Rooke Chapel Congregation, Sunday August 25, 2019.
I have chosen for our theme, this semester,
“Big Questions.”
because it is in the asking of life’s biggest questions,
living in the biggest mysteries,
that I experience God most fully.
Our scripture is full of big questions,
And I hope you have some too,
And I want to hear about them.
Though you should know from the outset:
I don’t have a bunch of easy, big answers for you,
it’s I think good to be suspicious of anyone who does.
So we’ll gather this morning and this semester to sit with the questions,
and sing and pray,
and maybe from time to time, get a glimmer of an answer.
And I hope you find this place to be a home for you,
but either way, I want to get to know you,
and if we can help you connect to another community,
that’s what I’m here for too.
You may have noticed,
that two big questions were posed to Jesus in today’s text:
What must I do to inherit eternal life,
and who is my neighbor?
And he responds,
with two questions of his own, a story,
and an injunction: Go and do likewise.
Classic, right?
Couldn’t he have just told us exactly what to do?
But that’s not Jesus’ way.
And I hope it’s the asking of big questions,
that brings you to a place like Bucknell,
Wondering big wonderings is,
in essence,
our job while we are here.
And questions matter, I think,
as much as answers, in our life of faith.
It is, of course, possible to avoid big questions.
Either with our attention jumping,
like Doug the dog from the movie Up,
from one issue to the next: “Forest Fires!”
