This passage is fun. There's lots of
back and forth between Jesus and the Pharisees and Saducees trying to
trap Him. It feels like a debate montage where one side is
sytematically dismantling the other in scene after scene in some feel
good underdog-takes-on-all-comers feel-good high school movie.
But one of the things that this portion
of scripture really highlights is just how smart Jesus is. He's
really smart! Wicked smart, even. (If that term can even be applied
in His case) :) We see him do what amounts to verbal judo in his
sparring with the Pharisees. These are the intellectual elite of the
day, who formed a brain trust just to take this Man down by trapping
Him in His words. And at the end it says that “No
one was able to answer Him a word, nor from that day on did anyone
dare question Him anymore.”
It
seems that we usually don't think of Jesus as a “smart” person.
Our view of him has been a bit sanitized by th emovies that have him
walking around without his feet ever really touching the ground or
showing anything more than token emotions. But
he truly was every bit as human as you and me, and He was incredibley
smart. He was, in fact, the smartest person ever to have lived.
Most of the time, it appears we think of Jesus as just “downloading”
all the necessary information from God that He needed. He is painted
in our minds aswithout personality or original thought. But He was
the one who agreed that the greatest commandment was to love God with
all your heart, soul,
mind,
and
strength.
I
think realizing that Jesus truly was the smartest man that ever lived
helps us when we pray concerning the more “mundane” things in
life. Do you believe that Jesus really does know more about
residential plumbing than anyone else who ever lived? What about
computer programming? Song writing? Doesn't Jesus know more about
astrophysics than all of NASA combined? Why wouldn't we, when we need
help, seek to get it from the most knowledgable person in that field?
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