Sermon preached by the Dean of Wells at the Eucharist on May 25th
2014 (6 after Easter)
Acts 17 v 22-31
John 14 v 15 - 21
I expect that some of you may have been following the rather fierce controversy in the
letters pages of the Wells Journal over the past few weeks about belief and atheism. The
letters have contained a series of passionate arguments where the protagonists have largely
talked passed each other because they start from very different presuppositions about the
nature of religious belief. But that hasn’t stopped a high level of emotion and certainty being
expressed on all sides. I’m tempted to say why let listening to another person or the careful
exploration of truth get in the way of a good rant.
I’ve felt partly responsible for this outbreak of religious disputation because I think that my
talks during the winter on ‘what can we believe today’ have trodden on a few sore toes.
But, at the same time, I can’t help think that such publicity about faith must at least make
some people stop for a moment and consider what they mean when they say believe or
don’t believe in God. However, I am not sure that you will find good and convincing
answers in the pages of the Wells Journal.
That is not because of any defect in our esteemed local newspaper, it is because of the
nature of belief. Faith is not a demonstrable series of facts. It is an exploration of a way of
being and that exploration takes time and patience and practice. Faith can neither be
proved, nor disproved, in 500 words.
This week, on Thursday, the church celebrates the feast of the Ascension. Jesus leaves this
world and ascends into heaven to reign at the right hand of God. It is a fine picture, heavily
dependent on Luke’s account of the gospel. If you go to the Corpus Christi Chapel, near the
east end of the cathedral on the north side, and look at the late medieval carving behind the
altar you can see Jesus’ feet disappearing in the clouds whilst the disciples remain looking
upwards. Such pictures if taken literally provide powerful ammunition for those who think
that Christians believe half a dozen ridiculous things each day before breakfast. A convinced
atheist would argue that because we cannot demonstrate that the Ascension happened in
this way then the whole edifice of belief must come crashing down.
So much of the argument between believer and unbeliever, it seems to me, centres around
the question of proof. Show me that God exists or show me that God doesn’t exist. Faith, I
would suggest is something very different. Faith asks questions about what stories we trust
to shape our lives, and what community we find in which we can explore the deeper truths
of our humanity. Faith in God is inseparable from a certain kind of practice, of coming
together to worship, of prayer, of the study of certain texts, and of a willingness to change
and develop and to be open to the unsuspected gifts that God may provide. In the Christian
faith this practice is centred around the person of Jesus, but even as it looks back at the
tradition of the church it remains, for every generation, a story yet to be completed.
In today’s gospel reading from John there are the words ‘I will not leave you orphaned; I am
coming to you’. Much of the argument between the atheist and the literalist believer seems
to me to hinge around this question of how do we cope with being orphaned? What
happens when we no longer have a script that provides certainty one way or another? What
happens when Jesus leaves us and goes back up to heaven? Can we trust that Jesus will
come to us again even when we can neither see him nor feel him, even when the tasks of
life seem unremitting, and the emotional mood dark? For it is at this very point that the
word faith begins to resonate; faith means going forward in trust that God will not desert
us; believing that God will hold us, at critical times, by the spirit of truth, the advocate, the
one who speaks for him. I want to say more about what that means for us as the church in a
moment. But before that I don’t want to leave the experience of being an orphan quite so
quickly, because I think that unless we can accept that we are in some way orphaned, we
will never grow up in faith.
As orphans we are called to take on new responsibility for living. We can no longer shelter
behind the immediate guidance of a parent, we have to understand the world on its own
terms and to act wisely within it. As orphans we mourn the lost certainties of childhood,
and we have to learn to enjoy the promise of the unknown, of the exploration of God that
is yet to come. As orphans we must discover for ourselves the food and shelter that we
need, and trust each other so that we can share on the journey.
Many people, I fear, find it difficult to set out on this spiritual voyage of exploration. They
prefer to create new parents, bulwarks of certainty that will shelter them from the
tempestuous sea. These defences may be a literal understanding of scripture or a blind trust
in the church, or a dogmatic acceptance that the material sciences can explain all things.
Many clever people keep religious belief in a separate compartment, and in this crucial area
of life remain children, emotionally unable to explore the deeper meanings of faith. Perhaps
we all tend to do so in different ways at those times when remaining open to reality iscomes
too difficult and too painful.
Even at a national level our political life can be wrapped in the nostalgia of childhood. The
expected success of UKIP in the European elections is at least in part a disjunction between
the emotional desire for safety and the known, as it is a realistic assessment of Britain’s
economic position and international standing in the second decade of the 21st century.
But if we are orphans together this does not mean that God has abandoned us, and left us
adrift without any guidance or support. There are hidden traces of God’s guidance within
the world and above all within the life of the church. In the reading from Acts Paul tells the
Athenians both that they must search for the unknown God, and that, at the same time, this
God is not far from each of us. The gospel of John speaks of a Spirit in the life of the church
that the world of materialism and atheism neither sees nor knows.
This Spirit of truth is the spirit of love, the love of God who abides in us, and the love of
each other as we are encouraged, and offer encouragement to others, in how to live by
faith. The spirit of God in the church looks to the future as God has still more to give to
each of us, and to ask of each of us, and yet the Spirit is not free-floating, it is anchored in
the simple practices of belonging. ‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments’. That
culture of mercy, of generosity, of courage, of concern for the visitor and stranger, of
expectancy, is what makes the presence of God more than a fading memory of past
traditions that are no longer credible for modern women and men.
As I said at the beginning, to learn this way of being takes time, it requires an apprenticeship
in which we learn from others through their deeds and their words. None of us will ever
stop learning about God, but gradually we may find that we also become teachers, teachers
who have learned to live joyfully as orphans and are able to encourage others to let go of
their fears and to trust that in this all too fallible community of the church the Spirit of God
is at work. There is no greater gift that we can give or receive in life than the sensitive and
personal encouragement of another believer to follow the way of Jesus, to remain faithful
even in times of sorrow, even when God seems distant and even when we are most
conscious of our status as orphans.
One of the rich themes of St John’s gospel is friendship, friendship with God and friendship
with each other. I want to end with some words of the 12th century Cistercian monk Aelred
of Rievaulx who speaks of this Godly companionship that we can offer one another,
companionship that keep us fresh on the narrow path of faith. He writes ‘Friendship yields a
harvest in both this life and the next… what happiness, security and joy to have another self
to talk with! One to whom you can confess a failure without fear and reveal unblushingly
some progress that you may have made in the spiritual life; someone to whom you dare
entrust all the secrets of your heart and in whose advice you can have confidence… our
Saviour says in the Gospel, “I do not call you servants but friends”, showing that human
friendship leads to that of God.’
May this Eucharist be a true feast of faith and friendship.