There's an old Peanuts cartoon in which Charlie Brown tells Lucy they have to stop fighting and finder a kinder way to resolve their conflicts. He tells her that the planet is filled with people hurting each other, that it's possible that they, as children, can make a new world order.

Lucy listens for a minute and the POW! She slams him to the ground and walks away saying, "I had to hit him quick, he was beginning to make sense."

Apart from God's purpose in and through the Cross, I've often wondered if that wasn't part of the reason the Sadducees and Pharisees reacted like that did to Jesus' teaching. It was beginning to make sense. And if it made sense then it meant their faith was inconsequential, their lifestyle without purpose and their whole life had been without meaning.

Rather …