Engaging the Question

Jesus asked the Pharisees a clever question.  “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?”  The Pharisees knew the obvious answer.  “The son of David.”  (Mt. 22:42)  But Jesus had a not-so-obvious point to make using a very close reading of a fairly obscure passage.  But here’s the main thing.  Jesus made his point not as a statement but as a question.  He tossed the ball back to the Pharisees:  “If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?”  (v. 45)  He invited engagement.

What interests me most is that the Pharisees were apparently trying to test Jesus in some way.  Jesus, though, attempted to engage them in a conversation.  He posed questions.  Questions invite further conversation.  Unfortunately, the Pharisees cut the conversation off.  “No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.” (v. 46) 

I think the mistake the Pharisees made was concentrating on the answers.  Answers have a finality to them.  That’s the answer and that’s that.  Or, as we sometimes hear where I’m from:  “God said it.  I believe it.  That settles it.”  Questions invite further engagement and ongoing conversation in a way that answers just do not.

Jesus is much more about ongoing conversation than answers because ongoing conversation is fundamentally relational.  To be in conversation is to be in relationship.  That matters a lot more than answers. 

The Pharisees, like the Sadducees before them, stopped engaging.  That doesn’t leave much room for relationship.  And there is no salvation outside of relationship.  Not even Jesus can work with those who refuse to engage.  We don’t have to have the answers.  All we have to do is engage the question.

Peace,

Might as Well Have Stayed Home

When you’re a bishop you get a lot of interesting mail.  Some of it is angry.  Some of it is humorous.  Some of it is angry and unintentionally humorous.  This is about a letter of the last sort.

I can’t remember what I said that set my correspondent off.  Something heretical about grace or the unconditional nature of God’s love, or I suspect, God’s call on the church to respond with unconditional acceptance and inclusion of everyone, absolutely everyone.  Someone who didn’t see it quite the same way wrote me what was intended to be a rebuke.  “If the Kingdom of God is as inclusive as you say it is,” the email read, “why would anyone want to be a part of it?”  I guess some people would rather just stay home if the wrong people get invited.

Well, there you have the basic problem.  It is one Jesus addressed in a parable about a king who gave a wedding banquet (Mt. 22:1-14).  The invited guests responded badly.  Some made flimsy excuses.  Others ignored the invitation.  Still others responded violently.  (It’s interesting that invitations to God’s banquet not infrequently result in violently negative reactions.)

When the original guests failed to accept, the king was not deterred.  He sent his messengers into the streets to invite everyone and anyone they could find.  They did so, to both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.  I guess the original invitees wouldn’t have wanted to be there anyway, especially if they knew who eventually showed up.

But then, as Matthew tells this story, there’s one more curiosity.  Among the guests was a man who showed up not wearing the proper wedding garment.  With this, the king was not so pleased and has the man cast out. 

Scholars will tell you these two parts of the stories were completely separate sayings as Jesus actually told them, and that Matthew put them together simply because they both involved wedding banquets.  Who am I to argue with scholars, and I have no doubt they’re right. 

Still, if we’re lucky enough to get an invitation, I think it would behoove us to show up with our party clothes and dancing shoes on.  Otherwise, we might as well have stayed home, and in that case we deserve to get thrown out.

Peace,