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WHO AM I, AND WHY ARE YOU WITH ME?
Jesus asks questions very often. In fact, with many of his teachings Jesus begins by asking questions of his listeners.
“Can grapes be plucked from briars, figs from thistles?” (Matt. 7:16)
“Is there one among you who will offer his son a stone when he asks for bread, or a snake when he asks for a fish?” (Matt. 7:9)
“How can anyone break into a strong man’s house and make off with his goods, unless he has first tied up the strong man before ransacking the house?” (Matt. 12:29)
“Do you bring in the lamp to put it under the meal-tub, or under the bed?” (Mk. 4:21)
The answer to those questions is either a yes or a no. They don’t require much thought from us. There is certainly nothing very deep about them, and they are hardly the “questions of life” which puzzle most of us from time to time.
Many children have a way of asking questions almost incessantly. One of my earliest childhood memories is of riding the in backseat of the car and leaning into the front seat. Undoubtedly I was chattering away, which was good training because I get paid to do it very often now. But I remember my mother turning to me wearily and saying, “OK… enough with the questions for a while. I’ve never seen another little boy who asked so many questions.” For her in the moment that was undoubtedly the truth.
The teaching of religion and often the preaching of the gospel center around questions as well, sometimes asked and sometimes unasked. Several weeks ago we read the story of the wheat field and the weeds which had been maliciously planted there by a mysterious enemy about whom we heard nothing else. The farmer’s servants wanted to know if they should get themselves into the field and pull out the weeds immediately. But the farmer told them to wait until both sets of plants had matured. When they were mature it was easier to tell the two apart and to save the wheat. Now the question that possibly prompted this story (which doesn’t appear in the gospel narrative) was “Why doesn’t God act in situations when we think he should act? Why doesn’t God do something?” Those are the meat-and-potatoes questions of religion.
A popular best-seller written by Rabbi Harold Kuschner twenty or more years ago had the title “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”. The implied question is why do bad things happen to good people? It’s a question posed to me fairly often in different forms. Sometimes it’s dressed up this way: “I’m a good person. I don’t hurt other people. Why did God allow this tragedy in my life? It seems so unfair.”
Sometimes I will reply, as gently as I can, “Life often isn’t fair and probably it isn’t meant to be fair, at least by our standards. But what’s really unfair is to imply that God is responsible when some tragedy strikes. Tragedy and injustice comes from many quarters, and God does not micromanage every moment of every life every day, contrary to belief in some quarters.
Here’s something that made me – as a preacher and as a pastor – sit up and take notice:
“Our problem, my problem, is that sometimes we play into people’s desires for obvious, pat answers, and thereby [we] avoid the impossible questions. Lots of people in our world today want a faith that they can put on a bumper sticker, three spiritual laws, six basic fundamentals, and four Christian principles to live by. But our God is so much more interesting than that. Jesus is so much larger than that, and life is so much more demanding.”1
I imagine that this sort of thing happens to religious leaders across the lines of tradition. Some years ago an intelligent young woman came to see me in my office because she had many questions. As I tried to answer them, she became and more exasperated with me, I think. “You seem to have it all figured out.” (She was wrong with that assumption.) “How can I be as sure as you are about all of these questions that I’ve got?”
Finally I caught on to what seemed to be happening. This was a bright young professional person with a responsible job. But she was so busy asking secondary, extraneous questions that she was not prepared to answer the basic question that she was so busy avoiding. If you did find faith in Jesus Christ, how will your life change? What are you prepared to do with that faith?
When I put that question to her, she replied that she’d have to think about it. You will not be surprised to know that I never saw her again. She never came back to church, I suspect, because the prospect of having to make a concrete decision and stop dabbling in the extraneous fine points of religion was not what she was about. It was too threatening for her. I do hope that someone else was able to help her in her quest for meaning in life. But I doubt that she found it in the Gospel of Christ which makes demands upon all of us.
When Jesus asked the question of his disciples and of Simon Peter in particular, “Who do you say that I am?”, he brought things down to the fundament issue confronting the disciples. Why are you here with me when you could be somewhere else: fishing, collecting taxes, working in a field? Who am I, and why are you with me? Who do you say that I am?
Note that it’s a very personal question: not what does a particular version of the Gospels say about me; not what does the Church say about me; not what does your best friend say about me. Who do you, in this moment in time, say that I am? Look me straight in the eye and tell me what you think. I can take it.
That’s what Jesus was doing to his disciples: putting them on the spot and, ultimately, asking them to put their own lives on the line with his.
There’s really no graceful way out of that moment of truth. They couldn’t – and most of us can’t when confronted with Jesus – slip out of my office with a noncommittal “I’ll have to think about that” never to be seen again. Jesus asks more of us that type of convenience religion.
You remember the rich young man, highly affluent, probably notably successful, who came to Jesus and asked what steps he needed to take in order to assure eternal life, salvation. He likely had it all: plenty of money, a nice home, influential friends, possibly a loving family, and a genuinely secure future. It’s all the stuff people will sell their souls for. But with all that he had, he knew that something fundamental was missing. Or simply he needed the assurance that all of his ducks were in order for he was a methodical fellow, a person in so many ways after my own heart.
What did Jesus do? He told him that he had to do the one thing that he could not bear to do: part with his many possessions and his great wealth and give to the poor. His preoccupation with material things was standing in the way of a chance for salvation. Jesus’ demand was too much for him. He, too, said he’d have to think about it and get back to Jesus at another time, and, as far as we know, he was never to be seen again, at least in Jesus’ presence.
There comes a time for everyone when we must make a decision about who Jesus is to us, and what he means to us, for those questions lead to what expects from us.
Here is a wonderful illustration by William Willimon in very practical terms.
“When I was beginning college, my sister gave me a book called something like How to Study. … I remember the book advised then when you start a course or begin to read a textbook, put a series of questions to the book. ‘What is this book about? What will be the main concern of this book? Is there a major point of view put forth in this book?’ and so forth. I found that to be a great device for getting into a new textbook and getting more out of the book.
“But in reading a book, a really good book, 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 didn’t know before reading this book, and what difference does that make?”2
Most of us decided either to become – or regularly decide to remain – a Christian based on the same principle. With all of our doubts, our dithering, and our extraneous questions, we must look Jesus in the eye and answer his fundament question: “Who do you say that I am? What possible difference does it make in your life?”
Sometimes the answers we give are just as important as the questions we’ve been asked.
The Ven. Theodore W.Bean, Jr.
Provost
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1 Pulpit Resource, Vol. 36, No. 3, p. 35
2 Ibid., p. 36.
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