APRIL 30, 2005 PASTOR SCOTT FULLER
Prepare our hearts, Lord, to receive your Word. Silence in us any voice but your own that in hearing we may believe and in believing, we may obey your will revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Amen. Dear Friends in Christ, GTYAPFGOFAOLJX. Amen.
Sometimes that question is a greeting. Well…whaddya know? (brightly)
Other times to seek information. Well, whaddya know? (with concern)
On occasion, we even use it as an insult. Well, whaddya know? (rudely)
In a poem entitled “Jacqueline” Samuel Rogers tells us that To know someone is to love them. And a similar spiritual truth about knowledge is revealed in an old Sunday School song that basically says everything we need to know can be found in the Bible. Let’s sing “Jesus Loves Me.”
Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so,
little ones to him belong, they are weak but he is strong.
Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me-
the Bible tells me so.
What do you know? I realize that’s kind of a loaded question, because, in fact, we all know lots of stuff regardless of how much formal education we’ve had…sometimes even in spite of it.
That’s why in recent years we’ve talked more about different kinds of intelligences. A person’s I.Q. and ability to pass tests are only two ways to measure their smarts.
I once knew a professor who was the most brilliant person I’ve ever met…in matters of theology and philosophy. But I’m not sure that he would have survived a winter’s night if he’d been left out on the porch in the cold.
Our own Alaskan backyard is the perfect laboratory to prove this thesis. From bush pilots and oil field engineers …to village elders and native artists, we know that knowledge comes in many different packages.
The ancient Greeks knew a lot. Their culture gave rise to the likes of Aristotle, Socrates and Plato. They knew about mathematics, logic and government. They knew about philosophy, drama and religion. So when Paul walks into the midst of those Greek sages and begins to preach, he steps into the very cradle of knowledge for the whole of Western Civilization.
They knew so much about religion that their city was infested with temples dedicated to gods who were believed to govern every aspect of life. In fact, in his wanderings Paul even sees a temple built to “an unknown god.”
Why do that, why have a temple to a god that remained unknown?
-hedge bets -cover their backsides -recognize limits of knowledge
Maybe it’s a confession of sorts that in the end, at their core, with everything stripped away but the stuff of life and death and love, all their knowledge, all their know-how, left them clueless, ignorant, unsure. This certainly could be what Paul senses. For he steps into that “amphitheatre” of arts and aptitude, intellect and ingenuity, wisdom and wit, philosophy and theology, and boldly proclaims, I know what you want to know about God.
And were he to visit our country, Washington, D.C., L.A., New York, or even Anchorage, and step into our “amphitheatre” of arts and aptitude, intellect and ingenuity, wisdom and wit, philosophy and theology, the Apostle Paul would still boldly proclaim, I know what you want to know.
For isn’t it true that, with all we know, there’s not a whole lot we can claim to know for certain? Our culture reflects some amazing similarities to ancient Greece and Rome, those melting pots of worldly cultures.
But with our melting pot mentality, in which I truly delight, comes a diminished sense of what we know is right…even, and especially, about God. Listen to this poem that reveals some of these modern struggles. It’s entitled To The Unknown God and written by Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas.
I sing You a hymn, Unknown God,
For me, though You are vanishing ages' lugubrious mystery;
You – a crossroad on wandering earth's orbit
Where my troubled thought returns now and then.
For some, You are stormy thundering revelation,
For others, the voice that breaks midnight's towering silence,
But for me – the ruins of a sanctuary, this earth
Where nature's teeming life reveals nothing at all.
For me, You are distant so many bright years, like a star
To whose miraculous light I am blind.
Perhaps your glance intermingles there with the fires,
But here – I do not fear You, nor love You.
I, a dustmote of sun-consumed wastelands.
I know that You are; not who You are, how You are –
My heart, before the thought of eternity
That I seek for in galaxies, is silent.
It may be that only in earth's hollowed grave,
If I rise someday through the dews, a sunny blossom,
That here, among earth's fragrant flowers,
I will see my Unknown God. (Translated by Demie Jonaitis)
The poet knows that he doesn’t know much about God, which is a pretty accurate theme for our day and age. But thanks be to God for people like Paul who dare to trust that in Jesus Christ this Unknown God is made known and given a name. That knowledge never removes from us the challenge of trust, but it always feeds our trust with the Advocate’s gift of faith.
In his book The Hungering Dark, Frederick Buechner puts it like this.
“Those who believe in God can never in a way be sure of him again. Once they have seen God in a stable, they can never be sure where he will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of humanity. If the holiness and the awful power and majesty of God were present in that least auspicious of all events, the birth of a peasant's child, then there is no place or time so lowly and earthbound but that holiness can be present there too. And this means that we are never safe, that there is no place where we can hide from God, no place where we are safe from God’s power to break in two and recreate the human heart because it is just where God seems most helpless that God is most strong, and just where we least expect him that God comes most fully.
What do we know? Well, we know that in Christ this Unknown God has a name, and that name is love. Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Amen.