Ask A Stupid Question . . .

-I’m sure you’ve all been asked a stupid question before

-If you are like me, you’ve probably asked one too

-These are some examples of questions taken from real trials

These are examples of real courtroom questions and answers that I found online:

Q: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?

A: Yes.

Q: And in what ways does it affect your memory?

A: I forget.

Q: You forget? Can you give us an example of something that you’ve forgotten?

Q: Now doctor, isn’t it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn’t know about it until the next morning?

A: Did you actually pass the bar exam?

Q: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?

Q: Were you present when your picture was taken?

Q: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?

A: Yes.

Q: And what were you doing at that time?

Q: She had three children, right?

A: Yes.

Q: How many were boys?

A: None.

Q: Were there any girls?

Q: How was your first marriage terminated?

A: By death.

Q: And by whose death was it terminated?

Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?

A: All my autopsies are performed on dead people.

Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?

A: No.

Q: Did you check for blood pressure?

A: No.

Q: Did you check for breathing?

A: No.

Q: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?

A: No.

Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?

A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.

Q: But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?

A: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere.

-Those are some dandies

-In today’s Gospel lesson, we get an interesting question from the Sadducees

-Sadducees were a Jewish religious sect at the time of Jesus

-They had the majority of the seats on the Sanhedrin or Jewish ruling council

-They were more secular in their thinking and practice

-They were prone towards consorting with the enemy, the Romans

-But what is most important to this story is that they denied that the Bible taught the bodily resurrection from the dead and the existence of angels or demons

-They believed that only the first five books of the Old Testament, the Torah or the Pentateuch, were applicable to a person’s life

-They believed that the resurrection was not only fanciful but also irrelevant

-They only wanted to know about what was important for this life

-They didn’t really care what happened after death

-Sounds a lot like our culture

-Who cares what happens after I die?

-I got a lot of partying to do before that happens!

-Hey, my life is busy. I got a lot going on. I don’t have time for that God stuff right now. I’ll get right with God down the road.

-So the logic goes

-Did y’all just wake up in church this morning, dressed up so nicely?

-For those of you that are retired, did you just wake up one morning and all of a sudden all the money that you needed for the rest of your life was sitting in an account waiting on you?

-How did you get your job? Did you just walk into work one day and they hired you on the spot right?

-Those are ridiculous situations of course. In order to accomplish each of those things, it takes dedication and preparation

-So does eternal life

-It sounds like us though too doesn’t it?

-I know my neighbor doesn’t go to church – it sounds like she doesn’t believe in Jesus but someone else will tell her about Jesus

-I know that the person next door is in need somebody else will help him

-The Sadducees come to Jesus in order to try to trick him – they intend on asking Him a stupid question in order to demonstrate just how ludicrous the idea of the resurrection really is in their minds

-What they were suggesting was the fulfillment of the Levirate law in Deuteronomy 25:5 that commanded the brother of a deceased man to marry the widow, his sister-in-law, and have a child with her so that his dead brother’s name would not be cease

-This is the reason that there is a difference between Matthew’s and Luke’s genealogies of Jesus. Matthew gives the actual lineage of Joseph’s family to Jesus while Luke gives the legal lineage of Joseph’s family.

-Therefore, they suggest this crazy, one-in-a-lifetime situation where seven brothers all marry the same woman and none of them have any children with her

-You see if any one of them had children with her then, in their minds, she would have been his rightful wife