Addressing the Unanswerable
Pastor Mathew Magera – 5/19/19 – Sermon 350
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace and peace to you from God our Father, from our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“There are many things that are essential to our
faith, but I there’s no way I can speak about them in a sermon because you
would not be able to understand. They are far too complicated and way over your
head.” Can you imagine the reaction if I began a sermon with those very words?
There’s so much to say but so much you won’t understand. What a pompous
posterior, how dare you say something like that. It comes off as insulting,
offensive, and rude. In public speaking, there are numerous ways to lose your
audience and I believe this would be one of them.
Listen to Jesus in John 16, “I have much more to say
to you, more than you can now bear.” Jesus says to his disciples, the eleven
closest to him, “There are things that are essential to your faith, but I can’t
speak about them because you would not be able to understand. They are far too
complicated and way over your head.” Why, thanks, Jesus. That’s just what I’ve
always wanted to hear from you. It sounds like you are insulting my
intelligence. Of course, Jesus doesn’t open his message to the eleven with
these words but they are the words that we hear first from him in our passage
today. Jesus has this interesting ability to comfort people and yet still be
able to offend them at the exact same time. No wonder we called out for his
crucifixion.
But, here we are in John 16, maybe minutes away from
Jesus being betrayed by Judas, arrested, and taken to trial. Here we are in the
Garden of Gethsemane. We’ve finished the Last Supper. Jesus is speaking
candidly with his disciples as he prepares for the events of Good Friday to
take place. He’s already spent a few chapters speaking to his disciples but now
he knows his speaking time is nearly up. He could go on but time is short. I
have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear.
I mean, when we hear this, do we not feel that force
coming from within us to say, “No, Jesus, go on. We can take it. Just give us
something.” We believe we might understand it. Or at least we might get some
nugget out of his words that could give us yet another glimpse into who he is.
If not that we want to hear more, we certainly don’t want to be told that we
won’t understand something. I could tell you more about this, but you’d never
understand. Who wants to hear anyone say this to them? To me, hearing that,
it’s not that I fear I won’t understand it, but that I believe the one speaking
doesn’t understand it enough themselves to convey it in a relatable way. I
never seem to go down the path of believing that I won’t understand it, but
instead try to justify myself in why I would. Oh, it’s not that I wouldn’t
understand it, it’s just that you’re a bad teacher. Now, maybe we won’t say
this to Jesus’ face, but I wonder if we have thought it at one point in time.
If Jesus is such a good teacher, why are we so confused? We might find
ourselves trying to blame Jesus. If you had only told us more, and in a better
way, we would not be stuck where we are. We feel defeated
The truth is, however, there are many dimensions of
life in God we don’t understand. There are many questions that will not be
answered until we are seated at the victory feast. My list of questions grows
almost on a daily basis, as does yours, I imagine. We are not without those
questions.
We just don’t understand some things. There are questions
that will simply remain unanswered. We never determine specifically what Jesus
was going to tell them, but we know that in the future, in the unfolding of
time, we will be told. We are even told how we will hear of them as well. Jesus
says, “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the
truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he
will tell you what is yet to come.”
Three years ago, for our tenth anniversary, Lane and
I had the opportunity to tour the Vatican. Aside from the sea of people that
flock to major attractions such as this, it was extremely fascinating. I
remember some things about this tour. I remember seeing amazing art. I remember
being in the open expanse where the Pope would address a crowd. I remember
standing in the Sistine chapel, not an inch of wall or ceiling without a story
to tell. I remember seeing Michelangelo's sculpting of Mary carrying Jesus down
from the cross. I remember St. Peter’s Basilica where it is said that Peter
himself is buried. I remember wondering if this is why the Catholics sold
indulgences, so they could build such buildings, and if the very places I
walked were part of Martin Luther’s reasoning for speaking out as he did. I
even remember looking at a tapestry, and seeing a cat nestled at someone’s
feet, of which I took a picture because it reminded me of Skye.
There was so much unloaded on this tour that there
was no way I was going to remember or even understand it all. There was so much
unloaded on this tour that I even knew it didn’t cover all of it. There Lane
and I were, being fed from a banquet of information, history, and faith,
completely overwhelmed, yet at the same time, satisfied. There were likely so
many unanswered questions, yet I don’t feel I was held back by them. I had
trusted our tour guide, through her very thick Italian accent, to provide me
with exactly what I needed as I walked. I trusted our tour guide to give me the
right information, but not all of it. I wasn’t frustrated.
There might be times in our faith when unanswered
questions become a stumbling block. How can we know God if we can’t understand
him? There is so much to know, so little we actually understand, that we fear
we might fall away. We may actually fear that our lack of knowing is what cuts
us off. Fortunately, Jesus not only admits to the disciples that there is much
more he can tell them, he not only confesses that they would not understand it,
but he tells them of a great tour guide that will help them. The Holy Spirit.
The Spirit of truth will guide you into all the truth. Jesus can make blunt
statements like this to his disciples because he is also making a promise. You
won’t understand what I would say, Jesus says, but the Holy Spirit will guide
you into all the truth. Jesus can say this because faith is not defeated by
unanswered questions. Where we all hate unanswered questions, where we are
plagued by them, hurt by them, and even defeated by them, Jesus assures us that
faith is not defeated by them. The goal of faith is not to know everything.
Faith, you might say, is hinged on the unanswereable. Faith absorbs those
unanswered questions rather than being absorbed by them. We don’t have to know everything but we do
have a tour guide. A good tour guide will tell you what you need to know when
you need to know it. A good tour guide is also trustworthy enough to follow
into areas of life we may not understand.
It’s like this… In the Alaskan wilderness, a group
of tourists were gathering for a hike in Grizzly territory. The tour guide
gathered the group together and began an orientation. He said, “Most bear
encounters occur when hikers, being extra quiet along the trails in hopes of
viewing wildlife, accidentally stumble into a pack of bears. The resulting
surprise on both sides can be catastrophic.” To avoid this, the tour guide
began to pass out tiny bells for the tourists to attach to their clothing to
warn bears of their presence. “Lastly,” the tour guide said before they left,
“be especially cautious when you see signs of bears in the area, especially
when you see bear droppings.” At this point one of the tourists raised their
hand. “How do you identify bear droppings?” “That’s simple,” the tour guide
said. “The bear droppings are the ones with all the tiny bells in them.”
A good tour guide will tell you what you need to
know, when you need to know it and will be trustworthy enough to follow into
areas of life we may not understand. This Alaskan tour guide may be
knowledgeable, but would you trust them? Jesus promises the Holy Spirit as our
tour guide, not only to tell us what we need to know when we need to know it,
but also to be trustworthy as we journey through a faith with unanswered
questions.
The Law tells us we won’t understand God, that we
are not good enough because we don’t understand and that we are failures
because we don’t understand. The Law says you are a bad Christian for not
trying harder to fill yourself with the Word of God, for not opening yourself
more to who God is. That’s how the law treats us here. But, Jesus meets us in
this struggle, promises the power of the Holy Spirit, and assures us that this
Spirit will lead us into all truth. We are not the leader, we are the follower.
The Holy Spirit will lead us.
It opens up the future for us. It requires our
discernment, our listening, our watching for, and our trusting of God, but it
opens that future for us. As God continues to reveal himself through the Holy
Spirit, we can trust that the God who Jesus has shown us is still the God that
is continuing to work in our lives. We walk together, openly admitting that
there is much we don’t understand, and God accompanies us on that walk. We may
say that we don’t understand, but God didn’t send the Holy Spirit dependent on
our understanding and God won’t take the Spirit away in those times we are
least able to trust, understand, or persevere. There are many things that work
to defeat us. Live in the confidence that your faith will not be defeated by
the unanswerable but that your faith would be sustained and nurtured by the God
who would freely send his Son to die for you, and his Spirit to enlighten you.
To God be the glory, now and always. Amen.