The Right Questions

“I have so many questions right now,” the thinking goes, “but when I mature in my faith, and pour into my head more information about Christianity, I'll have more answers and fewer questions.”

Really? Does it truly work like that?

It seems that the Bible goes out of its way to portray people who are hanging on by their fingertips in painfully difficult situations, when others may well have given up.

They are persons who have doubts, who are full of questions, but who are wagering their lives on God anyway in trust that his word and promise is true and will work out as he promises.

We remember persons such as Joseph, who could have given up while sitting in Pharaoh’s prison...

or Jacob, who literally holds onto the angel of God who wrestles with him in the night...What's your name?

There is Job, who with his three so-called friends pose deep questions indeed:

Why do the righteous suffer?

Why do the wicked prosper?

Why do we experience pain and suffering if God is love and wants the best for us in life?

And we keep on asking those same questions today as well.

Some want to treat the Bible as an answer-book: if one could just find the right page, the answer to every question is there somewhere.

But it might be more accurate to say that it is the great question-book that challenges all of the conventional answers that we like to give.

In my reading this week I came across a college chaplain who in his work deals with the questions of students all the time.

He learned to sort out the idle blather from the serious questions with a question of his own back to the students: “How will the answer or response make a difference in your life?”

And that fits with the typical Hebrew tactic to counter a question with another question.

We see Jesus doing exactly that in today's Gospel.

“Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“Why do you call me good?” Jesus says.

The effect of Jesus' question is to say “Cut out the flattery; it will get you nowhere, buddy.”

Then Jesus lists the contents of the second table of the Ten Commandments, the ways that we are to relate to one another.

We can see the man going down the mental checklist: done that, done that and that, and that....

And with a self-satisfied smile turning to Jesus and saying “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.”

Then scripture says that Jesus looked at him and loved him,... loved him enough to respond in a very firm and directive way.

Jesus didn't say, “That's nice...whatever.”

He said, “Go...sell...give...follow me.”

It is not the possessions themselves that are the problem; it is the man's attitude toward them that has him tied in knots.

He doesn't possess them, they possess him, and so he goes away sorrowful.

What we do not hear is Jesus ridiculing or cursing or rejecting him.

The statement in the paragraph above still stands; Jesus looked at him and loved him, and so we anticipate that the opportunity remains for him to wander back to Jesus at some point in the future, because he really does need to do so.

What Jesus has done is to point out that both tablets of the Ten Commandments apply to the man, not just the second.

“I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other.” the commandments begin, but the man is in danger of worshiping his possessions rather than God.

That is what Jesus saw in his heart.

And the man turned away sorrowful.

It is budget-building time at St. Mark's, even as we're preparing for Consecration Sunday next week.

I do hope that the questions and conversations that we have are not only about account balances and projections.

They need also, or actually primarily should be about discipleship and what is our mission and how best to accomplish it, and only then how to fund it,

lest we slide into worshiping the fund balance or the building rather than God.

The man had asked a question and Jesus had made it an even larger question.

As we grow older, the tendency is for us to make our questions smaller.

We may content ourselves in asking just those questions for which there are simple direct answers.

But God is not containable in simple direct anything.

The Christian faith is not reducible to a bumper sticker, six fundamentals, four principals, three spiritual laws,and a partridge in a pear tree.

God is much more interesting than that!

The hymn that we sing next is one that we have only used a time or two, but it is one that poses a big question: What kind of love is this?

And also the direction in which we should look to marvel at a response:

You showed your love, Jesus,

there to me on Calvary.

It complements our Gospel reading today in that it is as much an invitation as it is an answer to a question.

We are invited to marvel at God's action in Christ Jesus in cross and resurrection and to follow him wherever he calls us.

We won't have all of the intellectual answers lined up until we arrive at the fullness of heaven;

despite our best efforts there are still things that will always remain mystery, beyond our ability to comprehend.

We trust that gravity is going to continue to work, whether or not we understand it completely.

Jesus will continue to uphold us in faith, whether we understand everything about him.

The man came with questions and Jesus offered him the way of discipleship, which, many can testify, is better than mere answers.

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.