"Remember This: It Is Something Like an Elephant"

Pastor Nagle
03/02/2005

“Remember This: It is Like An Elephant” Proverbs 2:1-15 Psalm 146 Midweek III March 2, 2005
Did you ever read this poem, written over a century ago, based on an East Indian fable:
It was six men of Indostan To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind), That each by observation Might satisfy his mind. The First approached the Elephant, And happening to fall Against his broad and sturdy side, At once began to bawl: “God bless me! but the Elephant Is very like a wall!”
The Second, feeling of the tusk, Cried, “Ho! what have we here So very round and smooth and sharp? To me ’tis mighty clear This wonder of an Elephant Is very like a spear!”
In turn, the third thought the trunk was like a snake and the fourth thought the knee was like a tree. The fifth thought the ear was like a fan and the sixth thought the tail was like a rope. And so these men of Indostan Disputed loud and long, Each in his own opinion Exceeding stiff and strong, Though each was partly in the right, And all were in the wrong! So ends one of our texts for today. One in which there is apparently a great desire for truth, but that no one involved quite gets the whole picture. Nor is the poem a fiction. We still act like that today. You know what you know and I know what I know, but if either of us knows what the other knows, we’ll probably say either it’s wrong or it doesn’t matter. Especially in matters of faith and religion and doctrine and church.
I’m spending some time this Lenten season reminding you and me of some thoughts that could make a difference in life, trying to figure out what it is that should be remembered, if life as the people of God is to be lived well. And here is one thing: that we are wisest when we realize how little we know. That’s not always a popular thought, because we like to think that we already know quite a bit about things. But like the blind men, what we know may not be what is, and what is may be more than we care to know. Especially when it comes to God. So that many people claim to know precisely how God is and what God wants and whom God blesses and why. But some of them are fools and some of them are wrong and the rest don’t recognize the truth of God when it stands right in front of them.
Consider another of our texts tonight—the one in which the troops came out against Jesus as a robber. He asked for whom they were looking. And they said, Jesus. He said, I am he. But they didn’t believe it. He tried again, and they did too. But it took awhile for them to recognize him in their midst, standing right in front of them. The religious authorities, on the other hand, seeing him there and knowing full well who Jesus was, tried to take what he had proclaimed and turn it around so that it became a falsehood instead of eternal truth. And Peter, who also knew who Jesus was, and was among the best of Jesus’ followers, became afraid of responsibility and truth itself and denied that he was a party to any of it. Are you yourself more like the soldiers or the religious authorities or Peter? Each of them saw Jesus, though it’s possible to say that none of them really saw Jesus.
For, as the poet reminded us, when it comes to God, we act like blind people who take a bit of this and a bit of that and try to make an elephant our of it. In trying to come up with a statement of belief, we take a bit of scripture here and a bit of Sunday School lesson there, a little common sense here and a greeting card verse there, and add to it something of our own pain and experience and a little of someone else’s, and we try to make sense out of it all. But the point is that there’s no sense to it at all. Do you think you understand God? Or forgiveness or reconciliation? Or heaven and hell? Or faith or grace?
In all my years of proclaiming it, I still can’t understand it. Can preach it, can delight in it, but can’t understand it. To which, someone says, If you can’t understand all about God, maybe you should give up and let other people proclaim the truth. But my problem is that I don’t think anybody else really understands God either. And that we’re a lot like the six blind men who thought they knew what they were talking about and really did not. In truth, things are not always what they seem. Not sin. Not salvation. Not truth. Not God. Not that it is always less than it seems. Sometimes it’s more than it seems. And for that we should be grateful. But gratitude hasn’t always been what Christians do best. Take, for example, the idea that God is always more willing to forgive than we are to ask. Or to look with kind eye on those who have hurt him deeply. We sometimes dispute that and try to call down fire from heaven because we think sinners should suffer. And just who would those sinners be? Others, of course, for we see ourselves as the children of Abraham, the ones who sit in church, the generous givers, who have Bibles, even if we don’t often open them. We are the ones who will get into heaven. And I have no quarrel with that, but are we always glad that others might be there too?
The problem with those six blind men from Indostan was that they saw the parts, not the whole. And though the whole is made up of parts, we all know that the whole is greater than its parts. So when it comes to knowing about God and the Bible and faith and life, and heaven and hell, what we believe is nothing like an elephant, but something like the way we act at a church covered-dish supper. When the line is open for serving, do you yourself go through first or last? And do you take what you need or what you want? And is the size of your portion equal to what you brought? And do you praise someone for homemade and scorn others for store-bought? And do you take only a little so that others are guaranteed their share? Would you ever invite a stranger to get in line with you? In front or behind?
When it comes to knowing about God and the Bible and faith and life, and heaven and hell, what we believe is nothing like an elephant, but something like a newspaper. Do you read the headlines and assume they’re always true? Is an editorial only an opinion? Do you accuse people of awful bias, but only when they disagree with you? Do you cluck at stories of awful inhumanity and sit back to wonder why nothing is done? Do you find truth in what may be fiction and fiction in what is supposed to be truth? Are you glad you live in this part of the world, and not that? Do you pray for or about the people whose names are in print? Or not pray at all, seeing it’s only a newspaper.
When it comes to knowing about God and the Bible and faith and life, and heaven and hell, what we believe is nothing like an elephant, but something like a report card. We say it is good to get an A, and not good at all to fail. It doesn’t matter to some people how an A was received, but is surely important that you have gotten what others did not. So it’s disturbing that someone else might also get an A—especially if you see yourself as the hardest worker, or the teacher’s pet. Who cares if getting an A can be a matter of achieving everything but knowing nothing?
When it comes to knowing about God and the Bible and faith and life, and heaven and hell, what we believe is nothing like an elephant, but something like a battle. Sense would say that in every fight there is right and wrong. But when you fight, your own best sense says you are right and the others are wrong. Some people claim that God will bless the right, but blindness keeps us from seeing that sometimes we’re in the wrong. And we look for victory and claim it when it is not there, even when it should not be there.
And maybe you can think of other examples to examine the truth about God and the Bible and faith and life and heaven and hell. Not the truth as you think it is, not the truth as others have told you it is, not even the truth that the footnotes in your Bible claim that it is, but that you ask of Jesus standing in your midst—who are you really. And that you admit that others may know as much about him as you do. Which was the problem of the blind men, you see. Each was certain only he was right. Not that they mis- identified what they touched. A trunk is like a snake and a tail is like a rope. There is nothing wrong in being wrong. What is wrong is insisting that you are right. You may be right, but it is not guaranteed by God that you are right. Beware of anyone who claims to be right, even holy and religious people who claim to be right, everyone who uses the name of God in defining right. For you see, not every theology is good theology. Not every sentence that includes the word “God” is a good sentence. And our own humility needs to admit that.
Though it’s a lack of humility that makes us what we are. So the soldiers came out bearing weapons, thinking they were right. And the high priest came out wearing pride, thinking he was right. And Peter came out caring about his own skin, thinking he was right. And we come out certain that we are right too. So certain that we try to convince others that only we are right. But in fact, we sometimes mislead people through our lies, through our biases, through our vested interest, through our misunderstandings, and through our sin.
And this may be the truth: that we are wisest when we realize how little we know.
So the God who made the elephant with a trunk and a tail gave us neither, but did make sure that we had a head and a heart. A head to pay attention to what the story is all about, and a heart to know that it has something to do with us. A head to see right and wrong, and a heart to admit that we are more wrong than right. A head to be smart enough to pay attention, and a heart to care enough to pay attention. A head to think that victory is important, and a heart to understand that in the Jesus-story, the loser actually won.
The soldiers didn’t know what Jesus looked like. The authorities knew what Jesus looked like but didn’t know what he stood for. Peter knew what he stood for but didn’t use it when he needed it. It is something like an elephant. May we work through our blindness to understand what that means.