Gotcha Questions
by Kenny Sallee, ThMDeuteronomy 34:1–12; Psalm 90:1–6, 13–17; 1 Thessalonians 2:1–8; Matthew 22:34–46
Most of us learned pretty early in life that questions usually have answers.
When we were in school, we were taught to study, pay attention, do our homework, and prepare for the test. If we knew the right answers, we passed. If we knew enough of them, maybe we even got an A.
But every classroom seemed to have at least one person who asked questions for an entirely different reason.
You know the kind.
The question was not really about learning anything. Sometimes that person already knew the answer. The question was asked to challenge the teacher, to get a reaction, or perhaps even to embarrass the person standing in front of the class.
That is a little like what we see happening in the twenty-second chapter of Matthew.
The religious leaders keep coming to Jesus with questions.
But they are not necessarily looking for wisdom.
They are testing him.
They are trying to trap him.
The Sadducees come up with that strange story about a woman who marries seven brothers, one after another, after each husband dies. Then they ask Jesus which one of them will be her husband in the resurrection.
It is the kind of question designed less to discover truth and more to create an argument.
Then the Pharisees take their turn.
They send a lawyer—someone who knows the Law of Moses—to ask Jesus what may have been the biggest “gotcha” question of all:
“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
Now, there were plenty of commandments from which Jesus could have chosen.
The religious scholars had spent generations studying them, discussing them, interpreting them, and sometimes arguing over them.
Perhaps they expected Jesus to hesitate.
Perhaps they thought he would choose one commandment and immediately open himself to an argument about another.
But Jesus does not hesitate.
He says:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
And then he continues:
“This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
And then Jesus says something that brings everything else into focus:
“On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
In other words, if you want to understand what God desires from us, begin here.
Love God.
Love your neighbor.
Everything else grows from those two things.
And nearly two thousand years later, nothing about that answer has changed.
We live in a world filled with complicated questions.
Some of them are theological questions.
Why do good people suffer?
Where is God when storms destroy homes, when fires sweep across communities, when innocent people are killed, or when families are torn apart?
Why does God allow suffering?
Why does God sometimes seem silent when we desperately want an answer?
People have wrestled with those questions for thousands of years.
And the truth is, there are some questions for which we may never have a complete answer in this life.
We can study Scripture.
We can read theology.
We can pray.
We can seek wisdom.
And we should do all of those things.
But faith also requires us to admit that we do not know everything.
Sometimes wisdom begins with being able to say, “I don't know.”
But even when we do know what Jesus asks of us, living it out is not always easy.
Jesus says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
That sounds simple enough.
Until life hurts.
It becomes harder when we lose someone we love.
It becomes harder when our health begins to fail.
It becomes harder when the future we had planned suddenly disappears.
It becomes harder when prayers do not seem to be answered the way we hoped they would be.
How do we love God then?
How do we trust God then?
That is where faith becomes more than something we talk about on Sunday morning.
Faith becomes something we live.
I think faith grows throughout our lives.
It is a little like a flower opening.
We may begin with a small bud of faith, not knowing exactly where it will lead us. Over time, through prayer, Scripture, worship, suffering, joy, disappointment, and grace, that flower continues to open.
Sometimes we look back over our lives and realize that God carried us through places we never imagined we would have to go.
There were times we were certain we could not make it.
Yet somehow, by the grace of God, we did.
That does not mean everything turned out the way we wanted.
It means God was still there.
And that brings us to Moses.
Our reading from Deuteronomy takes us to the end of Moses' earthly journey.
Moses climbs Mount Nebo and looks across the land God had promised to Israel.
Just imagine that moment.
Moses can see the land.
He can see the destination toward which he has been leading God's people for all those years.
But God tells him that he will not cross over into it.
Moses' journey will end there.
And what a journey it had been.
When God first called Moses, Moses did not exactly volunteer enthusiastically.
He asked God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?”
Moses had doubts.
He had fears.
He had excuses.
He did not believe he was qualified for what God was asking him to do.
And yet God called him anyway.
God said, in effect, “You are the one I have chosen.”
And Moses went.
He stood before Pharaoh.
He led God's people out of Egypt.
He crossed the Red Sea.
He walked through the wilderness.
He listened to the complaints of the people.
He carried responsibilities he probably never imagined carrying.
And through all of it, Moses kept following God.
Not perfectly.
Moses made mistakes.
Moses became frustrated.
Moses sometimes questioned God.
But Moses remained faithful.
There is something important in that for you and me.
God sometimes calls ordinary people to do things they never imagined themselves doing.
We may say, “Lord, surely there is somebody more qualified.”
We may say, “I'm too old.”
Or, “I'm too young.”
Or, “I don't know enough.”
Or, “I've made too many mistakes.”
Or simply, “I can't do that.”
Moses said some of those same things.
But God was not asking Moses to be perfect.
God was asking Moses to be faithful.
And God asks the same thing of us.
There may come a moment when God taps you on the shoulder and asks you to step into something you never expected.
Maybe it is ministry.
Maybe it is caring for someone.
Maybe it is standing up for someone who has been pushed aside.
Maybe it is forgiving someone.
Maybe it is simply being present with someone who is hurting.
Whatever it is, loving God means sometimes stepping forward in faith even when we are not entirely sure where that step will lead.
And eventually, like Moses, every one of us reaches a place where something must be laid down.
There comes a time when God says, in one way or another, “You will not cross over there.”
There are things we begin that someone else will finish.
There are dreams that may continue beyond us.
There are ministries we eventually hand to another person.
There are places where our journey ends and someone else's begins.
Moses did not enter the Promised Land.
But that did not make his life a failure.
He had been faithful to the calling God had given him.
That is an important distinction.
Success in the Kingdom of God is not always measured by whether we personally see the final result.
Sometimes faithfulness means planting a seed whose shade we will never sit beneath.
Lucie Eddie Campbell expressed that hope in the words:
“Oh, when I come to the end of my journey,
weary of life and the battle is won…”
Those words point us toward another familiar promise:
“Well done, good and faithful servant.”
And I don't believe God will say those words to us because we got every theological question right.
I don't believe there will be a final examination where God asks whether we could explain every mystery of Scripture.
I think the greater question is this:
Did we love God?
Did we love our neighbor?
Did our faith make any difference in the way we treated other people?
Did we feed the hungry?
Did we welcome the stranger?
Did we forgive?
Did we show mercy?
Did we stand beside the lonely?
Did we see Christ in people who were different from us?
Those questions are much harder than any classroom test.
And then, near the end of today's Gospel, Jesus turns the questioning around.
After everyone has been testing him, Jesus asks them a question:
“What do you think of the Messiah?”
Elsewhere in the Gospel, Jesus asks his disciples the same question in another form:
“Who do you say that I am?”
That question still stands before every one of us.
Who do you say Jesus is?
Not your priest's answer.
Not your church's answer.
Not your parents' answer.
Not something you memorized years ago in Sunday school.
Who do you say that Jesus is?
Because our answer eventually shows itself in the way we live.
If Jesus truly is Lord, then loving God cannot be separated from loving the people God created.
And Jesus made that very clear.
Love God with all your heart.
Love God with all your soul.
Love God with all your mind.
And love your neighbor as yourself.
It really is that simple.
And sometimes it is that difficult.
But if we spend our lives trying to live those two commandments faithfully, then when our journey finally reaches its end, perhaps we will hear those words we all hope to hear:
“Well done, good and faithful servant.”
Amen.
