Don't Be Shallow

The day after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Jesus set in motion the chain of events that would lead to his death. Throwing the money-changers  out of the temple (11:1-19) was like kicking a hornets’ nest. Enraged, the chief priests, scribes, and elders devised a plan to destroy him. They challenged Jesus’ authority. With one question he silenced them and with one parable he indicted them. They retreated, but they regrouped.

Proving the adage that politics makes strange bedfellows, they sent political rivals, the Pharisees and Herodians, to “trap him in his talk” (Mk. 12:13). Jesus stymied them as well. Finally, the Sadducees, who, Mark tells us, “say that there is no resurrection” (12:18), approached him with a question of their own (12:19-23): There was a widow who, in hopes of producing an heir for her first husband, married, each of her dead husband’s six brothers, one by one, each upon the death of the former. Eventually they all died, and so did she, without producing an heir. So, whose wife will she be in the resurrection?

I’ve read this story many times, but this time I was struck by the strangeness of Jesus’ reply: “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?”

Answers can be wrong, but questions? I went back and read it through many more times, asking many questions of my own, before I made a simple grammatical observation:  Jesus didn’t say the question was wrong. He said they were wrong. And they were wrong for a specific reason: because they knew “neither the Scriptures nor the power of God” (v.24).

No doubt, the Sadducees thought they knew the Scriptures. As the aristocratic priestly class, they took their authority from the Books of Moses (Genesis - Deuteronomy). They built their life and doctrine on them. So when Jesus cited one of the most famous passages in Exodus as proof of the resurrection of the dead, he was indicting them.

These experts, who thought they knew their Bibles so well, had (like me) missed a critical point because they missed the grammar. The Sadducees’ understanding of Scripture was as shallow as their desire to get to the bottom of it. They weren’t coming to God’s word desperate to really know him. If they had, they’d have read more carefully. They’d have thought harder. They’d have learned that God’s character is wrapped up in His promises - that God intends Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, even though they’ve died, to live to see their fulfillment. It is this understanding upon which the faithful have always stood.

Their approach to Jesus was as shallow as their approach to Scripture. They, like we so often do, came with their pet topics to discuss, their own agendas to uphold, and their best points to make. They did not come to listen. They did not come to be taught. They did not come hungry, willing to be corrected, prepared to ask question after question until they finally understood the truth. They certainly did not come to repent.

This article was originally published here.