You can tell a lot about a person from his friends. If a person has generous, kind, compassionate friends, it is likely that he himself embodies those qualities. On the other hand, if the friends are abusive, nasty and brutish, there’s a good chance the individual is as well. You can tell a lot about a person from their friends. And, for that matter, from their enemies. Knowing someone’s opponents gives you insight into who they are as well.
In the final chapters of the Gospel according to Mark, Jesus interacts with a lot of hostile groups. They are frequently trying to trap Him, justify their rejection of Him and diminish His standing and popularity. The people who engage with Jesus are often at bitter odds with one another. They oppose each other’s teachings, yet still find time to reject Jesus as well. Learning a little bit about Jesus’ opponents reveals quite a bit about Jesus Himself.
Take the Sadducees from our passage for this week. In Mark 12, Jesus has engaged with the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees and the Herodians, and now He encounters the Sadducees. Each of these groups held one another at arms-length at best, and out-right hostility at worst, all the while functioning together in Jewish society.
The Sadducees were a group of religious leaders who stressed their aristocratic status in society while fulfilling various political, social and religious roles. As part of the Sanhedrin, they exercised power in the Temple and throughout Jewish culture: collecting taxes, equipping and leading the army, administering the local government, even mediating domestic grievances.
The term “Sadducee” derives from the word “righteous” or “just,” reflecting their self-identity as the “righteous-and-just-ones.” In many ways, they are the mirror image of their frequent theological opponents, the Pharisees. Indeed, the New Testament authors often lump them together—holding different religious ideas, yet similar in their opposition to God and God’s Anointed.
Unlike their Pharisaical brethren, the Sadducees rejected the idea of a pre-ordained future, the immortal soul, the afterlife and angelic beings. Most notably, the Sadducees denied the doctrine of the resurrection from the dead. (Quick memory tool: because they did not believe in the future resurrection they were “Sad, you see?”)! The Apostle Paul exploits that difference between the Sadducees and the Pharisees in Acts 23. It is this rejection of the belief in the resurrection that is at the basis of their challenge to Jesus—does Jesus Himself teach the resurrection from the dead? Is God the Lord of a bunch of dead bodies or the Lord of Life?
In preparation for worship this week, read Mark 12:18-34.
- We have two stories here—Jesus’ confrontation with the Sadducees and His articulation of the Great Commandment. What might link the two stories here? Is it just temporal proximity that connects them, or might there be a deeper theme?
- What is the tone of the Sadducees question? Why do they ask it in the way they did?
- Jesus’ response to the Sadducees is to point out their failure to know “either the Scripture or the power of God.” How are these two things connected? How is failure to know the Scripture the same as a failure to know the power of God?
- What is the link and connection between the commandment to “love the Lord your God” and “to love your neighbor as yourself?” What is common to both? How do they interact?
- What is Jesus’ stone in verse 34 as he responds to the scribe? What attitude does Jesus take with the scribe?
By Henry Knapp