SLOW DOWN AND KNOW
Dr. Stephen D. Jones,
preaching
Second Baptist Church
December 16, 2007
Text: Isaiah 11:1-3
What do you know to be true? What do you
truly know? Gravity, you might recall, remains a theory. A fairly trustworthy
theory around which there is much agreement. You can sit under a tree and watch
an apple fall to the ground and know from whence the theory cometh. But even
about something as commonplace as gravity, there remains a lot that we do not
know and scientific issues yet to be resolved. It is likely true that the more
you know about gravity, the less you know.
Why is
that the case? Because the further you probe into a scientific or technical
area, the more theoretical it becomes, the more intricate it becomes, the more
complex the questions and issues. I know everything I need to know about
gravity, and my life will continue on very well, thank you. But there are
scientists who can’t know enough about gravity and whose experiments, creative
musings, scientific imaginings push them into new frontiers.
What
do you know to be true? What do you truly know? Is the morning newspaper
accurate? Is the evening news on television true?
What can you know
about the Civil War? You know what those who lived through the Civil War wrote
down about it. But what if their perspective was skewed? Last month, the Civil
War battlefield of the First Battle of Booneville was likely discovered. They
reconstructed the battle by finding bullets in the soil. But what can we truly
know? In November, I read Galusha Anderson’s book on St. Louis as a Civil War
border city. When he served as pastor of Second Baptist Church, Anderson was
decidedly pro-Union. He was the first pastor in St. Louis to have the courage to
speak out for the Union and for the abolitionist cause. The story would be told
quite differently by the Presbyterian pastor in St. Louis who preached an
earlier sermon favoring the Confederacy and the continuation of slavery. Whose
version was true?
There are several
definitions of knowing, and I’m not referring to the kind of knowing that
depends upon accuracy, correctness, expertise or know-how. There is another kind
of knowing that wells up deep within.
There is a depth of knowing that far surpasses our awareness. Some of us think
of ourselves as superficial, not very deep. Those are people who simply have
shut off the vast spiritual depths within them. The depths are still there, but
they have shut the doors to it and don’t know how or don’t want to know how to
open them. The classic stereotype is the ditzy blond or the bulk jock who are
valued by everyone for their skin beauty or their raw strength. No one would
turn to either stereotype for spiritual wisdom. Unrewarded, many people caught
in such stereotypes have simply shut the door to their wisdom. It’s not that
they are superficial. It’s that they live superficially. No one is
superficial. There are vast regions of the soul within each of us.
I’m not into boxing
or wrestling. I find both rather unsettling. But I must admit that I enjoy the
Rocky movies. In the first Rocky movie, we are introduced to Paulie’s sister,
Adrian, who is as much of a non-descript nobody as you could find. She’s
nothing, really, at least that is the way everyone treats her. And the way she
thinks of herself. She’s a wallflower. She works in a grubby little pet shop as
a clerk and avoids as much human contact as possible. But then Rocky discovers
her and is the first person in her life to choose to spend time with her. She
finds this all the more incredible, irritating, really. But what happens in the
course of the movie is that Adrian is transformed from this ugly little store
clerk into an attractive woman, not a glamour queen, but attractive. But it
isn’t the physical transformation that touches me in that film. It’s the
emergence of her person, her strength, and her wisdom. She becomes Rocky’s rock,
his strength, his wise counsel, his wisdom. The dog with whom Rockie jogs is the
perfect gift from Adrian. She already has the spiritual depth within her to know
what he needs. Rocky’s love helps her open the door and discover that it is
there.
We are all Adrians. We
already know so much. Not information. Not know-how. Not expertise. But
spiritual wisdom. We don’t have an empty soul, we have a soul full of wisdom and
your task and my task is to open the doors to it.
How else can we
describe what happened to young Mary? Our two Rebeccas, Swarm and Nall, are
already older than we think Mary was at the time of her visitation by an
angel. She had already given birth to Jesus before our two Rebeccas can drive
automobiles.
And yet few wise
sages throughout all of history have written or said anything as wise as Mary’s
Magnificat, her revolutionary wisdom stated while still a young girl,
preparing to raise her first-born child. This wisdom comes at the end of her
three months with Elizabeth, and Elizabeth no doubt is the Wise Sage from Judea
who helps Mary open the door to her own wisdom. But the Magnificat isn’t
an example of Mary memorizing someone else’s words. These words appear to us as
genuine and have meaning because they come from someone so unexpected, so
untutored, so un-credentialed, so unpretentious.
Have you ever read
poetry written by a young adolescent? Ever observed a painting by a child? Ever
sensed artistry coming forth from a teenager? Ever heard a child say something
utterly wise?
There are two kinds
of knowing, objective knowing, and intuitive or spiritual knowing. Information,
reason and logic flow from objective knowing, and wisdom and hope flow from
intuitive knowing.
And the ironic
twist is that we think we objectively know a lot when in fact we objectively
know for certain very little. Much of what we objectively know is based on faith
and trust. For example, is global warming really happening, and is it the result
of human activity? If you listen and trust Al Gore, your answer is absolutely
yes. If you listen and trust George Bush, your answer is likely no. Does anyone
know objectively for certain, without doubt, the cause of global warming? No,
you have to depend upon someone else’s expertise or draw your own conclusions
based on the data that winters were a lot colder when you were a child.
The other ironic
twist is that we think we spiritually know very little when in fact we
intuitively know a great deal. We’re out of touch and largely unaware of a vast
reservoir of knowing that lies deep within our soul.
When Isaiah speaks
of God’s Promised One, he writes, “The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the
spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit
of knowledge and awe of the Lord.” (11:2) This refers to spiritual or
intuitive knowing.
We learn from
Genesis that you and I were created in the image of God. If that be true, then,
we find God’s imprint deep within our souls. We don’t have to go looking for God
out there; the divine imprint is already within us.
Tom Stella says,
“Within the within of our own lives lies the treasure of joy, peace and meaning
that we usually look elsewhere to find. It is out there, we imagine, in that
other person, that other job, or in the next life, heaven” (p. 80, The God
Instinct).
Frederick Buechner
writes, “I believe we know much more about God than we admit that we know. . ."
(p. 19, Secrets in the Dark).
That is why
children sometimes say the wisest things, the most revealing things, things far
beyond or far deeper than their level of experience.
There is an old
tale,
“Said the Master to the businessman:
‘As the fish perishes on dry land, so you perish when you get entangled in the
world. The fish must return to the water; you must return to solitude.’
The businessman was aghast. ‘Must I give up my business and go into a
monastery?’
‘No, no. Hold on to your business and go into your heart.’” (Anthony DeMello,
One Minute Wisdom, p. 13)
There’s something
about the practice of solitude, about going deep, that helps us encounter the
Great Mystery, the Divine Imprint, the wellspring of wisdom deep within. The
Buddhists have a dictum, “Don’t just do something, stand there.” And Advent is
one of those seasons of the year the church sets aside just to stand there, and
go within and encounter the Great Mystery, the Divine Imprint, the wellspring of
wisdom at our disposal. Contemplation, solitude, meditation, prayer, communing
with God, are ways of opening the door to this encounter.
I think that there
is within us a “wisdom beyond our wisdom” (p. 61, Buechner), a knowing beyond
our knowledge, an awareness of mystery that we have no right to claim as our
own, and yet it comes, strangely, from within us. The Apostle Paul wrote of
this, “Where is the one who is wise?... Has not God made foolish the wisdom of
the world? . . .For God’s foolishness is wiser than human knowledge. . .” (I
Corinthians 1:20ff) (see also I Corinthians 3:18, Ephesians 3:19)
That still small
voice within comes from some deep place that we cannot easily identify but less
easily deny. And everyone who goes deep, can potentially hear that voice, those
holy whisperings. Everyone can access the Mystery deep within.
We know,
intuitively, far more than we are aware. We know we are God’s, even when we
spend our lives running from God, or even when we spend our lives running after
God.
Buechner adds, “. .
.weak as we are, a strength beyond our strength has pulled us through at least
this far, at least to this day. Foolish as we are, a wisdom beyond our wisdom
has flickered up just often enough. . . Faint of heart as we are, a love beyond
our power to love has kept our hearts alive” (p. 61, Secrets in the Dark).
More than anything
else, the expectant Mary, the Mary of Advent, models for us how to be in touch
with what we spiritually know. And thus, it is she who urges us in this season
of our lives to Slow Down and Know. Amen.
