Sunday Sermon - 20 October

In 2002, Donald Rumsfeld, in a press conference about the Iraq War, said the now infamous quote: “There are unknown unknowns” when speaking about the lack of evidence regarding Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction and sharing them with terrorists. Remember Donald Rumsfeld? He was the Secretary of Defense under the presidency of George W. Bush.  And yes, he specifically said, and I quote:

“…as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.”

I remember this vividly.  I remember watching the press conference on CNN and asking Janice “What the heck did he just say?” Soon afterward, all of the political talking heads at the time were berating him for saying what seemed to be a completely nonsensical comment. But is it really nonsensical?

Rumsfeld wasn’t the first to use this kind of paradoxical logic. In fact, it’s been around for quite awhile and even dates back to ancient times. Plato wrote that Socrates said: “I know that I know nothing.” Socrates, when speaking of his own wisdom, is claimed to have said that the only reason he was wiser than others was because he was the only one willing to recognize, accept, and acknowledge his own ignorance.    

Well folks, I’m here to challenge Socrates' position. He’s not the only one willing to accept his own ignorance, I am too! The older I get, the more I realize how little I know.

Just as Rumsfeld said, there are unknown unknowns and with every passing year I find myself becoming lost in the awe and ignorance of my life and the world I live in. Let me explain with a couple of examples.  

I just finished reading Astronaut Colonel Chris Hadfield’s book The Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth. A great book that I strongly recommend. Hadfield offers all sorts of simple yet profound nuggets for life, but what most captivated me was his ability to translate, through his exceptional use of words, how small our planet Earth is and how even smaller we are in the vast expanse of incomprehensible space.

 Imagine, if you will, that the entire universe as we know it is nothing but the size of a speck of sand on a beach. If the universe is that small, which it may very well be, then how small are we little human beings relative to that ineffable expanse? How much can we know about anything when we are but a single grain of sand in the vastness of an infinite desert? 

Okay, maybe a more manageable example, I can appreciate that metaphysics at 10 am is a lot.  

Let’s take the human brain. It is believed that we use 100% of our brain but we only understand how about 10% of it actually works. In other words, there is 90% of our brain that is apparently doing something that even the greatest scientific minds know we don’t know about. And if we know there’s a lot about the brain we don’t know, then there must also be things we don’t yet even know that we don’t know. You follow me?

Our readings this morning speak of our limitations as human beings. Job is reminded by God of his limited understanding and meagre power as a human being, compared to God’s infinite wisdom and unlimited power. It even reads as God speaking in an almost mocking and deprecating manner. And then we read on, for God isn’t just all wise and all powerful. In Paul’s letter to the Hebrews, God, as Jesus, is compassionate and empathetic to our human limitations and ignorance. Paul writes that Jesus prays for us and for himself in his human condition, “dealing gently with the ignorant and wayward.”

The Gospel of Mark also points to Jesus’ compassion for humanity as he explains to his disciples his predicted future of suffering and sacrifice, his ultimate act of service in dying to give life to us. Jesus had to explain this because James and John didn’t understand. In their asking to sit at Jesus’ left and right hands in glory they revealed an oversimplified understanding of Christ’s messianic purpose. They didn’t know about the suffering,  they couldn’t grasp the humiliation that Christ must endure. They didn’t know what they didn’t know.  

The paradox of the messiah is that their anointed king, their all knowing wise ruler, will be humbled and humiliated as the weak and frail human form that God has chosen. God chose to be human, to be like us, to show us how to be human in this world. By simplifying his God-ness and coming to us as Jesus, God mirrors our limitations and our ignorance, telling us we aren’t ‘all wise’ beings (“we don’t know, what we don’t know”) and that’s okay because as Jesus, God shows us the way.

I said I realize that the older I get, the less I know. Some of you may feel the same way. As we grow in age, we also grow in confidence, accepting who we are and being okay with ourselves. When we are young, we protect ourselves and guard our insecurities by holding up shields made of hubris and forged in self-importance. As we grow older, we learn to set down our shields and confidently embrace and expose our vulnerabilities, our limitations and weaknesses. We learn to love and trust ourselves and those who we know are our friends. We can be honest and accepting of the limited human beings that God created us to be.  

By accepting our limitations we can be people of true faith, a people that can - without knowing how we know - know that God, the Ultimate Being, exists and came to us as Jesus, a frail limited human, to explain to us and show us, that which is ultimately incomprehensible.

This acceptance of our ignorance, weaknesses, and limitations is wisdom. Isn’t that why we say, “the older we get the wiser we become?”

In both Hebrews and Mark, Jesus tells us how to be human. Not like those who live in blind arrogance, believing ignorantly in the facade of earthly power as “the Gentiles” but as humble Christian servants, compassionately sacrificing for “the ransom of many.”  

God’s word in scripture tells us that we are limited beings with limited minds and that there will always be things that we don’t even know we don’t know. That’s okay because God, in human form as the Christ, by living and dying for us, reveals to us that within our human limitations we still have the power to believe.  

We are a people of faith, believing in the incomprehensible. As a people with faith in Jesus Christ, we know we have great power.

We have power in our humility.

We have power in our service.

We have power in our compassion.

… and that power is the power of our love.

Amen.