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Introduction

The questions he asks

Jesus is the question.

Let me explain.

In the Garden of Eden, after the man and the woman betray God and try to displace him as their Creator, they become ashamed of their nakedness. They had been transparent to each other and to God, but upon their transgression they become self-conscious about their motives, and so they cover up their intimate parts. Then they go hide behind trees. They do not want to be seen for who they are, so they put up defenses, separate from each other, turn their home into a fortress, and shy away from God’s view. They are lost to themselves, isolated and afraid.

Their Creator will not leave them in this state. He comes to find them, and as he seeks them he does something really surprising: He asks a question. Even more surprising, it is not a question of accusation, like, What have you done?, or a question of confusion, such as, What’s going on here? Rather, it is a personal question: Where are you?

That is the perfect question. They are lost. They are so disoriented and deluded and ashamed that they don’t even know where they are, and they have forgotten who they are. God’s question invites them to locate themselves by entering into dialogue with their Creator. They do not have to specify where they are; all they have to do is respond. By responding, they are located and found. That is the beginning of salvation history.

Jesus is the question of salvation, because he is the Word of God who seeks to elicit our response, in order to locate us who are lost. He is the love of God who asks Where are you? all the way to the furthest reaches of our existence. The hard part is that encountering him will stir up all our disorientations, our delusions, our shame, because he finds us in our hiding places. It was not easy for the couple hiding in the garden to respond to their Creator’s question, and everything seemingly became harder for them once they emerged. But that’s the way a cure works sometimes: a lot of things become more unstable so that you can be restored to health. When Jesus asks questions, that’s what’s happening.

Jesus intends to draw us out, into the sacred dialogue, which is life in him. His presence is the very personal divine question addressed to each of us: Where are you? And to drive that one question home, he asks many different questions that, in one way or another, draw us into a deeper encounter with him, if we dare to really listen and attempt a response.

In this book, I have dared to take Jesus’ questions seriously. One thing I have learned is that his questions are never just what they seem, especially when they seem — as they often do — almost like they are out of place or running on a different plane from what is going on. His questions show us many of the ways in which we hide to avoid genuine encounter. Sometimes we hide behind our own fears, or a sense of control, or assumptions, or sometimes just expectations, which turn out to be way too narrow. Listening to the questions of Jesus — and I mean really listening — is painful and wonderful, unsettling and illuminating, inconvenient and inspiring, all at the same time.

So here is a word of warning: If you want to remain comfortable, do not let Jesus ask you questions. If you take these questions seriously, you will become just like those whom we hear about in the Gospels, whose commonplace ways of thinking were overturned. His questions reveal the hidden secrets of people’s hearts and reset the cozy encounter they thought they would have with him. The new level of encounter is one that he himself establishes. His questions provoke an examination of conscience and demand a greater openness to his divine mission. No one is on secure ground when Jesus starts asking questions.

One of the ways to cling to your own version of secure ground is to have a thesis in place before you encounter Jesus’ questions. As a systematic theologian and general overthinker, I find this to be a particular temptation. I am grateful, therefore, that I did not think about writing this book until well after I had started engaging his questions — or rather, after I started being engaged by them. I started writing reflections on one question at a time as a spiritual practice through the weeks of Lent one year; then I did it again during Advent. The point was to find a question and just sit with it, see it in its scriptural context, and wonder about it. I stayed with each question for a long time. I tried to let a wide sense of Scripture teach me how to listen, which required me to not only see each question in its own immediate context, but oftentimes to also consider different questions in relation to others, or different episodes in relation to other episodes. I had to continually resist the temptation to make a tidy little meaning out of what I thought or what I wanted something to mean, and instead give myself over to reading Scripture as Scripture is meant to be read: as a whole symphony of harmonious sounds. This meant learning over and over again to hear how the Old Testament rings out in the New Testament, how the four Gospels sound alongside one another, and how the epistles speak with the Gospels. Listening to Jesus’ voice requires nothing less. There is certainly more to hear in Jesus than what I myself have heard, but I am grateful for what I have received and, especially, that I didn’t just hear my own echo.

Having no thesis when I began, the themes that emerged in the process came about from engagement with the questions. I discovered them; they came to me through engaging with Scripture. The order in which I have arranged these reflections does not follow an overly precise chronology or thematic structure. It is not strictly necessary to read from beginning to end. All the same, I did choose this order for the reflections because, as I meditated on them myself, I noticed how they move through a process of initial inquiry and discovery, to moments of healing, to the revelation of motives, to the possibility and problems with cooperating with Jesus’ divine mission, to the paschal mystery and thereafter. The first and last questions addressed are nearly identical, but are taken from either end of the Gospel of John; those two reflections and the one halfway between them (chapter 11) are the only ones I intentionally placed in dialogue with each other (or, more accurately, the last was written in view of the first, and chapter 11 was written in view of both the beginning and the end).

You will also notice that I move between the NAB and RSV English translations of the Bible, as well as the JPS translation of the Hebrew Scriptures on occasion, as the particular wording in different translations draws out different resonances. As you will see, sometimes it is important to reckon with the translation itself and be aware of how particular words or images in Scripture are meant to draw us to other parts of Scripture, which may or may not be apparent due to a given translation (see, for example, chapter 10). Regardless of the order in which the reflections are presented or read, and the translations used, this is not a book that attempts to crack a code, as if Jesus talks in riddles and I have figured him out. Instead, this book represents a concerted attempt to really listen and to allow Jesus’ questions to disturb me, awaken me, locate me, and transform me. I hope to hear more in the future, and I hope you will hear more than I have through your own engagement with Scripture.

It would be strange and inappropriate to engage in an exercise like this for some kind of practical benefit. All the same, I have found benefits from these reflections on Jesus’ questions. Since some of these reflections emerged in the context of liturgical seasons, they have become entry points to penitential prayer and increased longing. I have already begun using some of these reflections in my teaching at the college level, as well as in my presentations in pastoral settings. They have found their way into retreats that I’ve preached and parish missions that I’ve led. I hope you find them to be useful in a variety of ways, too, even though that’s really just an extra benefit.

My greatest hope is that you’ll let yourself be startled by the fact that we have a God who questions. He does not need to, but he does. The divine question, the person of Jesus, addresses us directly, and asks questions so we can be drawn out of hiding into contact with who he is and what he bears for us. We find each other in him, too.

It turns out that the project of salvation is not some hostile takeover — it is communion. It apparently matters that we want to be healed, so he asks if we want it. Likewise, it matters what and whom we seek; so again, he asks. If we find that the questions of Jesus are just what we expected, then we can be sure that we didn’t hear him correctly. Our expectations are to his questions what color blindness is to the rainbow. They delude us into thinking we have grasped all there is. And that analogy runs the other way, too. If we can imagine the rainbow’s colors piercing through and healing our blindness so that all of a sudden we do see the whole spectrum, then that is something like the effect these piercing and illuminating questions might have on us, because that’s who Jesus is in all his glory. He is the divine question.