The Blessing of Not Knowing
by Anne Le Bas

“About that day or hour no one knows,” says Jesus, “neither the angels in
heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father…”

My husband, Philip, told me this week about something that happened in a
physics lessons he was teaching recently at school. He was talking to one
of his classes – 13 and 14 year olds – about the way that scientific ideas
have changed over the centuries. Schoolchildren in ancient Greece, he told
them, would have been taught a very different set of ideas to the ones that
they were learning. The earth was thought to be at the centre of the
universe, for example. As the centuries passed and new scientific
discoveries were made people realized that many of those old ideas were
wrong. In the same way, he suggested, future generations might look back on
us and be able to see ways in which our scientific ideas had been mistaken
too. They’d have made discoveries we can’t even imagine, and perhaps our
understanding of the world would seem as odd to them as some of those
ancient Greek ideas do to us.

The girls were horrified. In fact, they were furious. “Dr. Le Bas, are you
saying that some of the things that you are teaching us might not be TRUE!”
Alas, he had to confess that this was so. Dr. Le Bas, the fount of all
knowledge, the ultimate authority in all things scientific, didn’t know it
all. Down he fell from his pedestal. Life would never be the same again for
them. A new and frightening world opened up in which even their teachers
didn’t have ALL the answers.

I suppose we’d all like to think that someone, somewhere has it all sorted
out. Life, the universe and everything. When we are children we tend to
trust parents or teachers. Later on it’s doctors, scientists, even priests
sometimes too, whom we might look to. Popular opinion is many people’s
unquestioned guide to the world. People will simply look to the crowd for a
direction to take. If millions believe something, how can it be wrong?
Blind faith is a temptation that’s hard to resist. It makes life so much
easier if we convince ourselves that someone else knows what is happening
and why, that someone else understands how it all fits together and has the
answers to the questions that perplex us. There are so many complex
dilemmas that face us, and most of us would admit to feeling baffled about
the way forward. Global warming and our part in it, poverty, AIDS, our
response to terrorism. What on earth shall we do about these things? Within
the church too there are questions that divide us – controversies about
homosexuality and women bishops, the tension between holding onto tradition
and changing with changing times. There are many that claim that the
answers to all these things are clear and simple. They offer neat, pre-
packaged answers, tidy black and white certainties. If they are Christians
they might quote a few Bible verses, and claim that that is all that needs
to be said. But outside the church, too, people will often look for simple
answers, following the lead of whoever sounds most confident, whoever has
the slickest presentation.

But the uncomfortable truth is that no human being, however clever they
seem, can know it all. No one can really be confident that they have it all
sussed out.  We are all people of our time and place. We are limited,
incomplete and sometimes plain wrong in our understanding. The truly wise
person is the one who recognizes that their knowledge is just one small
grain of sand in an infinite desert of ignorance.

But surely, for those who call themselves Christians, there is one person
we can turn to with certainty, isn’t there?  We may feel in the dark, but
Jesus has the answers… doesn’t he? Well, not always…not according to
today’s Gospel.  “About that day or hour no one knows – neither the angels,
nor the Son…”

Many people seem to regard Jesus as a sort of superman. They see him as all-
powerful, all-knowing. And yet here he says, as plain as can be, that that
is not so. When will the end of the world come? He hasn’t a clue. He is
certainly wise, but he is a man of his time and place, just as we all are,
and he never claims to be anything other than that. It’s not just his own
admission that tells us this, however. The whole of this passage reveals
how rooted he is in his own culture. The images of earthquakes and darkened
skies which he describes in his apocalyptic vision were really just the
standard, “end of the world” scenario in his time. Just as we might have in
our minds Hollywood images of nuclear mushroom clouds, walls of water
thrown up by a comet, the advancing shadow of an alien spaceship, people in
his day had their own set of mental images of the apocalypse. It’s the
disaster movie script of a first-century Jew that we hear Jesus repeating
here. But Jesus seems to accept this scenario as literally true – this is
how it will be. In fact, he seems sure that it is imminent. It will happen,
he says, in his disciples’ lifetime. Biblical commentators sometimes try to
argue that he didn’t really mean this, that he was referring to his
crucifixion, but that isn’t how it sounds to me, that isn’ t what he says.
And I don’t see why we should try to square the circle on this – trying to
salvage the idea that he knows it all, when he goes on to admit quite
openly and readily that he doesn’t.

So –Jesus is as limited in his understanding as we all are by time and
place, in ways he is aware of and open about, and in ways that he hasn’t
even seen himself. He doesn’t even pretend to be otherwise. He is not a
self-proclaimed, know it all guru. But where does that leave us, who claim
to follow him? Up the creek without a paddle, you might think. Perhaps we
should go and look for someone who DOES have the answers. It’s tempting,
and every generation produces plenty of men and women who will promise us
the answers in return for our blind faith and unquestioning obedience.

But let’s not give up on Jesus just yet. I’d rather trust someone who has
the wisdom to know that he doesn’t know it all, actually, and I think it is
what Jesus says after this shocking admission of ignorance that really
matters.

I don’t know the answers, he says, and neither do you – so stay awake.
What happens when we let ourselves think that someone else has everything
under control? We close our eyes and let life simply simply happen around
us. We don’t have to take initiative. We don’t have to take responsibility.
We don’t have to take risks. All we have to do is follow orders. It’s very
tempting, but it is not the response that will ultimately lead to healing,
wholeness and hope. The only way that can happen is if each of us, everyone
of us, is awake, aware, with our eyes open to the problems of the world,
and our eyes open too to God’s calling to us to be part of their solution.
We need to be like the members of the household he talks about in his
parable, each getting on with the task they are called to. God created us
as individuals, each one with something distinctive to give. He meant for
us to work with him as co-creators, not as robots or puppets. Stay awake!
says Jesus – awake enough to question, awake enough to take initiative,
awake enough to take risks, even if that means we sometimes get it wrong.
Don’t blindly trust in others to provide you with answers, Jesus says, not
even me. Don’t let others live your lives for you, or answer the questions
for you which you should be answering for yourself. Realize instead the
glorious truth that the God who created you has also richly equipped you
with gifts of discernment, wisdom, compassion to use in the service of
others.

Stay awake! says Jesus. As the slogan says, “If not you, then who? If not
now, then when?” Wake up! You may not have all the answers – but neither
did Jesus. You may not have a perfect understanding of the world – but
neither did Jesus. What matters, though is that you keep your eyes open,
your mind open, your heart open, and that you are willing to respond.
Today marks the beginning of Advent, the season in which we look forward to
God coming among us with new hope and new life for the world. But how and
where will he come? I don’t know. It won’t be in a stable in Bethlehem,
that’s for sure, though I think that is where we often still look for him,
in the old, old story. I doubt very much whether he will come on a cloud of
glory, either. But as St. Paul reminds us, God is faithful, and he will
come. He will come amongst us in all sorts of ways, prompting us to respond
to the world with love. Perhaps he will come to some in the shape of a
homeless earthquake survivor in Pakistan, unlocking in us compassion and
generosity. Perhaps he will come as we realize that we can help those in
need in our own community, befriending the lonely, supporting the
vulnerable. Perhaps he will come as we abandon an entrenched position and
learn to listen to those who differ from us.

Finding out that there are no simple, black and white solutions to the
world’s problems, no know-it-all gurus to follow, can be a shock – Philip’s
class certainly found it to be so. But it can also be a wonderful
liberation, a moment when we start to realize how high a view of US God
really has. We are not slaves to be ordered around, but friends and co-
creators in whom he puts his hope, whom he invites – and trusts - to make
the world anew with him.
Amen

(Comments to Anne at annelebas@DSL.PIPEX.COM.)