Let Not Your Hearts Be Troubled | A Sermon on the Myth of Certainty
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on The Fifth Sunday of Easter (A), May 7, 2023.
Acts 7:55-60; Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14
This morning, we are treated to a small part of what is commonly referred to as “the farewell discourse” in the Gospel of John. Context is always important, and it is especially important here. The cross is looming, and the time has come for last words and last things.
Jesus draws those around him close, those faithful disciples who have struggled, followed, loved, risked, lived with Jesus. He draws them close, knowing that he is going to be arrested and put to death, and he says to them, in a few different ways: Soon I won’t be with you anymore. Soon you’ll look for me but won’t see me. Soon you’ll reach for me but won’t find me. Not in the ways that you’ve come to expect.
He seems to say, soon you may be angry. Disappointed. Confused. Discouraged. Isolated. Disbelieving. Afraid. Despairing. Hopeless.
Soon, you will grieve.
Jesus seems to acknowledge all of this –the complexity of emotions that will stir in the disciples’ hearts, minds, and bodies (that are already stirring) –acknowledging those realities and speaking to them a word of comfort, hope, and certainty:
Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me (John 14:1).
Jesus draws those around him close, those faithful disciples, and us. Me. And you. These words are for our ears –our hearts—too. And with all that is happening in the world around us, we need them desperately.
Reports out of Allen, Texas of another mass shooting. At least nine dead in the second-deadliest shooting of the year. This is the 199-mass shooting of 2023. So many. Tragedy upon tragedy, they’ve become expected –the shock and pain dulled by familiarity. And yet, we know that each individual child of God is loss grieved by our God –grieved as if he, she, they are the one and only.
In our grief, fear, confusion, apathy, outrage, indifference Jesus draws us close and says:
Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.
My heart is troubled. I bet some of your hearts are troubled. What are we make of this?
Looking to the disciples’ responses, Jesus’ words raise questions. His directive, Let not your hearts be troubled, made in no uncertain terms, does not, as it turns out, instantly un-trouble any hearts. So we are not alone.
If we look back just a few verses before where this morning’s Gospel begins, we get Simon Peter asking:
Lord, where are you going, and can I come?
And Jesus says, Where I am going you cannot follow (John 13:36).
But, Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.
Thomas, dear Thomas, then speaks up:
Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way? And Jesus says, You know the way. I am the way.
And Philip, not long after:
Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied.
And Jesus says, You have seen the father; I am in him and he is in me (John 14:8-10).
Let not your hearts be troubled.
There are certain times in our lives -both individual and collective- where we are forced to confront the myth of certainty that pervades the human experience.
The myth of certainty:
The idea that we can know what lies ahead of us at any point in our lives.
The idea that we can control what happens next.
The idea that we are in the know about anything and everything.
The myth of certainty is a close cousin, of course, to our obsession with power and our comfort with control.
I was speaking with a parishioner in the very early days of the pandemic. We were talking about this very thing – not knowing what was in store for the next few months. And as so often happens in these conversations, I found myself on the receiving end of a very astute and deeply faithful observation: “Well,” my conversation partner said, “we don’t ever really know what the future holds for us. Do we? We think we know. We want to believe we know. But we don’t know what will happen, even tomorrow, even in so-called normal times.”
The myth of certainty. It is only a myth, after all. The global pandemic certainly pulled back the curtain, so to speak, giving us a glimpse of the truth. And yet, our desperation to shore up what we know, to get more information, to put our anxieties to rest, to predict and to plan and to plead was also on full display.
Incessant acts of gun violence undermine our so-called certainty and self-reliance even further, chipping away at any attempt we may make to hunker down in a safety or serenity of our own making.
Where are you going and can I come?
How do I know the way?
Can I see? Can you show me more?
Thomas Merton’s, The Wisdom of the Desert, is a collection of early monastic stories. There is one story that I’d like to share. It goes like this:
Some elders once came to Abbot Anthony, and there was with them also Abbot Joseph. Wishing to test them, Abbot Anthony brought the conversation around to Holy Scriptures. And he began from the youngest to ask them the meaning of this or that text. Each one replied as best he could, but Abbot Anthony said to them: ‘You have not got it yet.’ After them all he asked Abbot Joseph: ‘What about you? What do you say the text means?’ Abbot Joseph replied: “I know not.” Then Abbot Anthony said, “Truly Abbot Joseph alone has found the way, for he replies that he knows not.” [1]
That is the truth of it, isn’t it: We know not. We want to know. We need to know. But we know not.
Like Peter, Thomas, and Philip, we issue our questions and seek a certainty that makes sense to us – one that we can use to plan and to act. We are, after all, only human. And planning and acting is necessary in this world. And yet, what we crave, what we long for, the source and substance of our true craving, is something else entirely. It is for the presence and healing love of God found in Jesus Christ himself, pure, spiritual milk.
Jesus who knows our human failings and limitations. Jesus who foresees our grief, who tolerates our questions, who loves us to the end. Jesus who first goes to prepare a place for us and then will return, taking us by the hand, so that where he is we may be also.
We are invited in our uncertainty and even our fear to look and to seek in ways we might not have before. To notice how God is always doing a new thing. To recognize how our need for certainty, our sometimes too swift reactions to uncertain situations, can cause us to overlook the many ways God meets us in the in between, in the not yet, in the not now. What can feel like chaos to us can be the raw ingredients of God’s creating.
So while I am very glad indeed that we have moved through the worst of the pandemic, I also call attention to one gift of that time: our confrontation with uncertainty and God’s work within it and within us. And I hope that as we continue to navigate this uncertain world, that we grasp tightly the only thing that can be known with certainty: our Lord Jesus who is the way, the truth, and the life.
Friends, it remains Easter. And yet we are this morning reminded of Jesus’ farewell discourse. Of last words. Last things. Because even where the resurrection truth is known and celebrated, our lives are still marked by human limitation and fragility as we are reminded today by the news out of Texas and everyday by the event of our world. We, a people who know not, will always seek to know it all. But here is the good news. By the Grace of God, we follow a Jesus who knows all and asks only that we know him, taking the next faithful step forward in love –faith in action.
[1] Thomas Merton, “The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings of the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century” (New Directions, 1970), LXXXVIII.
