Feast of Holy Trinity – Series C 

This sermon wants to break some of the hold which the saying “Knowledge is Power” has over us or more accurately its opposite corollary: the lack of knowledge is weakness. It is true that we can manipulate the environment in which we live and wield powerful forces to shape our world and lives. Knowledge has done some amazing things for us. Thanks to refrigeration and modern technology, we can make winter in summer and summer in winter. We put people into space, etc. The other readings for today, Proverbs and the Psalm 8 really highlight the space element. You might use them but note that we are going where the psalmist never imagined he could go.

One can surely ask, however, whether we really conquer the greater unknowns? Are we not just as helpless before death and eternity as David ever was? Our medicine can stretch our days by a decade or two, but our lives always draw to their inexorable end. There is a whole realm of reality over which we have no control and are helpless. For all our knowledge, we are carried along by time and the necessities of life in ways which are no different than our most uneducated and simpleton ancestors. The truth is that not too far beneath the sophisticated veneer of our exteriors lies the same brutal and brutish human beings whom we read about in history books. We are helpless before these realities and that helplessness makes a mockery of all our knowledge. Smart and well educated people die at the same 100% rate as everyone else.