When Good Enough is Never Enough

Among the most well-known ancient Greek philosophers is Socrates, who is remembered for his teaching methods that employ probing and thought-provoking questions. But there is another philosopher by the name of Mediocrates you may have seen recently on tee shirts, bumper stickers, and memes. As the joke implies, Mediocrates is the philosopher who tells us, “Just strive to be adequate,” and “eh, that’s good enough.”

In today’s Gospel Lesson, Jesus encounters a group of Sadducees — members of an ultra-conservative religious party who are determined to trip him up with some thought-provoking, probing questions of their own. The Sadducees accepted as authoritative only those things written down in the Law of Moses (the first five books of the Old Testament). Because of this religious outlook, they rejected many things Jesus was teaching. For example, they rejected the notion of bodily resurrection. Their view of the afterlife was pessimistic and joyless. The abode of the departed was called “Sheol.” It was a world deeply embedded in…