Fascinating word... Agenda. An agenda can be a list or outline of things to be considered or done in a fixed period of time, such as agendas for business or faculty meetings. It could be the official work plan for a committee meeting. It can be a temporary but highly organized plan for matters to be negotiated among rival groups.
There can be an underlying and quite often ideological plan or program associated with an agenda. An agenda might be political in nature.... the agenda of the Democratic Party.... of the Republican Party or any special interest group that wants to capture attention, control the discourse and debate while manipulating the achievement of a goal. It can be the list of business to be brought before an elected Assembly, such as a state legislature. Quite often an agenda is the framework for negotiation and compromise. Anyone can have an agenda... all you need is a cause, a purpose, an idea, a goal and expectations.
People love agendas... we use them all the time. It’s a neatly framed way to control situations, get our own way or negotiate an advantage based on our experiences. We even try to use our agendas with God.
When we come to Christ, we come with our own agendas and assumptions about what the relationship should be like. None of us comes to Christ with a blank slate. Rather, we bring opinions formed by life experiences. Perhaps our agenda is political. Perhaps it is theological or intellectual. Perhaps it is racial or social. Whatever it is, we expect Jesus to buy in. We want him to sign our petition or endorse our cause. If he doesn't, we're not so sure we want to follow Him.
In Luke 20, Jesus has encounters with two different groups of people that should inspire us to question to what degree we come to Christ with our own agendas. First, the religious officials question Jesus' authority, and Jesus responds with parables that expose their sin. Luke tells us in 20:19-20 that these religious leaders were looking for a way to turn the tables on Jesus. They sent spies to ask Jesus a question they hoped would catch him off guard. Two groups that normally despised each other, the Pharisees and Herodians, crafted an agenda based on their mutual hatred of Jesus.
Their “agenda” called for them to come to him with flattering words, praising him for being a teacher of truth, and then ask him the perfect question for squeezing someone between a rock and a hard place... "Is it in keeping with the law of Moses to pay taxes to Caesar or not?" If Jesus said they should pay the tax, the Jewish people would brand him a traitor. The Jews hated this tax. If Jesus instructed them not to pay the tax, he would have been branded an insurrectionist by the Roman authorities. Rome didn't tolerate people like that.
Jesus “detected their trickery.” He turns the table... and asked them a question (vs 24)... "Show me a denarius. Whose likeness and inscription does it have?" They produce the coin and answer, ..."Caesar's." Then Jesus says to them, "Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." They were unable to trip him up, their mutual agenda fell apart and they were reduced to silence.
In the second encounter in Luke 20, Jesus is approached by a group of men called Sadducees. This was an aristocratic group made up of priestly families of Jerusalem. They were worldly and wealthy. Even though they were religious, they were the rationalistic intellectuals of their day. So, just as the Pharisees and the Herodians had a political agenda, these guys had a theological and philosophical agenda. Unlike the Pharisees, they didn't believe in life after death or in the resurrection of the dead, and their conflict with Jesus was that he had already predicted his own resurrection.
Their Agenda – they knew that if they were right, then Jesus could be discredited as a phony. To prove it, they approached Jesus (verses 27-33) with a hypothetical situation designed to make anyone who believed in the resurrection look ridiculous.
Quoting from the book of Deuteronomy, the Sadducees refer to a law that stated if a man died before he and his wife could produce a child, then his brother had an obligation to marry the widow. The Sadducees paint a wild scenario: a woman gets married and her husband dies before they have a child. So she married his brother, but he also dies without producing an heir. This goes on through seven brothers, all of whom die before they have a child. Finally the woman dies.... probably from exhaustion and the Sadducees want to know whose wife she will be in the resurrection.
It's amazing that Jesus even took this seriously, but He actually gave them a very thoughtful answer. First, he corrected their theology. The Sadducees assumed that if there were an afterlife, it would be an extension of this life. So, if you were married on earth then you would be married in heaven, and if you had kids on earth you would have kids in heaven. Jesus said it doesn't work that way.... and delivers the agenda killer... by saying there is “no marriage in heaven.”
Jesus also corrected their understanding of the Bible passages they referenced. In verses 37-40, Jesus refers back to Moses' interaction with God in the burning bush. He uses very simple logic: God's statement to Moses was in the present tense: "I am the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob." That doesn't make any sense if they're not alive. If someone comes to you and says, "I was your father’s best friend," that may be because your father is dead or somehow their relationship has changed. But if he comes to you and says, "I am your father’s best friend," the assumption is that he's still alive and their relationship is still dynamic. That's why Jesus says, "He is not the God of the dead but of the living." Again, Jesus puts an end to an agenda, an attempt to discredit who He was.
What cause are you trying to get Jesus to endorse? Christians get caught up in many agendas and causes that have nothing to do with God’s purpose or Kingdom building. Such activities, ideas, causes and schemes serve to deflect our time, energy and very often our resources away from the things God would have us focused on.
How does Jesus respond? Thankfully, just as gently as He did with his enemies in the first century. He loves us enough to engage with us, but he won't sign on to any of our schemes, plans, ideas or agendas. He has an agenda of His own that is moving forward to its ultimate conclusion and He wants us to sign on to His program.
Our concept of what He's doing is so small and limiting. Our view of his Kingdom is at best a human remake of life on earth. It might be a political remake; that’s why many Christians put so much faith and confidence in the continuation of this world and its political systems. Surely God is going to fix all this. No... He is not going to do that. This world and all of its ways are passing away.
Maybe you fall into the group that seeks a theological remake of God’s plan. You might feel that the Bible is a bit outdated and should be interpreted more liberally to accommodate today’s social and cultural standards. No. What God said 2,000 years ago, 3,000 years ago, what He has been saying from the beginning of His interactions with humanity still stands today... without change or dilution. God doesn’t change His standards... nor can we.
God wants us to be part of something that transcends our own agenda and ideas of how we think He should be doing His work on earth today. We want wiggle room. We want to negotiate compromises and allowances for humanistic philosophies. He wants obedience, commitment, loyalty, integrity, humility and love among brothers who have claimed salvation in Christ.
He wants us to embrace with passion a Kingdom without end, created not through political power, or theological compromise, but through the cross and the power of His resurrection. It’s is His cross and that cross is our bridge to eternity. He invites us to pick it up, bear it, and follow Him on His terms... not ours.
