Knowing and Unknowing

February 26, 2017

Cate Thorn

Ordinary 8     1 Corinthians 4:15     Matthew 6:24–34

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This last week in my role as chair of a BOT I joined representatives from other schools in the NCOL to interview candidates to fill 3 AS roles and worked with the principal to confirm the SA’s for the Charter before the MOE come to carry out an ERO review. Does any of that make much sense to you – excepting those of you who may be familiar with the current coding system of the education system? Given our context here in this place, perhaps this is easier, next week we’ll be making pancakes on Shrove Tuesday and receiving the imposition of ashes during services on Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, 40 days of penitential preparation leading to the great celebration of Easter. So long as we don’t do the maths on 6 weeks plus four or so days 40 days is fine, you see Sunday’s don’t count so it works out, don’t worry. Or perhaps do now, if you didn’t before.

Well, that’s much easier to decode, we all get that, right – we know the church coding system, or maybe not … not so much. Perhaps we’ve not met this church code before, or we’ve met it in ways that have been less than helpful, or we can’t honestly see much of the point of it. I grew up in a church that did Christmas and Easter but not the Lent repent bit. I had to uncover the rhyme and reason for the Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, Lent then Easter ritual season.

With ashes made from burning of last year’s palm crosses our foreheads are marked on Ash Wednesday with sign of cross, we’re reminded of our vulnerable mortality. Lent’s been known in church tradition as a time for intentioned reflection, self-examination, penitence and preparation. Sometimes this takes form of self-denial, giving up something we like in order to be more aware we’re in a season that attaches to it a certain discipline, the discomfort reminding us, if of nothing else, that we’re in Lent. Sometimes takes form of giving to, intentionally paying forward to benefit another rather than refraining from, to deny ourselves. Sometimes takes form of more prayer time, more regular attendance of services, following a guided study or reflection, raising our awareness of how we live, perhaps choosing to modify our habits of living – such as our focus this year on water justice. Lenten practices vary in expression and focus yet each are described as a discipline for in them there’s a decision to be more intentional, more aware, to inhabit our life each day more mindfully. The faith tradition enlived in this place is the impetus that prompts and often time provides the means for such disciplined intent.

Such discipline enables us to engage in process of reflection, self-examination, penitence, preparation, they’re a ‘what we do,’ if you like. I wonder, though, do we also pause and consider the why of what we do, the ‘to what end’ we do it? Preparation, discipline for what? That which is to come, of course, Easter!! In last week approaching Easter day we tell the narrative of the Passion that ends in the death of Jesus, named as God with us. Sure, on Easter Day we celebrate the rising Christ, death overcome but not without first the death.

Lent is a time of preparing for Easter, when the God who walks with us is put to death by us. Not by accident but on purpose because that God offends our expectations, offends us by truth telling, offends us by showing us who we are, holding mirror up to us that shows us, despite our best intentions, we do not live as we’re called to live. That we’ve retreated from the position of treating others as we’d want to be treated, of loving others as we love ourselves, of loving others as we love God for we are beloved of God. Retreated to safe place where we can manage the appearance of such things while at the heart of things, in our hearts remain safe, moved perhaps but be untouched. For it’s a very dangerous thing to live with our hearts exposed and we would rather put to death the God who reminds us we can live this way and expects this of us. So we succeed for a time and all is darkness. We put to death, actively lay our hands on and kill the God we know, who knows and loves us as we are. We dwell in darkness of absence of life. But how do we prepare for that?

Historically Lent was a time for those who’d sinned and fallen away, been shut out of community for their failings, to repent with hope of reconnection and reconciliation. It’s also been time of final preparation for those to be baptised or confirmed, time of preparation for death to the old life, for putting on of new life in God. This is cause for celebration – of course, we insist. And yet, and yet … it also means we’re willing forfeit our identity, who we are, who we’ve known ourselves to be.

Are we willing to do that? Assuming we’re willing how able are we to change? I’ve heard insanity defined as “doing the same things over and again while expecting different outcomes.” How possible is it for us to change ourselves for surely the way we are keeps us as we are. But, tell me, have you changed, do you think, from when you were say 20, 30, 40? Did that change happen by dint of will, or through circumstance, from experience, letting things go that no longer serve, encountering the new, the unknown that, somehow and perhaps against your preferences, becomes the inevitable now with which you live.

Each Sunday in Lent we’ll hear much wisdom, gain much information about water, as resource, of scarcity, how much we use, of rising sea levels that threaten the lives of our Pacific brothers and sisters. We’ll be invited to self-reflect, made more aware of the impact of our living, invited to choose to change how we live. And because we’re people who desire to work for the benefit of creation with good intention we may well begin to do differently, however I suspect before too long we’ll relapse. There’s not enough compulsion, not experiencing the imminent danger to life we’re not compelled to be and do differently. We may’ve best intention, our consciences truly pricked, our hearts go out but the usual, the bubble of our normal, is intact so life as usual’s what we resume.

Do we really want to be changed? Do we really believe the world’s in imminent danger of being destroyed? Is it just fake news? Not the information we’re given but that it adds up to the end of things. You see it won’t make any difference what we hear about the endangerment of the life of this planet if we’re not really convinced in our heart of hearts that there’s any real truth to it, that it’ll happen to me. That it’ll happen to my loved ones, that there’ll be no future generation for they’ll be no place for them to live.

Is it because we can’t imagine this to be true? Because we imagine we don’t participate in such destruction, for we’d never knowingly do so. Any more than we’d knowingly participate in unjust systems that foment violence and war, cause refugees to flee, inequitably dispense resources so life’s made unviable. I think it’s true, none of us knowingly participate or choose to participate in such systems, even as we also know how intimately we and they are interconnected. What we do, how we live, we’re product of what we’ve learned of how to live, it’s who we are, our knowing gained by the philosophical, theological, geographical, geopolitical landscape that formed us.

May it be then that it’s what we don’t know, our unknowing that’s resource us for the transformation of our knowing, the deeper than thinking unexamined unknowing of our hearts? That in us which reverberates as we hear the gospel words “Do not worry about your life; is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to the span of your life?” Words that resonate in us, echo a deep truth. Yet for them to be made real, to come to life in us we have to let go of what we think we know, let go of our control. Intentionally, actively choose to be still before them, be open to their transforming of us, willing to be changed so we actually will enact this transforming way of being and doing in life in this world. It may sound passive, yet if we don’t take this time to dwell in presence of divine unknowing, to willingly enact our transforming way of being and doing, we will perpetuate what we know – systems of injustice that are destroying life and this planet that sustains life. Lent is a time of preparation, are we willing to forfeit what we know, dwell some time in place of unknowing that we might be changed, transformed?