Out Our Way

Mark 12: 13-27

Out our way, folk who work with horses know that every horse as two brains - one on the left and one on the right. When you are training a horse, you have to train both sides. I recall when Goliath was all a flutter over the "prairie jellyfish" as someone dubbed those plastic sacks from Walmart and IGA that somehow don't get recyced but get free to roam the prairies with the wind.

My pal and mentor, Rick, taught me that the horse needs to learn the sack is harmless so it will ignore the sight and sound and maybe the smell of the plastic "monster." Hooking up a few bags to a small fly rod he taught me to shake it, wave it and eventualy touch Goliath with the bags while holding him steady on the lead rope. Eventually, he calmed down and I could wve it about his head and ears and rub it on his neck, back and hind quarters with out him flinching. I was pretty proud of myself and started to take Goliath back out for a ride when Rick stopped me.

"You're only half done," he said. You taught his left brain, but now you have to teach his right." That's when I learned about the two brains of a horse. Yet both brains belong to the same animal.

In reading Goliath's Gospel text I discovered the devil is like a horse in the sense that he too often has more than one head or brain. Consider the Pharisees and Sadducees who were polar oppositis in religion, but served the same master in their hatred and opposition to Christ.

The Pahrisees were the ultra-conservative, legalistic Jews who not only insisted on obedience to the Law, but sought to "improve it" by adding more rules and regulations of their own. Some see them as the "fundamentalits" of their day. More concerned with being right in their own minds than in being righteous before God, they saw Jesus as a threat to their control and power. So they saw Him as the enemy and sought to destroy Him with a clever ploy - asking Him if good Jews should pay taxes to Caesar. The idea was simple. If He said "yes," then they could tell the people Jesus was a lackey of the Romans and thus a collaborator with the enemy. If He said "no," then they could report Him to the Romans as a rebel and have Him arrested.

But Jesus turned the tables on them by asking them to show Him a coin. It was a Roman coin - bering the image of Caesar! "Well, if you use Caesar's coin, then accept Caesar's authority and his right to tax you."

Then came the Sadducees - whom many consider similar to the secularized and politicized religion of many of the so-called progressive and liberal Church leaders of our day. They did not take the Bible seriously and did not accept many of the basics of the Jewish faith - such as the resurrection of the dead. They also thought to be clever and raised a silly challenge to the concept of the resurrection by coming up with the idea of a woman who had been widowed seven times, and at the resurrection, which husband would truly be hers.

Jesus' response was simple and dismissive: "Despite your role as priests of the Temple and supposed servants of the Lord, your question demonstrates your incredible ignorance of both the Scripture and of God." As we might say today, "You can't have a battle of wits with an unarmed foe." And with these words, Jesus silenced the Sadducees.

Pharisees - the legalists who are more concerned with their own doctrine and being right than with God's righteousness - and Sadducees - who have more in common with the secular and pagan culture than with the basics of their own supposed faith - were two different points of view, two different heads, but all part of he same body - not the Jewish faith but the Devil. For both Saduccees and Pharisees worked for the same master, and it was not the Lord. When Jesus confronted them, they reacted as did the demons - screaming in indignation and yet helpless.

In the movie "The Passion," the devil is seen in various scenes passing among the Saduccees and Pharisees, working and encouraging them in their hatred and desire to destroy Jesus. The devil seems to succeed, uniting the bitterest of enemies in the common cause of stopping Jesus. Two heads seek to kill the Christ and seem to succeed as He dies on the cross. But then comes the resurrection. One of the final scenes shows the devil in hell screaming in anguish as the Risen One overcomes the power of the hatred, deceit and evil. Two heads, one master - and all fail. This is the story of the season of lent and of Easter. As a simple, uneducated man trying to read the Book of Revelation noted when two smarty-pants seminarians challenged his ability to comprehend it, "It ain't all that hard when you boil it down to what John is trying to say. God wins. 'Nuff said."

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John Bruington and Goliaths serve in Havre at First Presbyterian Church.