When he was at table with them, he took the bread. He blessed the bread, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him!(Luke 24:13-35)

Tuesday, June 1, 2021

Avoiding the real answers

 


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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