The Mercy of Knowing In Part
A Sermon preached on Feb. 15, 2026 at First Presbyterian Church, Athens, GA for Campus Ministry Sunday
1 Corinthians 13:8-13
Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.
Exodus 33:17-23
The Lord said to Moses, “I will also do this thing that you have asked, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”
Moses said, “Please show me your glory.”
And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you the name, ’The Lord,’ and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one shall see me and live.”
And the Lord continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”
SERMON
This fall and winter, more than usual for Georgia, we’ve experienced some disorienting weather patterns. Until a couple weeks ago, my children had never known the joy and humiliation of a truly epic kids versus parents snowball fight … and certainly not wedged between days with temperatures in the 60s and 70s.
As much as I love a good, cold winter, its hard to complain about the more temperate days, when you can stay outside into dusk without freezing your nose off.
Our family lives over in the High Ridge neighborhood, across the river from Ben Burton Park, and like much of Athens, prior to the 1980's that swath of land was all forest. Trees were cleared to build homes, but the remnants of the old forest still dominate the landscape, so that in the spring and summer, we are canopied in green oak and river birch, and in the fall and winter when the trees are bare, those magical pink and orange sunsets filter through the naked wood into our kitchen windows.
This year’s strange weather combines with the reality that our boys are growing up to produce what may be my new favorite evening activity. Our yard backs up to of one of Jack’s best friends yard, separated by an old rickety fence, with one plank missing right at the meeting point. And most nights when the weather is nice, you can look out our kitchen window and see Jack and his buddy Esa sitting atop the fence, talking and laughing, backlit by the pink and orange sunset streaming through the naked trees. Because of that missing plank, 4 year old Remy is also able to shimmy through and climb up there and join the older boys, which bring that younger brother incalculable joy!
As I behold this glory, wondering what caused the latest outburst of childhood laughter, it occurs to me that much like the sunset silhouetting them, my young sons are, even to me—at least in part—a beautiful mystery. Though I have known them arguably longer than they have known themselves, I will only ever know them ‘in part.’ Their lives—their loves and fears and desires … the contents of their fence-top conversations are not for me to behold … at least not fully … at least not this side of eternity.
And it occurs to me that if this is true of our finite lives, how much more so of the Infinite Life we name and worship as God.
Moses is understandably concerned at the beginning of our reading. The Golden Calf incident has just wrapped up, and there is a real question as to whether God’s presence will continue at all with the people, and if it does, whether that divine presence is a gift or a threat, or perhaps a little bit of both. Moses has successfully convinced God not to destroy the people, and more than that, God has reluctantly agreed to continue journeying with them toward the Promised Land. Perhaps to try to gain a firm grasp on the exact nature of this ongoing divine presence, Moses asks to behold God’s glory. And while God does technically grant this request—it is God’s Glory that is said to pass by Moses later in the text—the agreement comes with a caveat: God says, ’you cannot see my face—which is a biblical euphemism for the essential being of a thing—; for no one can see me—the essence of God—and live.’
I don’t know about you, but I have always interpreted this passage as a warning, in the manner of ‘don’t look directly into the sun, lest you go blind. Don’t look into the face of God, lest you fall down dead.
But on a closer reading, I’m not so sure that’s what is intended here. While there is a legitimate reason to fear God in this story, there is more to indicate God’s tender, loving mercy. The divine is humanized to a startling degree, so that God is standing in a particular place on a mountainside where Moses can apparently see at least where God is. God’s hand picks Moses up and places him into the cleft of the rock, then shields him while the divine glory passes by, at which point God removes the hand so that Moses can see God in part—to be precise, Moses sees God’s rear end! I didn’t write it—that’s just what the Hebrew says.
Beyond the oddity of such a description, there is a tenderness to the whole scene, right. What we observe here is a God who clearly cares for Moses like a parent; wants to give Moses what he desires, but also to protect him from that which would be harmful. Even in this most exceptional case of God’s self-revelation, there remains a hiddenness to God. Even one so close as Moses can only know in part, which does not appear to be a threat, so much as it is a mercy: you cannot know me fully—you cannot behold my essential nature and live … and so I will not permit you to know me fully … because I want you to live … I created you … to live … you must live this life you have been given.
I now believe that I have likely been misreading this story as if it was a warning, when in fact it is intended as a commentary on the beautiful mystery of this life that we have been given. God’s protection of Moses in this story is not protection from falling down dead, but from failing to appreciate the life that he has—God protects Moses from life-emptying mistake of trading in mystery for knowledge.
Don’t hear me wrong—I know we’re in a university town, and so I’m not knocking knowledge here—and I don’t think God is either. What God is doing here is carving out space in the relationship between Moses’ life the the infinite eternal life, for the unknown; space to be surprised, to have our breath taken away by the pink and orange sky at dusk—by the sacred mystery of even our closest loved ones
The mercy of knowing in part is a life filled with awe and wonder.
It is delighting in all that is left to discover about this life that we have been given. This is most obviously true in our loving relationships. Every marriage therapist under the sun will tell you to keep dating your spouse. Stay curious about who they are and who they are becoming; keep learning new things about them, even when you’ve been married for 50 years.
I haven’t done the research here, but I am willing to bet that the children who grow up to have the healthiest adult relationships with their parents are the same ones whose parents were curious about their unique lives; who most effectively resisted that universal parental temptation to mold their children into miniature versions of themselves. If I’m right, knowing that we know our children only in part is a mercy to our future life, just as much as it is a mercy to their present.
And as important as this divine wisdom is for our familiar relationships, it is a wisdom perhaps most needed today in the unfamiliarity of our public square. There is a tendency to be certain of a person’s value to our own life and family and society, without knowing a single thing about them past their outward appearance, be that skin color, how they dress, how many piercings or tattoos they have, or anything else that we may use to assume knowledge.
The divine wisdom for us today may well be that we cannot both see the full picture and be human—we cannot see God and live. The wisdom given to Moses on the side of the mountain is that while we live as finite humans, we cannot behold, in any totalizing way, the Spirit of God, which enlivens every person, including and perhaps especially those who are seen to be other than ourselves.
And so we are left to decide … do we want to know with certainty who our neighbors are, and the real human value—not economic or cultural, but spiritual value—that they contribute to God’s creation? Or do we want to live the lives that we have been mercifully given?
Millenia after Moses is left in mystery, one of his spiritual descendants, The Apostle Paul picks up where Moses was left off.
For now we see as in a mirror dimly. For now, we know only in part.
This is not a condemnation, but a confession of our God-given humanity.
There is always more that we could know … about our neighbors, about our world, about ourselves … about God.
One day, Paul is certain, we will see clearly … but for now, let us live in humble gratitude for children’s inexplicable laughter against a backdrop of colorful skies; for neighbors who speak lovingly to their children in a language we may never comprehend, or whose love is expressed differently, but no less sacramentally than our own. Let us never trade in mystery for certainty, or accept as true life anything less than awe and wonder at the incomprehensible mercy of knowing in part.