Don’t Waste My Time

The Gospel - Luke 20: 27-38

Humans ask many dumb questions and seek out many trivial facts that a lot of time and effort is lost. Sometimes the more intelligent and learned you are the stupider the questions often become. That’s true in academia and it’s certainly true in those who become Bible scholars.

Sometimes pursuing trivial information is used to cover up or deflect away from real issues or questions people don’t want to answer or may even be malicious in nature.

Here are some trivial bits of info for you:

There are 49 different types of food mentioned in the Bible.

In the 1400’s a law was set forth in England that a man was allowed to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. Hence we have “the rule of thumb”

Many years ago in Scotland , a new game was invented. It was ruled “Gentlemen Only…Ladies Forbidden”…and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language.

Did you know that Honey is the only food that doesn’t spoil.

Coca-Cola was originally green.

It is impossible to lick your elbow.

What is the largest amount of money in coins you can have without being able to make change for a dollar? Three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, ($1.19).

There is a huge danger in wasting time seeking out trivia and theorizing what God means about certain things from God’s perspective. I think He certainly feels that way about denominational distinctions and those things that “shave” His words into mere word play and make them questions in a kind of eternal trivial debate.

Titus 3: 9 says “But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and strife and disputes about the Law, for they are unprofitable and worthless.”

There are other verses that warn about “useless words or facts.”

Ecclesiastes 6: 4 says, “for it comes in futility and goes into obscurity; and its name is covered in obscurity.”

Job 15: 3 suggests, "Should he argue with useless talk, Or with words which are not profitable?”

2 Peter 2: 18 states “For speaking out arrogant words of vanity they entice by fleshly desires, by sensuality, those who barely escape from the ones who live in error…” Given this thought listen to our Gospel Lesson from Luke 20: 27-38:

Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and asked him a question, "Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother.

Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her."

Jesus said to them, "Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.

And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive."

Remember that the people who asked this question didn’t believe in resurrection and/or life after death. Therefore they didn’t really want an answer, perhaps they wanted to just shut Jesus up, shame him, or even suggest Jesus teach another subject.

Think for a second - Why would resurrection be so important to Pharisees, other Jews, but not the Sadducees?

Part of it concerns which books in the Bible were considered to be inspired by God. 

The Sadducees worked only with the Pentateuch, the Torah (the 5 books attributed to Moses), while the Pharisees and others also added the Wisdom Literature (Prophets and Psalms) as scripture, and it was in those extra books that Pharisees found justification for trusting in a resurrection of the dead.

But this sounds too simply like a denominational fight, a tempest in a theological teapot, and therefore hardly worth anyone’s time to report in the Gospel of Luke.

But Jesus uses the question to add an important layer of understanding to our knowledge in reminding us of how His birth, life, death, and resurrection has changed things, and must change our view of God, Jesus, and eternity.

This trivial question actually went to the matter of ultimate justice in the world.

The Sadducees understood this world to be the only place in which God would act as a keeper of covenantal promises; Pharisees understood that God (the Creator of Heaven and Earth) would keep promises and enact justice even (maybe even particularly) beyond the boundaries of this world, beyond space and time.

That made it important in addressing a necessary thing because Rome quite clearly controlled the here and now one and was clearly not going to be paid back for its injustices here and now.

The terms of Jesus’ argument are worth a closer look. He has been handed a case involving the complexities of levirate marriage, that patriarchal institution that protected women by passing them from brother to brother.

(The law could become quite detailed and trivial in that teachers of it (Rabbi’s) would become necessary to sit around and ask themselves these kinds of questions even into our days.)

Jesus says that in the age to come, the age of resurrection and restitution, the whole institution of marriage will be unnecessary, and women will not be passed along as property. Why? Because, as Jesus says in Luke 20: 36, in that age, people “are not able to die.” Why would that matter?

It appears that Luke’s Jesus understands the age of resurrection and restitution to have set aside the entire patriarchal structure that makes the possessing of women as property possible because individuality has become the focus of salvation and eternity and not people groups, families, children, and nations.

His whole ministry, while upholding God and God’s law, also redefines and adds things that make it simpler to understand. His commands and commandments still stand as they continue to be human ideals but they also have the Messiah to deal with now as well.

Eternity will be a “self-identified” mass glorification of God, with many small parts coming together in a larger form of adoration and joy, if that makes sense.

Meanwhile here of earth we need to be reminded to not focus on human concepts and arguments that don’t matter in the long run.

“Remind them of these things, and solemnly charge them in the presence of God not to wrangle about words, which is useless and leads to the ruin of the hearers.” (2 Timothy 2: 14)

“For some men, straying from these things, have turned aside to fruitless discussion,” (1 Timothy 1: 6)

It’ll be a struggle but let’s focus on the important things and not get caught up in trivial or useless words. Remember that of the 800,000 words in the English language. 300,000 are technical terms. The average person knows 10,000 words and uses 5,000 in everyday speech. A writer generally knows approximately 15,000 and uses around 10,000.

Christians don’t need that many.

BUT how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?  Amen.