When Prophet and Priest Have No Knowledge

The repentance of those who thought they understood

“For both prophet and priest ply their trade through the land,

and have no knowledge.”

— Jeremiah 14:18

There is a terrible honesty in Jeremiah.

The land is dying. Famine has entered the city. Bodies lie in the fields. The people look for peace and find terror. They wait for healing, and no healing comes.

And still the machinery of religion continues.

The prophet continues to be prophet. The priest continues to be priest. They move through the devastated land carrying the familiar words, fulfilling the familiar roles.

But Jeremiah says something devastating about them:

They have no knowledge.

This may be one of the most severe judgments Scripture makes upon religious people. Not that they have ceased speaking about God, but that they continue speaking when they no longer know.

There is a great temptation in the religious life to believe that faithfulness means having an interpretation for everything.

Something happens, and we explain it.

Someone suffers, and we give it meaning.

A door closes, and we speak about Providence.

A prayer goes unanswered, and we explain the purposes of God.

A life collapses, and before the dust has settled we begin telling the wounded person what God is doing.

We may even believe this is faith.

Jeremiah is less certain.

There are moments when the holiest sentence a human being can speak is:

I do not know.

The Desert Fathers understood this with an almost frightening clarity. People traveled great distances to ask them questions, and sometimes the elder said nothing. Sometimes he wept. Sometimes he gave a word so small that it seemed almost inadequate to the question.

They were not withholding wisdom.

Their silence was wisdom.

They had learned how dangerous it is to speak about mysteries before which one has not yet become silent.

We have not learned this easily.

Religious knowledge can become a defense against God.

We accumulate words about Him because words give us the feeling that we possess what cannot be possessed. Theology, spiritual experience, ecclesiastical office, years of prayer, familiarity with Scripture—all of these are gifts. But every gift can be subtly turned into a shelter from the terrible poverty of standing before God without an explanation.

The prophet and the priest can continue to ply their trade through the land.

And have no knowledge.

Perhaps there comes a moment in every serious spiritual life when God permits our knowledge to fail us.

Not the knowledge of the Creed.

Not the knowledge that God is good.

Something more intimate is taken away:

the conviction that we understand what He is doing.

We thought we knew what obedience would look like.

We thought we knew what fidelity would produce.

We thought we knew the shape a vocation should take.

We thought that years of prayer would make the path clearer.

We thought suffering would eventually disclose its meaning.

Then something happens for which our old language is insufficient.

The prayer is not answered as we expected.

The relationship is not restored.

The institution does not become what we hoped.

The person we love continues to decline.

The wound does not close.

The future refuses to reveal itself.

And suddenly we discover how much of our peace depended upon understanding.

This is where Jeremiah becomes a father of the desert.

He does not explain the catastrophe.

He weeps.

“Let my eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease.”

There is a knowledge contained in those tears that the explanations of prophet and priest do not possess.

Jeremiah does not stand outside the suffering of his people and interpret it. He enters it. Their wound becomes his wound. Their bewilderment enters his prayer.

This is very close to what St. Isaac the Syrian understood as the merciful heart. The purified heart does not acquire a superior vantage point from which everything becomes intelligible. It becomes vulnerable to everything. It burns for creation. It weeps because it can no longer protect itself from the suffering of another.

Perhaps this is why genuine elders so rarely sound impressive.

They have lost the need to be impressive.

They do not need to demonstrate that they understand the workings of Providence. They have stood before God long enough to know the limits of what can be said.

They know when words are necessary.

They also know when words become a violation of mystery.

This is especially difficult for those whose lives have been formed around religious words.

Priests.

Teachers.

Preachers.

Spiritual fathers and mothers.

Theologians.

Writers.

People to whom others have come for answers.

There can be a strange humiliation when the person accustomed to saying, “This is the way,” finally reaches a place where he himself cannot see the road.

But perhaps this humiliation is mercy.

Perhaps God is not taking faith away.

Perhaps He is taking away our need to understand Him before we trust Him.

That is a much deeper purification.

We usually think repentance concerns the things we have done wrong.

Certainly it does.

Jeremiah says plainly:

“We acknowledge our wickedness, O Lord.”

But there is another repentance that comes much later.

We repent of our certainty.

We repent of the ease with which we interpreted the lives of others.

We repent of explanations offered too quickly.

We repent of confusing familiarity with the things of God for knowledge of God Himself.

We repent of the hidden assumption that because we have served Him for many years, we should understand His ways.

The fathers called the beginning of wisdom the knowledge of oneself.

And one of the deepest forms of self-knowledge is discovering how little we know.

Not cynicism.

Not skepticism.

Not the abandonment of truth.

Humility.

There is an enormous difference between saying, “Nothing can be known,” and saying before God:

“I do not know what You are doing.”

The first closes the heart.

The second opens it.

And perhaps only then can faith become what faith was always meant to be.

Trust.

Jeremiah reaches that place near the end of his lament.

He does not solve the famine.

He does not explain the dead.

He does not discover why healing has not come.

Instead he says:

“Do not spurn us, for your name’s sake.”

Something very subtle has happened.

He has stopped appealing to his understanding of God.

He appeals to God.

This is prayer after explanation.

Not:

Lord, I understand why this has happened.

Not:

Lord, now I see what You are accomplishing.

Not even:

Lord, show me what all of this means.

Only:

Remember.

Remember Your covenant.

Remember Your mercy.

Remember us.

There comes a time when this may be the purest prayer available to us.

We do not know what God is doing.

We do not know what the next year will contain.

We do not know why certain things were permitted to break.

We do not know whether some wounds will ever be healed in this life.

And perhaps we no longer need to pretend that we know.

The Kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent.

For some of us, repentance may mean relinquishing our sins.

For others, it may also mean relinquishing our explanations.

The prophet can put down his prophecy.

The priest can cease trying to interpret the famine.

The teacher can stop teaching for a moment.

The spiritual father can admit that he cannot see the road.

And all of them can become something more fundamental:

a human being standing before God.

Perhaps then the tears can come.

Not tears of despair.

Tears born when we finally surrender the burden of having to understand.

The famine remains.

The wound remains.

The unanswered question remains.

But the need to explain them has fallen silent.

And in that silence, something very small and very true becomes possible:

Lord, I do not know.

But I am here.

And You are here.

Have mercy.