Wine Before Breakfast Tuesday, March 2, 2010

On Good Questions and Being Close to the Kingdom

He wasn’t in a good mood.

Maybe it was the tensions of the week.
            Passover in Jerusalem,
            and the stakes are high.

Maybe it was that he knew where this Passover was going.
Maybe it was because he knew that the stakes were higher than anyone had imagined.

Whatever was the reason, he didn’t seem to be in the mood to answer too many questions.

“By what authority do you do these things?”
            I’m not going to tell you.

“What about taxes paid to the empire?”
            Take a look at a coin.

“So this woman has seven husbands one after another,
which one is she married to in the resurrection?”
            You guys really are clueless, aren’t you!

But then he gets a question that he answers.
            Was it because it was such a good question.
            A question that got to the heart of things?
            Or might it have been something about the questioner?
            Did Jesus see something in this scribe that was missing in the others?

“What is the greatest commandment?”
            Now that is a good question.

Jesus answers the question,
            the scribe runs with the answer
            down paths that demonstrate that he “gets it,”
            and Jesus says that this man is
            “not far from the Kingdom.”

Not far from the Kingdom.
            That’s a good place to be.
May it be the case that we are not far from the Kingdom.
May it be that we ask questions worthy of the Kingdom.
May it be that we ask questions worthy of the one on the way to the cross.

You got any questions like that?
Then come to Wine Before Breakfast tomorrow morning.
Joe Abbey-Colborne will be preaching, and he’s got loads of such questions.
The Bandhood will bear our questions and our longings in song.
Judith Alltree will be serving up answers that you can eat.

7.22am in Wycliffe Chapel

And I’ll tell you what.
            If you’ve got bad questions, then bring them too.
            Sometimes a non-answer is the most profound way to get an answer.
Questioners new and old, all welcome!

 

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