6th August 2023 - Communion Service - Dave Food - Questions Matter

Okay, it's August. Have you noticed it's sunny outside for a moment and

then you blink and then you miss it. But it's August. So that

means we step into a new theme. Last month we were looking at church.

This month we're looking at questions. So some of you know I've been

a primary school teacher. I was an infant school teacher. I remember.

So I was a young man, twenty something and I was teaching the reception

class. And the first thing I want to say to anybody who ever thinks

they wanted to be a primary school teacher, make sure your knees work well.

Just what you do? You imagine six foot something and I'm trying to

get down to their level. I spent a lot of time crouching, and

I realized that wasn't a good thing. So I ended up spending a lot

of time kneeling, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But one of the

things that I remember about all the children that I taught in infant school was

they always asked questions. Let me give you an example of a question that

I was reminded about fairly recently. A dear friend of ours who we'd known

over many years. A social work colleague of Julia's. She had a son

who liked color, and he decided he want his bedroom painted, and so

his mum said to him, what color would you like it? He said,

tomato red. Now you know the kind of color you're thinking about it.

But anyway, mum said, okay, we'll do that. So Julia

and I helped do a bit of painting, and anyway, the room was

painted, and then he was presented with the room and he walked into the

room and he wasn't excited, and mum said, what's the matter, And

he said, where are the pips? Because even inside of tomato there's pips,

and so he wasn't just expecting tomato red, he was expecting pips on

the wall as well. And one of the things I love about little children

is they ask questions, and questions matter because questions give us an indication that

someone's interested. And this is true about our faith as well. If you're

trying to share your faith with a colleague at work, with a family member,

if someone asks you a question, go with the question, because that's

where their attention is right now. And the other thing is that actually we

live in a strange world where preaching the gospel in some countries is illegal,

but it's not illegal to answer a question. So you could stand on the

corner in certain countries and preach the gospel and you might end up in prison.

But if somebody comes up to you and ask you a question and you

just honestly answer the question, it's unlikely that you get because your defense will

be I was just as asking the question they asked me, and so I

believe questions matter. And I also believe questions matter because actually it's an indication

we want to learn more. Have you ever read something and thought, oh,

maybe you're reading a book, and then you think it doesn't describe in

the book what it describes that they're at the seaside, but it doesn't say

whether the sea is calm, or whether the seas there's waves, or whether

it's windy. Just you're at the seaside. So immediately your imagination is running

and you're trying to picture, and because there aren't enough words on the page,

you now get questions. And we get questions because we get intrigued,

and we get intrigued because actually our imaginations are running away and exploring things and

Jesus was good with questions. He was good with questions. So let's take

an example of how Jesus responded to a question in Luke chapter ten. Look

chapter ten. You'll recognize this. And so a rich young man someone said

to Jesus, wanting to justify himself, he said, who is my neighbor?

You recognize this question, don't you? So what's the answer? Okay,

if you think about it for yourself, are you going to ask this

question who is my neighbor? There's lots of different ways you can answer this

question. You might answer it from the perspective of the house that you live

in, So it could be the person on the left, the person on

the right, the family on the left, the family on the right,

maybe the family below. Actually, we as a house have seven neighbors because

we've got a garden with lots of gardens that back onto it. So okay,

they're not are what you might call the obvious neighbors, but they're all

neighbors. We have some land that connects with them. But it might not

be might not be at home, It might be my neighbor at work.

And then think about the desk you sit at, the person who sits on

your left and on your right. It might be the people you travel with

regularly, you sit in the car with them, they're your neighbors for that

journey time. Anyway, he wanted to justify himself, so he said,

who is my neighbor? Do you know what jesus response was? Before you

bring it up, Jonathan, do you know what Jesus' response was? His

response was not an answer. His response was a question. In Luke,

chapter ten, verse thirty six, it says this, so which of these

three this is the do you know where the contact of this? Do?

I need to put this into context? Let's actually let's test church. What

story are we talking about here? It's the Good Samaritan story. So yeah,

we're talking about the Good Samaritan story. And guys going, okay,

who is my neighbor? And so Jesus comes back with a question, So,

which of the three do you think was the neighbor of him who fell

amongst thieves? Can anybody remember the characters in the Good Samaritan? There's obviously

the Samaritan, but what about the other two? Yep, the leave the

leave, the lead like the kind of religious type man and the passer by

yeah, absolutely, three different people. Now which one was the neighbor?

Well, they were all in proximity, but only one acted like a neighbor.

But what I want you to notice here is not so much the story

is what Jesus did. Jesus asked the question, and he came back with

a question. Because you know, it's very easy to put yourself in a

box in answering a question. If I said to you, you know,

uh, if like like a number of Jesus' disciples were, are you a

follower of Jesus? If I asked you the question are you a follower of

Jesus? Your first thought in your head might be why are you asking me?

That might be our first thought because in some countries if we answered that

question, we might end up in prison too. But actually a good response

would be what is a Christian? To you? What do you mean by

a Christian? Do you mean someone who goes to church? Do you mean

someone who's been baptized? Do you mean someone who follows the teachings of Jesus?

What do you mean by a Christian? Because you know, that's a

really interesting question to go back, So what do you mean a Christian?

Please tell me before I answer you, I'm happy to answer your question,

but before I do, just tell me what's your understanding of being a Christian.

And so I want to explore some of the examples that Jesus took us

in. Let's let's take a different example in the Gospel of John. Gospel

of Gone John, chapter ten, verse thirty six, Chapter sorry, chapter

eighteen, verses thirty three and thirty four. And this is where Jesus has

been accused and is before Pilot. And then Pilot entered the pratorium again called

Jesus and said to him, are you the king of the Jews? Now

that's a closed question. The only logical answer to this is yes or no,

or possibly maybe. But it's not what we'd call an open question.

Does anybody know how Jesus answered? He answered with a question we read on

in thirty verse thirty four. Jesus answered him saying, are you speaking about

yourself about this? Or are you telling others that this is concerning me?

It's a question. So Jesus didn't answer the question. He answer He responded

to part. Now, I find this fascinating because it takes us deeper into

every conversation. And so I believe questions matter for those of you who have

children, for those of you you have nieces and nephews or grandchildren, for

those who are listening online who've got children or maybe even children who are listening.

Keep on asking questions, keep on answering questions, but don't just jump

straight into the answer. Let's fly acquiring why they're asking. Somebody might ask

you, is the oven on? Okay? Now, if you should have

put the oven on earlier because somebody wanted to put something in the oven and

you've forgotten, you might want to go no. On the other hand,

if it's about safety of children because there's a hot oven around, you might

want to go, why are you asking? You know, are their children

around? Do we need to pay attention? And that there might be a

whole bunch of reasons why someone's asking why is the oven on? Questions are

great. I let me go back to my teaching because they show that people

are searching for answers. I've loved. I've taught right through from four year

olds to postgraduate master students, so I think the oldest person I taught was

seventy two in terms of formal teaching. But you know, the thing now

I've taught primary, i've taught secondary. One of the things I know I

don't like teaching is I'm not a great fan of teaching secondary children. For

me personally, I'm not saying it's bad or it's I just find that often

you'll have children in the class who don't want to learn. They're just there

because they have to be there. And those are the kind of people I

really struggled to teach someone who has because they're sitting there with their arms folding

saying, entertain me. You know, teachers aren't entertainers. That helped you

know you can have fun on the journey. Hopefully we have fun on the

journey at church as well. But the thing that captivates me is people who

ask ask questions. And I'll give you a really specific example, which is

I realized that I was wired this way was I was. I had the

opportunity to teach on a postgraduate master's course executive NBA course that's people who are

in industry who are coming to learn so they've got a job. And one

of my fellow academics said to me, Dave, can you teach these classes?

I said, well, you're better qualified than me. To cover this

topic. He said, no, no, please, can you do it?

I said, why do you not like teaching him? He said no,

they asked too many questions, and for him, he was just comfortable

to stand at the front and teach the theory. It was good at theory.

It's much better at theory than I was. But I actually liked when

I'd teach something and somebody say, well, that's true, but how would

it work here? There's a question, And so I love questions. And

I actually believe if we go back into the New Testament, if we go

back into the early Church, you'll find that the sermon was not somebody talking

from the front and everybody just sitting and listing. People would go, excuse

me, Peter, I don't agree with you on that, and there would

be a bit of a dialogue that went on. I remember when we were

meeting as a church in Manocroft School many many many years ago, and I

think John Brannan was speaking and one of the members of the congregation, who's

husband of one of the ladies in the church, he had a question and

he just naturally just asked the question in the middle of the sermon. So,

what makes you say that, and it was just so culturally different,

It was refreshing, it was interesting. But questions matter, and you know,

I want to encourage us because I also want to encourage you to be

ready to answer questions. Because if you've if you've intrigued someone enough that they've

asked you a question, it's a bit like fishing. You've got fish nibbling

on the hook. Now you can you can wind them in, you can

persuade them, and so questions are a great thing to respond to. Now,

why are we afraid of questions? I think we're afraid of questions because

we think we might not know the answer. I might not be able to

answer a question I want to say that applies to me too. Please put

me on a pedestal. Put anybody in a pedestl. We're all eventually going

to get asked a question we won't know the answer to. And what could

the answer be instead, Well, that's a really interesting question. I've never

thought about that before. I'm going to go away. Need to do some

research, and that might be to ask somebody else. It might be to

read a book, it might be to pray. But I believe questions are

good. So let's look at an example of a context of questions in Luke

chapter ten. This is a story that be very familiar to us. In

Luke chapter ten, it says this, and behold, a certain lawyer stood

up and tested him, saying, teacher, what shall I do to inherit

eternal life? Now? Before we go on, I just want you to

think about it. If you were asked that question, excuse me, what

must I do to inherit eternal life? We might go into a logical thing

of when you need to become a Christian, you need to become a follower

of Jesus. I'm interested in why are you asking? Are you asking for

yourself? Are you asking for a loved one? Are you asking just an

academic question? Because do you know what if someone's saying, you know,

I've just been given a diagnosis of a terminal illness and I want to know

where I'm going, that's a very different great because I would immediately do well,

Okay, I believe in a God who heals, So before I answer

your question, can I pray for you? That's where I'd go with that.

But if we immediately jump into answering the question, we missed that opportunity

and so what did he say? He said to him, what is written

in the law? Okay, and what is your understanding of that? What

is your reading of that? Now, there are many times when I've heard

people's I've talked to Muslim friends, Muslim colleagues and say, you're a Christian,

who's Jesus? And I don't just respond with the answer like, Okay,

you've heard of Jesus too, who is Jesus to you? And often

I'll get a wide range of answers from you know, I've had people who

tell me Jesus is fictitious, other people who said he's a good teacher,

other people who said he was a prophet. Well, he's true, he's

a prophet, but he's also the son of God. He's our savior.

And I want to hear what their perspective is. And so he went on

to say, and we're just clicked in the wrong place, Jonathan, Sorry,

yeah, and so sorry, he responded, And what is written in

the law? What is your reading of it? It's important to understand where

people are coming from. Let's now look at the Gospel of Mark as he

entered it, and again he entered into Capernium, say after some days,

and it was heard that he was in the house, Rumors going around that

Jesus is around. Immediately many gathered so that they were no longer there was

no longer room to receive them, not even near the door. He preached

the word to them. Now, I want you to imagine a room full

of people, so full of people that people can't even get through the door.

This is a story that I love. This is one of my favorite

stories in scripture. And then they came to him bringing a paralytic who was

carried by four And when they could not come near him because of the crowd,

they uncovered the roof where he was so they had broken through, and

they let down the bed on which the paralytic was lying. I want you

to imagine you're sitting in a crowded room waiting for Jesus to speak. You

know, this is fantastic teacher, And suddenly the roofs there's a hole in

the roof appearing when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic son,

your sins have forgiven to you. And then he goes on to say,

and some of the scribes, sitting there and reasoning in their hearts,

said, why does this man speak blasphemies like this? Who can forgive sins

but God alone? So there's the question, who does he think he is

saying things like this? But immediately when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they

were reasoning, thus he said to them, why do you reason about these

things in your heart? Which is easier to say to the paralytic, your

sins have forgiven you, or to say, arrive, take up your bed

and walk. He didn't respond by trying to explain it logically. He said,

which is it easier to say? Is it that you're healed or your

sins are forgiven? And that's why I love questions, because those questions will

take us to a place where we can get We can get into the stuff

of conversation. Often, a very challenging part of life is death. I've

had the privilege of taking many funerals. We've all probably had the privilege of

going to many funerals, And one of the most common scriptures read at a

funeral is John chapter fourteen, verses one to six. Let's not your heart

be troubled. Believe in God, Believe also in me. Now I want

you to think about someone who's lost a dear friend, a loved one.

The reason they're at the funeral. Some of them will be sitting there thinking

why what? And then why now? And why my brother, my sister,

my friend. There's a lot of questions running in people's heads. And

one of the privileges I think of getting engaged with anybody who's journeying through bereavement,

through grief, is to journey with them. You know, it's very

easy when people are broken, when things are lost, when things are a

mess to I won't talk to them because I won't know what to say.

They might ask me a question. They might well, why my son?

Why is my son being taken from me? I think many times the honest

answer is do you know what? I don't know, but I still know

God loves you. So but I still know God loves us. And one

of the things that is so powerful around these kind of things is that the

enemy loves to isolate people because they feel no one loves them. I remember

this changed me completely. When my dad died, I went up to be

with my step mom and my sister, and my dad's Vicka came around to

visit us, just to have a chat and he came in, and he

wasn't trying to create conversation. There were moments when there was a minute of

silence, and that was Okay, we do not have to fill our world

with noise, We do not have to talk all the time. I think

we live in the noisy world, and sometimes silence is a powerful thing.

But I was sitting there and we were talking, and then somebody said something.

I think it was my sister said something, and then my stepmom went,

yeah, Tony would have done this. Toney was my dad's name.

He would have done this. And we all burst out laughing. And then

it was like, oh, oh, we shouldn't be laughing. But then

we all looked at one and and smile, and you know, the ice

have been broken, and actually it was perfectly normal. Yeah, there is

laughter in the midst of sadness. There are tears in moments of joy.

But the thing that I learned from him was rather than stay away, to

come and get engaged, Come and join the conversation, Come and join some

of the things that are unknown. In John fourteen, it says, let

not your heart be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me,

for in my father's house are many mansions. If it were not so,

I would have told you I go to prepare a place for you. I

don't know whether you realize what question this passage he's leading to, But let

me build it. And where I go, where I go, you know?

And the place? Sorry, did I click on too quickly? And

I will go and prepare a place for you and come again and receive you

to myself. And where I am there you may be also, And where

I go, you know? And the way you know? So Jesus is

making statements here, and then Thomas says, Lord, we do not know

where you're going, and how can we know the way? This is such

a great indicator. Okay, Thomas's confused. He said, where are you

going? Lord? You know? Yeah, there's there's some really powerful insights

that come in. Now. Does anybody know what jesus response was. Jesus

said to him, I am the Way, the Truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known

me, you would have known my father, and from now on you will

know him and have seen him. Philip said to him, Lord, show

us the Father, and it is efficient for us. People want a glimpse

of God. They want to know I like you have probably had, We've

all had people who say how can you how can you believe in a God?

And they'll come up with a list of reasons why they don't believe.

That's really interesting because then you can pick them up and you can you can

say, so, well, how can you believe? There's so much mess

in the world? You know, why is? Why is there sickness?

And but I may I always want to make it personal. So if somebody

says, why is their sickness? I said, well, God's a healer

and so there is sickness, but there is also healing. And they said,

how can you believe that? I said, well, God healed me.

I was very sick with malaria. I was in hospital with malaria and

they gave me them right medicine and I went home, but they didn't give

me enough medicine. So for those people who lived in malarial areas, you

know that as if you don't kill the parasites, they come back again,

and it gets worse and worse and worse that you go through his cycle.

And I remember to this day going to the Christian Union and Johnny, who

was the leader of the Christian Union. They shared, we believe God's going

to heal some people today, and I thought, oh, that's interesting.

I'd never I can't remember having received personal healing till this particular point in my

life. And then we came to the end of the service. Johnny came

up and said, Dave, would you like prayer? He knew that I

was battling with malaria, and to this day, I'm still sure. I

kind of went, well, maybe, but Julia was there and she said

I went yes, and they prayed and God miraculously healed me in malaria.

So I don't just want to tell stories. I want to tell stories that

create questions. It's great to be an enigma. One of my favorite pieces

of music is a piece of music called The Enigma of Areas. It's an

intriguing piece of music that draws stuff out you. It's great to be an

enigma because enigma means someone will ask you a further question. So if people

ask me a close question, I want to turn it into an open question

because then I get their opinions. So do you believe or do you not

believe? Okay, how would I answer? How could I answer that?

I could go yes or no, but that's the end of the conversation.

Potentially I might say, Okay, what do you mean by belief? Believe

in what? Because immediately they might go, I want some evidence, Show

me some evidence. Well, I can tell you personal story after personal story

like you can like you can at home, personal story after personal test the

money of what he's done in my life. And so I want to answer

questions. And so I kind of want to unpack this and go a long

way further. So where did I get to? So let me go to

verse twelve. Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in

me, the works that I do, he will do also, And greater

works than these he will do because I go to the Father, and whatever

you ask in my name, that I may do, that the Father may

be glorified in his son. If you ask anything in my name, he

will do, I will do it. I want to make those kind of

statements because I want to give an opportunity for prayer. I want to give

an opportunity for God to engage in the conversation. And I want to make

this a month of questions. So I want to prepare us and a cripus

as a church for answering questions. But I also want to say sometimes we

have questions and we don't know how to ask them. So I'm going to

make this month August a month where we can ask questions. So if you

want to send me a question that you don't know the answer to, I'm

not promising to answer it. I might come back with a question that's just

what I've been teaching this morning. But if you've got a question, send

it to me on WhatsApp. There'll be some questions that will be thinks about

where we're going as a church. Well, in which case, if you're

asking it, probably a number of other people asking it. We can put

some We can answer some of those questions through through church. We can answer

some of those questions on the website. Some of the questions I might not

know the answer to and say, can anybody else help me? We can

study together, we can journey together. Some questions nobody might know the answer.

You might have to say, well, let's pray about that. And

if you want to be anonymous, put a question in the offering bolt I'm

really I just want to I think it's I think it's a good healthy sign

of something. When children are asking questions, when family are asking questions,

isn't that a sign of healthy family, healthy thoughts. So let me give

you a question this morning. I'm not expecting you to answer it right now,

but here's my question for you today. Who do you say Jesus is?

How do you describe him? Now? There's no right or wrong answer.

There might be better answers, but there's no You might describe him as

your friend. That might be your genuine experience. Other disciples described him as

a teacher, Raboni, as a healer, as a prophet. You are

the lens we look at through Jesus. Will it will describe how we see

him, will describe the character character is. Some people will say God.

If our picture of Father God, who do you say God is? Some

people's picture of God will be a stern man sitting at a desk, a

bit like a headmaster, saying yes no and punishing us from time to time.

And part of that is all loaded up the word Father. When we

talk about Father God. Some people have the lens of their father, and

so when they hear the word Father, that's the only way they can see

God. Some of us had good dads. Some of us had distant dads,

some of us had dads that were never there at all. Some of

us had dads who were so engaged. They're still engaged with our lives.

They're interested in what we're doing, and they're for us. That's a wide

range of experience. But if that's the way we see God, then we

only see a tiny bit of God. And maybe we even get a wrong

image of God. So who do you say that Jesus is? So let

me pray, and I'm going to pray a very different prayer this morning.

I'm going to pray that God stirs up questions in us the church. I

think I think God's going to stir up in us some questions that we'd use

for evangelism, some questions that we might we might just build a little bit

of a strategy where we just start to ask some questions of others, Now,

a simple questions. As we got our eyes closed, I just wanted,

if you imagine this the answer to this question, when was the last

time you saw God's hand at work? Now, for some of us,

that might be God answering a prayer, God doing a miracle. For some

if we ask them, they might say, I've never seen God's hand at

work, how would I know? But that's a great that's a great conversation

to jump into. And so, Father, as we've gathered together around your

word today, Lord, I sense in my spirit I've loosed a whole set

of ideas into our minds and hearts. It's good to ask questions, it's

good to seek more. Father, I pray that we'd start with your word

the Lord, as we read your word, instead of looking it through a

lens and getting a complete picture, Lord, you'd lead us to places where

we ask more questions, we learn more of you, we unpack more of

you, We unpack more of who you are and what you're doing in our

lives. So, Father, I pray that your word would come alive to

us again, Lord, in personal study time, in Bible study time,

in church. Lord, when we read, there might be visions of what

you're doing and what you're going to do. And Father, I pray that

when we come across circumstances we can't answer, we don't just hide it in

a box and ignore it. We start to pray about how you, God

would do something different, and how Jesus, your son maybe would answer a

question with a question. And so, Father, give us inquiring minds,

give us hearts that are seeking, and Father, give us minds that would

look to you to provide those answers. And I particularly want to pray this

morning for those who've asked lifetime questions, questions that have been in our minds,

in our hearts for decades, something that maybe happened in our past,

maybe even our families past. And Father, I pray that Lord, you'd

give us a fresh perspective, a godly perspective on our history, on our

legacy, on where we've been, and you at work. Rather let your

light shine into dark places in our hearts, in our homes, in our

communities, and in the world. Let your light shine, because I know

when it shines questions of rice, Oh what's this? Oh who's this?

What's happened here? Father? Girl, I pray that we would not be

fearful of questions, but we'd be faithful in our ability and your ability to

answer questions that draw people closer to you. And so Father, I pray

that Lord, as we gather around communion this morning, Lord, we'd learn

something more of you, give us a fresh perspective on the gift of your

son and what he did for us in Jesus' name.