St George’s Bloomsbury, 18th May 2014,
10.30am
John 14:1-14 "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe
in God, believe also in me. 2
In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I
have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place
for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am,
there you may be also. 4 And
you know the way to the place where I am going." 5 Thomas said to him, "Lord,
we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" 6 Jesus said to him, "I am
the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through
me. 7 If you know me, you
will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen
him." 8 Philip said to
him, "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied." 9 Jesus said to him, "Have I
been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has
seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? 10 Do you not believe that I am in
the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak
on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the
Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of
the works themselves. 12 Very
truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do
and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the
Father. 13 I will do whatever
you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If in my name you ask me for
anything, I will do it.
Acts 7:55-60 But filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into
heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of
God. 56 "Look," he
said, "I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right
hand of God!" 57 But
they covered their ears, and with a loud shout all rushed together against
him. 58 Then they dragged him
out of the city and began to stone him; and the witnesses laid their coats at
the feet of a young man named Saul. 59
While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my
spirit." 60 Then he
knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin
against them." When he had said this, he died.
It may be a function of my line of work,
but
it seems to me that a lot
of people
seem
to spend a lot of time talking about matters of belief.
‘Do you really believe in God?’,
I’m asked,
often
by people who are struggling to understand the perceived inconsistency
of
an apparently sane and rational human being
believing
something that appears irrational, and quite possibly insane.
Sometimes the question is more nuanced,
and
comes from a place of personal questioning:
‘Do
you believe in miracles?’,
‘Do
you believe in the power of prayer?’
‘Will
you pray for me?’
Sometimes the question feels designed to test me:
‘Do
you believe in the virgin birth?
In
the resurrection? In the Trinity?’
And sometimes the question seems designed to trap me:
‘Do
you believe in the ordination of women?’
‘Do
you believe in same-gender marriage?’
And so I could go on…
Do you believe…?
Do
you believe…?
Or, perhaps more pertinently:
‘In what
do you believe?’
Or even,
‘In
whom do you believe?’
This is an important, and surprisingly contemporary,
issue.
And our
passages this morning take us right to heart
of
this question of belief.
Of course, people believe for all sorts of different
reasons:
some
of us have simply inherited our belief system,
while
others will have arrived by a process of conviction,
some
of us have latent belief, which we’ve not quite managed to lose yet,
while
others of us, myself included,
have what I can perhaps best define
as ‘reluctant belief’.
It can all be very troubling, very confusing, very
divisive,
and
that’s before we even start to address the question
of
whether some sort of belief is necessary for salvation.
Well, says Jesus in John’s gospel,
‘Do
not let your hearts be troubled.
Believe
in God, believe also in me.’
It seems that, for the author of this gospel at least,
belief
in God is based upon belief in Jesus.
How do we know God?
We
know him through Jesus.
And how do we know Jesus?
We
know him by his Spirit at work in our lives.
Belief in God is not based on belief in creeds,
confessions, and catechisms.
Neither
is it based on security, stories, or scriptures.
Rather, belief emerges as the outcome of a lived relationship
with
the one through whom God is made known,
and in whom God is revealed.
Belief is the product of a relationship,
it is
not the outworking of a theological conviction.
And here I think it’s important to take a moment to
clarify something significant:
Not
all beliefs are equal.
Sometimes, the concern for ‘balance’ in our
post-enlightenment society
means
that we end up giving equal weight
to
very different orders of belief.
So, for example, on the television news
the
scientist representing the weight of scientific opinion,
may
find themselves given equal billing
with
the lone representative of the minority view that disagrees with them.
It’s the same with matters of faith and belief:
Asserting
belief in God as revealed in Jesus,
is not the same thing as, for
example,
asserting belief in the
effectiveness of homeopathy;
despite
the best efforts of some new atheist polemicists
to equate belief in God
to
the equivalent status
of belief in fairies at the bottom
of the garden.
Francis Spufford makes this point eloquently.
He
says:
‘Whether
God exists or not is unprovable,
so for an individual person,
whether He exists or not is always
going to be a matter of belief.
But
at the same time, quite independently,
he either exists or he doesn’t,
irrespective of whether He’s
believed in.
He’s
a fact, or a non-fact, about the nature of the universe.
So if you believe, you’re making a
bet
that God exists whether you believe
or not.’[1]
So it is that Jesus says:
"I
am the way, and the truth, and the life.
No
one comes to the Father except through me.
If
you know me, you will know my Father also.”
Here, we meet Jesus offering the readers of John’s
gospel
a new
and radical path to God.
The Jews of the first century believed that the way to
God
was
to be found in careful observance of the Jewish Law
as
revealed in their written scriptures (Pss 86.11; 119.30).
While the Graeco-Roman religions of the time
believed
that the complexities of the pantheon
revealed
the path to divine knowledge
Over against both of these, Jesus offers something
new, something radical.
The
way to God, says Jesus, is to be found through lived relationship
with
the one in whom God is revealed,
and
through whom God is known.
God is not encountered through obedience, observance,
and ordinances,
but
through relationship, friendship, and revelation.
Jesus opens the way to God
because
in him is to be found life in all its fullness,
and
in him is the truth that shatters all our defences,
and
disarms all our pretences.
In Christ there is nowhere to hide,
because
in Christ we are most fully known,
even
as we come to know that which is most fully other to us.
When we stand with Stephen,
and
open our eyes to see the revelation of God in Christ,
we are united with the life and the truth
that
is at work in this complex, fallen, broken world,
drawing
all of creation into God’s loving eternal embrace.
When we join our voices in worship and name Jesus as
Lord
we do
it not to make God feel good about himself,
but because we are sharing with
Christ in the re-centering of creation.
When we pray to Jesus, we do so not to abase ourselves
before the almighty,
but
in order to align ourselves, our lives, and our world,
with the one in whom all earthly
principalities and powers
find their completion and
fulfilment,
and in
rejection of all other claims on our lives
that
might otherwise demand our allegiance.
Belief for belief’s sake is, frankly, pointless.
But
belief that emerges from a lived relationship with Christ,
sustained by his Spirit at work in
our lives,
is
something that changes the world.
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