York Minster

What is God revealing?

Date: 7th October 2007
Preacher: The Revd Canon Jeremy Fletcher

There is a spate of books around at the moment about the big questions about faith and belief. Richard Dawkins leads the field, with, The God Delusion, and the book of the moment is by John Humphrys, called In God we Doubt. I have to say that I have heard enough Dawkins not to want to line his pockets by buying the book, but John Humphrys is another thing. Having made some radio programmes about faith and doubt he found himself overwhelmed by the reaction. As a person who doubts openly and honestly he says that he finds himself strangely comforted by the number of people who want to convert him, and he has clearly tapped a rich seam of enquiry and questioning.

Beginning to answer the big questions means asking some preliminary ones first. The key thing to do is choose your starting point. We are finite creatures, with limited understanding, living in a particular place at a particular time. A satisfactory answer to ‘Does God exist’ depends on a range of methods of enquiry, evidence which is agreed to be valid, and an understanding that our human experience, emotion and perception, not always scientifically verifiable, have a part to play. It does seem to me that we should beware of those who give categorical answers one way or the other: it takes as much faith to be a Dawkins as a Christian.

In the New Testament reading today Jesus is asked a big question. There’s a man blind from birth – the Greek word for ‘from birth’ is the one we get ‘genetics’ from. Jesus’s disciples ask the big philosophical question: whose fault was it that he was born blind? Who sinned, his parents or the man himself? But the disciples seem to be genuine here: they believe that if anyone has a starting point to answer such a question it is Jesus, who lives in our finite world but whom they believe to be the creator of the universe as well.

Even with them Jesus adopts a different starting point. Instead he starts where they all are, right there and then. ‘It’s not about what caused the blindness. It is about what God can do at this moment’. The question is not who has sinned, but ‘what is God revealing to us?’ What is revealed in the rest of Chapter 9 is fascinating. The Pharisees apply their prior questions to the situation, which, interestingly, are also about sin, mainly about the proper keeping of the Sabbath. Their world view cannot comprehend that someone might do something which the law, they say, forbids. They are as certain as they can be that their prior understanding proves that Jesus is sinful, and therefore he cannot be from God. Not even the evidence of their own eyes convinces them, and they set off on a quest to challenge the evidence. The man who was healed is very down to earth, yet much more aware of what God is doing now. ‘I do not know about the big questions about sin. But I do know that I couldn’t see, and now I can’. He is later able to say that if Jesus were not from God, he could do nothing.

Many commentators have pointed out that the man is an individual, and that he stands symbolically for all those who encounter God and find that the eyes of their heart, mind, body and soul are opened. The man does not work his way to healing but has God revealed to him. In the present moment, in the circumstances of his own life, and from his own situation, the greatest question of all is answered. ‘I can see’ starts it off.’ ‘I believe’ is the consequence. Perhaps it is the end of the chapter which is the most challenging. Some Pharisees continue the dialogue, and see the deeper issues at stake. ‘Are we blind’?, they ask. Jesus says that the greatest sinner is the one who refuses to see the truth because they think they see already.

It is not that asking the big question is a bad thing to do. We are created with vision and imagination, and conscience and hope. We are born to look to the stars as well as our feet. But our starting point in answering them cannot be at a higher vantage point than God. We can only approach these things from the place of humility, and perhaps from the kind of honest doubt which drives John Humphrys and caused such a reaction to his programmes. That is not to question the faith I have held since childhood. But it is to place that faith against all that would challenge it, all the science which I respect and cannot wash away, all the reality of the world in its glory and brokenness. And I can only ask: what is God revealing here? The man who found his sight found his faith. May our questioning lead us to do the same.