QUESTIONS 

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is “Questions”.

To be human is to have questions – lots of them – spoken and unspoken – simmering in the pot – or deep in the deep freeze.

To be a child – is to ask many wide eyed and sometimes wild questions.

What are your questions?

TODAY’S GOSPEL

Today’s gospel has Jesus asking two questions – a teaching technique rabbis often used.

First question: “Who do people say that I am?”

Second question: “Who do you say that I am?”

When we’re young we might have answers to the first question. We might know what different people say about Jesus.

When we are at a Kids’ Mass and the priest asks a question, arms go flying up – even before the kid has an answer.

It’s cute and sometimes kids’ surprise us with their answers.

When we are older we need to start answering that second question for ourselves. Christ asks each of us, “Who do you say that I am?” There comes a point in the middle of our life – or at key points in our life – when we need to deal with that question.

We’ve all heard the auditorium and stage phrase: “Get the hook!” It might go back to vaudeville shows when someone was on the stage too long and their jokes were bombing. I’ve also heard it when we priests are in the pulpit and we’re talking too long. “Get the hook!”

Here’s your chance to practice it right now: “Get the hook!” and if I go too long, yell it out, “Get the hook!”

The question mark is a hook. Questions can stop us – get us off the stage of life for a while – so we can deal with heavy duty questions.

Today Jesus is asking, “Who do you say that I am?”

Better put: we need to sit or walk in prayer with Jesus and talk and listen to each other about who we both are.

It’s called prayer. It’s called meditation. It’s called a relationship.

Questions! They can be helpful hooks – or painful hooks.

In today’s gospel after Jesus asks his two questions – he then tells Peter and the disciples who he is and what his plan is – where he is headed.

So yes there are questions and yes there are answers.

Surprise, Peter’s doesn’t like the answer Jesus gives. Peter doesn’t like the plan. Peter doesn’t like the future Jesus is stepping into.

When Peter hears the words, “suffering,” “rejection,” and “killed”, Peter challenges Jesus. Don’t we all? Don’t we all?

Peter’s understanding of what Jesus is like or supposed to be like, isn’t what Jesus tells them he is like – and Peter doesn’t like it.

And Jesus here in Mark 8 gives some key teachings about the meaning of life.

Jesus tells his disciples about the cross.

The sign of the cross often comes before the question mark.

The sign of the cross often brings us questions.

Cancer. Suffering. Greed. Crime. Addiction. Death. Divorce. Disaster. Why? Why? Why?

What are your questions?

How many questions do you ask each day?

Am I aware of my daily questions?

Give us this day our daily questions.

Remember the story of the father who used to ask his kids when he came home from work and they came home from school, “Did you come up with any good questions today?”

POVERTY

Last Wednesday afternoon I walked through the corridor in the rectory here at St. Mary’s. I walked past a lot of people coming for assistance – for help.

And with the way the economy is going – with the increased number of people out of work, I was wondering about the number of people needing help – and how tough it must be getting through these rough economic times.

The poor are here Monday evenings and Wednesday afternoons – and the folks here at St. Mary’s are very generous – making direct donations or putting money in the poor box – as well as those who give their time and expertise in the Saint Vincent de Paul Ministry. It’s tough work. It’s much easier saying Mass and babbling out words here in the pulpit.

I walked by the poor lined up for help. I went out the front door and walked down to CVS to get a birthday card. As I walked down Newman Street, I found myself inwardly saying, “Get moving. Get a job. Get a life.”

Woo! I caught myself! Where was this coming from inside me?

I didn’t realize that I was questioning the poor I just walked by.

I had to pause and say to myself, “I haven’t walked in their shoes.”

I had to say to myself the saying from the Jewish Talmud or Teachings that I find myself saying more and more and more: “Teach thy tongue to say, ‘I do not know.’”

I have never experienced their poverty, even though I have a vow of poverty as a religious.

I said to myself, “No comparison.”

So last Wednesday I experienced my own poverty and lack of compassion and understanding as I walked down Newman Street.

I realized that I was still walking down what Paul would call, “The Oldman” Street.

I need to change, to grow – to become a new man – a new person in Christ. I need conversion.

In his letters Paul tells us he was arrogant, righteous, and wrong about Christians – and Christ – and God – and people – and their motives – and he had to fall on his face – and be blind for a few days – till he found himself of Straight Street in Damascus where he was told to go if he wanted answers – if he wanted to be healed.

Is that the way life works?

We have to walk down a lot of streets – take many roads – trip and fall at times – till we get it straight?

Is that everyone’s story?

Blindness. Insight. Blindness. Insight. Blindness. Insight.

Questions. Questions. Questions.

As I walked, as I thought, I was grateful that so many folks here at Saint Mary’s are helping the poor – helping in the English as a Second Language Program – running an elementary and high school – running religious education programs – visiting the prison – visiting the sick – preparing folks for marriage - doing many things for many people – parenting – serving – doing our best to make this a good community – a good place to live – except for the traffic.

I still felt my poverty – because I had said inwardly, “Get moving. Get a job. Get a life.”

For some: not easy, not easy, not easy.

TODAY’S SECOND READING

The title of my homily is, “Questions.”

Sure enough, I noticed that today’s second reading from James also has questions. It begins with three questions in a row: “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?”

Then the second question: “Can that faith save him?”

Then the third question – a right in your face question: “If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,’ but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?”

Woo! The Letter of James can be very tough stuff.

Questions. Questions. Questions.

This religion stuff can be tough stuff.

Jesus is saying that very thing here at the end of today’s gospel: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.”

Tough questions. Tough answers. Life.

TODAY’S FIRST READING

Today’s first reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah begins, “The Lord God opens my ear that I may hear; and I have not rebelled, have not turned back.”

I have to admit I rebel at times. I am deaf at times. I refuse to listen at times.

Isn’t that why we come to church? Isn’t that why we don’t want to come to church at times? Jesus can be that tough.

CROSSES AND QUESTIONS

Jesus hooks us with the cross. Jesus hooks us with questions.

Suffering brings us to the cross. Suffering brings us questions.

Why God why?

Why me, God, why me?

Even Jesus screamed out the big feeling question we often ask, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

SO

So maybe there are more questions than there are conclusions. Maybe there are more questions than answers.
What’s your take on this question of questions and answers?

We studied the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas in the process of becoming priests – and his format was the question and answer method. First the great question – and then various answers – and then what he would consider the best answer.

And we heard somewhere along the line that before St. Thomas Aquinas died he said to burn all his writings – saying it’s all straw.

And every time I heard that story – a necessary story I realized many years later – I felt humbled. I found myself asking the hook question hidden in the story, “Then why am I studying all this?”

And I remember two of our teachers using not only the classic text books for dogmatic and moral theology – but also lots of articles and other books – and saying to us, “You have the rest of your life to reflect upon these questions.”

And that lead to the further questions, “Isn’t that dangerous? Wouldn’t that make one a cynic? Why study in the first place? Why have faith in the first place? Are there any answers?”

Of course there are answers – just as the cross is an answer – just as Jesus is an answer – just as Thomas Aquinas gave answers, just as The Baltimore Catechism used the Question and Answer method – just as the Gospels have many questions and many answers.

How do I end this homily entitled, “Questions”?

It seems that much of life is like the ocean – necessary, deep, taking up most of the planet – without which we wouldn’t be here. It seems that God is also like the ocean – necessary, deep, keeping up all of the planets and the universe – without whom we wouldn’t be here.

In my homily last Sunday, I gave some of my life learnings – answers that I have come up with. In my homily this week, I found myself countering, I also have life questions – and my faith and my hope is that eternity with be filled with the great answers.

And I have lots of questions for God. Don’t we all? One is: “God what’s your take on the interesting hats these religious leaders often come up with?” I’m dying to hear God’s take on that one.

CONCLUSION

Not knowing how to conclude at this point, but knowing people have often been helped by standing at the beach looking out at the ocean or at the Bay here in Annapolis, let me conclude with a poem by the Irish poet, John Boyle O’Reilly. It’s entitled, “The Infinite.”

THE INFINITE
The Infinite always is silent:
It is only the Finite speaks.
Our words are the idle wave-caps
On the deep that never breaks.

We may question with wand of science,

Explain, decide and discuss;
But only in meditation
The Mystery speaks to us.