Comedian George Carlin had an old
routine in which he described his life in Catholic grade school. Each week the parish priest would come to
visit their classroom and he and his classmates would pose questions to the
priest. With vivid imaginations and
twisted logic, George and his friends would exaggerate the smallest facts of
religion, trying to find a question that might stump the priest.
“Father, what if someone was killed on
the way to confession?” might be followed up by questions about a hypothetical
person killed after confession on his way out of church, but who had committed
a sin as he exited, who then repented and turned to go back into church, but
before he could return was hit by a car.
The questions became convoluted, unrealistic, and very funny.
Those grade school questions weren’t
real searches for answers, but an intellectual game, which kept them from
having to deal with the real lessons of faith.
I think of George Carlin and his classmates as I read about the
Sadducees try to trap Jesus into answers to impossible questions. Maybe Carlin was inspired in his routine by the
Sadducees’ challenge to Jesus of a woman who married seven brothers, each of
whom died without children. When she
finally died, whose wife was she (Mark 12:18-27)?
The Sadducees' questions weren’t a
search for truth but a way to avoid a real discussion with Jesus about the
afterlife; the real life that awaits us after death. Jesus didn’t try to answer their silly
questions but told them they understood neither Scriptures nor the power of
God. Instead Jesus pointed out the truth
they had been missing or avoiding all along: that “God is not God of the dead but of
the living,” and
that we’ll all be raised again from the dead.
Aren’t we like the Sadducees at
times? We allow ourselves to be
distracted from a deeper relationship with God because we carry a lot of
baggage with us. Perhaps we dwell on
religious rules we don’t comprehend or hang onto a hurt inflicted by some
cleric. We’re certain in our hearts the
rule is unfair, or we can’t forgive the religious professional who was
profoundly wrong—and maybe just as profoundly human. Certainly struggling with faith questions and
relationship is a part of our lives, but could our “baggage”, our challenges
and our questions, be a way to justify our move away from a deeper relationship
with God? Maybe we’re allowing our own
unwillingness to forgive to come between us and a deeper relationship with the
one who wants to love us endlessly, the one who forgive us always.
The Sadducees remind me of individuals
I come across in my own life and maybe in yours. Think of the person at work who raises a
topic not to move a project forward but only to embarrass a colleague, or the
politician whose “innocent” questions are intended to torpedo a bill instead of
improving it.
Many of us struggle with humility, in
part because we may not be exactly sure what humility entails. “He guides the humble to
justice, he teaches the humble his way.” (Psalms 25:9)
Jesus invites us to lay down our
baggage, our complications and those questions that aren’t really designed to
draw us closer to God. He invites us to
look at our lives and place our trust in the gift of life promised by God.
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