May 30, 2010
For All that We Do Not Know - John 16:12-15
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadLeah and I got engaged in February of 1999. I was living in Killeen, Texas at the time (close to Fort Hood) and she was living in Greenville. For some reason, she and her parents flew down to Dallas sometime that fall. Leah had been to Dallas once on a business trip, and she thought, therefore, that she knew her way around the city. I had never been to Dallas at all, and with the exception of driving through Atlanta, I had never been to a city that big. Leah decided that there was a really good restaurant there where she had eaten on her business trip, and, since she knew her way around Dallas and all from that brief little trip, she was certain that she knew how to get us there.
So off we went, all four us (my future wife and future in-laws), trotting through Dallas on a Friday night in my ten-year-old Nissan Altima. Leah directed me down this street, a one way street, that directed us not to the restaurant, but to the hood, to a slum, to a scary and crime-ridden part of town. I even remember passing by someone in handcuffs getting arrested. And it was a one way street. And I had my future in-laws in the car, and I had never been in Dallas before, and I had never been in a city that big before, and I was lost in a dangerous part of town, and I had no earthly idea how to get back home.
Jesus’ disciples did not know this then, but they were, at this point in their story, pulling out of the hotel parking lot. They thought they knew Jesus, and that Jesus was leading them somewhere, you know, cozy. That is the point, is it not? But they were wrong. The disciples had no idea at the time of the Cross, or of persecution, or that many of them would be executed themselves for following Jesus. The disciples were about to have a bit of a problem. “The Word became flesh in Jesus,” John tells us in his first chapter, “and dwelt among us.” So If Jesus is God and if Jesus gets killed, what happens to God? The disciples would soon be a very serious crisis. Jesus knew that, but the disciples did not.
The disciples had no idea. Jesus even told them that he had many more things to tell them, but that they could not possibly bear those things then. They could not possibly have comprehended those things. They had no idea what their future would be. They only had a small glimpse of who Jesus was, and even that was unclear, but they had no earthly idea about their future. Or, let’s put it this way: what they knew paled in comparison to what they did not know.
I had the privilege this past week of giving the invocation and benediction at my old high school’s graduation. I went to the Spartanburg Day School from the third through the twelfth grades. It was wonderful going back and being reminded of the ten years that I spent there. I was eighteen when I graduated from high school and it has almost been eighteen years since then, and I just can’t possibly believe everything that has happened to me in that time. Looking back on all that, there was just so much that I did not know then.
The one thing I guess I have learned is that I don’t know. Foreknowledge is impossible. It always has been. We were supposed to have three graduates today, but two of them backed out at the last minute. Foreknowledge is impossible. Billy, congratulations on your achievements. It’s great to have you here this morning. I understand that you’re going to work in your family’s business. I think that’s great. For what it’s worth, that sounds like a good gig. It sounds like ya’ll have a good thing going down there and I wish you all the best.
But I do want to throw this question in there just for kicks. What are you going to do when you fall in love with some sweet, pretty, lovely, young lady who just so happens to live in Washington, state that is? Now you’re going to love her. She will knock your socks off. And she will love you, and you knock her socks off. But, she will also love Washington State. And she will not be happy until she is at home in Washington State and you will not be happy unless you are with her. So guess what, you’re going to Washington State. (I have spent some time out there and it’s beautiful.) Now you’re going to have a hard time working in your family’s business all the way out in Washington State. You may laugh, and your mother probably wants to kill me now, but I had dinner last Friday with a couple who did just that, except for them it was the opposite.
Foreknowledge is impossible. We never know when we’re going to find ourselves in a completely different reality, under a completely different set of rules, with a completely different set of assumptions. And there’s no way to prepare for that. Foreknowledge is impossible. Just one month ago, this country’s energy plan was to drill for oil off the Carolina Coast. Well that plan’s pretty much dead right now, and it’s getting deader with every drop of oil leaking in the Gulf Coast. Our economy seemed to be recovering a month ago, too. But then this little country named Greece borrowed too much money, and this thing called the Euro declined in value, and so did the dollar, and so did the stock market, and so much for that economic recovery. Every morning, I read the editorial page in the newspaper. Every article in the editorial page revolves around something that we don’t know.
So what in the world are we supposed to do? Jesus talks a lot about truth in John’s Gospel. In fact, Jesus’ trial before Pontius Pilate is really a trial about whose version of truth really is Truth. “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” Jesus insists in John. Pontius Pilate is not, and neither is Rome, and neither is anything or anyone else. And “You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” Jesus tells us, which seems so contrary to our experience. I sure wish I knew the truth that night in Dallas. I wish we knew the truth of the pivotal issues of our day. I wish we knew the truth about all you graduates. But from my experience, we just don’t.
Or, maybe we do. Bob Jack from Pleasant Hill has been quite a mentor for me since I got here, and Bob told me a very interesting story. Bob said when he got to Pleasant Hill some twenty-five years ago that they hired a consultant on church growth. Those guys get paid to know it all. Anyway, this one church consultant told Bob that they needed to move north, on some land that they owned around the corner of 160 and York Road. People will never live, this consultant said, all the way down on Lake Wylie. Foreknowledge is impossible.
So I asked Bob what they did down there. Bob said that it took a lot of prayer. In fact, that’s Bob’s answer on a lot of things. And I really think that was Jesus’ answer to his disciples. Jesus is no longer here in person. He has not been here in person for a very long time. But Jesus has promised us that the Holy Spirit is here. And he has promised us that the Holy Spirit will guide us. Just as sure as Jesus guided the disciples, Jesus said, the Holy Spirit will guide us. That’s what Jesus told us. Oh, and by the way, Jesus is God. He’s not God’s lieutenant. And neither is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, too, is God. We have God’s counsel here through the Spirit. Forget the church consultant. Just talk to God. Try that method. That’s what Jesus said, anyway, and that’s what we believe. In fact, I’m about to specifically ask you if you believe that and you’re about to tell me.
Otherwise, I don’t know what to tell graduating seniors today. I don’t know what to tell myself. Does anybody have any idea how to raise three children, or how to do everything I’m supposed to do as a pastor, or how to be a part of the world’s salvation and not just be the drag on the world that we normally are? If you go to any commencement address this year, you’ll be told a thousand times to go out there and make a difference, as if that’s an original idea. Well how? There’s just too much that we don’t know.
But there is one thing that we do know. For all that we do now know, there is one thing that we do know. Actually, there’s a person that we do know. His Name is Jesus. We know him through the Holy Spirit. We know God, maybe not all there is to know about God, but we know God. We may not know how to solve the world’s problems, but we do know the One who created the world, and who has promised to save it. And we also know that God, through the Spirit, continues to save the world, and he employs us in it. So if you want your life to count for anything at all, if you want that dash between your birth date and death date on your tombstone to mean anything at all (and that dash is indeed very, very short) if you want to make the least little difference out there, then you need to spend some time cultivating that knowledge and that relationship with God. Because God is not finished down here. We’ve got some work to do, but before we can even get around to it, we’ve got to figure out what that work is first. And before we can do that, we’ve got to pray, a lot and together, and read our Bibles a lot and together, and take very seriously this surprising and new and beautiful thing that God is doing.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
