c. 2003 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

(UNDATED) This is decision day about the stone wall I built out front.

I just learned from a surveyor that it intrudes on my new neighbors’ land. Do I move it or not? They say to leave it, don’t move it on their account. I appreciate their generosity. But the decision remains.

As I survey the situation, I am faced with Pontius Pilate’s dilemma, namely, discerning what question to ask.

What will promote neighborliness? What happens if I leave the wall in place and they change their minds later? What are the legal consequences? Do I want to negotiate landscaping with a neighbor or just clarify the situation? What is the right thing to do? What is expedient?

These questions swirl around me as I stand next to the wall. I realize that framing the question is the first step in acting. By giving shape to the question, we give shape to the answer. Wrong questions tend to yield wrong answers. Asking no questions _ action without reflection _ tends to yield nonsense.

In the stone wall situation, I recognize that I will get nowhere by asking: What can I get away with? I don’t know property law well enough to ask: What is the legal requirement? But I sense that this isn’t a legal matter, anyway. This has to do with what is right _ right for them, right for us, right for long-term neighborliness.

Framing the question doesn’t make it easier to answer. But it does force me to think more deeply.

As it happens, I decide to move the wall. It seems the right thing to do. It clarifies an ambiguous situation. It avoids future hassles.

When faced with an accusing elite, Pontius Pilate asked the wrong question of Jesus: “Are you the king of the Jews?” That question couldn’t encapsulate the man from Nazareth. Nor could it resolve the political quandary posed by conflict between Jesus and the religious establishment.

It is ironic that tradition names this last Sunday before Advent “Christ the King Sunday,” and then assigns a Gospel reading (John 18:33-37) in which Jesus evades Pilate’s question and dodges the issue of kingship. We celebrate, in other words, an answer that Jesus didn’t give to a question that missed the point.

That irony makes me wonder how many wrong questions we ask of Jesus, of God and of Scripture.

A frequent quandary _ Why do bad things happen to good people? _ starts in other questions, such as: Does goodness pay off? Is faith the way to happiness? Is misfortune a form of divine punishment? Is life fair?

Similarly, when faced with a quandary like ordaining a gay bishop, some people ask: What does the Bible say? That sounds reasonable, even noble, but left unspoken is the deeper question: Why does it matter to you? In light of all the questions you don’t ask of God, why do you ask this one?

Similarly, much of church history turns on the question: Did God grant ultimate authority to Peter and his apostolic successors? Left unspoken are deeper questions, such as: Did God cede ultimate authority to anyone? Is ultimate authority about power or about self-sacrifice? Did God want any institution founded?

Pastor-search committees frequently ask members: What do you want in your clergy? They don’t ask: Do you want clergy at all? They don’t ask: Do you want any of this apparatus? Like Pilate as he formulated his questions in terms of power, the one thing he knew, committee members can’t imagine answers that lead beyond the institution they feel called to preserve, so they don’t ask deeper questions.

As John tells the story, Jesus and Pilate ended up talking past each other. That is what happens when people ask wrong questions. In staying shallow, they avoid the confusion of going deep, but they also miss the grace. In not examining their yearnings, believers end up accepting less than they need. In rejecting some questions as out of line, they miss that dimension of God which always ventures beyond human boundaries.

Pilate is remembered as evil. Better, I think, to see in him the laziness of not digging deeper to find right questions.

DEA END EHRICH