Questions

It is probably why some of us are here today; things have been knotted up in our lives, and we want some thing to make sense, to be un-knotted...we want answers.

And some of the questions

have been the ones

for which there are no easy answers.

That makes us uneasy.

Most of us don't like open-ended, impossible to answer questions.

Anxiety builds when we wrestle with:

“Is my life, as I am living now, worth living?”

“Does God really know me, individually, and not just as another bit of humanity, but me?

Does God really care about me?

How can I live with confidence and hope for the future?

What about this 'heaven' stuff, and my personal place in it?”

And... others like that.

Then we turn to the scriptures and think that I as your pastor am able to zip off the perfect answer to the impossible questions.

If it were just that easy!

There are some teachers,

the very best teachers who teach in order to stimulate questions.

Jesus was a teacher like that.

When I visit a person a number of times over the years, there are many joys we can share.

But there are also sad times, when the person stops asking the big questions, when the person's world gets smaller and smaller, and the only thing of concern to him or her is what he or she is feeling right at that minute.

And then there are those times when we want to throw the questions at God.

Why are things going this way right now?

Is God listening at all?

Does God care?

And then we need to remember that God may answer by throwing questions right back at us.

It started all the way back in the garden of Eden.

The serpent poses the little question:

“God gave you everything, didn't he, so he wouldn't hold back that one tree?”

And their satisfaction at eating the fruit soon turns to dismay

and they hide themselves.

God's question to them

is right to the point:

“Where are you?

Do you really think that you can hide from me?

And what would be the point of doing that?”

We are made for community with God, the Genesis story is telling us,

a community that is messed up because of our actions,

because of asking only little, self-centered questions.

It happens again in the book of Job.

After enduring the long speeches of his three friends, Job finally does begin to complain.

He lists all the good things that he has done (chapter 29), how much he has been mistreated, (chapter 30)

and is so prideful that he takes oaths of calamity upon himself if he has done anything wrong. (chapter 31)

It is all about himself,

and the justification for himself

that he has worked out by himself.

The Lord finally answers (chapter 38), by way of questions thrown back at Job:

“Who is this that uses words without knowledge?

Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Have you commanded the morning dawn ever since your life began?”

...and two chapters of more questions at Job, ending with...

“Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? Anyone who argues with God must respond.

Will you condemn me so that you may be justified?”

And Job then realizes that he is not the center of the universe.

It is all about God, and how we are connected with him.

We know folks who are angry with God, as angry as Job.

I suspect that they are and will remain miserable until they come to the same realization as Job,

until they are quiet,

until they realizes that life does not center on how I feel at a given moment.

The old spiritual has it right:
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen, no one but Jesus.”

We cannot comprehend the pain that the Lord God has taken into himself in the crucifixion and death of the Son, Jesus.

How does our pain compare with that?

Oh....perhaps we should be quiet, and listen some more.

There are questions in the little bit we know about Bartholomew also.

When Philip tries to recruit him to follow Jesus, he retorts, ”Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

It is a smart-aleck, I-know-more-than-you sort of question.

“Come and see,” says Philip.

When Jesus greets him before he can be introduced, Bartholomew asks, ”Where did you get to know me?

“I've known you all along,” Jesus replies.

When Bartholomew starts toward faith, Jesus asks him,

”Do you believe just because I said that? There's lots more to come.”

We could find more such instances in the Bible, but this is enough to see a pattern.

We ask questions that tend to be centered on ourselves.

Each time, God fires back with a question that changes the focus from us to God.

What is the point in trying to hide from God? is the question to Adam and Eve.

What have you accomplished, compared with the wonders of God? the Lord asks Job.

Do you believe in me just because of a little wonder? Jesus asks Bartholomew.

All of those questions are about relationships, aren't they,

our relationships with the Lord God,

relationships that are established and maintained not by our hard work, but by the gift of God.

And this brings us now to the two questions that Jesus poses in our Gospel reading today.

The first question is easy: “Who do people say that I am?”

The disciples are like kids in a

classroom when everyone knows the answer to the question:

“Pick me, pick me!

Columbus traveled to America in ____ and every hand goes up.

“Some say that you are Elijah come back before the end.

The paper that was signed in July of 1776 was_____

Everyone knows that!

Some say that you are a prophet, like Jeremiah or Isaiah.

How do you program this dratted cell phone?

I can do it, I can do it!

Some say that you are John the Baptist come back to life.

And they could go on and on with little bits like that,

but then Jesus asks the big question, the important question,

the relationship-with-God question:

“Who do you say that I am?”

Suddenly all the class hands go down and there is silence.

I imagine a lot of toe-scuffing in the sand.

Speak up now.

For the moment I don't care what nine out of ten neighbors think.

I want to hear what you think,

what you have come to know,

the way in which you will live,

the relationship that God has established with you,

how you will bet your life...

Who do you say that I am?

Is it one of those impossible questions?, or is this a straightforward question,

really the only question that matters?

Peter blurts out an answer without understanding all of the implications, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

And then he is going to spend the rest of his life working to understand what he has said, and to live within the relationship thus established by God.

And so will we!

The Apostles' Creed was confessed at the times of baptism with eight young people this summer in St. Mark's, and we will spend all our days exploring how God has fit them and all of us into relationship with himself,

and what we should be doing because it is true.

Questions, yes we have questions.

And some of them

God answers by questioning us.

But it is different than any other exam that we ever face,

for in this test, God has not only given us the questions, but as we listen carefully, he has also given the answer we need in order to live.

Thank you, Jesus, Messiah, the Christ, Son of God, merciful Lord. Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.