Often we just don’t get it.
Saint Thomas Aquinas, in a rather famous prayer of his, spoke of the “twofold darkness” into which all humanity is born—that is, the darkness of “sin and ignorance.”[1] Again and again, it seems, we miss the point. We fail to understand. As a preacher, I have learned not to assume people get it. As a person, I have learned not to fool myself into thinking I get it either. As a preacher, I must admit temporary depression when—occasionally in conversation—I discover that even people who’ve heard the gospel over and over again fail to think and act like gospel people, betraying—again, in idle conversation, letting it slip—some utterly pagan or worldly way of thinking. And personally, I have occasionally been horrified by the image I’ve found in my own ethical mirror, priest though I am. I’m talking about everything, faith and morals, truth: often we just don’t get it, and I am repeatedly mystified by those who confidently say they do.
But what accounts for our ignorance? Maybe it’s simply a matter of growth and development. Twain said once, “A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.”[2] Maybe we don’t get it because in the grand and eternal scheme of things we are still immature, still children, only very slowly gaining any sort of genuine wisdom. Maybe we need only to be patient with ignorance—ours and the ignorance of others. Maybe it’s the condition of the age. Sometimes I think that just as we give certain labels to periods of history—the “Dark Ages,” the “Renaissance,” the “Victorian Age”—so our descendants will call our time the “Ideological Age,” an age of tribal rhetoric, no longer an age of real argument—an age of politicians, pundits, and Twitter philosophers “so shallow,” to quote Newman, “as not even to know their shallowness.”[3] Maybe this is our problem: the fools of our culture algorithmically blinding us with foolishness we have been all too happy to purchase, like and retweet. Last year for The Atlantic the social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, wrote a piece titled “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life have been Uniquely Stupid.” He blamed social media and our naïve, what he called, “techno-democratic optimism.”[4] Maybe that explains it.
Not entirely I don’t think. You see, underneath all this I think there’s a deeper and more primeval explanation for the ignorance plaguing us, and it is this: there is an ignorance located not in the intellect but in the will. That is, there are some things I don’t want to know, and I will not know them. There are some things you don’t want to know, and you will not know them. Reason and all the available information in the world be damned—there is an ignorance located in the will, and it has the capacity to blind each person. It’s what the Church calls “vincible” ignorance. That is, if we were to strip away every ideology and gain all possible knowledge available to the human mind, there would still be this—what the Bible repeatedly calls the “hardening” of the heart, the plague of Pharaoh and of so many after him.
Jesus, in his day, bore the brunt of such ignorance. The cross, of course, is a symbol of God’s love but only because it’s also a sign of our ignorance. It’s a theme of the gospels. “He came to…his own,” John tells us, “but his own people did not accept him.”[5] As John tells the story of Jesus’ passion, after he is beaten and bloodied, dressed in mockery like a king—his thorny crown and purple robe—Pilate asks the chief priests, “Shall I crucify your king?” “We have no king but Caesar,” said those who had hoped and waited and yearned for centuries for their promised messiah—a tragedy, I think, chillingly understated in John’s Gospel. We hear this story now as a matter of course, failing, mostly, to understand how deeply the earliest Christians were haunted by this scene and by the story this scene told. How could so many people fail to believe in Jesus? How could so many of his own people not see and believe? Apostles and evangelists, and later theologians, all wondered and wrestled with these questions. “I know, brothers, that you acted out of ignorance,” Peter said to his fellow Jews, trying, as best he could, to get them to see the divine plan at work in Jesus’ death and resurrection and in the wonders being wrought in his name.[6] Paul went into remarkable depth in his letter to the Romans, explaining the mystery, as he saw it, of how Israel was to be “hardened” for a time, “until the full number of the Gentiles comes in,” he said—when finally “all Israel will be saved.”[7]
This was the burdensome question: how could the people of Israel not see that Jesus was the Christ? And it’s the question behind today’s passage from Matthew, and the context. After telling the parable of sower, his disciples ask Jesus “Why do you speak to them in parables?” The rather drawn-out answer Jesus gives is interesting—and not altogether satisfying. “[K]nowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you,” he told his disciples, “but to them it has not been granted.”[8] And then he invokes a passage from Isaiah—a passage invoked in all four gospels and even by Paul at the end of Acts of the Apostles.[9] “Gross is the heart of this people, they will hardly hear with their ears, they have closed their eyes.” “But blessed are your eyes, because they see,” Jesus said just after quoting this passage, “and your ears, because they hear.”[10] It was a nagging and bothersome problem for the writers of the New Testament, obviously. Why didn’t people see? Why didn’t they get it? The New Testament doesn’t say much—just a few passages from the Old Testament brought forward for interpretation—like I said, not altogether satisfying. These remain difficult questions, and so they will remain until such time as the veil is finally lifted on the latter day.
But what about us? What does this have to do with us? It has been a rather dangerous and violent project over the centuries to speculate too much on the place of the Jewish people in God’s plan of salvation. No one has done better Paul and many have done worse. I will only go as far as the great Von Balthasar, that remarkable twentieth century theologian. “God,” he said, “is the author of the problem, and to him alone belongs its solution.”[11] I would not recommend you dwell on the question much more than we have already. It’s too dangerous for most.
Rather, the more practical questions we should ask ourselves are these: How receptive to the word of God are we? Keeping to the imagery of Jesus’ parable, what sort of soil are we? Are we ideologues? Let’s not answer these questions so quickly. Let’s take our time and think about it. Individually, you should ask yourself the question, “Am I hard-headed?” Do you have the self-awareness even to ask yourself this question? I hope you do. Again, don’t answer the question right away—think about it slowly. How do you respond to criticism? Do you fly off the handle? How do you react to a difficult homily? Do you call the priest an idiot under your breath and ignore him? Do you take offense? What about those bits of Church teaching you don’t like—those bits you’re embarrassed about when you’re around friends? Do you ignore them? Ridicule them? Play the part of enlightened dissenter? The New Testament is pretty clear; human history is pretty clear—you and I are quite capable of missing the point. You and I are quite capable of squandering the word of God, of wasting grace. But at some point in your life—in my life too—we’re going to have to stop playing the pathetic game of hard-hearted pride, the charade of arrogant ignorance. We’re going to have to open our minds and our hearts—truly open them. This gospel we preach is true, and there are consequences to it. If religion is for you only a source of entertainment or comfort or cultural pride, then I’d be concerned if I were you. Pray for the grace to be broken up, shattered by the truth so as to be put back together by the mercy of God. For soil to be rich and ready for growth, it must be plowed up. Pray for that—if that’s what you want. If you want Jesus—the real Jesus who wants you. I pray you pray for that. I pray you want that. I pray you have him. And I pray you hear his voice. Amen.
[1] Devoutly I Adore Thee: The Prayers and Hymns of Saint Thomas Aquinas, 41
[2] The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain, 230
[3] John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University, 113
[4] Jonathan Haidt, “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life have been Uniquely Stupid,” The Atlantic (11 April 2022)
[5] John 1:11
[6] Acts 3:17
[7] Romans 11:25-26
[8] Matthew 13:10-11
[9] Mark 4:12; Luke 8:10; John 12:40; Acts 28:26-27
[10] Matthew 13:15-16
[11] Hans Urs von Balthasar, Explorations in Theology Vol. II, 290
© 2023 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield
