Your God Is Too Small - Advent Gospels - Day 9

He is the God of the Living!

Stupid Questions

SolLuna, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

 

12/6
Matthew 22:23-33

Be Astonished!

The same day some Sadducees came to him, saying there is no resurrection; and they asked him a question, saying, "Teacher, Moses said, 'If a man dies childless, his brother shall marry the widow, and raise up children for his brother.' Now there were seven brothers among us; the first married, and died childless, leaving the widow to his brother. The second did the same, so also the third, down to the seventh. Last of all, the woman herself died. In the resurrection, then, whose wife of the seven will she be? For all of them had married her."

Jesus answered them, "You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is God not of the dead, but of the living."

And when the crowd heard it, they were astounded at his teaching.

I have heard it said and I have said it, "The only stupid question is the one you do not ask."

I need to revise that.

The only stupid question is the sincere, honest, and relevant question that you do not ask.

There really are stupid questions in this world. Here is proof. It is a convoluted, irrelevant, distracting, and argumentative question about a realm which we can barely conceive of and a reality that is beyond our understanding and our rules of operation. It does not even comply with the laws of nature.

In narrowing Heaven and the Resurrection to their definitions of reality and relationships, Jesus shows that they were also limiting the potential of temporal and eternal life in the present.

They were defining truth and meaning by their disputations on the law when the Torah was silent on the matter they were raising. They were wrong about God because they were ignorant of the scriptures and their meaning. Worse than that, they were wrong because they failed to know the power of God.

Their God was too small.

They were wrong about the resurrection because they failed to comprehend the meaning of real life itself. Human relationships on this planet in time and space are indicators of something deeper in the eternal realm where God is the God of the living.

Jesus confronts the stupidity of the question and calls the questions out of the stupor, the haze they renders us stupid in our disorientation. He offers an alternative way of thinking that is life-orientated rather than death-obsessed,

Jesus comes in the Advent season in history and year after year to announce life. Eternity invades time to lift mankind to an eternal persopective that changes how we think and live in the here and now.

God is the God of the living. Be astonished.