Questions

I was watching the TV the other day, and a well known failure as a presidential candidate was being interviewed. The reporter was trying to get an answer to a specific question about a particular policy, and the politician was evading it. It was remarkable at how skilled each of them was at it. The one, in rephrasing and coming back again, and the other at evading while hoping to not seem to be.

It went on for a few minutes until I, the viewer got so frustrated I literally wanted to shout at the screen.

Will you just answer the question?

Last night, I was teaching on the fourth commandment - the Sabbath. We had covered all the heavy lifting last week and this week I was hoping to connect it to life today through Jesus' experiences with the religious authorities. So we talked a bit about exactly what a Jewish Sabbath looked like. In a room filled with women (just worked out that way with about 8 people missing), I tried to stress how Sabbath was a time to renew relationships with God and with family - through spending time. That despite what it later came to be - rigid, inflexible rules - it was about the heart.

So then when I moved on to Jesus, they could understand why He talked about the "rules" of the day by saying "You have heard it said, but I say..."

"Why do you think He did that?", I asked.

A woman who hasn't been coming long, an Air Force wife whose little boy was coloring in a chair next to her said "Because with Jesus, it is always about the heart."

Bingo.

We closed with the Rob Bell video, "Sunday" in which Rob makes some of the very same points. I know that a lot of us who were trained to study, to produce and then deliver the information tend to just drop the material in people's laps. Questions slow us down, and we have to manage the responses.

But think about it the next time you watch a politician dance - if we can create in the hearer a desire - a hunger - for the answer, we've done what Jesus was so skilled at.

Ask. You will receive.