Questions

Haiku of entrapment

Questions to test him.

Two to cause him to stumble,

one that shuts them up.

Sadducees bowl up

marriage and resurrection.

He hits them for six!

He quotes the scriptures,

affirming resurrection:

God rules the living!

A lawyer enquires:

Which commandment is greatest?

The answer is Love.

For God and neighbour,

love is the first requirement.

All else is detail.

Asks his own question:

How is David’s son the Christ?

They have no answer.

Questions that challenge,

call, confuse and confound. We

ask, and we answer.

© Ken Rookes 2020

No resurrection?

Haiku for questioners

No resurrection?

Not the way Jesus saw it.

Does that make him right?

Sadducees say no,

life is finite. We live once,

end of the story.

Myself, I waver;

does that mean I’m lacking faith?

Please don’t condemn me.

Should that day arrive

and we stand before God’s throne,

all must trust in grace.

The Sadducees bring

their convoluted question:

whose wife will she be?

Jesus laughs them off;

marriage has no purpose then,

in the life to come.

Offering his own

complex logic, Jesus proves

that the dead are raised,

God rules the living,

that is what really matters;

serve the living God.

© Ken Rookes 2019

Whose wife will she be?

When we have finished living,

after we die,

we will continue to exist; in some form.

So Jesus is recorded as saying

as he responds to the improbable scenario

put to him by a group Sadducees

endeavouring to ridicule

notions of resurrection.

This state of eternal existence will be quite unlike

that which we have previously known,

here among earth’s red dust;

he tells them.

Don’t expect family reunions,

welcoming friends

or the lovers embraces

so favoured by our imaginative reassurances

in times of grief.

And there will be no opportunity

to complete or to add

to the life that has been concluded.

The goodwill we have sown,

the love we offered,

the peace we made,

the grace by which we lived

and the hope, joy and laughter

we spoke, danced and sang;

these alone will stand.

Gentle, sometimes unnoticed,

they witnesses to the reality

of our faith and worship.

 

It is enough.

Would it be so terrible

if the Sadducees were right?

© Ken Rookes 2014

It is enough.

Would it be so terrible

if the Sadducees were right?

© Ken Rookes 2014

questions that matter

"So here are these Sadducees, learned men who are members of the branch of Judaism that does not believe in a resurrection after death. These Sadducees finally get to encounter Jesus. This is their moment--this is their time in the sun. Yet, this is what they say: Teacher, if seven brothers die in succession and each marries the same woman, one after another, to whom is she married in heaven?

Excuse me? Here they are before the Christ--the Anointed One--and this is the best they can do?

There is a Jewish saying that says, “Rake the muck this way; rake the muck that way. It’s still muck. Meanwhile we could be stringing pearls for heaven.”

How often do we waste our time raking the muck instead of stringing pearls for heaven? How often do we waste our time playing word games instead of seeing the Christ right in front of us?

There’s a character in one of Saul Bellow’s novels who says, “I had boasted…how had I loved reality. But…unreality. Unreality, unreality! That has been my scheme for a troubled…life.” Well, let us ask ourselves if that is our scheme as well? Do we avoid the reality of questions that matter?"

http://day1.org/814-love_the_questions