Key Verse: Matthew 22:36 –

“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”

Has anyone ever asked you a trick question? Some trick questions either don’t have an answer, or the way they are asked does not allow for a correct answer.

Sometimes questions are designed for no other purpose than to get someone into trouble. You’ve heard the old standard: “Answer yes or no: Have you stopped cheating on your wife? Within the framework of the question, there’s no way to answer without self-incrimination.

Jesus often ran into such dicey questions. Our text for today finds Jesus teaching in the temple, drawing ever closer to the end of his earthly ministry. He had become so popular that his religious opponents were working overtime in an effort to discredit him. It’s unfortunate that even religious people often lack the ability to make a case for their own view without casting aspersions on others’ beliefs.

The God of the Living (vv. 23-33)

A bit of background before we get to the main text: two main groups provided leadership for first century Judaism. The Sadducees were the fundamentalists of early Judaism. They relied mainly on the Torah as authoritative and had little truck with the prophets, the writings, and revolutionary notions like resurrection. Their counterparts were the Pharisees, who not only accepted the writings and the prophets as scripture, but had come to believe that faithful Jews would not live forever in shadowy Sheol after death, but would one day rise from the dead and find new life.

The Sadducees and Pharisees appear to have enjoyed baiting each other with trick questions designed to cast doubt on the others’ beliefs. In this chapter, however, the two groups turn their attention from each other and focus their attacks on Jesus, who was leading a new movement that threatened them both.

As Matthew tells it, the Sadducees took the first shot at Jesus, and they came out with tongues blazing. They used their best trick question, based on the tradition of levirate marriage described in Deut. 25:5-10. The admittedly sexist practice was designed to ensure that every man would have a son to inherit his goods and to carry on his name. Thus, if a man were to die before his wife gave birth to a son, one of his brothers (even if already married) was expected to marry the widow and have relations with her until she produced the desired son, who would be regarded as the child of the deceased. [DD]

The Sadducees stretched the odd custom to extremes in their efforts to trip up the Pharisees. What if a man with seven brothers died without begetting a son, and every brother who married the widow suffered the same fate, until all of them had married her? In the resurrection (if such a thing existed), they asked, whose wife would she be? [DD]

The Pharisees had no answer, which delighted the Sadducees. But when they posed the same question to Jesus, they got a surprise. He had an answer for them, and they didn’t want to hear it. Jesus recognized the Sadducees’ hostile intent, and quickly pointed to some gaps in their understanding. The implication was that, since they didn’t know anything about the resurrection, they didn’t have the right to ask smug questions about it.

In the resurrection, Jesus taught, human relationships such as marriage would give way to a different reality, something that we cannot now begin to understand, where earthly customs no longer apply. He gave no details, only that the resurrected would be “like angels.”

While he was on a roll, Jesus called their bluff on another point. He quoted a recurring text form the Pentateuch (Exod. 3:6, 15-16; 4:5, etc.) in which God reportedly said “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” even after those patriarchs were dead and buried. Jesus asked how such a thing could be if there were no resurrection. Otherwise, the scriptures should have said “I was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

Jesus’ response was more semantic than logical, but it was enough to silence the Sadducees, who went away remembering Jesus’ last words to them: “He is God not of the dead, but of the living.” Following God is all about living – now, as well as later.

The God of the Loving (vv. 34-40)

When Jesus silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees grinned and stepped in as if to say “Move aside and led some real men tackle this problem.” They posed for Jesus a question that could embroil any group of rabbinic students in endless debate. The Torah contained many commandments and the rabbis had added many others, so there were literally hundreds of directives that faithful Jews were expected to understand and to obey. All the commandments were deemed important, but the rabbis delighted in debating which ones were the most important, and they did not all agree.

So, they submitted the conundrum to Jesus. “What is the greatest commandment?” (vv. 34-36). Jesus never blinked, but quickly quoted two Old Testament texts. He sided with the popular view that Deut. 6:4-5 was the most important. Called the “Shema,” it was to be recited three times every day: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”

Jesus quoted the text, and in keeping with contemporary Greek thought that had introduced the mind as the source of decision making, he added “and with all your mind” (v. 37). [DD]

That was the first and greatest commandment, Jesus said, but he then went a step beyond to insist that the second most important could not be separated from the first. From Leviticus 19:8, he quoted the injunction that God’s people should love their neighbors as themselves. It doesn’t take much thought to recognize that the two commands are like two sides of the same coin. If we claim to love God but don’t show love to our neighbors, we’re lying. Those who truly love God will express it in love to other people. The cross is not complete unless it has both a vertical and a horizontal dimension. God is the God of the loving.

Here it is, then — in two short answers to two trick questions, Jesus taught two very important theological truths: God is the God of the living, and God of the loving.

The God of . . . you? (vv. 41-46)

Jesus was not satisfied to leave it there, for the truth of the gospel always calls for a response to the gospel. While his silenced inquisitors were still gathered about, Jesus turned the tables and asked a question of his own.

“What you think about the Messiah?” Jesus asked. “Whose son is he?” (vv. 41-42a). The Pharisees responded confidently because the answer seemed obvious. Everybody knew that the Messiah would be descended of David. So, they smugly answered, as if the question was too elementary to ask, “The son of David” (v. 42b). [DD]

“Ha!” Jesus said. “Ha!”

No, that’s not in the text, but we can imagine Jesus offering such a retort. “How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying ‘The Lord says to my lord, sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet?’ If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” (vv. 43-45).

The Pharisees would have known Jesus was quoting from Psalm 110:1, which was traditionally attributed to David, and begins “The LORD (Yahweh) says to my lord ….” [DD]

Jesus interpreted “my lord” as a reference to the messiah, The Pharisees thought of the Messiah as an ordinary man who would be empowered by the Spirit to deliver Israel, not as someone David would call “lord.” Would David refer to his descendant as “lord” if he was an ordinary man?

Thinking of the Messiah as divine was not a category of thought for the Pharisees.

Jesus pressed them for a response. What did they believe about the Messiah? Would they stick with their traditional beliefs, even though they led only to bickering within their own faith? Or would they dare to risk trusting that Jesus really was the Messiah, and that he was not the kind of Messiah they expected?

We would like to think that some, at least, would have declared their faith, that one of them, perhaps, would have seen the light and trusted in Jesus as the one who could lead them to the God who is God of the living and God of the loving.

Unfortunately, the response was silence. “No one was able to give him an answer,” the text says, “nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions” (v. 46).

We may find some delight in the ancient inquisitors’ discomfiture, but can we really do so comfortably? Today we are faced with the same question.

God has come to us in Christ as the God of the living and the God of the loving. Do we want to live? Are we willing to love? Can we believe what Jesus taught, or do we require more data? How long will we remain silent?

We are an educated society. We like to discuss things and argue and debate, to send things out to a committee to gather more information, to consider and reflect and run opinion polls before we make a decision. Jesus calls us to stop evading the issue and ducking the question. He calls us to respond.

I’ve attended a lot of Baptist meetings in my life, and many of them include resolutions that tend to be debated ad infinitum. I’m always happy when someone has had enough, and they stand up to say “Call for the question!”

In essence, that is where Jesus leaves us at the end of today’s text. He calls for the question. He challenges us to respond. What do we think about the Messiah?