Stop and Think

Mark 12:24 Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God? 25 For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. 26 And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? 27 He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong."

At the end of the previous chapter, Jesus had left His critics speechless.  Since He was approaching the end of His ministry, He was challenging everything to stop and process everything He had said, done, and stood for.  Sometimes it was the questions He answered; other times it was the questions He asked.  First, to those He had silenced He asked them to consider if He might not be the cornerstone of faith God had been promising to send.  Then, he foiled them in their attempt to trip Him up over their question about taxes: "Why did they have Caesar's coin in the temple in the first place?" In the verses above He forced the Sadducees to see the inconsistency in their denial of the resurrection. Next, He interacted with a man who got the answers to His question about the greatest commandment right, yet He concluded their discussion with the phrase: "You are not far from the Kingdom of God." In other words, not - quite - yet. Finally, He focused in on the poor woman giving all she had to the poor as an example of the only one he had talked to that day who really did get it.  He gave His disciples, and us all, a lot to stop and think about.