Have you ever been part of interviewing an organizational consultant?

There is always some fear in these conversations, fear that this person will be looking closely at your area.  You believe that everything in your area is great, of course. The problems lie in the production area or in marketing or in customer service or any area other than yours.

But you want to know what this consultant thinks about your area, about the subject you know best. You want to find out (or show everyone else) that this person is incompetent to judge your area and should therefore not be retained. And so you ask specific, precise, loaded questions about the thing that matters to you most.

That is exactly what is happening to Jesus in Matthew 22:15-46. Three groups of people ask Jesus questions. The Herodians,  a political-religious party who favored Herod the Great asked about taxes. The Sadducees, noted for their denial of any resurrection from the dead ask about marriage after death. The Pharisees, known for their precise following of the law, ask Jesus about the most important commandment.

Every question was loaded. There would be, to most people, no way to win these conversations. Almost anything Jesus would say would label him a heretic, a waffler, “one of them” or “one of us”.

Almost.

Jesus, however, being the smartest person who ever lived, knew exactly what they were trying to do, why they were trying to trap him, and how to craft an answer that left them questioning their own beliefs.

Here’s the lesson for those who would follow him. It isn’t about being crafty in our answers to other people. It is this: what do the questions we keep asking Jesus tell us about our own biases, our own areas that we want to protect?