Posts Tagged ‘unknowing’

The art of not knowing (Mk 10:35-45)

October 20, 2024

Pentecost 22 -2024

Mark 10-35-45

Marian Free

In the name of God whose ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts. Amen.

The Book of Job can be a difficult read but in summary it is a reflection on the limits of human knowledge and how little we know in comparison with all that there is to know. It provides us with a reminder that in this life there are some things that we will never understand, and it confronts our simplistic, pious ways of explaining away trauma and tragedy. 

Job has had everything stripped away from him, wealth, family and even health. His well-meaning friends have come to visit and, believing that Job’s current state is a consequence of something he has done, proceed to use their misinformed theology to try to get Job to admit to his fault. Job, convinced that he has done nothing to offend God, maintains his innocence. The discussion goes on and on and on and on.  

All this time, God is silently listening and holding God’s tongue. Finally, when God can stand it no more, God interrupts and speaks directly to Job.  

This morning’s reading gives us just a taste of God’s speech (which continues for three whole chapters).  “Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind: 

2                “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? 

3                Gird up your loins like a man,

                                    I will question you, and you shall declare to me.”

As we read further, we can sense the irony and even the sense of playfulness in God’s words. Take these from chapter 41: “Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook,

                                    or press down its tongue with a cord? 

2                Can you put a rope in its nose,

                                    or pierce its jaw with a hook? 

3                Will it make many supplications to you?

                                    Will it speak soft words to you?”

You can almost hear God smiling. God is using exaggeration and sarcasm to make a point – all human knowledge and wisdom is limited, and the mind of God is ultimately beyond our comprehension.

The comparison of how much we think we know with how little we actually understand provides a useful background to today’s gospel (indeed to much of the gospel story). Over and again, Jesus finds himself in the position of correcting the misunderstandings of his opponents, of enquirers and even of his disciples. The Pharisees think they can trick Jesus with questions such as the one about divorce, the rich young man thought (hoped) that rigid adherence to the law was all that was required for salvation and James and John who thought that Jesus was seeking to take control. 

Jesus was so different from what anyone had expected that followers and opponents alike struggled to adjust themselves to reality – even though it was right in front of them. After all that Jesus has said about the last being first, the lowliest being the greatest, In today’s gospel, James and John (believing that Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem to usurp the power of the Romans) have approached Jesus and to ask that they be given places of honour – to the right and to the left of Jesus – when he takes the throne. 

Did they not hear what Jesus had just said – that in Jerusalem the Son of Man (Jesus) would be handed over to the chief priests and scribes who would condemn him to death???   Have they not understood anything that Jesus has taught them during his ministry?

Remember these are not just any followers.  James and John are part of Jesus’ inner circle. They are not only among the twelve disciples, they, with Peter are the ones to whom Jesus entrusted the experience of the Transfiguration, they with Peter, will be invited to pray with Jesus in Gethsemane, and yet they don’t get it. No matter what Jesus says, no matter how little he conforms to their idea of a Saviour they simply cannot change their preconception that God would send a triumphant saviour – not a suffering servant.

Jesus confounded and continues to confound all expectations. He was not a king. He was not a warrior. He was not a priest. Jesus did not build an army. He did not take on the might of Rome. He did not restore the historic priesthood. There was no existing model of a Saviour that matched the reality that was Jesus. And because Jesus did not conform his followers, even his inner circle could not grasp what he was really about. However hard Jesus tried to confront the preconceptions of his disciples, they kept trying to impose their presumptions on him, they kept trying to make him fit the mould they had in their heads. 

The problem was and is that Jesus just won’t fit. His life and death defied all previous expectations. Jesus’ birth, his life and his death were the polar opposite of what the people of Israel were looking for. His very existence, instead of being comforting and assuring, instead of. shoring up the hopes of the people, was destabilising and disquieting. 

In his person, Jesus is an illustration of the point made by God’s response to Job. By turning everything. Upside down, Jesus demonstrates in his own person that God cannot be defined or limited as is ultimately beyond our understanding.  

Over and over again the disciples tried to make Jesus fit their expectations, much as Job’s friends tried to get Job to agree to their understanding of his suffering. The problem is that Jesus doesn’t not fit. Jesus unsettles and challenges pre-existing ideas and confronts the limits of our knowledge in the hope that our hearts and minds might be set free from what we think we know and that we might find the courage to enter into the emptiness of unknowing.

The spiritual journey, as the disciples discover time and again, is a process of unlearning and unknowing what we thought we knew so that in the end it is our unknowing not our knowing that will lead us into the heart of God.

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Surrendering our need to know

July 9, 2016

                                                                                           Pentecost 8 – 2016

                                                                                                 Luke 10:25-37

Marian Free

In the name of God who stretches, challenges and inspires. Amen.

There is a wonderful movie out of Kenya called ‘The First Grader’. It recounts the true story of an old man who, on learning that the government is offering ‘free education for all’ presents himself at the local school. The first day he is refused admission by one of the teachers on the basis of his age. Undeterred, he returns the next day, only to be told that he requires a uniform. On the third day he arrives in cut off trousers, long socks and sandals only to be told that there are simply not enough desks and that he must go home. However, his determination pays off when the head teacher allows him to join the class. Conditions are basic. The classes are large and at least one child has to sit on the floor to accommodate Maruge. The teacher is enthusiastic and passionate which is some compensation for the lack of space and equipment.

Two scenes stand out. One is that of a small boy who is asked to come to the front of the class and draw the number five on the blackboard. He does so, but writes it backwards and the other children laugh at him. The other is that of Maruge who, refusing to believe that the boy is stupid, makes a ‘story’ about the number five having a fat belly and a hat. Because the information was presented to the child in a different way by someone whose starting point was that he could learn, the boy was able to imprint the information on his memory.

All of us learn in different ways and have different ways of receiving and processing information. At its best education harnesses those abilities, develops and enhances inquisitiveness and creates a desire to continue to learn. At their best our educational institutions create not individuals who know everything but people who realise how much there is still to know. At their worst they create individuals who are locked into only one way of knowing and who believe that what they have been taught is not only all that they need to know, but that what they know remains true forever.

A similar argument could be made for spiritual education – that is, ideally it creates an openness, an humility, a sense of awe and above all the realisation that there is so much more to know. Sadly this is not the reality for many. Instead of having their minds and spirits expanded through a growing awareness of the utterly other, they are taught rules and regulations, ‘facts’ about God. They are given the impression that faith is about what God expects of us and what we can expect of God. In those instances becomes a closed and limited phenomenon rather than an experience that is unbounded and endlessly open.

It is this latter form of spiritual education that results in fundamentalism and in the sort of arrogance that asserts that there is only way of believing and living and that this way should be imposed on both the willing and unwilling alike. It leads to judgementalism and narrowness and a belief that it is possible to determine who is good and who is bad by the degree to which people conform to established modes of conduct. The end result of such an approach is the opposite of its intent – it leads not to a healthy relationship with the divine, but to a life in which God is no longer required to provide direction or guidance.

Over and over again the Christian scriptures challenge the view that it is possible to know everything there is to know and certainly that it is impossible to know even a fraction of all a there is to know about God. Perhaps the finest example of this is God’s response in the Book of Job. God is taunting Job, challenging him to prove his wisdom and understanding in comparison with that of God. Paul confronts the arrogance of the Roman community when he reminds them that the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of humans and Jesus consistently points out the limited understanding of those who would challenge him in debate.

Today’s gospel is one such example. The lawyer asks a question, not because he wants to know the answer, but because a he wants to test Jesus. Jesus turns the question back on the enquirer, who responds with another question. Jesus’ response is to tell a parable which, with its shock conclusion, exposes the self-satisfaction of the lawyer and his narrow view of God. The lawyer, like so many of those who opposed Jesus, appears to have a fixed and legalistic view of God and of faith. They seem to believe that they know exactly what is expected of them and of others. As a result they believe that they are in a position to judge and that they can determine who is in and who is out. Their faith has been reduced to a number of pre-determined precepts and they do not have the flexibility to see beyond what they believe they know to understand what it is that they do not know.

Today’s parable is one that many of us have learned in Sunday School. It is so familiar to us that we no longer appreciate the challenge it presents and are happy to accept the conventional view that it is about doing good deeds or helping others. If we listen/read carefully, we will see that Jesus does not answer the lawyer’s question. Instead of describing a person to whom one should be neighbour, Jesus challenges the lawyer to consider neighbourliness from a surprising and unexpected quarter – the reviled and despised Samaritan. Being a neighbour, accepting neighbourliness is not something that can be confined to definition, but is a concept that continually expands as we learn more about the world and about God’s inclusive love.

In this and other ways, Jesus was constantly stretching and expanding the established view, pushing people beyond conventional ways of understanding and insisting that they rely on God and the movement of the Spirit and not on their own limited understanding.

Contrary to popular understanding, faith is not something that is fixed and delimited for all time. It is a journey from certainty to uncertainty, from independence to dependence and from self-confidence to confidence in God. It is not a matter of having or needing to have all the answers but of surrendering ourselves to the infinite wisdom of God and of finding peace in not knowing and not needing to know.

The lawyer wanted to secure faith and knowledge in a concise, limited and defined format. Jesus challenges him, and therefore us, to understand that it is only possible to be truly secure when we throw ourselves on the mercy of God and trust in God to reveal all that we need to know.

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