|
|
|
|
|
QUESTIONS Richard Lewis, Director of the Touchstone Center in New York City, wrote an article a few years ago entitled "The First Question of All” (appearing in Parabola Magazine, Vol. XIII, No.3, 1988, pp. 20-25). The article is about the child's question "Why?" concerning almost anything in the universe. A child asks an adult "Why?"; and the adult usually answers "Because. . . " and with as precise a reason as possible; only to have the child say, yet again, "But why?” Lewis says that the child's question, and many other questions that children seem to come up with, are far more than just "attention-getting devices.” "Why?" (Lewis says) was not so much curiosity (for us as children), but the nagging sense that for everything we understood there was a reason - a real reason that brought it into being in the first place. If it snowed, why did it snow; and if it snowed because it was cold and moist, then why was it cold and moist - and so on . . . Somewhere in childhood we became root-diggers possessed with the ability to surface from various unknowns into reasonable facts - only to dive down again in order to find out what was below the facts, what startling amount of ground and mud and water and darkness and heat held things together. As children, we felt related and connected to everything around us - the summer day was not just an objective reality outside ourselves, but somehow, we were that summer day. Mr. Lewis asked a group of seven and eight-year-olds a series of questions about the sky, not unlike some of the questions they might have asked themselves. Here are the questions with some of the answers the children gave. How heavy is the sky? It's heavier than a little kid. How far is the sky? It's farther than India, Africa, and the North Pole. What does the sky feel like? Cotton, pillows, and softness. How would you get to the sun? You would tippy-toe. How big is the sky? The sky is about four inches. It's about as big as a blue whale.
What does the sky sound like? It sounds like a bird whistling. It sounds like an ocean. It sounds like popping. How big is the sky? It's bigger than a planet. It’s a million inches long.
The children's answers, like the questions themselves, pull at the boundaries of reality so that what we can "know" is given a richer dimension of possibility. And note that the questions are taken quite seriously by the children, and answered. Because of the way young children think - given their buoyancy of thought and their ability to transpose one reality into another - we as adults cannot help applauding them for their startling turn of perception and poetic insightfulness! Mr. Lewis concludes by saying that much of the impulse by the child to play with questions such as these is the tantalizing feeling that such questions give us permission to answer in a way that enriches our sense of the real. For some persons, this kind of reality may be too threatening or unstable to tolerate for a long period of time. But for the child, the curiosity to ask such questions is a paramount part of childhood. Today's Gospel lesson raises some important questions - and even indicates at least a direction in which we might begin to look for answers. But it seems to me the questions, themselves, are more important - and need to continue to be asked if our faith is to be kept alive. Jesus first asks the disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" And the disciples answer. Then Jesus asks, "But who do YOU say that I am?" And Peter says, "You are the Messiah." "But what kind of Messiah?" we might ask. "One that must suffer, and be rejected, and be killed, and after three days rise again," says Jesus. “But why?” Why must the Christ suffer? Why must the Messiah of this world be rejected and killed? How does Christ rise again? If you think 2,000 years of Christianity has come up with satisfactory answers to these questions, 1 hope you will share them with me. And for every possible or even partial answer to these questions, there arises another question. Suppose we say, "The Messiah, the Christ must suffer so that any suffering humankind experiences, Christ has experienced too." But why is there suffering in this world? or "The Christ must be rejected by those in authority because truly religious people are always counter-cultural." But why? or "Jesus had to die on the cross so that he could save humankind from its sinful ways." How? There will always be important questions we must ask, but may never be able to answer fully - and yet, in asking the right questions, we can glean at least a part of the mystery we call life, and the realities of our journeys through life. One of my mentors: the Rev. Kingsley Smith, likes to say this: “We go to church to have our questions answered. We have our answers questioned. That clears the decks for having our questions, questioned.” In other words - we need to know the right questions to ask! Who is Jesus for you? Who is Jesus for me? About 20 years ago, the movie "The Last Temptation of Christ" caused a big controversy among many religious groups which objected strongly to the way in which Jesus was depicted in the film. I went to see the movie, because I feel strongly that if you're going to participate in a dialogue or protest or criticism about a movie or a book, you really should see the movie or read the book so that you can better know what you're talking about. My assessment of "The Last Temptation of Christ" was that it wasn't a very good movie. But the movie did challenge my faith in a way I hadn't anticipated - and which had nothing to do with the more controversial scenes. I left the movie thinking, "Boy. The Jesus they portrayed in that movie isn't attractive to me at all. And the Jesus I believe in is a very attractive person. The Jesus they portrayed in that movie wasn't a very good public speaker: he begins his first sermon kind of stuttering into it. MY Jesus was an excellent public speaker. The Jesus they portrayed in the movie didn't seem to be very intelligent. The Jesus I believe in is highly intelligent. The Jesus portrayed in the movie was tortured by conflicting voices in his head, and seemed, most of the time, without a sense of direction in his life. MY Jesus is a lot more together than that. He may struggle - just as we all do - but he has a sense of direction. He knew his mission. Do you see where my thinking might take me? MY picture of Jesus is that he was attractive, articulate, smart, and clear about his mission. That analysis, my friends, says much more about me, and what I value in life, and who I need or want Jesus to be - than it probably says about who Jesus really was, and is. No one individual, or group of people, has a monopoly on describing or even knowing who Jesus was or is. The significant thing is that each of us and all of us together, as church, continue to be challenged to ask and explore the important questions: "Who is or was Jesus? Who is Jesus for\to me? and, in light of the first two questions, Who am I? Lamar Williamson, Jr. says about the significance of today's Gospel text that "By leading to a clear understanding of the correct answer to the question, "Who is Jesus?" this text points to a clear understanding of the question "Who am I?" I am a disciple: a learner who follows Jesus; a follower who learns from him. What I must learn above all is to follow Jesus in his obedience to the will of God, though it means suffering and death to my ego." (Mark: Interpretation - A Bible Commentary for Preaching and Teaching, Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1983, p. 157.) "Who is Jesus?" "Who is Jesus for me?" "Who am I?"
The significance of raising these questions is to see that whoever Jesus of Nazareth was, as an historical person - and there are many things about the historical Jesus that we will never know - the more important factor is, of course, "Who is Jesus for me now? What is my present-day relationship with the living risen Christ?" There will always be that tension between the Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith. Peter Fink, a Jesuit who teaches at Weston School of Theology, put the age-old tension well in an essay he wrote ( Boston Globe, 9-5-88, Editorial Page). He said this:
There seem to be two ways in which we humans approach the mystery of God, who for Christians is made incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. Either God is everything we are not, because we don't want God to be "that way," or God is everything that we are, because we need God to be "that way." The irony is that, in solid Christian Theology, God is both. In Jesus Christ, God is both human and divine, or better - human in his divinity and divine in his humanity. (As such), Christ reveals to us the divine in our humanity and to God the human in God's own divinity. What is my present-day relationship with the living, risen Christ? Who is Jesus for me? Who am I? We need to keep asking those questions, allowing our own images and perceptions to be challenged, to change, and to grow. And maybe, like children, it would help to remember that in some mysterious way the questions point not to an objective reality outside ourselves, but to that Ultimate Reality that we are each and all a part of: God. Amen. The Rev. Canon Mary D. Glasspool |
 |
 |
||
|
|||