Lent Day 6 February 28

Lenten Reflection for Day 6

Date: February 28, 2012

Author: Pastor Pat Harris

Bible Passage: Mark 12:26–27 (NRSV)

²⁶ And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the story about the bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? ²⁷ He is God not of the dead, but of the living; you are quite wrong.”

Reflection:

This statement concerning God was made by Jesus, in response to the Sadducees’ challenge to him in the form a story about a woman who married each of seven brothers, in turn, after the previous one died. The Sadducees, who did not believe in resurrection, asked Jesus whose wife she would be in the resurrection. This fictional story was created by the Sadducees to be used as a type of insulting challenge to Jesus’ statements about resurrection. It is a kind of sideways attack, which attempts to discredit the idea of resurrection without making a direct hit.

Jesus, who was aware that the Sadducees only accepted the first five books of the Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) as Scripture, drew on God’s conversation with Moses at the burning bush (recorded in the Book of Exodus) to disprove their challenge to resurrection. God, who is well known to be the God of living people, introduced Godself to Moses, with the words: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” If God is considered to be the God of these deceased people, then they must have been resurrected. Jesus returns the challenge to the Sadducees, accusing them of not knowing Scripture and of being skeptical of the power of God.

Although we might find this particular story and the resulting challenge to be absurd, many, if not all of us have challenged God at some point in our lives, or questioned God’s power. Many of us have found ourselves, occasionally, saying like: “If there really is a God, then why…..?”, or “If God is so powerful, then why did this happen? Like the Sadducees, most of us have difficulty conceiving of God as being able to do things that are beyond our logical framework or comprehension. If we can’t understand it, then it can’t be so; or if it doesn’t fit our framework of how things should be, then God couldn’t possibly have done it.

Jesus reminds us that God does things that we can’t possibly imagine. All of our attempts to put God in a box are destined to fail because God transcends our imaginations. Our desire to limit God’s power is a form of idolatry, as we attempt to re-make God in our own image, rather than our being made in the image of God.

Prayer: All powerful God, help me to learn to accept you as all-powerful and beyond my limited comprehension. Make me humble and willing to acknowledge my limited, flawed understanding. Amen