The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



Proper 22, Year A, October 2, 2011, St. Augustine’s Chapel Nashville

“I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Phil. 3:8).

My theme today (borrowed from the Apostle) is “knowledge,” and if there’s any place in the Diocese where the word should strike a sympathetic chord it’s here on the Vanderbilt campus: the harbor of a great research university, a home of learning, a place where knowledge is prized. Not only that, but Episcopalians as a group generally put a high value on learning; we’re not the only ones, of course, but it is part of our self-image and (in part) deserved. For centuries we have prayed in our Prayer Book liturgy that our hearts and minds might be kept in “the knowledge and love of God,” and I suppose that the subliminal influence of that text over time has left us favorably disposed towards knowledge, and not just the knowledge of God.

The sort of knowledge that Paul is writing about in Philippians is gnosis, a Greek word with a checkered past in pagan antiquity and Judaism; a word that went on to have an even more problematic reputation in early Christianity as various folks (called Gnostics by their enemies) claimed to have “special knowledge” of “hidden mysteries” that gave them the key to understanding all things, and an inside track on salvation. This seems pretty silly now, but it was challenging at the time, and there are modern versions as well which emphasis a “highbrow” spirituality which can lay aside ordinary, run of the mill, belief in favor of this “special knowledge” and “insight.”

Well, enough about that, as fun as it is to mention, because that’s not my main point. Paul’s knowledge, his gnosis in our second reading, is knowledge that is rooted in Christ, publicly available to even the humblest person, knowledge that has historical purchase and has been revealed by God in time. In short, it’s knowledge of Christ Jesus himself, “born of a woman, born under the Law” (Gal. 4:4) as it says in the Letter to the Galatians, in order to root him in time and place, in our history and in our material world (things our friends the Gnostics didn’t care for at all: oops, big target, couldn’t resist).

Now here’s the point I want to make about knowledge in general (not just the knowledge of God), an insight gleaned from the poet Keats, who was himself no intellectual slouch: “A fact is not a truth until you love it.” A great research university which also prepares undergraduates for lives and careers communicates not just information but purpose and passion. It’s work is all about translating facts into truths (in Keats’ terms) because it’s those things that make life worth living. In order to translate facts into truth we have to invest ourselves, and that is demanding work, both for teachers and those who are taught. I suppose there are neutral facts, but in education and in every other area we need to be engaged in our subject without remaining neutral. When we’re passionate about a subject it’s because our will is engaged; we’ve come to know something in a different way, and that different way is rooted in love. Universities properly deal in a wide diversity of subjects; that is, after all, the very origin of the word “university;” but whatever the subject or indeed whatever the endeavor, the great business of learning and of living itself requires our purpose and our passion at every point. Remember, “A fact is not a truth until you love it.”

What’s true about knowledge in general is also true about the knowledge of Christ. When Paul says in our reading, “I want to know Christ” (Phil. 3:10) he does not mean he wants to know “about Christ”: that is, merely the historical facts, the salient intellectual points, or the “theory” people have about Jesus Christ. On my worst day, I suspect that I am a great collector of facts about Jesus, a compendium of ultimately neutral knowledge about my subject. Others may identify with me. But that’s not what Paul is about; he means something else again. He’s a bit of a poet himself. The knowledge he’s writing about engages the will, the love, the purpose and passion of a Christian. He wants to know Christ, as he says, “and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Phil. 3:10-11). That knowledge of Christ is inseparable from love. We cannot share his sufferings and become like him in his death and resurrection if we have not engaged our Subject with understanding, with sympathy, with identity: that is, with love, in love, that turns the facts about Jesus into the truths of faith. Perhaps “understanding” is the word we’re looking for: not knowledge “about” someone, but the tie of relationship that’s ultimately rooted in love.

Today our confirmands are showing the way. They have been instructed, not simply in the facts about Jesus but also in a whole new way of living and loving, through the ministry of this Christian community of St. Augustine’s Chapel. They have chosen to follow Christ and to know him. Their purposes and passions have been engaged in a mighty endeavor, the great Subject who is Jesus Christ himself, living out his life in this community which is his Body the Church. They know that the facts about Jesus Christ will not become truths until they love and follow him, becoming like him in his death and resurrection. That is the new life that both they and we are called to today.

- The Rt. Rev’d John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee

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