Is God revealed in our questions?

This week we would usually have someone share an article they read from the United Church’s magazine The United Church Observer (UC Observer or ucobserver.org).  But why would we read a magazine when this is a church service; aren’t we supposed to read only the Bible?  For me the short answer is “No”.

So there are two short reasons for that (and several longer ones).  First, in our Protestant understanding of who God is and what God does, we say “God is still speaking”.¹ Our ancestors of faith wrote of their experience of God in their lives, and also shared what they heard God/Spirit saying to them. But God is not locked away in the “canon”, or authorized collection, of books & letters we call the Bible.  God is still speaking in our day and age in many ways including through modern scholarship and faith-full reflection on everyday events.  If God is still speaking, our job is to listen and discern God’s word to us…even if – especially if – they lie beyond “That Book”.

The second reason, in part, is tied ironically to the Bible reading for the day: Jesus did more than read his bible (Luke 2: 41-52).  He learned from his teachers, he questioned, and delved beyond the written word into tradition and the current theological interpretation of his day.¹ The story tells us that Jesus was in the Temple with the Elders and Teachers of the Law and that “his questions amazed the teachers of the Law”.   I imagine that means Jesus had absorbed what he had been taught by his teachers, reflected on it in light of all that he knew and had experienced in his 12 years,² and then asked insightful questions about what all this would mean to him as he was growing into, and living as, a mature faithful Jewish man.³ And, as one of my Teachers once said, “There is more grace is a good question than in a good answer”, meaning we find (or reveal) more of God’s character in our humility of asking questions that we do in supposing we have The One Right Answer. (It also helps us build up relationships as we explore other people’s views instead of preaching only our own.)  Perhaps then Jesus, by asking questions to deepen his understanding (and therefore actions), revealed the aspect of the “Wonder”, the Awe of the Holy?

The UC Observer is one place where we can read faith-filled, God/Spirit-inspired reflections on both current affairs and every day events, which help us to ask insightful questions and learn what all our religious teaching means to us as we grow into and live a mature Christian faith.

Where do you go for inspiration?   For teaching?  What questions do you find yourself reflecting on as you take this teaching and apply it to your own everyday life?

This is the crux of spiritual living: to apply to the everyday situations of our life what we have learned about connecting with God (or the Divine, or the Mystery Behind Life, or Cosmic Christ, or Love, or whatever name you use to describe this reality), with the Creation around us, and with those around us.   Speaking from my own experience, places of strength and hope, I can say that unless we read and question how this learning applies to me – now, in this place – it isn’t faith at all; it is simply knowledge learned, like knowing the periodic table of elements or the names of Canadian prime ministers in the past 150 years.   Until the faith we have learned matters here and now, in this time and place, it doesn’t matter at all.  Because all of this – religious faith, spiritual rootedness – is all about the Beyond and the Everyday meeting and being lived out in me.   I am –You are – where heaven and earth meet.

And the story of Jesus in the Temple, hanging out with the mature Teachers of the Law (or more precisely mature Students of the Law) is trying to tell us, I believe, that God is revealed to us in our questions and seeking and wondering.  Jesus discovered that at 12; how old are we when we discover that?  It also reminds me that “God” is so beyond Human Understanding that God reveals God’s self to us in this questioning and seeking and wondering, this learning for as long as we are willing to participate in it; even then (as Paul says) we know only in part, but then [at death when we meet God ‘face-to-face’] we will know completely.

Notes:   ¹ This is the “motto” or “tagline” of the United Church of Christ (USA). I think it is snappy, easy to remember, and (undoubtedly in my experience) accurate.     ² For an interesting take on what it would mean for Jesus to be 12 – in between childhood and being a man – see http://www.frpeterpreble.com/2015/12/growing-up-with-jesus.html (highlight and right-clk).  Also where I found the painting.  (The Feature Photo credit: osv.com/teenvoices.)    Other scholars suggest this trip included Jesus’ ceremony of becoming a bar mitzvah, literally “a son of the commandments”.   ³ Modern scholars know that Jesus was at least raised in the manner of the Pharisee Party, which was a religious political party.  The Pharisees held the Written Law (Torah), and the Oral Law (the teachings of the Prophets, as well as the traditions and interpretations passed down through the generations) as being equal in authority to the Torah and as commands of the Divine.  Questioning is the first step of expanding understanding (interpreting) what “God” means by a particular command.   Jesus would have been schooled in, and understood his religious faith and obligations, from these ‘texts’ and from the traditional of questioning.  In time this Oral Law came to be written down and codified in the text of theMishna, a forerunner to, and part of, the Talmud, which forms the basis of Jewish legal code.

The Reading: Luke 2:41-52 (NIV Reader’s edition, biblegateway.com):    Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Passover Feast.  When Jesus was 12 years old, they went up to the feast as usual. After the feast was over, his parents left to go back home. The boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. But they were not aware of it. They thought he was somewhere in their group. So they traveled on for a day. Then they began to look for him among their relatives and friends. They did not find him. So they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple courtyard. He was sitting with the teachers. He was listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at how much he understood. They also were amazed at his answers. When his parents saw him, they were amazed. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been worried about you. We have been looking for you everywhere.”  “Why were you looking for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he meant by that.  Then he went back to Nazareth with them, and he obeyed them. But his mother kept all these things like a secret treasure in her heart.  Jesus became wiser and stronger. He also became more and more pleasing to God and to people.