Something Completely Different

How many of you remember Monty Python? The British comedy group in - I think - the 70's which used to transition between their skits with “And now for something completely different....” And it always was pretty strange. Part of their appeal was that their humor was so totally off the wall, from Monty Python and the Holy Grail to the Ministry of Silly Walks. But the fact of the matter is that most of us don’t really like to be taken by surprise. We don't want "something completely different." Sure, a lot of us would like changes to be made - but nice safe changes, life as we know it but better; perhaps we long for something we’ve read about or seen on TV or maybe we dream of going back to “the way things used to be.” And how could it be any other way? We only know what we know.

But sometimes we put too much effort into making sure we can’t be surprised. Sometimes we spend so much energy trying to control the future that we miss out on what God is doing. It’s like that today, and it was like that 2000 years ago. And every single one of our readings today have to do with expectation, and disappointment. Haggai’s people looked at the shabby little temple they’d managed to scrape together after they’d returned from exile in Babylon. They were disappointed in what they had accomplished. Paul’s readers in Thessalonica wanted - and expected - Jesus to come back right away, right now, so they wouldn’t have to cope with the hard work of being a church during times of persecution. They were disappointed. And in our lesson from Luke the Sadducees expected to be able to trap Jesus in a paradox and discredit both him and the Pharisees at the same time - and guess what? Jesus disappointed them.

Let me set the scene for you.

Jewish society in Jesus’ day was pretty much divided into two parties, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. There were some fringe groups, like the Zealots, who were trying to get rid of the Romans by - er - direct political action, and the Essenes, who coped by withdrawing completely into their own little enclaves. But, basically, anyone who had any time left over after trying to scrape out a living to think about such things was in one of the two main groups. And both groups were into control big time.

You could probably call the Sadducees the conservatives. They were doing okay with the status quo. They tended to be from the priestly class, were usually well-to-do, and believed in maintaining good relations with the Romans. The Pharisees were the progressives. Sort of. At least they were more interested in change than the Sadducees. They believed in upward mobility through education. The Sadducees had the edge in terms of political, economic and religious power, but the Pharisees were gaining ground in the religious arena, making religious status and authority something you could earn by studying Scripture and obeying the law, rather than something you had to be born with. Jesus threatened them because he seemed to hold the law lightly. That didn’t bother the Sadducees at all, except insofar as he didn’t seem to respect their authority much either. But the Sadducees were actually much more threatened by the Pharisees than they were by Jesus.

The source of the Sadducees’ power was Levitical and Aaronic descent, and the temple ritual established by Moses in Exodus and Leviticus. The first five books of the Torah were the only ones they believed in. The Pharisees, on the other hand, paid strict attention to all of the writings, including the prophets and the Psalms and the histories, and then added the oral traditions and some newfangled ideas about angels and resurrection which had become popular during the four hundred years since the last prophet, Malachi.

So here we are in Jerusalem, with the Sadducees and the Pharisees at odds with one another, and the Sadducees taking the opportunity to catch Jesus in a paradox which will also embarrass the Pharisees. They challenge the belief in resurrection by asking which, if any, of a woman’s seven earthly husbands would be her husband after the resurrection. Since the Mosaic Law forbade polyandry, that is the practice of having more than one husband at a time, something had to give, either resurrection or morality. Well, obviously a resurrected life can’t tolerate any immorality, so all seven could not be her husbands. Therefore, they reasoned, there’s no such thing as resurrection.

The Sadducees had based their question on the Pharisees’ assumption that life in the age to come would be just like life in this age, only better. In other words, they were interpreting heaven from the viewpoint of earth. Jesus, on the other hand, was teaching that we must interpret earth from the viewpoint of heaven. They had their perspective backwards.