Luke 7:18-35

Y’all, I’m tired. I’m weary.

It’s that point in the semester when I wonder why I’m here. I wonder what I’m learning, or why I’m learning, or what I know or really, what exactly it means to know.

Honestly, my first few read throughs of today’s gospel didn’t really help much with the Am I learning question. Professor Lin’s Intro to New Testament lectures, somehow, didn’t cover these particular verses.

Thankfully, people in today’s gospel also seem to be struggling with knowing.

Are you the one who is to come? Or are we to wait for another?

What did you go out to look at? Who did you go to see? A Prophet?

Are you the one who is to come? Or are we to wait for another?

Yes, I tell you. I am sending a messenger. I tell you. 

Are you the one who is to come? Or are we to wait for another?

Oh you are like children!

Makes zoom classes seem tame.

Clearly, I’m not the only one who wrestles with the concept of knowing. Even the ones who see and hear in this passage struggle. So what does it mean to know?

Here, knowledge seems to require a physical experience. Those who have been healed, whose bodies have been transformed. Those who have been baptized. Those who choose to eat and drink with John and Jesus. These are the ones who find wisdom, who trust what they’ve learned, they know in their bodies.

What do I know in my body? 

I know my shared baptism when I dip my fingers in holy water. I know creation when I run through smells of falling leaves. I know patriarchy as I press, prod and reshape my gendered curves to avoid institutional discomforts. I know community through the hunger for a shared meal. 

There are things that I do not know in my body. I do not know what it is like to sit in St. Luke's chapel surrounded by the voices of this incoming class. I do not know motherhood through the embrace of a child. I do not know what it is like to fear that my breath might be taken away between a knee and the pavement, I do not know what it is like to fear that my life might be taken away in my sleep, without any reason or cause, and then without any justice.

I do not know. 

So, what, then does it mean to learn. Why are we here?

Friends, look. Look at these faces, the ones present in this space, and note the ones that are not, that are unable to be here for various personal social institutional reasons. Look at these faces that you know, that have come to know you. Feel, feel the ache of not being in one another's presence and yet the comfort of resonant voices and familiar tunes. Are we not here to come to know Christ in and through community, in our bodies, through one another? This is what we are learning, this is how we know. 

We are coming to know the body of Christ through one another, in presence and absence, in hunger and thirst.

You should probably still study for that Old Testament exam and finish the paper for History of Early Christianity. These stories of learning inform our current journeys. 

But as you read the tales of the patriarchs, as you wade through the dilemmas of the councils, take moments to look at the faces, to watch the sun rise, to be aware of your own surfaces, to find grace in your body.

We are here to learn, so that the love of Christ incarnate may be known. 

Amen