Earth, from a distance of 3.7 billion miles.
“No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.”
Carl Sagan was a popular 20th-century writer, astronomer, and exobiologist. He cultivated an infectious enthusiasm for popular science, and he encouraged people to ask big questions about the universe, and humanity’s place in the universe. Sagan was the one who persuaded NASA to turn their Voyager 1 space probe around to photograph Earth from a distance of 3.7 billion miles, giving humanity the astonishing image of a “pale blue dot,” our tiny home, aloft and alone in the vast preserve of outer space. Years before that, Sagan led the development of the Golden Record, an artifact placed on board that same Voyager probe (as well as Voyager 2), containing information about us and our planet for potential discovery by extra-terrestrial species, who might one day intercept our wondrous inventions.
In Carl Sagan’s book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, he writes, “There are naïve questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question.”
“Every question is a cry to understand the world,” says Carl Sagan. “There is no such thing as a dumb question.”
And yet our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ seems to be silencing all who have questions. In today’s encounter he asks a provocative question of his own, but “no one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.”
Why did they fall silent? Let’s begin reflecting on this by accepting Carl Sagan’s assertion that “there is no such thing as a dumb question.” This is self-evidently true: every question is an attempt to learn something. Think of a small child acquiring language and asking question after question: “Why is the sky blue? Why does the dog chase her tail? Why is that bald man always wearing a black shirt with a white collar?” These are not dumb questions. They readily lead the questioner to their straightforward answers. Perhaps the questioner is inexperienced in the field about which she is asking; but asking questions is an intelligent thing to do. She asks naïve questions, but they are not dumb questions.
But these are not the questions the challengers of Jesus are asking. The Pharisees were naïve about many things – something we can truthfully say about every human person who has ever lived, or ever will live – but their questions were not part of their quest for new knowledge, let alone wisdom. Their questions were hostile. In Carl Sagan’s list of less-impressive questions – remember, he said “there are naïve questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, [and] questions put after inadequate self-criticism” – the Pharisees are asking questions with too little self-criticism. They are not looking honestly at themselves before asking a hostile question of their political opponent.
And that is what Jesus is, to them: he is a political opponent. He threatens their firm hold on authority in their society and culture. But we tell their stories of failure in debates with Jesus not just because they are fascinating characters from a story, and definitely not just to stroke our own egos under the assumption that we’re better than the Pharisees. We recall their questions and failures because we, too, stand to lose politically if we follow Jesus, and we, too, stand to lose a lot even if we merely question him. Jesus threatens whatever firm hold we may have on our world, on the means of production, on our control of other people, on our safe and self-satisfied beliefs and attitudes. He is our political opponent.
To follow Jesus means to surrender to a worldview that clashes with many things we unconsciously accept as good, and even necessary: things like capitalism, which involves private ownership in a market economy. While I doubt I will ever live without a bank account and retirement funds and real estate, following Jesus makes me chronically uncomfortable with those arrangements. The longer I walk in the Christian Way, the deeper I am bothered by the profound injustice of the world that so frequently benefits me, privileges me, ensures my own comfort and safety at the expense of others. I can afford to watch the Gaza-Israel War from a safe distance, with only one member of my family directly in harm’s way. I can form opinions about that war – and of course opinions about your opinions about that war – without the threat of airstrikes flattening my own house. When I follow Jesus, I can’t help but notice that disparity, and I must awkwardly wrestle with it.
This helps me understand more deeply why the Pharisees stopped asking Jesus questions. His answers were unsettling, even upsetting. He didn’t just defeat them in their petty attempts to embarrass and discredit him in the eyes of the people, though that was bad enough. He was also correct about things that deep down they wished he were wrong about.
I can behave like this. I want to say – and believe – that the money I earn is my money, and therefore it belongs in my bank account, and can rightly be invested by my financial representative, and therefore can earn even more money that will become my money. And all of that is true, by the rules of our economic system. My money is my money. But Jesus is right when he points to the manifest injustice of that system, and then turns his finger toward me, inviting me to step into the discomforts of my conscience, and work for a system that feeds, clothes, and houses everyone in peace and dignity. But that new system – it’s going to cost me. Do I dare ask Jesus questions, even well-intentioned (if naïve) questions? If I do question him, his answers will make me deeply uncomfortable, and end up costing me wealth, ease, and safety.
But other people in the Holy Book bring home this problem in even more profound ways than the Pharisees. The Pharisees ask hostile questions, questions that reveal their hypocrisy, questions that lead to awful answers that challenge and repel them. I get that! But other people ask Jesus a different question, a heartfelt and honest one. They ask Jesus, with sincere curiosity, “Who are you?” They ask this in various ways, and the questioners are diverse, from rural fisherfolk all the way up to the regional Roman governor. And several times in the Good News we see Jesus evading this question, or answering it but telling them to keep quiet about it. In biblical studies they call this “the Messianic Secret,” the habit Jesus had of strictly ordering his friends not to tell people that he is the Messiah.
And here is why Jesus does this: Jesus does not want to answer the “Who are you?” question until he is nailed to the cross. When the centurion sees Jesus on the cross he puts it all together and says, “Truly this man was God’s son!” The cross is the place where the answer to the question, “Who is Jesus?” becomes clear: his grievous, humiliating death; his whole life poured out in love for others; his life, death, and imminent risen life — all this reveals to the whole world that God in Jesus is transforming all people into a new dominion; God in Jesus is mending the world; God in Jesus is routing the powers of sin and death, and making all things new. But always at great cost.
And so, finally, we encounter even more people who stand mute before Jesus, not just the Pharisees. They stand at the cross and are struck speechless by both the wonder and the horror of who Jesus is, and what his identity implies for all who follow him. On Good Friday, Christians look back at the prophet Isaiah, who spoke to a different generation that did not imagine or anticipate Jesus of Nazareth. But Isaiah’s words, written in a different time and for a different purpose, somehow, centuries later, speak eloquently to us Christians about Jesus on the cross. Isaiah sings:
See, my servant shall prosper; he shall be exalted and lifted up and shall be very high. Just as there were many who were astonished at him — so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of mortals —so he shall startle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him, for that which had not been told them they shall see, and that which they had not heard they shall contemplate.
“Kings shall shut their mouths because of him.” More stunned silence, more fear to ask any more questions, more anxiety about who Jesus is, and what will happen to us if we listen to him, and follow him.
You may not like his answers, but I encourage you to approach Jesus in your prayers, and ask him your questions. “Who are you?” That’s a good question. “I am the Crucified One,” comes his answer, and that is a hard teaching, for it compels his followers to live costly, cruciform lives. “Why is there innocent suffering in the world?” That’s a question I like to ask Jesus. His answer? He answers by entering into that suffering himself as one of the innocent victims. We find him among the Gazan children, and also among the abducted Israelis. We find him among the slaughtered in our own nation, so overrun with guns that I almost didn’t notice this week’s mass shooting in Maine. Jesus compels his followers to enter that suffering too, and to relieve that suffering among those we call our neighbors.
Your questions for Jesus will give you uncomfortable, challenging, even vexing answers. If you listen to them, and if you still choose to follow Jesus, that will cost you a lot. But you will have many friends here alongside you, if you choose to follow. And here in this community of faith, we ask the hardest questions, remembering our sibling Carl Sagan’s wisdom:
“Every question is a cry to understand the world.”
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Preached on the Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 25A), October 29, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.
Deuteronomy 34:1-12
Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
Matthew 22:34-46