I’ve told this story before, about a monk named Pachomius, one of the early fathers of monasticism.

He was an Egyptian monk in the fourth century. The story is of a vision he had one night, a demonic vision, a temptation. But it didn’t seem so at first, of course; at first, it was beautiful, spiritual on the surface.

Opening his eyes, Pachomius was face-to-face with Christ himself; that was the vision, clear and beautiful, or so it seemed. He wasn’t fooled, though. In an instant, Pachomius said, “It is clear that he deceives me.”^[1] The devil was disguised as Christ; it was indeed too good to be true. This false apparition of Christ was too familiar, a vision of a Christ he could control.

The monk, as I said, didn’t fall for it; he saw right through it. Because, of course, he was spiritually mature, wise. His was a faith not built upon mere images and cheap emotions, sentiment and little else. His faith was real; he believed in a Christ larger than himself, a Christ more real than what he thought of him. He believed in the Christ of the Gospel, the real Christ, the Christ he couldn’t control. It’s why he wasn’t suckered by the familiar image, the false apparition of Christ. Because he was humble and smart.

I like that story; I’ve told it before, as I said. I like it because it reminds me not to trust too much my familiar notions of God, of Jesus, of the Bible. It reminds me to beware of conventional wisdom, especially of the religious kind. It reminds me that I am capable, as we all are, of creating in my own mind an unreal image of Christ, thinking it real, worshipping it—that false comfortable image—instead of Christ himself. It reminds me that I can lose sight of Christ, because I think I already see him so well; that I can become ignorant of Christ, because I think I already know him.

It’s the same sin of those who lived with Jesus, the sin of those who knew him. “Where did this man get all this?…Is he not the carpenter…?” “And they took offence at him,” it says. Because they thought they knew Jesus, thought they were already familiar with him; because of what they knew of him already, they failed to recognize him, to understand him. That’s why his miracles there were few; it’s why he was “amazed at their lack of faith.”^[2] Because they failed to see; because they thought they already saw.

It was Wendell Berry who said, “the first responsibility of intelligence…is to know when you don’t know or when you are being unintelligent.”^[3] That’s what I’m talking about; it’s one of the lessons of the Bible, the Gospels especially. Often, we think we know what God would say and how he would say it. Often, we think we know God so well, we blind ourselves to him. Clearly, Christ would think as I do. Clearly, he would say it the way I say it. Clearly, mine are the politics, the economics, the opinions Christ approves. “And they took offense at him…and he could do no mighty deed there.” It’s a sin repeated in our own day by each of us, all while Jesus sits amazed at our lack of faith. And always the consequences are terrible, the headlines unbearable, and the wounds deep.

Brothers and sisters, my appeal is simple. It’s for humility: humility in all things, but especially spiritual humility, religious humility. Now what I’m not counseling you to accept is any sort of postmodern skepticism or doubt, just humility. I simply suggest that we understand that God will not be trapped by what we think of him, that God is not the same as our ideas of him, and that we can’t assume he thinks as we do.

We must be open to a larger God, to a Christ that is real and not made by us. If we Christian pilgrims are to be useful in this beautiful land called America, we must always seek the Christ who is real. We must, like that ancient monk, renounce the fake Christs in which, sometimes, we’ve too quickly believed. This is, at present, the sin that has made Christ so unbelievable to so many. And it’s why his power, I think, is so little seen. Of this false knowledge we must repent, humbly begging for the truth, for the grace to be surprised by Christ, the Christ you and I sometimes still don’t know, but whom we should. Amen.

[1] Philip Rousseau, Pachomius, 140

[2] Mark 6:1-6

[3] Wendell Berry, The Way of Ignorance, 60

© 2021 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield