The Peace of Unknowing

There really is no better reading we could have at this point in our common experience of a pandemic than the one appointed for this week on the second week of Eastertide. Like the disciples who were together behind locked doors for fear of the Jews, we know a bit about being shut up in our houses. We know a little about being afraid of what lies beyond the safety of our own homes. We are afraid of what could be.

And what is true for the disciples is also true for us: Peace cannot be found on either side of the door. Peace cannot come from being shut in for weeks on end. Peace cannot come from being worried about being sick. Peace cannot come from worrying about those who are sick or might become sick. Peace cannot come when we are worried about financial losses. Peace cannot come when we worry about what life will look like when the shutdown ends and we resume our everyday activities. Peace is not to be found in the world of forms; that is, in the physical world we call home: our bodies, our things, our relationships, our money and the things it can buy. Peace comes from somewhere else.

It is my pastoral instinct to want to reassure you that all will be well, that we will all get through this; that life will return to “normal.” I want you to have peace. But peace does not come from words, no matter how well-intended. Peace, as it turns out, isn’t rooted in beliefs either, which keep us tied to the temporal world, the world of forms. Rather, peace comes from faith, which requires far more courage. What is the difference between belief and faith. We shall see in a moment. 

When Jesus appeared to the disciples they were shut in behind locked doors and hemmed in by their fears. “[Jesus brought] peace in the midst of fear. His peace is the fulfillment of his promise. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” (Jn. 14:27). Jesus leaves them peace, and this giving of peace is contrasted with how the world gives…. the world gives and takes away. The security of one moment is replaced by the anxiety of the next moment. The world cannot sustain an abiding peaceful presence. Yet that is precisely how Jesus sees himself, an abiding presence that transcends the vagaries of the world. Jesus does not stop the chaos of the world. Rather he is present within it, calming and untroubling the heart, bringing peace.” (John Shea, Matthew, Yr. A, p.155-56) 

The strange thing here is that the peace Jesus offers comes in the form of an abrupt disruption of belief. Jesus undoes the standing beliefs held by the disciples about the finality of death. Let us recall that the women who met the resurrected Jesus were commanded by him to tell the disciples of his rising, and we can assume that none of them believed the women. They are fearfully locked together in a room after all. Their lack of confidence gives them away. That Jesus should appear there in his body, wounds intact, despite the locked doors is in such conflict with physical laws, that Thomas, who did not see the appearance, makes clear that he will not believe the verbal account of the other disciples but must first see Jesus for himself.  Upon a third appearance, for the benefit of Thomas, not only the women but now all of the disciples experience faith beyond mere belief. 

In 1951 Alan Watts (d. 1973) wrote a little book called The Wisdom of Insecurity during a turning point in his personal life. He had just lost his wife and vocation as an Episcopal priest to a divorce. Here he makes a distinction between belief and faith that is helpful.

“…. belief has come to mean a state of mind which is almost the opposite of faith. Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would “lief” or wish it to be. The believer will open [their] mind to the truth on condition that it fits in with [their] preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go. In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception.

Most of us believe in order to feel secure, in order to make our individual lives seem valuable and meaningful. Belief has thus become an attempt to hang on to life, to grasp and keep it for one’s own. But you cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. Indeed, you cannot grasp it, just as you cannot walk off with a river in a bucket. If you try to capture running water in bucket, it is clear that you do not understand it and that you will always be disappointed, for in the bucket the water does not run. To ‘have’ running water you must let go it and let it run. The same is true of life and of God.” (p.24)

What the disciples experienced in the appearances of Jesus was the dismantling of their deeply held beliefs replaced by an authentic faith. Paradoxically, there is far more peace in the unknowing of faith then the security of beliefs. Peace and faith, it would seem, are inextricably linked. The disciples, at peace and free from the preconceived ideas of religiosity and open to the leading of the Spirit emerged from their room to launch a new sect of Judaism which would morph into Christianity over the next 300 years and continues to this day, albeit in a great number of expressions and interpretations.

Watts continues: “To discover the ultimate Reality of Life – the Absolute, the eternal, God – you must cease to try to grasp it in the form of idols. These idols are not just crude images, such as the mental picture of God as an old gentleman on a golden throne. They are our beliefs, our cherished preconceptions of the truth, which block the unreserved opening of mind and heart to reality…. The principle has not been unknown to Christians, for it was implicit in the whole story and teaching of Christ. His life was from the beginning a complete acceptance and embracing of insecurity…. For the basic theme of the Christ-story is that this “express image” of God becomes the source of life in the very act of being destroyed. To the disciples who tried to cling to his divinity in the form of his human individuality he explained, “Unless a grain of corn fall into the ground and die, it remains alone. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit.” In the same vein he warned them, “It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away the Holy Spirit cannot come unto you.”

Appearing in front of them, mortal wounds intact, Jesus bestowed upon them the Holy Spirit, the wellspring of Peace that passes all understanding. Then they understood. Then they traded the security of belief for the uncertainty of faith. Then they did not cower in a room behind locked doors but emerged into the world empowered not with the assurance of a safe and secure life but with an experience of the truth – the Absolute, the eternal, God.

When the time is right, may we too emerge from the doors that now hold us apart from the world with new imaginings about the possibilities for our human family, our spiritual selves and our community of faith, willfully plunging into the unknown. Let us use this precious time we have been given in this brief pause as a bridge between what was and what will be. Let us claim the promise of peace that comes not in holding fast to what was before but comes rather with an openness to what will be, whatever that might be.