Advent 1: “No One Knows”

Matthew 24.36-44

(12/2/07)

“But about that day and hour, no one knows,” Jesus tells us. And then again, speaking of the people of Noah’s time, it tells us they “knew nothing until the flood came.” Later, Jesus says, “Keep awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” All variations on the theme of “no one knows.”

There is a part of me that wants to rebel at that. I am a curious person—in more ways than one, some would say, but what I mean is, I like to know things. I’ve been teaching a church history class this fall, and scarcely a week goes by that I am not tempted to go off on some side path. Something I read in preparation for a lecture catches my interest, and I want to find out more about it. Well, do that too many times, and the task before you never gets done! Sometimes you just have to learn to say, “I’d like to know about that, but I can’t right now.”

And so when Jesus says, “No one knows,” there’s something in me that wants to say, “Well, let’s see if we can figure it out!” Human beings have always been like that. To a great extent, of course, much of human progress has been provoked by people who were curious, and who wanted to figure out things that no one knew.

Now there’s nothing wrong with that. God has given us a mind to think, to inquire, to puzzle, to wonder. But there is a line to which we come, when we are dealing with spiritual matters, a line we cannot cross. There are, very simply, some things we cannot know, things we cannot understand.

Many people can’t abide this. Sometimes their demand to know all the answers turns them away from the Christian faith. Their attitude is that if they can’t understand something, they can’t believe it. Faith for them needs to make sense.

Now this is a normal part of human spiritual development. Often we see it in college-aged young people, who for the first time have begun really to think about God, about spiritual matters, about the Bible. They are very susceptible to the argument that if it can’t be rationally understood, it must not be real. It is no accident that many college students turn away from faith. Their struggle is often not just a frivolous, careless thing, but something deeply rooted in their desire to understand the universe and everything in it.

Other people go in quite a different direction. They want to understand, and so they try to pin everything in Christianity down in a systematic form that they can deal with. This is the kind of approach which sees in the Bible, especially in books like Revelation or Daniel, a blueprint for world events. You’ve probably heard these preachers on the radio who can give you a complete time-table and road map for the end times—what’s going to happen when, and who it’s going to happen to.

The problem with this approach is that we so quickly become presumptuous about how much more enlightened we are than anyone else. The 19th century humorist Josh Billings put his finger on it. “The trouble with people,” he said, “is not that they don’t know, but that they know so much that ain’t so.” Indeed, there are Christian and sectarian groups that know lots about God that ain’t so—because they are desperate to have all the answers.

In a sense, they are rather like people who can’t abide being surprised at Christmas. They have to snoop and calculate and figure until they know the contents of every last present under the tree that has their name on it! Ah, but we love to do that, don’t we—many of us, at least, because we just can’t stand not knowing.

Yet the clear message of the Bible is that there are some things we cannot know, things about God. Last week in our adult Sunday School class we talked about St. Augustine, and we touched on his teaching about predestination. What does it really mean to say that God knew everything before time began? Are we just puppets on a string? Why does God save some and not others? You see, these are questions for which we finally have no answers. Luther says these questions arise from the “prudence of the flesh.” The one who is disturbed by them, he says, will “always keep asking why God wills this and does that, and he will never find the reason.” There are some things, you see, that we cannot know. It’s not that we’re not smart enough, not clever enough, not ingenious enough; it is simply that we cannot know.

Oh, but we don’t like it. Why would God keep us in the dark like this? Let’s think about it this way: “Not knowing” is an integral part of what we call faith. Think about Abraham, the father of faith. “Abraham,” the book of Hebrews tells us, “went out, not knowing where he was going.” He went, simply because God directed him and he obeyed. Faith—that’s what we call it. You see the Christian faith, properly understood, is not intellectually believing a whole bunch of doctrines and dogmas. It is simpler than that, and yet much more difficult. Christian faith is obeying, trusting, and often it is not knowing. It is being willing not to know. It is being content not to know.

John Henry Newman was a great intellectual, a theologian, an Anglican priest who thought deeply about things. He was in the midst of a great spiritual crisis. He had been to Europe and was returning to his native England, in a boat that was stopped in the water because the fog was so thick it was impossible to navigate. Newman wrote a great hymn on that boat, one entitled “Lead, Kindly Light.” One line goes: “Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see the distant scene; one step enough for me.” Faith means being willing to take life, one step at a time, not seeing the distant shore, not knowing what is to come, yet moving ahead with confidence that God will lead, step by step.

There’s another wonderful hymn in our hymnal, written by Samuel Kinner. I don’t know anything about him, or about the circumstances of this particular hymn, but there is a line that goes like this: “Your wondrous ways are not confined within the limits of my mind.” The older translation was a little different, but also profound: “How this can be I leave to Thee.” Faith is learning when and how to leave the reasons to God. It is learning to say, with the Psalmist, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it.” It is being content not to know.

And yet again we are not left completely in the dark. We do have a word from the Lord. “Therefore,” he says, “you also must be ready.” By this he means that the real task of Christians is not to try to speculate or understand things that are beyond them, but to live each day expecting that this is the day that Christ will come. It is to live honorably, as Paul says, “not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy.” It is to live with love and care for our neighbors, with kindness and mercy, with good will and peace.

Elsewhere in the gospels Jesus couples this with an admonition to “watch,” like a sentry keeps watch. Yogi Berra said it best—“You can observe a lot by watching.” Yes, you can indeed. You can observe God, always keeping his promises, always fulfilling his word. You can observe God gathering his people, caring for them, feeding them at this Table, forgiving their sins, keeping them in faith. Yes, and as you see these things, you begin to learn that with such a God, it may not be necessary for us to understand and know everything. It may be possible to trust and to believe.

I came upon a sermon by the 4^th century church father Jerome; he’s the guy who first translated the Bible into Latin. He was speaking of the line from the first chapter of John: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” He says this: “The Word was made flesh, but how he was made flesh, we do not know. The teaching from God I have; the science of it, I do not have. I know that the Word was made flesh; how it was done, I do not know.”

In this Advent season, we often think of Mary, the young girl, told by an angel that she would be the mother of the Word made flesh. It was an astounding announcement, an incomprehensible thing. But think of her response: Not “I don’t understand,” or “I can’t believe it,” or “Give me proof, Gabriel.” Rather, “Let it be to me according to thy word.” Luther once said there were three miracles in this story. One, that God should become man. Two, that a virgin should conceive. Three, that Mary believed. And the third, Luther said, was the greatest. Mary didn’t need to know the how and the why, didn’t need to know the science of it or understand it all. She simply trusted. How about you?