Questions God Asks Us, Part 1: Where Are You?

 Friends, I’m starting a new sermon series that’s going to go for ten weeks, until the middle of November, based on the book Questions God Asks Us by a pastor and author named Trevor Hudson. The premise of the book is very simple, but Hudson invites us to go to some deep places with it. Each week in this sermon series we’ll engage a different question that either God our Creator, or Jesus, pose in the Bible.

I led a short sermon series on this book for the first time eight years ago, back when I was serving down the road at the Avon church. What I find so compelling about this short book, both then and now, is that Hudson flips something major on its head. Many Christians have a deep-seated belief that the purpose of the Bible, and of faith itself, is to ANSWER questions. Our questions. We ask, God responds. That’s how it works. Why? Because we’d love that. It would be so much more comfortable if God would just do what we want. 

Now, to be fair, the idea Christians have that the Bible is a manual for life that answers our questions comes from some powerful sources. One of them is former President Ronald Reagan. He declared 1983 as “the year of the Bible” and encouraged Americans to read and study scripture, and learn about important life values from it. On January 31st of that year, in a speech to the Annual Convention of the National Religious Broadcasters, Reagan further proclaimed “within the covers of that single book [meaning the Bible] are all the answers to all the problems that face us today.”

And certainly, much light and wisdom can be gained from spending a whole year reading the Bible. I wasn’t around yet in 1983, but in 2008 I mapped out a plan to read the entirety of the Bible, including the apocrypha, and I achieved that goal. It was a very nurturing quest that only left me intellectually hungry for more of the Divine. Thankfully, I was in college at the time, and I had access to the whole Rush Rhees Library at the University of Rochester, and I took full advantage of the rows and rows of books hiding in the stacks exploring a multitude of spiritual topics. 

And I’ve absolutely turned to the Bible for life advice on all kinds of topics. The Bible covers everything from what you should eat today to how you should treat your friends and family to what happens in eternity. In fact, all of those topics were touched on in this morning’s scripture readings!

But here’s the uncomfortable truth about the Bible, for those of us who would love to see nothing but answered questions in there: God doesn’t like answering questions, at least not based on the Divine track record. Looking just at the example of the four canonical Gospels, and Jesus’ conversations with people, he gets asked approximately 183 questions. He answers, at most, 3 of them. He poses another 307. God made manifest in the person of Jesus makes the Divine point very clear: the Holy isn’t super interested in giving us straightforward answers to our questions, frustrating though that may be. And our Creator never desired for our scriptures to become like a Magic 8 Ball that you could ask a question, flip to the right page, and find in clear words “yes” or “no”. Sometimes you’ll find “outlook uncertain” or “ask again later”. But if we do all the asking and God does all the answering, then we won’t have a dynamic, evolving, personal relationship with God. We’ll end up with a transactional, one-sided relationship. And God doesn’t want that. God wants to stimulate the curious minds and hearts that She created in the first place.

Thus: the questions that God asks us. It doesn’t take long at all in the Bible for God to flip our expectations and start questioning us. This morning’s question, “where are you?”, comes up in Genesis chapter 3. God created two people, one man and one woman, and set them loose in a beautiful garden, with lots of freedom to interact as they wish–name the animals, eat what looks tasty, go play. Except for one important rule: see that tree? The one right smack dab in the middle of the garden? The one that has a blinking neon sign over it that says “that tree”? See the fruit on that tree? Don’t eat it. K? You kids have fun.

And I’ve always thought of Adam and Eve in that story as little kids. Tall kids, sure, but in those first two and a half chapters of Genesis, they run around in their birthday suits and don’t care who sees, they pig out on 24/7 snacks, they talk to animals, and they don’t have jobs. They sound just like my kids. In my pastoral opinion, this was never a story about original sin or people becoming evil, it was a story about what it’s like to grow up. Lesson one: it’s rough. Lesson two: it’s inevitable. God tells two 5 and a half foot toddlers that there’s one and only one rule: don’t put that fruit in your mouth. But if Adam and Eve are that infantile, they’re putting EVERYTHING in their mouths. The forbidden fruit may as well have been made out of car keys, Legos, and button batteries. And if a kid ever puts any of that stuff in their mouth, boy do they learn the difference between good and evil.

But once Eve takes a bite out of the fruit–the first time in human history that anyone violated the Apple Terms and Conditions–and once Adam decides to join in on mouthing the stuff that Dad told them not to touch, suddenly it all changes. Adam feels something new and scary–self-consciousness. Embarrassment. Being naked isn’t any fun anymore. He hides in the corner, like a three year old who colored on the walls with a Sharpie. He doesn’t want God to find him. He’s ashamed, and he doesn’t want to be punished. And God, looking around in the garden and not seeing either Adam or Eve, asks the first question: where are you?

It’s a question of concern, with a note of confrontation. And it’s an inventory of the self. There’s the literal–where are you hiding, Adam? But then again, wouldn’t an omnipotent God, who also loves us like a parent, know right away that Adam was hiding behind the couch? It’s not God who needs the information here, it’s us. It’s a symbolic question, that Moses and Aaron have to reflect on in this morning’s OT passage, as they receive the instructions for the very first Passover–where are you? Where are Moses, Aaron, and the Hebrews sitting, in a hidden room, with goat blood smeared on the door? What series of events transpired to get them here? Where have they been, together? And where will God take them? Moses dropped a flag where he was on that first Passover. Jesus dropped another when he observed his Last Supper–a Passover meal. Our Jewish friends drop flags where they are to this day when they observe Passover. Where are we? Where is our faith now? How did our ancestors get us here? And where are we going with God?

It’s a gutsy question, that Jesus challenges us to bring to any respectful conflict–where are you? Ask it with a few trusted friends next to you to hold everyone accountable for their best behavior. Where are we? What are we fighting about, and how did we end up here? What trail of events brought us to this moment? And how, with God’s help, will we get past this, as friends?

It’s a question God poses to each of us: where are we? Go ahead and answer with the literal, because that matters: I’m in the pulpit at East Bloomfield UMC. I’m exactly where God asked me to be in this season. It’s obedience. It’s faith. It’s trust. It’s love. How did I get here? What series of events in both my life and all of yours got me here? Oh man. Such a long story, and one worth honoring and remembering. So much history, and so much calling. Where am I going from here? Where are we going together? God only knows, but Jesus teaches us that we can work that out together.

Where are you dropping a flag today? And not just the literal, but the symbolic and spiritual, too. Where are you? Where does your faith find you today? Whether you’re curled up in a corner like Adam, sharing a meal in trepidation like Moses, or breaking up an argument like Jesus–or you’re somewhere else entirely–drop a flag. Your story matters. How did you get here? What events and choices brought you to this spot? And where are you going next?

Maybe only God has a reliable map. But God puts you, me, and all of us on that map, with love, and marks our journeys with love.

Amen.