Winter 2009
A very controversial matter was before the church court. The lines were clearlydrawn, there was no middle ground and both sides pushed for a decisive and final
decision. One participant observed “What we need to do is learn how to suffer thequestion.” What he meant was that we needed to wrestle with the question, chew on
it, live and struggle with it instead of seeking a quick and easy answer that wouldsilence any debate and push the question out of sight and, unfortunately, also out ofmind.It has been said that the questions we ask are often more telling and more importantthan the answers we seek. To suffer the question is to meet it head on, bechallenged by it, often in ways that make us very uncomfortable.There is little doubt that Jesus made people, especially the religious people, veryuncomfortable during his earthly ministry. So much so that it was easier to see himput to death than to be confronted with and have to suffer the questions he put
before them. To “suffer the question” would have required significant changes in the
way people treated each other, in the way they worshipped, in their commitment toGod and in their own perceived self-righteousness.Jesus was pretty harsh in some of his observations. On one occasion he said the
scribes and Pharisees, the religious people of his day, were “like whitewashed
tombs, which on the outside look beautiful but inside they are full of the bones of thedead and of all kinds of filth. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but
inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” (Matthew 23:27,28)
Another time he said
“Not everyone who says to me, „Lord, Lord,‟ will enter thekingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”
( Matthew 7:21)If we are to know and do the will of our heavenly Father we need to listen to Jesusand take to heart his words. For instance, he sa
id: “When you give a luncheon or a
dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors,in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give abanquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will beblessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of
the righteous.” (Luke 14:12
-14) We are pretty good at feeding ourselves. In fact we joke that one of the characteristics of Presbyterians is that they like to eat often andwell. This raises the deeper question for us to consider:
How would it change the face of our congregation if we did as Jesus said and to our next church dinner, the
men’s breakfast, and other events where we put on a meal we invited “the poor, thecrippled, the lame, and the blind” to be our quests?
As we approach Christmas, that celebration of the blessed event of the birth ofJesus, it is easy to get caught up in all the commercial and religious hype that goeswith the season. The over-riding principle seems to be to find the perfect gift, give
people what they want, (how often we hear the words: “and what would you like for Christmas?”); the result being that it is more a time of „getting‟ rather than a time of „giving‟. I sometimes think all the frenzied activity is simply an attempt to gloss over
the deeper significance of his coming. So I would pose another question for us to
ponder, a question Jesus asked of his disciples, a question he asks of us: “
who do you say
that I am?”
(Matthew 16:15). It is not an easy question to answer but one weshould carefully consider for the answer we give will have serious implications forhow live if we would be his disciples.
Dorne Cornish
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