I really do want this life with Jesus. There is a part of me that longs to genuinely enjoy the kind of experience with God, rooted in grace and empowered by the Spirit, that Jesus came to offer us through what he accomplished in and through his life and death and resurrection. But there are times when my day-to-day activity betrays that there are other wants shaping my living. And I find in my own heart and mind rationalizations and reasonings that push against Jesus’ kind of life. It’s not that I am entirely double-minded, it’s just that . . . well, I am distractable.
If I am going to be honest, that distractability is not inevitable. I am distracted, in some sense, because I want to be, I chose to be, I set my focus and the distractability follows. And what I end up doing, in those distractable moments, is to attempt to justify my choices, argue that my distractability just “happened,” and try to plead ignorance or argue relevance or . . .
Well, I do whatever I can to distance myself from what I really already know matters. I play mental games to keep from having to look honestly at what Jesus invites me into.
I know that sounds pretty twisted . . . but I do find those kind of cognitive gymnastics going on at times. Kind of like what happened in Mark 12:18-27.
Some Sadducees come to talk with Jesus. They find it very hard to ignore him, but they don’t really like him. They don’t believe in the resurrection of the dead, Jesus seems to. They don’t think God messes with people directly very much any more, Jesus seems to believe the opposite. So, they don’t really like him and they really are troubled by his growing ministry.
So, they come with a question. Or at least they pose it as a question. They ask about a woman whose husband dies before an heir can be born. That was a problem in Jesus’ day, in that property was the basis of life and family property stayed with the son(s). No child and the family property goes to another. So, there was provision in the Old Testament law for a woman whose husband dies leaving her childless; she could have a child by her husband’s brother, thus preserving the line.
Well the Sadducees suggest a hypothetical situation involving seven brothers and no children and then end this sham by asking Jesus about whose wife the woman would be “in the resurrection” seeing as she had wed all seven brothers.
The truth is, they weren’t looking for an answer. They only wanted to trip Jesus up; get him a bit off balance. They were trying to muddy things up a bit so they wouldn’t have to deal with Jesus. They wanted to be able to throw up their hands and say, “See, this Jesus doesn’t have it all figured out! He can’t even resolve this tiny problem!”
And I do the same. All to often. When I hear Jesus speak to me about something in my life that needs to change or something in my world that he intends for me to be attentive to, I change the subject, raise an objection, posit a hypothetical situation . . . all in hopes of getting him distracted enough and getting me engaged enough that I can justify not following him simply, not responding to him directly.
How did Jesus respond to the Sadducees? He informed them that they had missed it. He didn’t directly resolve their hypothetical situation. He simply told them that they neither understood God nor the Scriptures (Mark 12:24).
They were playing games. Jesus was calling for life. They were dealing in fictional hypotheticals. Jesus was breathing life into spiritually dead people. They were wrangling about words. Jesus was speaking truth. They missed it my a mile by trying to be clever and confrontational. Jesus spoke to them simply and called them to be attentive.
Sometimes I miss it by a mile, too. I play games, deal in fictional hypotheticals, wrangle about words, try to be clever. And Jesus speaks plainly to me. He asks:
Do you really want to listen to what I am saying? Will you give attention to what the Scriptures actually say? Are you inclined to rest in the power of God? Or are you going to continue to distract yourself with such games?
