Four Ways of Knowing God: Sermon for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B (Feb. 26, 2006)

In the twelfth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Mark, a scribe asks Jesus, "What is the greatest commandment?" Jesus's answer, which we know as "The Summary of the Law" is this:

Jesus answered, "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:29-31)

Jesus here outlines four ways of knowing and loving God: with your heart, with your soul, with your mind, and with your strength.

In the eighth and ninth chapter of Mark’s Gospel, from which we read the story of the Transfiguration this morning, the Evangelist gives us examples of each of these ways of knowing. Indeed, Mark leads us through a logical progression such as an inquirer into the Christian faith might experience as he or she explores and then experiences a relationship with God in the Person of Jesus Christ.

In today's Gospel reading, Mark first makes reference to something which happened earlier, six days earlier to be precise. This antecedent event was a conversation initiated by Jesus who asked his closest disciples, "Who do people say I am?" (Mark 8:27) After some repartee about public speculation, Jesus put the Twelve on the spot and asked, "But who do you say I am?" In answer to this, Simon Peter blurted out, "You are the Messiah." (Mark 8:29) And this illustrates the first way of knowing ... with one's mind.

This first way of knowing is the one most familiar to us who live in the scientific age: intellectual assent, the acceptance of a proposition as true. "Jesus is the Messiah." One may know a lot of things in this way. I know, for example, that the earth orbits the sun, that viruses cause disease, that Beijing is the capital of the People's Republic of China, and that George Washington was the first President of the United States. I know none of these things because of direct, personal observation, nor do I know them as a result of some mystical or miraculous occurrence. I know them because I have accepted the propositions as true; that is, I have intellectually assented to the validity of these statements.

From time to time I find evangelistic pamphlets and fliers tucked under my car's windshield wipers or left on the counters of public rest rooms in which I am instructed on how to become a "saved" person. All I need do, say these pamphlets is say, "Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior." I suggest to you that the pamphlets are wrong. That sort of intellectual assent falls quite a bit short of the saving faith to which Christians are truly called. It is, in reality, merely a modern version of the ancient heresy called "Gnosticism."

Gnosticism was a religion of salvation through knowledge; the word "gnosticism" derives from the Greek word for knowledge, gnosiV (gnosis). The gnostic claimed to know God, but was only concerned with intellectual knowledge, with mental assent to certain truths; moral behavior was not critical. The evangelicals who distribute those pamphlets today are interpreting salvation in these terms, defining the essentials of saving faith as mere intellectual assent. St. Paul refers to such salvation by knowledge as "falsely called knowledge" (1 Tim 6:20) in contrast to "the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness" (Tit 1:1).

Gnosticism and other heterodox teachings were defined as heresies not because they were necessarily wrong, but because they were incomplete. Assent to the proposition, "Jesus is the Messiah" or "Jesus is my Lord and Savior" is not wrong, but it falls short of loving God not only with one's mind, but with one's heart, one's soul, and one's strength. It is merely a first step along the pilgrimage of the Christian life.

As St. Mark leads us along that path, we come to Chapter Nine of his Gospel where we come to the second way of knowing and loving God, the way illustrated by the event he describes first in today's Gospel reading, through mystical revelation, the "AHA!" experience. Not every "AHA!" experience is as dramatic as the vision of Jesus with Moses and Elijah seen by Simon Peter, James and John. Nor does every "AHA!" experience reveal a profound truth.

The story of an "AHA!" experience is told about Oliver Wendell Holmes, Senior, who was a surgeon. He was very interested in the use of ether, but felt he should know how his patients would feel under its influence, so he had a dose administered to himself. As he was going under, in a dreamy state, a profound thought came to him. He believed that he had suddenly grasped the key to all the mysteries of the universe. When he regained consciousness, however, he was unable to remember what the insight was. Because of the great importance this thought would be to mankind, Holmes arranged to have himself given either again. This time he had a stenographer present to take down the great thought. The ether was administered, and sure enough, just before passing out the insight reappeared. He mumbled the words, the stenographer took them down, and he went to sleep confident in the knowledge that he had succeeded. Upon awakening, he turned eagerly to the stenographer and asked her to read what he had uttered. This is what she read: "The entire universe is permeated with a strong odor of turpentine."

This is why mystical insights should not be accepted uncritically. However, they can offer hypotheses worth serious consideration. As a general rule, mystical insights do not contradict the facts known from sensory perception. Rather, they enable us to see new connections, to make new interpretations of ordinary experiences, and to add new dimensions of emotionality, value, and morality to our lives. Peter had intellectually assented that Jesus was "the Messiah, the Son of the Living God;" the mystical experience on the mountain top added a spiritual three- dimensionality to that proposition.

Each of us can and most of us do experience "AHA!" moments in our lives. They may not be as dramatic as the Transfiguration, but we all have had those moments of insight when the Universe just comes together and makes sense, when we know that God is "there for us." Mystical revelation is authoritative for the person who experiences it. The mystic's values, behavior, and life course are completely changed by a mystical revelation. He takes the step of loving God with all his soul.

But it is just that, a step ... the "AHA!" experience, the mystical event on the mountain top, passes ... the change in our values, in our behavior, in our life, may be permanent, but the event is not. That is why Jesus does not let Peter concretize the Transfiguration by the building of "dwellings," that is why Jesus leads Peter, James and John down off the mountain.

If we were to read further in Mark’s story, instead of stopping our reading at the descent from the mountain, we come to the story of Jesus's healing of an epileptic boy, in which the third and fourth ways of knowing and loving God are illustrated.

As related by Mark, Jesus, Peter, James and John join the rest of the Twelve together with a larger crowd. A man whose son is possessed by a convulsive spirit, that is, an epileptic, begs Jesus to cure him, which he does. St. Luke, who also tells this story, tells us that all who witness the healing "were astounded at the greatness of God." (Luke 9:43) This is the third way of coming to know God, through indirect revelation. Where a mystical experience is a direct revelation to the soul, a miracle indirectly reveals God to us through God's actions. Coming to know God in this manner is what Jesus spoke of as "loving God with all your heart." (Mk 12:30)

According the theologian Karl Rahner, the term "heart" was used in the primitive anthropology of Jesus's time to refer to the "dynamic principle which drives man to seek ultimate understanding." (K. Rahner, Dictionary of Theology, Crossroad 1990, pg. 203.) It is the heart which perceives the miraculous. A miracle, says Rahner, "is no lawless, arbitrary display of God's omnipotence." Rather, it is "part of a universal context of saving history" confirming that we are "called to the companionship of God." (Ibid., pg. 310.)

It is important for us to note that the word "miracle" is never used in the Bible. In the New Testament, what we call the "miracles of Christ," are most commonly referred to by the Greek was terata (terata). This word literally means "wonders," referring to feelings of amazement excited by their occurrence. We have all known the experience of something "touching our hearts." Our presiding bishop, Frank Griswold, has written of the heart being "permeable to God's presence and God's mystery." (F. Griswold, Listening with the Ear of the Heart, Cross Currents, Winter 1998-99, Vol. 49, No.1.) Bishop Griswold reminds us that "The prologue of the Rule of St. Benedict begins: 'Listen carefully . . . . and incline the ear of your heart.'" (Ibid.) If we do that, if we listen with the ear of our heart, if we allow our hearts to be touched, we will behold the miraculous, the wonder-full in everything around us. In the words of St. Isaac of Nineveh, our hearts will "burn with love for the whole of creation, for humankind, for the birds, for the beasts, for the demons: for every creature." In that way, we will "love God with our whole heart."

Finally, Mark illustrates what it is to come to know and love God with "our whole strength." The Greek word used in St. Mark's Gospel is iscuV (iskhus), which means not only "strength," but also "power" and "ability." To love with all of one's iscuV is to love with everything one has; one might say that it is to love with one's whole being. This fourth and most direct way to know and love God is shown in the experience of the epileptic boy; to know and love God with all of one's being is to be set free, to be personally liberated by God from the demons which enslave us as the boy was set free from the convulsive spirit which possessed him.

This then is the path along which Mark brings us, from the first step of accepting with our minds the proposition that Jesus is the Son of God, through a mystical encounter with the Christ, to witnessing the effects of his love in the lives of others and, finally, to our own being set free from what Paul called "the bondage of sin." This is four-fold experience of knowledge and love is what Paul describes in Today’s Epistle as light shining in the darkness, shining “in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

"Where the Spirit of the Lord is," Paul wrote in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians, "there is freedom." (2 Cor. 3:17)

But being freed from sin is not the end of the journey. Indeed, it is only the beginning! If we were to read further in Mark's Chapter Nine, we would come verses 30 and 31 in which Mark writes:

They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, "The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again."

In other words, Jesus set out with firm determination to follow the route that would eventually lead to Calvary and his crucifixion.

If we truly love God with all our mind, assenting that Jesus is our Savior and our Lord ... if we truly love God with all our soul, encountering him in Spirit and mystery on the mountain tops of our lives ... if we truly love God with all our heart, witnessing with wonder God at work in the world around us ... if we truly love God with all our strength, set free to follow him with our whole being ... we will go that way with him. We will follow the road to Calvary, bringing the love and power of God into the lives of others and, if called upon to do so, willingly giving up our lives for the good of others.

The journey starts today.... It starts every day.... Every minute.... Amen.