Nobody likes it but it happens to us all. For no matter how nice you may otherwise be, sooner or later if you stand for anything at all in life you are bound to run head up against those who will oppose you. And in the case of Jesus, the Tuesday of Holy Week was definitely such a day of conflict.

The Sadducees who ran the Temple were already upset with Him, to be sure, for what had happened on the day before when Jesus had driven out the moneychangers and the merchants. But when He came back to those same courts on the following morning, this time it was the Pharisees who began to question Him.

“By what authority are you doing these things?” they wanted to know (for clearly it seemed to be a stronger one than their own.)

“Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” they queried (knowing full well that almost any answer Jesus might give could incriminate Him with someone.)

“Teacher,” the Sadducees then chimed back in, “if a man dies without having any children and his widow marries his brother– and then it happens again six more times–then whose wife will she be at the Resurrection?” (An interesting question indeed, since the Sadducees didn’t even believe in the idea of resurrection.)

But Jesus quite deftly answered them all before posing a question of His own to those around him: “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?”

And it strikes me that Jesus might well ask the same question of us whenever we may try to play word games with Him as well. For in the end, it’s not about theological acumen or intellectual acrobatics– it’s about what each of us decides to believe about this Jesus.

Holy Week brings us smack dab in front of that Man from Galilee who claimed to be sent from the Father above. And today is a time for putting aside our conflicts and honestly dealing with the truth He presented to us.

So what indeed do you think about the Christ?