When we hear this scribe asking Jesus this question about which is the greatest commandment of all, we are probably thinking: Well, Jesus has 10 commandments to choose from, so this doesn’t seem like such a difficult question. However, according to Jewish tradition, there are 613 mitzvot or commandments in Holy Scriptures, so this question is actually a lot more difficult than it seems. With the scribes and Pharisees so obsessed in the observance of the law, Jesus is indeed faced with a very challenging proposition.
The scribe asks this question in the Gospel today after he hears Jesus' intense discussion with the Pharisees and Herodians. They were asking Jesus a bunch of questions in order to try to trap him and get him in trouble with the chief priests and the Jewish elders. With all this talk about questions in the Gospel today, we might think about the questions we ourselves ask on our journey of faith.
Sometimes we are afraid to ask questions, aren’t we? Maybe we think our question is silly, that we should already know the answer. Maybe we are afraid of embarrassing ourselves. We often see the disciples in the Gospels being very hesitant to ask any questions at all; perhaps they are afraid of the answers they will get from Jesus. We see the Pharisees ask a lot of questions in the Gospels, yet, they use their questions to push Jesus into a corner. In fact, a lot of people in our society use questions in a sarcastic and mean-spirited way, using questions as weapons that will harm or injure.
Sometimes we have a lot of questions in our minds, but the answers we seek are not alway clear-cut and well-defined. I remember that when I went off to be a missionary, I had a lot of questions that I thought would be answered through my missionary work. I wondered about the best approach to help people in a country that is mired in poverty, corruption, and violence. I brought these questions to my missionary work with a very idealistic and positive attitude, or so I thought. I spent 8 years as a lay missionary; I returned from those experiences with even more questions and not a lot of answers. Perhaps I lost some of my innocence and idealism along the way as well.
Our society sometimes sees asking questions as a sign of weakness. There are a lot of religions out there that try to answer every question with a very precise, confident answer. Yet, in our Catholic faith, we’re not afraid to say that we do not have all of the answers, that there’s a sense of mystery to our faith, that there will always be an aspect of the divine that’s beyond our human comprehension.
Our lives of faith can take many twists and turns as we travel along our journey. Sometimes in our journey of faith and in our search for meaning in life, our questions can turn into doubts that end up having us question our very faith. But asking questions, struggling with our doubts and our unbelief, will make us all the more stronger. A searching, inquisitive faith is far better than a faith that is lazy and complacent. I remember that one of my advisors in seminary challenged me with a couple of really provocative questions that really made me think. He asked me: “Lincoln, what kind of priest do you want to be? What kind of priest are you going to choose to be?” At first I thought: What kind of questions are these? What is he really asking me? Can’t I be the kind of priest that everyone needs me to be? Well, of course the answer to that question is certainly no – I can’t be everything to everyone. Those questions really got me thinking, and I still wonder what kind of priest God wants me to be, that God is calling me to be, what kind of priest my parishioners need me to be.
So I might ask all of you a couple of questions in light of todays Gospel and todays homily: How is God calling you to live out your Christian faith? What kind of questions do you need to ask in order to grow and develop as a follower of Christ? Are there are questions that you are afraid to ask? And if you have a question where there is no easy answer, are you willing to wrestle and struggle with that question, to try to find some sort of meaning without any easy resolution?
Do not be afraid to ask questions. Do not be afraid to search for the answers.
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