April and I interned at a church in Michigan as part of our seminary training. It was a small struggling church, but they had one ministry that was really making a difference in their neighborhood and community. This ministry was a Wednesday gathering of middle and high school youth. In this church that had maybe 30-40 in worship on a Sunday morning drew 60 or more youth every Wednesday night. April and I were blessed to work with the high school group. They were smaller than the middle school group, having only about 10-12 gathering for our small group break-out sessions. But among that small group was a teen who was really troubled. He’d had some serious discipline issues at school and was involved with drugs. But he was a curious kid. And I will never forget one night at the youth gathering when he stopped April and me because he had a faith question. He asked us, “If God sent Jesus to earth, knowing that Jesus would die on a cross, doesn’t that make God a murderer?” Wow! I don’t know how you would react to that question, but I was speechless. I think April and I both stuttered and stumbled over our words a bit, trying to respond to this youth. I don’t remember exactly what we said to him, but I think it was something along the lines of, “That’s a really tough question. We will need to think about it and get back to you.”

Questions are powerful. They can stop a person in their tracks. They can derail hundreds of years of research and belief. Questions cause change. Jesus was no stranger to questions. According to a 2002 study at Brigham Young University, Jesus was asked 126 questions in the gospels. Other calculations say 183 questions. And with most of those questions, Jesus responded with a question of his own. In fact, Jesus asked about twice as many questions of others as were asked of him. Why do you think that is? Abraham Joshua Heschel, a rabbi and leading Jewish theologian, says this about questions: “We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers.” And French philosopher Peter Abelard said, “The key to wisdom is this – constant and frequent questioning.” Questions open the door for wisdom. And even if we know the answer already, it is never a bad idea to still ask the question. Perhaps it will spark a conversation that will draw us closer to God or closer to our neighbor.

In our gospel text today, the Pharisees decided they wanted to test Jesus. One of them, who was a lawyer, decided to ask Jesus a question that he felt would trap Jesus into saying something that would get him into trouble. A lawyer in this context was a Pharisee who specialized in the 613 laws of the Torah (the first five books of what we call the Old Testament). And so he asked Jesus a question pertaining to those laws. He asked, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Do you see the test there? He wants Jesus to pick one law from the 613 laws of the Torah to be the greatest. No matter what he chooses, there will be an argument that he is wrong. Those of us who have some knowledge of how Jesus responds in situations like this might predict that Jesus will take this opportunity to respond to the lawyer’s question with a question of his own. As noted earlier, Jesus loved to do that.

But Jesus actually answers the lawyer’s question. He does take a little liberty with his answer though. Jesus replies, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” Jesus, not only gives an answer, he gives two answers. But Jesus’ answer is brilliant because within the answer there is another question. If the greatest commandment is to love God and our neighbor and Jesus says the whole law and the prophets hang on that commandment, then how do we live that out? The Pharisees would probably say that we live that out by following all 613 laws of the Torah. I think Jesus might answer a little differently. But that is the beauty of his answer. It truly and completely answers the question, but in a way that also leaves room for lots more questions.

And then Jesus immediately follows that up with a question of his own. He says to the Pharisees, “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” The Pharisees saw this as a lay up. This was an easy question because a large part of Messianic belief centered around the Messiah’s lineage. And the Pharisees were quick to answer. They said, “The son of David.” Ha! Silly, Jesus. He wasn’t going to stump them with a simple question like that. And they started patting one another on the backs in triumph. But Jesus wasn’t done. He said to them, “How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet”’? If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” Confusing statement by Jesus, but clearly a turning of the tides in the back and forth question competition between him and the Pharisees.

If we look closer at what Jesus is saying here, we can deduce two things. First, the Messiah was not simply a son of David. In other words, the Messiah was not going to return the land of Israel to the good ole days of prosperity under the reign of King David. The Messiah was more than that. The Messiah would do more than that…and not in the way the Pharisees expected (or anyone else for that matter). And we know that ended up being the case. Because Jesus was not the Messiah everyone expected. He accomplished more, but in a way that seemed like less. The Messiah was not simply a son of David…he was the son of God. And secondly, we can deduce that sometimes even our long held beliefs are wrong. For something like 1800 years, Christians believed that slavery was acceptable and normal. In the 1700 and 1800s, Christians began to question that belief. And now most Christians today would argue that slavery is wrong. But had no one ever stopped to question that belief, it never would have changed. Sometimes even our long held beliefs are wrong.

Peter Wehner, who wrote opinion pieces for the New York Times and has served as the speechwriter for three US Presidents, is quoted as saying, “Faith is more accurately measured by the courage within our questions, than the certainty of our answers.” I like that statement. Our faith is stronger when it isn’t afraid to question even the most stringent beliefs. If our faith is true, then it will hold up to the questioning…and be stronger for it. If we simply sit back and rely on the certainty of our answers, we will stop progressing and our faith will stagnate. Jesus’ life shows us the power of questions: their power to change minds and hearts and the entire world. Questions really do make a difference.

The Christian Church, as well as many other religions, has proclaimed itself as the giver of answers. As a teen in youth group, I often sang the song, “Jesus is the Answer for the world today.” We argue with other churches about what the correct answers to questions of faith are and split from one another over those very answers. But the reality is that we are all asking the same questions. What does it mean to follow Jesus? How did Jesus save us? What is the importance of celebrating at the Lord’s Table as Jesus instructed us to do and what happens when we do that? These questions and so many more are questions that all Christian churches have had to wrestle with over the years. That is something we all share in common. Yet the thing that divides us is not the questions but the answers. So perhaps we need to start asking ourselves, “Why are we concerned more with the answers than with the questions?” If we focus on the questions, we might see that we aren’t so different after all.

Questions change us. They open us up to different answers. They open us up to the reality that life changes and what worked in the past may not work the same now. They prepare us for a life of learning. And it is in learning and growing that we become who God has called us to be. T.S. Eliot, in his poem The Rock, writes, “Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger. Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.” We saw in our text today and in many of the other texts we’ve explored from the gospel of Matthew this past month that Jesus loved questions. He loved to ask them. But a lot of times those whom he asked questions didn’t really want to answer them.How good are we at asking questions? How good are we at truly listening to and considering the questions of others? I’ve spent a lot of time over the years thinking about the question that the kid from our youth group asked. I knew in my heart that God is not a murder, but you can’t really look at the story of Jesus and not see where that question came from. It would be easy to simply dismiss the question for fear of it weakening our faith. But, even though I’ve never really found an answer to the question that completely clarifies things for me, asking myself that question has actually strengthened my faith, not because I’ve done anything special, but because God has been at work in my heart and in my mind. Questions change us. They matter. They have power. Even though asking those questions can feel scary, we need to learn to embrace the doubts and wonderings. In an article titled “Why Jesus Taught with Questions Instead of Answers”, Mick Mooney wrote, “Questions and faith are not opposed to one another, but rather can be thought of as a perfect pair. We could even say that faith is more accurately measured by the courage within our questions, than the certainty of our answers.” Be open to asking bold and courageous questions. Questions have the power to change you and to change the world through you. So let’s step out in faith and ask them. Amen!