February 8, 2026 - Fifth Sunday after Epiphany: Know What You Do Not Know

February 8, 2026  Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
First Kings 19:9-15 and First Corinthians 1:18-31
“Know What You Do Not Know”
Douglas T. King

How do we learn?  How do we grow?  How do we mature?  Oftentimes, the first step in learning anything is recognizing everything we actually do not know.  

As people of faith we are called to continue to move forward into becoming the people God has created us to be.  It is a lifelong effort and no small task.  On our spiritual journeys the first step of acknowledging everything we do not know is called via negativa.  Via negative is the way of negation.  It refers to approaching the divine by seeking to remove all of the finite and limiting ways we seek to understand who God is.  It leans into the ineffability of God.

For us, the idea of Jesus Christ dying on the cross is an essential element of our understanding of who God is and how God loves us.  It functions as an assumption of the Christian faith.  But if we take a step back we can view the absurdity of the concept.  How do we reconcile God’s omnipotence with a mortal man dying?  The Jewish people had been waiting for generations for a victorious, warrior savior.  How could the Son of God possibly be hanging lifeless and limp on a cross?  Omnipotence and the deepest of vulnerability present in the same entity?  It is absurdity taken to the greatest of heights.  

In the Zen Buddhist tradition the very notion of God on the cross might be considered a koan; a concept of such deep paradox  that it flushes out all of the preconceptions one might have. The zen koan of “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” has nothing on the idea of an eternal God dying.

If we bring fresh eyes to our God on the cross it should challenge all of our assumptions about who God is.  It should empty us of all of the preconceived notions we have accrued and compiled into our sure theological answers.  

It is good for us to periodically shake the etch-a-sketch portraits we each carry in our mind about God.  In the book of Philippians we hear of Jesus engaging in what is called in the Greek, kenosis, self-emptying himself as he steps into his humanity.  Paul writes, Jesus, “did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself…”  We too are called to a form of kenosis, emptying ourselves of our egos to draw closer to God.  And part of our egos are the assumptions, however well thought out they may be, about who God truly is.  When we cling too tightly to our image of God we run the risk of not worshipping the actual living God who is beyond all human understanding and instead worshipping Gods of our own making.  We run the risk of not seeking to live into our calling as being created in the image of God but creating a God in our own image.  

The mystic Meister Eckhart wrote often about our need to become empty vessels that God’s Spirit can more fully find a home within us. He also wrote, “Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.”  If we wish to grow in our understanding of God we might need to take a step back to take a step forward.  Of course we are not called to abandon what we believe.  But what if we brought fresh eyes to it?  What if we read scripture as if we were reading it for the first time; if we stripped away our assumptions of what we think we know it says?  What if instead of the prayers we offer up daily we sat in silence and just listened for the Spirit’s movement in our minds?

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche describes three stages of spiritual development, the camel, the lion, and the child.  The camel learns all there is to learn of the inherited wisdom offered to us.  The lion roars a loud “no” to all of it and slays the tradition.  And the child arises in all innocence with a cry of sacred “yes” and an openness to discovering the deepest truths, unencumbered by assumptions.  

Now Nietzsche was not a Christian but in the gospel of Mark we do hear Jesus proclaim, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of heaven as a little child will never enter it.”  When we come before the divine removed from assumptions we are open to receiving the living God who is beyond all of our preconceived notions.    

During the time when it was thought God would demonstrate the divine presence through mighty acts of nature, Elijah is up on the mountaintop awaiting God’s presence.  A great wind, so strong it is splitting mountains, arises, but God was not in the wind.  An earthquake shakes every foundation, but God was not in the earthquake.  A great fire erupted, but God was not in the fire.  Then a sound of sheer silence settled upon Elijah, and in that, God was present.  Indeed.  When we are deeply faithful to God we allow ourselves to be surprised by who God is and how God may be at work in our lives.  

As people of Christ on the cross, we are a part of a faith tradition that made a radical renunciation of all previous understandings of the Messiah.  And in doing so our eyes have been opened to the remarkable gift of God’s grace.

If we began every time of prayer as if we were meeting God for the first time; if we entered into each worship service as if we were meeting God for the first time; if we read scripture as if we were meeting God for the first time who knows what might be revealed to us?  If I had to proffer a guess it would be that we just might find ourselves face-to-face with the living God who is beyond all of our limited understandings.  

The theologian, Thomas Aquinas wrote, “Then alone do we know God truly, when we believe that God is far beyond all that we can possibly think of God.”

The religious scholar David Bentley Hart wrote, “Wisdom is the recovery of innocence at the far end of experience; it is the ability to see again what most of us have forgotten how to see…” (Hart, p. 200 Wiman, Bone)

Now, if some of this feels a little too far out for us staid Presbyterians, I would remind us that we are a people of the Reformed tradition. The phrase Reformed tradition is a bit of an oxymoron.  One of the tenets of our Reformed tradition is that we continually question our tradition.  We are Reformed and always reforming.  In other words, we believe that God continues to speak to us in new ways in every generation helping us understand who God is and who we are called to be in every new context.  

As we enter into each new day, let us do so as if we are meeting God for the first time.  Let us open your eyes and ears and hearts to the God we have yet to experience.  Let us allow the divine to surprise and refresh us in ways we have yet to imagine.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.    
 
Wiman, Christian, Zero at the Bone, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, 2023.