"Live the Questions" | The Rev. Heidi Thorsen | April 13, 2025

Sermon Preached: April 13, 2025 at Trinity on the Green

Palm Sunday, Year C: Luke 19:28-40 | Isaiah 50:4-9a | Philippians 2:5-11 | Luke 22:14-23:56

Between the words that I speak and the words that are heard, may God’s spirit be present. Amen.

This day, Palm Sunday, marks the beginning of Holy Week– which is to say, a lot is happening between this Sunday and next Sunday. This is the week when we remember, and in some cases reenact Jesus’ journey to the cross. We lose Jesus, only to find him again on Easter morning— not in a triumphant blaze of glory, but in the uncertainty of an empty tomb.

This year, I’ve been reflecting with another clergy colleague about the questions of Holy Week– specifically, the questions that show up in the narratives that we will read throughout the coming week. Here are some of the questions we encounter:

First, as the disciples prepare for Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, they find a colt and a stranger asks them this question (just as Jesus had predicted they would): “Why are you untying it?”

Then, as the disciples get ready for the Passover, they ask Jesus, “Where do you want us to prepare for it?”

Later, at that passover dinner, Jesus tells his disciples that one of them will betray him. And the disciples ask, one after another, “Surely not I, Lord? Surely not I, Rabbi?”

In the Garden of Gethsemane, as the disciples fail to stay awake and pray, Jesus asks, “Could you not stay awake with me one hour?”

Then Jesus is arrested, and subjected to the authorities who ask him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”

As Jesus mounts the hill where he will be crucified, the criminals beside him ask, “are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”

And finally, as Jesus is about to breathe his last breath, he asks, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

In many ways Holy Week is a journey characterized more by questions than answers. And these questions become more complicated as the week goes on. When the disciples entered Jerusalem on the day that we now call Palm Sunday, they must have thought they had the answer to all their problems and questions– Jesus, the Messiah, was the answer. However, Jesus is not the answer in the way that they expect. Holy Week moves in a trajectory from hope to uncertainty, as Jesus is arrested, convicted, and sent to die. It’s only by passing through that veil of uncertainty that we can arrive at a deeper, stronger sense of hope on the other side.

These days, it’s not uncommon to drive by a billboard or a bumper sticker that boldly proclaims, “Jesus is the answer.” It’s a confident, well-intentioned statement of faith– the kind of thing that the disciples might have proclaimed, alongside shouts of “Hosanna!” as they entered the city of Jerusalem. On some level I agree with these words. And also– I can’t help but think that we are setting ourselves up for disappointment if we expect Jesus to be the answer to all our questions, in a simple, straightforward way. In my experience, faith is a lot less about answers, and it’s more about the questions that we ask. Faith is about being in relationship with a God to whom we can ask difficult, sometimes unanswerable questions. And faith is about letting those questions break open our narrow human perspective so that we can see the world in more expansive ways– in ways that might be a bit closer to the wideness of God’s love  and vision for us.

When we think about the Gospels as a whole, questions are not merely a feature of Holy Week. Jesus was asking people questions at every step of his ministry:

Who do you say I am?

Why are you terrified?

Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?

What are you looking for?

Can any of you, by worrying, add a single moment to your lifespan?

Where is your faith?

What is your name?

Who touched me?

What do you want me to do for you?

Jesus asks so many questions, and these are just a few. Perhaps it’s time that we stop thinking of Jesus as the answer, and start thinking of Jesus instead as the great question-asker. The one who invites us not to take anything for granted. The one who encourages us to ask difficult questions. The one who invites us into dialogue with the creator of the universe. The one who teaches us to not be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2).

Jesus continues to ask questions up until the moment of his death. And the answer that we get to all of these questions, ultimately, is the empty tomb– a question unto itself. This is most apparent in the Gospel of Mark– a narrative that doesn’t include any of those post-resurrection stories in the other Gospels that give us some sense of closure, or what to do next. Perhaps it is this version of Jesus’ story that we need the most, in times when our own lives feel uncertain or unresolved. I am grateful to Trinity parishioner Saray Say for writing about this in her Trinity Lent devotional– and I have to say, the Lent devotionals have been so meaningful, across the board, this year. Take a chance to go back and read them, as part of  your spiritual practice this Holy Week.

Sarah writes this: “To believe in the Resurrection is to embrace this ekstasis– this ‘being beside oneself’– that the women experienced [at the empty tomb in the Gospel of Mark]. It is accepting that God’s redemption of a world marred by evil is not neat and tidy, that there is no clear resolution while history continues to unfurl. Before the garden and the upper room, the seaside and the meal shared amongst friends, it is the silence of the empty tomb. All one can do is stand and witness it.”

This week, I encourage all of us to stand and witness the empty tomb– not rushing to answers, but staying with the questions that strike at the heart of our being. Those questions may be deeply personal– questions about your own life, what has come before or what is coming next. You might also come with questions about the state of our community, the nation, and the world. Questions such as: Where are we going? How can I do more good than harm, in a world where we are tied up in so many ways? What is our work to do?

Holy Week is not about finding the answers to these questions. Rather, Holy Week is about taking these questions to the foot of the cross. Let your assumptions about the answers fall away– bury them in the tomb– so that they might be resurrected into something new on Easter morning. May we be resurrected into a new way of thinking– which is, in and of itself, a part of salvation.

I would like to end with a quote from the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, written in a series of letters to one of his admirers, and later published as Letters to a Young Poet. May these words help us chart a different course through Holy Week this year:  not looking for easy answers, but living the questions– just as Jesus did. Rilke writes:

“I would like to beg you… as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

Amen.

Works Cited:

Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Stephen Mitchell, Letters to a Young Poet (New York: Vintage Books, 1984).

Sarah Say, “I Believe in the Resurrection,” Trinity Lent Devotionals, March 24, 2025, https://www.trinitynewhaven.org/i-believe/i-believe-in-the-resurrection. 

Thank you to the Rev. Ali Tranvik, for being a conversation partner for this sermon.