“Why Do You Seek the Living Among the Dead?”
“Is that anyway to treat your sister?”
“Do I look like the maid?”
Have you ever heard any of these rhetorical questions in your family? They are designed to illuminate a transgression, or faulty thinking or just laziness. They are the starting point in correction or redirection.
Did you know rhetorical questions are also used in Scripture?
“Have you eaten from the tree from which I commanded you not to eat?” – God (Genesis 3.11)
“Shall I bow down to a block of wood?” – Isaiah (44.19)
“Shall we sin to our heart’s content to see how far we can exploit the grace of God?” – St Paul (Rom 6.1)
This one is my favorite. “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” – Two Men in Clothes that Gleamed Like Lightning Standing Outside the Empty Tomb to the Women There Early in the Morning (Luke 24.5) This question was the starting point for redirection for the women – and for all humanity! Death just died! That’ll take some getting used to…
Did it illuminate a transgression? Check. The women there weren’t remembering (trusting? Believing?) what Jesus had told them about his three-day journey to hell and back. This question led them to remember!
Did it show their faulty thinking? Check. They were thinking Jesus got beat by death – and they were dead wrong. This question forever changed their (and my) understanding of death. Jesus’ resurrection has forever made “death” a transfer point, a place to get off this train going no where and on the One bound for glory, forever!
Can the same be said for us?
To God be the glory,
Karl