When Smart People Ask Dumb Questions

November 8, 1992

The Sadducees asked Jesus a question. It was not a very practical question. And it does not seem on the surface to matter very much one way or another. But a great deal hung on the response they would receive that day from Jesus.

These were very smart people. They were cool and suave, but their intention was very deadly. If they could take the letter of the law and reduce it to absurdity they could undermine the authority of Jesus.

The Sadducees represent a religious mind-set that is still around 2,000 years later: a way of thinking that is more interested in being in control than it is in discovering who God really is.

No religious group has a corner on this "Sadducee mind-set," either! Extreme fundamentalists use the Bible like a club to beat down opposition, and never mind the Spirit of Christ. So-called liberals close their minds against any authoritative word from God, or any admission that there is an authoritative revelation.

People like these Sadducees want answers! They want answers, whether or not they even know the questions! The answers they want have to leave them still in charge, or they reject both answers and questions out of hand.

The questions they ask today are: How can the Bible speak with authority when it is obviously the work of scores of different people, handed down across hundred of years, and hammered into a canon by synods and sessions of fallible church groups?

The question they asked Jesus that day was: "Now there were seven brothers.. and one got married, and died— and so on, and so on... In the resurrection whose wife will she be?"

Jesus does not "fit into human schemes." Jesus was not always cooperative when it came to answering questions. He always spoke the truth. And he spoke the truth in love. But He always spoke from faith to faith.

In the opening paragraphs of this chapter the scribes and chief priests and elders asked Jesus where He got His authority. Jesus knew they were not interested in following Him. They were clearly hostile. He answered their question with a question: "Remember John the Baptist? Where did HE get HIS authority?"

The authority figures got into a huddle and said to each other, "If we say THIS... If we say THAT..." and then they calculated how to answer and finally said to Jesus: "We can't tell you where John got his authority."

And you remember, Jesus answered them: "I'm not going to tell YOU where I get My authority, either!"

Nobody, but NOBODY ever pushed Jesus around with words!

That is not to say that Jesus doesn't answer questions from smart people. Or from dumb people, either for that matter of fact. Remember how patient Jesus was with Nicodemus [1]: Step by step he led this brilliant man to personal faith.

And remember how Jesus was more than patient with a Samaritan woman by the well of Jacob in Sychar [2]?

Jesus never confused doubt with unbelief, or ignorance with stupidity and carnal foolishness. Jesus was the very model of patience and kindness. But to these Sadducees who asked Him this "whose wife will she be in the resurrection" question, Jesus did not give any answer at all. The question simply was not germane to the realities of the kingdom of God.

By their debating skill or use of idle curiosity they sought to avoid the deeper question about God's character. Here in their very presence was God's Son. Here was the WAY to eternal life— making Himself available to the people, to THEM! And they were saying things that amounted to, "If You know so much about heaven, then 'How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?'"

Even in His "non-answer" to the specific question of the Sadducees Jesus was not rude. He simply indicated that they didn't have the first inkling about the realities of resurrection life.

In his response to their bringing up the subject of life hereafter, Jesus spoke of the "children of this world" as well as the "children of God" and the "children of the resurrection."

He made it clear that what awaited the "children of God" when they become the "children of the resurrection" is beyond our full comprehension now. He told them that life in the "resurrection reality" is different from the orders and institutions we know now. "They are neither married nor given in marriage." (This seems to disappoint some people greatly. Others are counting on it.)

Jesus also made it clear that to be children of God is the equivalent to partaking of eternal life. "Children of God" who become "children of the resurrection" never know death. They close their eyes here, and they open them to new quality of life in God's Presence.

One thing this passage proves is that it is easier to ask Jesus trick questions than it is to ask Him to make us children of God.

The heart of our faith is not difficult to understand. Following Jesus demands intellectual integrity. But it is also a humbling thing to be a follower of Jesus. We have to relinquish OUR control, and give up OUR authority, and take up OUR cross and follow Him where HE says.

It is all right to bring Him our honest doubts. We can bring Him those unanswerable questions— and we all have them. But when we know we are face to face with Truth we have to say, with Thomas, "MY LORD AND MY GOD! [3]" and know the assurance that while some things are beyond our complete understanding, it is possible to be right with God!

There is this Sadducee mind-set that becomes what Walter Brueggemann calls a "theological gamesmanship (that) rudely interrupts the long-known and trusted truth about God's character. [4]"

It is easier— especially for smart people who know they are smart— to ask trick questions than it is to look Truth in the face. When we have had a glimpse of Jesus— when we have seen Him in the faces of men and women of God— when we have heard Him knocking at our heart's door- we need to make Him welcome at any cost.

There may be times when it is good to speculate about the life hereafter, or argue about specific religious scruples, or consider the immanence of the Second Coming. But Jesus came as the Author and the Perfecter of a New Covenant that goes DEEPER than the absurdity of stringing out rules and the letter of the law into deliberate tangles.

The writer of Hebrews puts it (8:10)

I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be My people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor or a man his brother saying "know the Lord" because they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.

The question, then, is not what street of gold we are going to reside on in the New Jerusalem, but whether or not this God is your God, and whether or not you are His woman, His man!

The question is NOT "Could God possibly inhabit the "big bang theory?" but has God for Christ's sake forgiven your wickedness? and does He remember your sins no more? The core of our faith is simple, direct: It concerns compassion, and justice. There is no need to make things complicated.

The work of obedience can be rudely interrupted by ventures into venal curiosity— curiosity that has at its heart the desire to avoid the real issue: will I have this God, this Man, Jesus Christ, as my Lord and my Savior?

Prayer - Lord, Help us never to slip into the role of the Sadducees, and talk religion while our hearts grow hard and cold and we lose YOU out of our lives. Amen

[1] John 3:1-21

[2] John 4:4-26

[3] John 20:28

[4] In an exposition of the lectionary in a Fall, 1992, issue of Christian Century magazine.