Some of the Sadducees decided to have fun with this country preacher from the hill country in Galilee. They concocted a story (Mark 12:18-23) about a man who had married a woman and then died childless. In accordance with the law of levirate marriage (Deuteronomy 25:5-6), his brother had then married the woman, but he too had died childless. As there were seven brothers in this family, this pattern repeated through the remaining five brothers, before the woman herself died. And they posed the question to Jesus: since she’s been married to all of them, whose wife will she be in heaven?

This was probably designed to be an “unanswerable question” that would baffle and confuse Jesus. If he said, for example, “the last one,” they would say, “But why? That’s so arbitrary! What about the others?” And in the end, Jesus would be stuck for an answer, and they would all laugh at him.

Jesus asked, “Isn’t this the reason you get it wrong: because you don’t know the scriptures, and you don’t know the power of God?” (Mark 12:24). Wait, what do you suppose Jesus sounded like, when he asked that question? Just like a couple days ago, we saw that we needed to listen to the voice tones to decide what the words mean. Maybe he spat out these words with anger in his voice, as a harsh rebuke. Or his words might have carried a tone of sadness, as a lament. Or his voice might have expressed wistfulness and invitation, to give the Sadducees the opportunity to realize that their hearts really did want to know the scriptures and the power of God. We learn part of the answer to that question by speaking the words out loud. That’s because it’s harder to “hear” the voice tones when we read the words silently. You could try that out, just by saying verse 24 out loud a few times: first with anger in your voice, then with sadness, then with invitation. (Seriously. Out loud. All three times: “Isn’t this the reason you get it wrong: because you don’t know the scriptures, and you don’t know the power of God?”)

After you’ve done that, you could ask, “In which of those three readings did I sense Jesus speaking to me?” And then you could decide how you could answer Jesus’ question. What might you do, to gain a better knowledge of both the scriptures and the power of God? What’s the next step you should take, to do that?

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Help us, Jesus, to hear your voice: not just to read the words, but to hear you speaking within our own souls. And grant us the grace to know the scriptures, and the power of God, as we learn to follow you in all we do.