When we don't know what we don't know

A sermon on Mark 8:27-38.

[for an audio recording of this sermon, click here. Photo by Stefan Steinbauer on Unsplash.]

I think most of you know that my younger son, Maddox, has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (or ADHD).

He has learned a lot of skills and found the right medications to help him navigate through a world that is mostly designed for neurotypical people, so it is not necessarily obvious to strangers who first meet him now.

But when he was younger, he displayed a lot of the classic behaviors: inability to sit still in class, perseveration on topics that fascinated him, sensory reactivity, and general chaotic energy.

(Some of you will remember one of my first Sunday’s here when 6-year-old Maddox decided that my sermon was a good time to hop around my feet ribbiting like a frog. Yeah. That’s the energy I’m talking about.)

His behaviors were prominent enough that acquaintances, and sometimes strangers, would regularly ask me whether he had ADHD.

And I would say “no.”

Not because I was trying to hide anything, but because I genuinely believed that answer.

I had a very limited idea of what constituted ADHD, and that misunderstanding disqualified him in my mind.

You see, another one of Maddox’s characteristic behaviors as a child was to hyperfocus on activities that interested him: he could sit quietly for HOURS building a Lego creation, or (once he learned to read) consuming books way beyond his expected reading level.

And all I really knew about ADHD at the time was what was in the name: hyperactivity, and attention deficit.

While Maddox could definitely be hyperactive, he could also focus to an astonishing degree, so I assumed there was no way that he could have ADHD.

It wasn’t until Maddox, at 8-years-old, came to me with a book whose characters described what it was like for them to have ADHD, and told me – with a light of self-knowledge shining in his eyes – that this was EXACTLY what it felt like in his brain, that I learned better.

Hyper-focusing, and the attendant struggle to shift activities when attention is engaged, is actually a classic symptom of ADHD.

I had been confidently denying this profound tool for understanding Maddox’s brain because I thought I understood something that I did not understand. I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

I share this story (with Maddox’s permission), because that potential we human beings share to be entirely confident in our ignorance and misunderstandings, is, I think, a key for decoding the otherwise potentially confusing progression in today’s gospel.

This gospel is confusing because it seems to be continually changing its mind about whether or not people should keep quiet about Jesus.

·       It starts with an invitation to talk: Jesus questioning, “who do people say that I am?” and drawing out the various speculative identities that have been proposed.

·       But when Peter delivers the right answer, that Jesus is the Messiah, and we expect the response to be, “Yes. Now go get the word out!” Instead, Jesus tells his followers NOT to tell anyone about him.

·       But then, Jesus immediately starts telling people about himself, not the Messiah identity, but what he knows is coming in reaction to his Messianic ministry.

·       And then it’s Peter who is trying to pull Jesus back and get him to keep quiet.

·       To which Jesus responds with a rebuke to silence Peter.

·       Before Jesus again intentionally gathers an audience in order to warn them against trying to, “save their lives” and being, “ashamed of Jesus and his words.” Essentially warning against self-protective secrecy.

Of course, from our perspective informed by 2,000 years of theology and knowing the whole story of Jesus’s ministry, including what it means for him to be the Messiah, and how that is what Jesus is trying to explain, it’s not too difficult to untangle what is going on.

It’s not revealing anything about Jesus that is the problem.

Jesus knows what to say and what not to say, whereas Peter and his other disciples are don’t have the whole story yet, so they need to keep quiet while he controls the narrative.

But imagine how it seemed from INSIDE the story.

Imagine how confusing this would have been if you were Peter… and you didn’t know what you didn’t know.

Imagine going from being the only one who got the right answer and the ego hit of that confidence, to being told to sit down and shut up when you tried to act on your knowledge.

That’s got to be some serious emotional whiplash!

And then to have Jesus exhorting everyone to “not be ashamed of my words” … at least strongly suggesting that they are supposed to witness about Jesus after all.

I think it would be fair for Peter to be confused.

To Peter it would seem inconsistent, even incoherent… because Peter is missing the key knowledge of what he doesn’t know.

Peter was operating from the assumption that when he proclaimed Jesus’s identity as the Messiah, he knew what that meant.

His expectations for what came next were built on that error.

But Jesus knows that if Peter were to start witnessing right away, he would be getting all kinds of things wrong.

Because Peter’s idea of a Messiah was not someone who would be rejected and killed.

He didn’t understand that the path to freedom came through resurrection.

And not only did he not know this, he didn’t know that he didn’t know. He was utterly confident in his misunderstanding.

Just like I was completely confident that my child with textbook ADHD symptoms was neurotypical and just high energy.

I’m telling on myself in my example because I want to be crystal clear that I have no high horse to ride on when it comes to confident ignorance… and also because that experience offers the antidote to the error.

It’s as simple as a willingness to learn.

When other people asked me questions, I assumed the role of the expert.

Maddox was my son, after all. I should know about my son.

But when Maddox came to me not with a question, but with his own testimony…

When he gathered evidence (from Harold & George in the Captain Underpants books) and asked me to re-examine my assumptions…

When he challenged me to be willing to consider that there might be something I didn’t know…

 He gave me the chance to learn, for which I am so grateful.

And I think that Jesus is giving his followers, which includes each of us, the same chance in this gospel.

He gives us the chance to learn by explaining what it means for him to be our Messiah…

By saying it looks like suffering, and being rejected and killed by the systems of power,

But, also, that it looks like resurrection, like being freed from old patterns for which we couldn’t imagine an alternative, so that LIFE can spring forth.

He also gives us the chance to learn by calling us to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him.

Self-denial is something that I think we tend to associate with physical deprivations, just like we associate a cross with some kind of palpable, bodily suffering.

But sometimes the hardest things to let go of are our ideas, our assumptions about what we know is true, our self-perception as experts about the things we care about.

Maybe denying ourselves is not necessarily a material action but a mental and emotional one: a willingness to follow Jesus into unexpected places, a willingness to reexamine things that we thought we knew.

I won’t pretend that such an invitation is an easy one to answer.

The difficulty of that challenge is, in fact, the reason that the elders and chief priests had Jesus killed… because he was calling them to let go of their certainty about what they were sure they knew about God.

It’s also the reason that Jesus called Peter Satan… when Peter was so certain that he knew what the Messiah’s path would be and Jesus needed to shock him out of that certainty.

And the humility it requires to deny our own assumptions of knowledge are the polar opposite of what our own culture of partisan posturing and rigid opinions regardless of evidence holds up as our example to follow.

But that kind of toxic certainty that we already know what we need to know…

that we don’t have to keep listening and learning,

that we don’t have to consider new ideas that could challenge our assumptions…

That is the opposite of denying ourselves and following Jesus.

The good news is that when Jesus called Peter Satan, he did NOT shut the door on the chance to learn.

Instead, he said “get behind me.”

As in, the position from which we can follow.

And we always have that option. The option of putting down our certainty, denying our self-satisfaction, and learning how to follow.

We will probably experience some confusion in the process. We will definitely get some things wrong.

But when we put to death our ego, we make room for resurrection into new life.

Thanks be to God.