Cloud of Unknowing                            Transfiguration Sunday 2004  Luke 9

The modern mind has difficulty contemplating the mysteries of faith. We assume that faith is just another thing to learn and when we learn it we will know something, something quantifiable, something that we can define and understand and communicate, and if not, if we cannot define it, then it is not worth knowing anyway. This is the arrogance of modernism but this is not faith. Listen to this: In the light of faith we do not seek to unveil or to explain but to perceive and to absorb the rarities of mystery that are gleaming softly from all things; not to know more, but to know what is more than anything we can grasp. (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity) These are the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel one of the great spiritual leaders of the twentieth century. Faith is  knowing that there are things we cannot know. There are things that cannot be explained. There is something more than us.

Both of our readings this morning are reminders of the mysteries of God which we can explain forever and never really know what we are talking about. The typical modern might wonder what the point would be and how significant anything could be that we can't hope to understand or explain but of course that would be the significance to the modern mind, the very suggestion that there is something real that cannot be understood or explained by the modern mind because that shakes the very foundations of modernism itself that everything that is real fits into one category or another of some rational order or, to be fair, if it is not yet understandable it is simply a matter of time and study until it is.  As those who have grown up in the context of the modern world we have naturally felt that faith is faith is something we know and know really well but in fact faith has nothing to do with what we know. Faith is a product of what we don't know and have no hope of knowing. It is, in the words of the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, conviction of things unseen.  It is the unknown, the unseen, the inexplicable, the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, that we place our faith. How is this so?

There is delightful little book, a devotional classic from the middle ages of Christianity called The Cloud of Unknowing written by someone appropriately unknown. This is what the unknown writer says this little book is about (I have elected to not change the language of a classic from the original so please pardon the maleness of it): But how you ask me, "How am I to think of God himself, and what is he?" and I cannot answer you except to say, "I do not know!" For with this question you have brought me into the same darkness, the same cloud of unknowing where I want you to be! For though we through the grace of God can know fully about all other matters, and think about them - yes, even the very works of God himself - yet of God himself can no man think. Therefore I will leave on one side everything I can think, and choose for my love that thing which I cannot think! Why? Because he may be loved, but not thought. By love he can be caught and held, but by thinking never. Therefore, though it may be good sometimes to think particularly about God's kindness and worth, and though it may be enlightening too, and a part of contemplation, yet in the work now before us it must be put down and covered with a cloud of forgetting. And you are to step over it resolutely and eagerly, with a devout and kindling love, and try to penetrate that darkness above you. Strike that thick cloud of unknowing with the sharp dart of longing love, and on no account whatever think of giving up.

And so we part ways with the modern world and its emphasis on thinking our way to God. There is only one way to God and it is love. Think of all the ways it has been said. When asked what is the greatest commandment, Jesus said without pause, Love the Lord your God with all of your heart (Matthew 22.37) Later is disciples would write a further corrective, Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. (I John 4.20) Saint Augustine simplified Christian ethics early on with this radical and I suspect somewhat humorous word, Love God and do what ever you want. He knew as well as anybody that when you love God you want only to please God and you can't please God by causing harm to others or to yourself or to God's creation. When Jesus said he was the truth and the way and the life and no one comes to the Father except by me (John 14.6) this is what he meant. He is love, and the truth and the way and the life is love. In short, no one comes to God except by love. This is not the exclusive word that has been used by some to separate and divide, as in "no one gets to God except through Jesus" (as if anyone had the exclusive right to decide who that is) but rather is a word of radical inclusion inviting all of every creed to love God and thereby come to God. Jesus is the way of love. All who can love can find God. All you need is love. (The Beatles) Love is not so easy as one might think. As we grow older we learn that love has complications. It is not just about what we want. Love is a surrendering as much as it is anything else, a surrendering to the beloved, to what somebody else wants. In the words of First John, We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us - and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. (I John 3.16)

Surrendering is not giving up but opening up, opening up to the unknown, to the uncontrolled, to trust the unseen. It is to walk in the dark as much as it to walk in the light. It is to walk in the dark to the light. I read something this week in a little book called The Education of the Heart, (when it comes to faith education of the mind has its limits but there are no limits to the education of the heart)

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light,

To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,

and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,

and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.   (Wendel Berry)

The words of the poet remind me of that old saying of the sages: If you want to see where you are going, close your eyes and walk in the dark.

What does it mean? Perhaps it simply means that what we can see or think we see or expect to see might distract us from what is real, from who we are, from the God we seek.

It is true in art as well. A painter was asked one time what was the hardest part of the painting and the answer was the part of the canvas where nothing is painted. Is that not like the question of God? What do we do with nothing that is something and may even be everything? Our reason fails to compute this information but love can see in the dark. Some things can only be seen with the eyes of the heart. Faith is such a thing. We will not get there unless we are willing to go where we have never been and unafraid to walk in the dark.

When Jesus met Elijah and Moses on the mountaintop to discuss his departure he was suddenly adorned in dazzling white, a traditional representation of the resurrection. At the same time he is hearing news that the time has come to go and die his resurrection is revealed. After all, the ones who are filling him in have been dead for quite some time and there they are standing before him. surely this is something outside what we know anything about. It says that Peter and the others saw the two men talking to Jesus after they woke up. After they woke up. Peter still asleep in his own way couldn't keep still and spoke for all of us in such a setting by suggesting that they do something, that they build something,  that they in fact try to makes sense of this occasion but he didn't have any idea really what he was talking about. Even the writer of this gospel acknowledges that when he wrote this down. Is that not what we do with religion though? Pave paradise and put up a parking lot.(Joni Mitchell)  Take something as ethereal as Spirit and the light of eternity and build a large structure to hold it. You might as well try and catch the wind. (Donovan) This doesn't mean that beautiful buildings are not appreciated or not wanted but they are not what is holy. What is holy is invisible and unknown, incomprehensible and can only be seen with the eyes of your heart. The danger of this reality is that some will manipulate it to suit there own needs and purposes so it is important to understand that even though we cannot fully comprehend the Spirit of God we can recognize its fruits. Paul in his letter to the Galatians (5.22) got it just right when he described the fruit as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Just try those things on for a while. They feel right. This is what is present where God's Spirit is present. This is how we can know when god is with us. As Paul said, There is no law against such things meaning simply that the Spirit will enforce itself. One cannot be kind and gentle and arrogant and mean at the same time.

Anyway it is probably no accident that as Peter was making his suggestion a cloud overshadowed them. The cloud represents God's imminent presence. It is interesting I think because as you know when you are in a cloud the cloud is not only around you it is touching you. You are so close to the cloud that you can't see it anymore as a cloud apart from yourself. In fact you can't see anything. The cloud of unknowing is full of knowledge but we can't know it. We are surrounded by what we seek, we just don't know it. Just as light which is required for sight when it is too much blinds us, so it is also true that when that which we seek is so much a part of us, we cannot find it. It is like the old saying I heard one time that no matter whom it was that discovered water we know it wasn't a fish. That cloud is a permanent feature of human life. It is all that stands between us and the mysteries of God. The mystery itself touches us and shields our eyes from its glory.

It was out of the cloud that the voice was heard that said to listen to Jesus, the beloved. This is a call to faith, not the faith that is calculated to ensure a certain knowledge that all finally adds up but the faith that is surrounded by a cloud of unknowing, a faith that blocked from seeing and defining and quantifying and limiting has left only one avenue for discourse, the way of love and devotion. And so it is that we are being called to trust what we cannot know, to love even as we are discovering what love is, to go where love will take us even if we don't know where that is.

Even Peter didn't try to explain this experience again. It says they all remained silent but not really. They were silent about what happened because they didn't know what to say but before it was over their lives spoke loudly as those who had been in the presence of God and would never be the same again. Even the stones shall speak of God's glory when all words have gone from the earth.

And so, contrary to our usual intuition, we need not fear the unknown for it is what we do not know that will save us. If anything what we do know should be what frightens us but faith teaches us something else - that beyond what we know and think we know is something more that knows us and is more real than anything else; is in fact what is left when everything else is gone. As Rabbi Heschel put it so beautifully: What is most dear and real is neither known or knowable. In some strange way this knowledge of the cloud of unknowing, this something that is but that we cannot know, is a great relief and a powerful encouragement for living this life that we share here on earth. There is among the peoples of the earth a faith that sees with eyes and mind and has it all figured out, but it is the faith that sees with the heart and only knows how to trust love that will see us through this cloud of unknowing. Thank God for the blessed gift of faith that transcends what we can know and gives us hope that there is more, much more that we can ever know in all our days. Bless your hearts.