“Gotcha” Questions From Mean-Spirited People
Luke 20:27-38
In the last week of his life Jesus after entering Jerusalem heads to the temple where he is offended by the presence of salesmen and money changers in this sacred place. He drives them out. For Jerusalem’s religious establishment, that is the last straw. If they had any previous doubts, now they are convinced. Jesus’ ministry and message as well as his popularity and personhood pose a serious threat. A final solution to the Jesus problem must be enacted.
They were not content persuading Jesus to leave and return to Galilee. It is not enough to convince him to tone down his rhetoric. They decide to kill him! These are mean-spirited people.
All week Jesus preaches in the temple. Ordinary people composed most of his audience. They come with great hope and expectation. They want to see him, hear him, and perhaps be healed by him.
The religious leaders of Jerusalem are always present in the crowd. They are looking for a way to discredit Jesus. They hope to find a way to turn the crowd against him; perhaps even to have the crowd demand Jesus be put to death. These are mean-spirited people.
The religious leaders leave nothing to chance, every time Jesus preaches, they are in the audience. They take advantage of Jesus’ practice of permitting discussion at the end of his sermon. They come armed with a series of trick questions. We call these “gotcha” questions. No matter how one answers, one is cast in a bad light.
The plan is launched by assigning a small group of Jesus’ enemies to question his authority. They ask him, “Tell us, by what authority are you doing these things? We didn’t give you authority to say these things. Who did?” Even today that ploy is used. If you want to undermine a leader, question their authority. Jesus sees and avoids the trap. He answers their question with a question about the source of John the Baptist’s authority. No matter how they answer, they would be discredited.
Jesus then tells the parable of the wicked tenants. The religious leaders recognize themselves as the wicked tenants in the parable. This infuriates them. They consider the possibility of grabbing Jesus immediately and doing away with him, but they fear what the crowd might do. The plan of the mean-spirited is foiled again.
Their next question is crafted to push Jesus into a corner from which there can be no escape. They think, “He will have to answer this one.” When the opportunity is just right, one of them asks, “Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”
Jesus’ answer by saying “give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God the things are God’s”. What does it really mean to give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s? Twenty centuries later and Jesus’ answer continues to generate lively discussions.
The religious leaders thought they had the perfect “gotcha” question, but once again they are foiled. Jesus’ answer amazes them. Luke tells us it even left them speechless.
One might have thought they would give up after, but mean-spirited people are tenacious. The mean-spirited reorganize and try again with a different group assigned to ask the questions. In today’s gospel reading, Luke 20:27-38, they send in the Sadducees. They ask Jesus a question about the resurrection. Ironically, the Sadducees do not believe in the resurrection. That may, in part, account for why their question seems odd.
To paraphrase the issue brought forth by the Sadducees: Once upon a time, there was a family with eight sons. A married son dies and leaves a wife but no children. In keeping with the Law of Moses, a brother of the deceased marries the widow. In time, that brother dies without children and so on until she has married all eight sons. No children are born to any of these marriages. Eventually the woman also dies. The Sadducees finally get to the question, “In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be?”
An odd question for them to ask? If we knew a woman who had been married and widowed eight times, our first question would not concern her marital status in eternity. Other issues seem more pressing. Such as, “Did the county prosecuting attorney consider checking the arsenic levels in those deceased husbands?”
The Sadducees did not expect or even want Jesus to answer their question. They were interested in trapping and discrediting Jesus and turning the crowd against him. Imagine their surprise when Jesus gives a serious, even compassionate answer to their question. Let me paraphrase, not so much the words of Jesus’ answer, but the ideas Jesus uses.
Your question touches on something important in understanding the relationship between marriage and eternity. You do not believe in the resurrection, yet you asked me, “Whose wife she will be after she dies?” Your concern rises from the fact that she had multiple husbands and no children. You wonder how she, or for that matter, her many husbands will experience eternity.
Let me say that your understanding of both marriage and eternity is too limited. You work with the definitions of this present age wherein marriage is the primary vehicle for eternity. In this understanding a man has the right to take a woman in marriage. In exchange for this, the man offers the woman protection and support, and the woman is expected to provide children, particularly sons to inherit the family wealth and carry the family name. In this understanding, eternity is to live on in one’s children and grandchildren.
That is the understanding of this present age, but a new age is breaking. Eternal life will not be dependent on being married and having children. In this new age, categories of married, single, and widowed as well as male and female, slave and free, rich and poor, old and young, Jew and Gentile — even the distinction of living and dead fall away to be rendered unimportant. In this age of God’s reign every person has worth simply because he or she is a child of the living God.
Luke tells us that even the skeptical Sadducees were impressed by what Jesus said. In fact, they were so impressed that they no longer “dared to ask him another question” (20:40).
Remember the tenacity of the mean-spirited, they don’t give up easily. In fact, all they do is reorganize and try again. The mean-spirited decide to have Jesus killed without waiting for him to say something that discredits him in the eyes of the people.
It might be said at that moment those religious leaders crossed the threshold from mean-spirited to downright evil.
They are successful with this final version of the plan. At their weekly debriefing in the temple conference room, the mean-spirited must have congratulated one another on their success. They had heard the last from this Galilean troublemaker. How disappointed they must have been when they heard the news that the tomb was empty. God in Christ Jesus defeated death. The new age of which he had spoken had arrived. Thanks be to God. Amen and Amen.