… for the week of May 11, 2025
All You Answers Questioned
Some years ago, a class from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago had T-shirts made with the slogan “LSTC: The place to get all your answers questioned.” What does it mean to advocate questioning at a seminary? Shouldn’t the church train leaders to provide answers? It is a common assumption that we achieve right faith by coming to a correct interpretation of divine things. Indeed, many people of faith are ready and willing to provide that correct interpretation. But faith is more than a set of propositions. It is a relationship of trust with the living Lord.
For his part, Jesus tends to resist easy answers. “How long will you keep us in suspense?” his interrogators ask in today’s gospel reading from John. “If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly” (10:24). But Jesus’ reply is hardly straightforward: “I have told you, and you do not believe, . . . because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me” (10:25-27).
We may crave clarity, but faith is not always clear-cut. It is filled with subtlety, ambiguity, tension. Even as God desires abundant life for us, God also calls us to lay down our lives for each other. The gospel encompasses both suffering and hope, death and new life. The Son of Man comes not to be served but to serve, to shepherd.
These truths are hard to “tell plainly.” That is not to say we should not seek understanding in the life of faith. But faith also means having our answers questioned, allowing God to renew our minds for the sake of our relationship with Christ who claims us for himself. After all, the gift and challenge of discipleship is not to come to indisputable conclusions about God, but to follow our Shepherd on the way.
Devotional message based on the readings for May 11, 2025, reprinted from sundaysandseasons.com.
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… Happy Easter