When I was a young child, I have been told, I asked questions all the time. “Why” questions. It drove my mother crazy. She felt like she had this little mosquito following her around, buzzing in her ear night and day. Why? Why? Why? It was like a form of torture that she would try to endure, offering answers as best she could, but eventually she would cave and say, “I don’t know.”
She didn’t have all the answers like I expected her to. Later, I got married and I transferred all my hopes and expectations to my wise husband. I asked Kim all my questions, but it turned out he didn’t have all the answers either. I have spent much of my life pestering the people closest to me with unanswerable questions.
I might be an unusually irritating person, but doesn’t everybody want to have answers to the mysteries of life? We want to understand how and why things work the way they do, in heaven and on earth. Like these Sadducees in Luke 20, questioning Jesus.
If you’re not too clear about who the Sadducees were, it’s because we don’t talk about them nearly as much as the Pharisees. But one thing we know about them, because Luke tells us so right here, is that they do not believe in a resurrection. Life after death.
Someone once shared with me a little memory device for remembering the difference between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. It goes like this: The Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead, but the others didn’t, so they were sad, you see. You see? Don’t say I never gave you anything.
The resurrection was one thing the Pharisees and the Sadducees disagreed on, but there were other things. The Sadducees were, you might say, the originalists of the time. They maintained that the written law – that is, the collection of laws written in the Torah – is the only law. Nothing could be taken from it or added to it. And it must be interpreted literally. The Pharisees, on the other hand, seemed to regard the law as something like a living thing, that needed to be continually examined and reinterpreted. But for the Sadducees, it was carved in stone. Literally and figuratively.
So on this particular day Luke writes about in chapter 20, the Sadducees approached Jesus about the vexing question of marriage in the so-called hereafter. Assuming that there is a hereafter. They come at him with a complex hypothetical that reminds me of a word problem in a math textbook.
Their question is based on the written law of Moses, of course. If a man dies leaving his wife childless, his brother is obligated to take his deceased brother’s widow as his wife so she may have children. But if he also dies, still leaving her childless, then the next brother must marry her. And so it goes, as long as there be brothers to marry, as long as she remains childless. You’ve heard of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers? This is the Bible version: One Bride for Seven Brothers.
The point of their question, I suppose, it to prove to Jesus that the idea of life after death just didn’t make sense. Because they couldn’t work out the details. This was a math problem with no solution. They were stumped, and they were betting that this problem was going to stump Jesus too.
It’s like a trial of Jesus and his teachings. Jesus had one conviction, the Sadducees had a different conviction, and they intended to battle it out with words in an improvised court of law. This is how the court trial worked in Israel: One side would speak, presenting their arguments. Then the other side would speak, critiquing their arguments and presenting their counter-arguments. And so it would go, back and forth. Until one side could offer no further defense. Hence, the last one to speak would be the winner.
The thing to hope for, strive for, in a trial of this kind, would be to have all the answers, so many answers that the other side would run out of questions.
And then you run up against a four-year-old with an endless capacity for questioning.
The Sadducees of the world, the inquisitive children of the world, and the Jobs of the world; all want answers about the seemingly inexplicable, sometimes terrible things that happen in life.
In the book of Job we see some of those terrible, horrible things that can happen in life, things that seem to make no sense. Job loses his children, his livestock, his home, his health – just about evWherything. And then he climbs out of the wreckage of his life and starts demanding answers.
Job had been raised to believe that if he lived a careful and righteous life, he would reap the rewards; that good fortune follows goodness, and bad fortune befalls the wicked. Job knows quite well that he has not been wicked, because he is a careful, reflective man. He has been obedient in the law, scrupulous in his piety, and up to now, enjoyed all the blessings he had accrued. He has done nothing to deserve this ill fortune, so now he is searching for the complaint department.
His friends are more than glad to step right up. They will pull up a stool, listen to all his complaints and then cheerfully tell him that, in spite of what he thinks to be true, there is no question, whatsoever, that all this harm has come to him solely because of his own transgressions. They don’t know what those transgressions were – they haven’t the slightest idea – but they know that, as sure as night follows day, punishment follows sin. And it’s as clear as anything that Job is being punished – for something.
But Job simply won’t accept that. His friends might be full of theological knowledge, but their answers don’t ring true for Job. He knows he did not deserve to suffer so greatly. He knows it in his bones. And so, therefore, Job knows that everything he always believed about divine rewards and punishments cannot be true.
There is so much at stake here. Sometimes people lose their faith over matters like this. Sometimes your beliefs, which have been so solid for you all your life, suddenly crack and crumble because a tragedy happens. Those things that you know with certainty, with clarity, that you have etched in stone, don’t hold up. The logic is no longer there; the math doesn’t work.
Job’s friends recognize all that is at stake, so they just keep arguing. Here too, it’s almost like a trial. Every time Job offers a long-winded answer to their assertions, his friends come right back with their own just-as-long-winded responses. They simply can’t give it up, because of what is at risk: the conviction that there is a good God in heaven. In this trial, God is the defendant.
Job’s friends won’t give up on God. But what’s really interesting is that Job feels the same way. Job won’t give up on God. But neither will he give up his position. He knows he doesn’t deserve all this suffering. And he cannot accept that a good God would punish him for something he didn’t do. No. He has not turned away from God, but Job is demanding answers. And he says:
I know that my redeemer lives. And that, at the last, he will stand on earth. And I will see God, who is on my side.
A greater faith there never was.
I never really got over my tendency to ask too many questions. I annoy my family, myself, and probably God, with my incessant questions. What? Why? How? And I had a kindred spirit at one time. My father-in-law, Peter, was also a questioner.
He was a pastor for most of his life. He preached with the sure conviction of faith, but still had questions, always questions. I will never forget a conversation we had one evening, as he was drawing near to the end. We talked about eternal things – things both of us wondered about, things neither of us understood. I asked him if he ever argued with God. His eyes opened wide, he said, “Yes! All the time! And I always lose.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “But I have a feeling that this time God is going to let me win.”
I know that my redeemer lives. And that, at the last, he will stand on earth. And I will see God, who is on my side.
What the story of Job tells us is that questioning is an integral part of faith. There is no way to have a strong and mature faith without having questions. But eventually, in our questioning, we run up against the awesome mystery of the divine.
Faith seeks understanding. In fact, this is what faith is all about – seeking to know God, to encounter God. But never assume that you will solve the mystery of God, like a math problem.
This is the essence of what Jesus wanted the Sadducees to know, too. Do not try to understand God in worldly terms. There is another realm altogether, one that we see now only through a glass darkly.
And finally, after Jesus finished speaking, Luke writes this: Then some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” For they no longer dared to ask him another question.
They have encountered the mystery. The end of the trial.
The Sadducees of the world, the Jobs of the world, even the curious little children of the world – perhaps you see yourself in these. Let us not be discouraged in our questioning. But merely encouraged to open our minds wider, to live with the tension of beliefs and ideas, to embrace the mystery of love.
Photo Credit: Shutterstock/Elizaveta Galitckaia
