Back to sermons

Phil Blackwell

“The Unknown Knowns”
I Samuel 3:1-20, John 1:43-51

Sermon – 2012-01-15

When Martin Luther King, Jr., moved to Chicago in 1966 to demonstrate for fair housing in the city, he found it to be the most racially-segregated city in America. He said so, and he took a brick to the head for saying it. He told us what we already knew but had tried so hard to forget.

That is the role of a prophet. A prophet does not foretell the future but rather forth-tells the truth. “As night follows day, if we do not confront the racism at the heart of this city there will be a violent convulsion.” We did not, and there was. That is the role of the Church, too, to be a prophetic voice in a society that does not necessarily want to hear the truth that it knows but yearns to forget, the truth that for our purposes this morning I am calling “The Unknown Knowns.

The sermon title is a twist on Donald Rumsfeld’s tortured justification for invading Iraq. Remember that he said, “There are known knowns . . . there are known unknowns . . . and there are also unknown unknowns.” But what he ignored is that there were people who knew information that they did not want others to know, the “unknown knowns.” There were people who knew that there was no storehouse of weapons, the reason presented for precipitating the war. There were people who knew that we would not be welcomed with open arms when we swooped down the streets of Baghdad. There were people who knew that the war had not yet begun when the President stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier and declared “mission accomplished.” But they did not want the rest of us to know, and truthfully, many of us suspected the truth but preferred not to hear it, content with our own state of unknowing.

Hiding from the truth is not just related to war. There were people at Penn State who knew what was happening in the shower rooms, but they pretended not to know. There were people in the Vatican who knew what was happening in the sacristy, but they hid the truth. There were people at Lehmann Brothers who knew but chose amnesia over truth-telling. There were people who could prove that Bernie Madoff’s numbers did not add up, but as long as people were receiving incredible, literally “not believable” returns, they chose not to know. Beware of the Unknown Knowns.

Old man Eli in the episode from I Samuel had a hard time seeing the truth at first. In fact, we are told, he had a hard time seeing anything. “At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room.” Eli was the patriarch of a family that oversaw the keeping alive of the sacred flame of God’s presence in the temple. The people of the community would bring the oil which kept the light burning over the ark of God.

But it was a hard time for the people of faith. We are told that the word of the Lord was rare in those days. Eli was neglecting his duties. He accused Hannah of being drunk while she only was praying silently but moving her lips. And the prayer? The one we noted just before Christmas as the prototype for Mary’s “Magnificat.” “My heart exults in the Lord; my strength is exalted in my God.” And Eli reviles that as ramblings of an inebriated woman.

The priests were taking the meat offered as a sacrifice to God and carving off the best pieces for their dinner. Eli’s sons effectively turned the temple into a brothel, and all he can do is say, “That’s not nice, boys.”

The sacred light was flickering, almost out, but not quite. Samuel, Hannah’s son, entrusted to the temple under Eli’s care as the first born, Samuel the young child begins to hear what Eli long ago had become deaf to – the voice of God. “Samuel! Samuel!” And the boy awakens in the night and cries out, “Here I am!” and runs to Eli. He thinks that it is Eli calling his name, not God. It does not occur to Eli either. “I did not call you, my son; go and lie down again.”

Three times this happens, and the third time it begins to dawn on Eli that something special is going on. “Samuel, the next time you hear the voice calling you name, answer, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’”

So, he does, and he gets an earful. God reveals to the young boy what Eli already knows but conveniently has forgotten – that the House of Eli is doomed. God says, “I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle. On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. For I have told him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them.” And there is no sacrifice, no offering, that Eli’s family can present to God to undo this awful truth. Eli is reminded of his unknown knowns by the boy prophet, Samuel.

Often this episode is read to children in the Church, with the punch line being, “See, God likes children and can even use children to accomplish God’s purposes. God is calling you to be a good, little Christian. Can you hear God calling? How do you answer?’ But in its context this is not about Samuel but about Eli. It is a dreadful oracle against the entire household not fit for children’s understanding.

Can we admit that the Church not only has a prophetic role to point out the truth when it is conveniently being forgotten, the unknown knowns of our society, but also sometimes the Church is the target of such prophesy? That the Church has its own hidden cache of unknown knowns?

One of the enduring documents from Martin Luther King, Jr., is his “Letter from the Birmingham City Jail.” To whom was this letter addressed? Not to the bigots of the South or the racists of the North. It was addressed to a group of clergy in Birmingham who were treating Dr. King as an outside agitator and telling him to back off and let them bring integration their way, slow and easy. Behind their slow and easy approach Dr. King saw an unknown known. So, like God calling out to Samuel, Dr. King “calls out” these clergy.

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor,” he writes. “It must be demanded by the oppressed.”

He extends the warning that “a negative peace which is the absence of tension” is less than “a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

And then, he has that insight made most clear to one sitting in jail, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”

And here comes his lament about the Church. “The contemporary Church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the Church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.”

And then, the dream. Not the dream from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, but from the jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, a dream that showed that the light of God’s vision had not gone out in Dr. King’s eyes, a dream not of wishful thinking but of profound revelation. He expresses the “hope that dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.” What we can see when we claim the truths that we know.

I wrote a letter last week, too, but it is very modest compared to what we just have heard. I did not write it from jail but from my office up in the parsonage in the church steeple, perhaps the only thing lofty about it. But I felt a need to be sure that we do not conveniently forget certain truths as the city prepares to host the G-8 and NATO summits on the third weekend of May. There have been some suggestions coming from across the street in City Hall that several steps will be taken to limit public movement and participation that weekend, and that those restrictions would stay in place indefinitely afterward. So, I wrote:

“I have lived across the street from Daley Plaza for 10 years. During that time I have seen and heard:

Tea Party protesters, War-in-Iraq objectors, Halloween clowns, Whirling Dervishes, Blackhawks celebrators, World Cup spectators, Christmas ornament purchasers, 21-gun salutes, children sliding down the Picasso, wedding couples being photographed at the fountain, movie casts playing their roles, people who are homeless sleeping on benches, farmers selling produce, gun violence opponents bowing in silence, hundreds of bicyclists ready to command the streets, blues, country, gospel, and jazz musicians, workers sunning at lunchtime, Sox fans rejoicing, sister-city promoters, crèches, menorahs, and crescents and stars, and placard-carrying/bullhorn-proclaiming/marching stalwarts for most everything.

Daley Plaza is the public square in Chicago. As the Mayor and City Council discuss circumscribing the people’s use of the plaza during the summits coming in May and then extending the limitations indefinitely, the question is: Do they have any capacity for nuance? The first indication suggests that the answer is, ‘No.’”

I shared the letter with a columnist from the Sun-Times, who make a good show of it in his Wednesday column. I am not suggesting that certain precautions ought not to be taken. I am not naive enough intentionally to forget that there will be people coming to Chicago that weekend to wreak havoc and do damage. I am not oblivious to the fact that we sit right at the heart of the city and look more like a bank than a church. I simply am saying that this is no time conveniently to forget what makes public space “public” and free speech “free.” It is a gentle reminder that we cannot afford to have any unknown knowns.

In the gospel account for today Philip sees Nathanael and says, “I have seen the messiah, the one about whom Moses said embodies all that is in the law and the prophets. It is Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” And Nathanael sneers, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Stereotyping, prejudice, maybe even racism, or at least regionalism of a sort. And Philip says, “Come and see.” Come and see for yourself. Come and see the truth made known to you in Jesus the Christ.

“Know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” We claim that, but then there is no room for unknown knowns, no place for shutting our eyes to unpleasant realities, even those that are part of the Church, and no hiding from the Church’s responsibility for shining light, the light of Christ’s love, on a world so fearful that it is selective in vision.

The role of the prophet, of the prophetic community, is to invite people to “come and see,” and thereby know the whole truth that ultimately, if not easily, will make us free. Amen.