Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
August 29, 2010
Matthew 16:13-20
As I work my way through the Gospels, it seems to me that Jesus was someone who always asked questions…so many questions. No matter what the circumstance or the situation, Jesus, much like Detective Columbo in the old TV series, always seemed to have just one more question: “What does it profit a person to gain the whole world and forfeit his or her life?” “Salt is good, but if salt has lost its saltiness, how will you season it?” “Is it right to light a lamp and then hide it under a bushel?” “Are grapes gathered from thorns? Are figs gathered from thistles?” “Which of these, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” And, of course, today’s bonus question: “Who do people say that I am? Better yet, who do you say that I am?” That’s one to chew on for a while. So many questions. Why?
I don’t know if you recall the film Paper Chase. It tells the story of a young, first year Harvard law student, and his interactions with a legendary Harvard professor. I’d like to show just a brief film clip as the professor, Professor Kingsfield, explains his rather challenging teaching style to the first year law students. (film clip is shown)
Now I suspect no one has ever mistaken the professor, wonderfully played by John Houseman, as a Christ figure. Professor Kingsfield, so pompous, so intimidating, so unapproachable, at times so sarcastic and even cruel, even as he could be inspiring. And yet, I think of how both he and Jesus used questions, one question leading to another question, every good answer seeming to lead to another question. Kingsfield insisted he was teaching his students to think like lawyers; firming up lazy minds filled with mush. What do you suppose Jesus was doing?
A colleague in ministry shares this story: “I cannot forget how, in late adolescence, my mind began to stir wonderfully. I became inquisitive, curious, seeking, searching. I had many doubts and even more questions. And so I went to my childhood pastor, a wonderful man really. But when I shared this youthful and exuberant spirit with him, he said simply, ‘You think too much! You must suppress your doubts, forget your questions, and simply have faith.” That approach to faith is still very popular today. Certainty is in; questions are seen as problems, perhaps even as threats. How dare you question my assumptions, how dare you question my truth? A lot of people in our country today seem to want a faith, and certainly a politics, they can put on a bumper sticker. Don’t complicate things. Give me three spiritual laws, six basic fundamentals, and four Christian principles to live by. Keep it simple. Give me the answers. Tell me what I should believe. Who wants to come to church to be confronted with a bunch of impossible-to-answer questions? If salt has lost its saltiness…? Give me a break!
United Methodist Bishop, William Willimon, shares the following story: “I heard a preacher last summer who, before he spoke, had the ushers hand out small sheets of paper that had the numbers one, two, three listed on them. When he began his sermon he said, ‘I have three things I want to say today about achieving happiness in life, and I want you to write down these three things on the slip of paper before you. Follow these principles and you will find happiness.’ He then proceeded to preach a sermon in which he made his three points – something about hard work, a positive attitude, and daily prayer, always giving us enough time to write down the painfully obvious on our slips of paper.”
Concludes Willimon, “I sat there thinking, ‘Is this fair to the grand sweep and scope of the Christian faith? Is this fair to life itself? I’ll bet there is someone here today for whom life has been so much more demanding and complicated than this three-point sermon. What about them?’”
Ah, the search for the easy answer…so tempting, so desirable. Was Jesus an answer man? Three steps to happiness, four paths to a better marriage, five guaranteed practices for a deeper and more lasting faith? Was Jesus an answer man? I suppose I’ll never finish searching the Gospels for the three best keys for catching fish! Was Jesus an answer man – with a convenient bumper sticker slogan for every situation? I think back to Professor Kingsfield: “You are on a treadmill. My little questions spin the tumblers of your mind. You are on the operating table. My little questions are the fingers probing your brain.” Think about the best teachers you ever had. Were they teachers who always had all the answers, or did they teach in such a way that they stimulated ever deeper questions? I think Jesus was a teacher like that, using questions to invite his disciples into an ever deeper journey in the faith. And in all honesty, in those rare times when I’m at my best, I hope I can be a preacher like that.
Now back in ancient history, when Julius Caesar and I were in college together, there was this book – How to Study. The book put forward a technique to make the student better at studying. One key piece of advice found in that book was that when you start a new course or begin to read a textbook for the first time, put a series of questions to the book: “What is this book about? What are its main concerns? Does it put forth a major point of view?” In other words, come to even new material with questions already formed in your mind. Helpful advice, I think, and I would certainly suggest that, whenever you engage the Scriptures, come with questions. But, as one scholar asks, in reading a book, a really good book, don’t you find that there is a point when you stop putting questions to the book and the book starts putting questions to you? How is your life going to be different after reading this book? What do you know now that you did not know before reading this book? What difference has this book made in your life? “Who do you say that I am?” Do you begin to understand the meaning of Jesus’ many questions? Do you begin to see what He’s doing here? And here I go, asking yet another question.
I guess what I want to say today is don’t be afraid of questions, of doubts, of uncertainties when it comes to your faith. I once heard a minister speak of an aging aunt of his who, decades ago, never missed an opportunity to hear the great theologian, Paul Tillich, whenever he spoke. Now Tillich spoke with a thick German accent, and he taught and lectured on a very difficult, thick, and dense theology. We had to study him in seminary, and quite frankly I still don’t know what he was saying half the time. This pastor said that his aunt told him that each time she heard Tillich speak, she found it all completely incomprehensible. But she also found it immensely exciting. She wasn’t exactly sure what he was talking about, but she knew he was talking about something very important and she just wanted to be there for it – to be a part of it.
Well, now I certainly hope that most of the worship and preaching in this church are not completely incomprehensible, at least not most of the time. But you know, as we struggle with and seek to understand this Jesus of Nazareth, I hope your church experience can be a kind of long-term training in asking the big, deep, not easily answerable questions, knowing all the while that you are indeed participating in something really important. My mentor in ministry, Bill Nelson – himself a voracious reader, searcher, and question-answer - was always fond of saying about the church he served, “When people enter this House of Worship, they take off their hats, but they do not have to take off their heads.” No need to check your questions at the door, not here. As you’ve heard me say before, a living faith is always open and growing, curious and questioning, not confining the human spirit but enlarging it. I once heard it said that the longer we live, the smaller our questions become. We content ourselves in asking just those questions for which there are simple, direct answers. So instead of asking, “Is my life, as I am living it, really worth living?” or “Does God really know and care about me?” Instead we tend to ask, “How much money do I need to be really happy?” or “When will he ever get to the point of this sermon?” But you see, our God is so much more interesting than that, Jesus is so much larger than that, and life is so much more fascinating and demanding than that.
Remember…Jesus not only encourages our questions, but he also has questions of his own. “Who do you say that I am?” Forget the theoretical, the abstract, the impersonal. Allow my questions, he says, to probe your brain, to examine your life. What difference does your faith make in your daily living, what are your priorities, which gods are you truly serving, and in what God do you truly believe? It would seem that to be a person of faith means not only putting tough questions to God, but also allowing God to lay some pretty hard questions on us.
But understand this: it is through that journey, that searching, that process of questioning and being questioned, that faith ultimately grows and deepens. It occurs to me that it might actually make more sense for our Bibles to be assembled as a kind of loose leaf notebook, rather than as something finished and final and bound in a book. Because I am convinced that our faith is never finished and final. It’s really rather like Einstein’s universe, not a machine, but a giant organism, pulsing with life, striving toward increasing depth and consciousness. And why? Because its very soul is saturated with the Presence of the living, still speaking, and always questioning, God.