NOTES for Mar 12:18-27
Science has the concept of a theory’s limits of applicability. It exists because all scientific models describe reality locally and therefore only partially and relatively. They work only as long as one considers the part of reality they were created to describe. By presenting Jesus with a rabbinic problem common at the time, the Sadducees are examining Him and testing His knowledge of the theological models that then existed. He tells them that these models do not apply to the Kingdom. They adequately describe our world, which has not yet been transformed, but not the Kingdom. One might ask why Jesus needs all these complications. He could simply have given the traditional answer to the question, which He undoubtedly knew. But His purpose is not to justify Himself, pass an examination, or prove to anyone that He knows no less than those asking Him questions. His purpose is to help everyone nearby understand what the Kingdom is. To achieve this, it is sometimes absolutely necessary to push a person beyond the boundaries of the patterns of thought within which he lives and to which he is accustomed. This is precisely what Jesus does. He says: in the Kingdom people are not born and do not die as they do in our world, nor do they marry as they do on earth. How, then, is it there? The Savior does not answer that question. What matters most to Him now is to dislodge His interlocutors from their accustomed rut, to make them reflect and look differently at what had seemed common knowledge and entirely familiar to them. This is how a taste for the Kingdom is acquired, a taste that may one day cause someone to begin seeking the Kingdom and to seek it in earnest.