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Yada, yada
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
Tuesday in the Octave of Easter
Acts 2, John 20
Peter told the people, “Let the whole house of Israel know for certain that God has made Jesus both Lord and Christ. This Jesus whom you crucified.” … Jesus said to Mary Magdalene, “Go to my brothers and tell them I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”
Jews listening to Peter – surely some of them challenged his words, “Know for certain.” Pilate wasn’t the only one to ask, “What is truth?” What can we know for certain?
No wonder science is so seductive. 2 plus 2 is four. Desire for mathematical certainty extends itself into the micro and macro worlds of our inhabitance. Gravity will surely bring me down. I can be certain about that.
We have been uncertain about certainty since the Fall, so painfully described in the story of Adam and Eve. In chapter one of his book Death on a Friday Afternoon, Richard Neuhaus describes before and after:
Before what we call the “fall” they knew the good in the fullest way of knowing, which is to say that they DID the good, they lived the good. They knew the good honestly, straightforwardly, simply, uncomplicatedly, without shame … Now they know no longer simply and directly, but reflexively; now they know in the consciousness of knowing.
This affects how we know God. The second-guessing, self-conscious mind is mostly not a mark of maturity but a womb for the false self, for what we usually call the ego. Our world is the only world that matters. You do your thing, and I’ll do mine. God watches, patiently or not.
True knowledge of the good is a way of knowing that is, in the words of Jesus, loving the Lord our God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind … The Hebrew verb yada, “to know” is rich in meanings, including to aspire to create our own truth.
God walks in our garden and does not shy from asking questions about our own truth, if we would only answer him when he calls. “Where are you, Adam?”
So the questions come at us. Who told us we are naked? Who so complexified our existence? From where did we get this reflexive knowledge so that we no longer simply know, but know only our act of knowing? … Where are you, my prodigal son Adam? Into what distant country have you gone? The questions come at each of us.
Peter cuts through it all. “Let the whole house of Israel know for certain!” Jesus is sure of what he knows. “I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Our treasured “knowledge of good and evil” is thrown out with the bathwater. “My precious” – even the ring is proven worthless. This visitation of God, the resurrection of Jesus, has thrown an infinite wrench into the finite works of the serpent.
We can know for sure again. All we have to do is answer God when he calls. “Where are you?”
Here I am, Lord.
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