Sermon: A bat's eye-view of the sun

From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

BAT’S - EYE VIEW OF THE SUN: Dr Raymond Pelly

• Genesis 28:10-19a
• Psalms 12, 13
• John 1:35-41

The Greek philosopher Aristotle once said that human attempts to see God – by which he meant ‘understand’ God – were about as successful as a bat’s ability to look directly at the sun. John’s Gospel puts it even more bluntly. ‘No one has ever seen God’ (Jn. 1:18). John, however, goes on to say – and here he parts company with Aristotle – ‘ It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known’.

Does that solve the problem? Yes and no; because, for all the accessibility of Jesus to human gaze and interaction, the mystery remains.

I.

In John’s Gospel the mystery of Christ is variously expressed. ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man’ (1:51). These words tell us that this is no ordinary man. In his person he opens up a flow of energy or life between heaven and earth; from the heart of God to the living, beating heart of the man Jesus. Otherwise expressed, Jesus is a visionary who both sees and incarnates the glory of God.

This sense of utter nearness to God – one could almost say his identity and the identity of God are one and the same – is expressed in similar ways in other parts of the same Gospel. Echoing the language of ascending and descending, ‘No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended, the Son of Man’ (3:13). Or, ‘For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself’ (5:26). Or, in summary form, ‘I and the Father are one’ (10:30).

Does this mean, then, that we are back in ‘bat’ mode, squinting ineffectually at the sun; tempted to give up; to say, this is too hard? Are the problems we had with God still there when we look at Jesus?

Once again, yes and no. Yes, in the sense that the mystery remains, is irreducible. Because Jesus was full of the life of God – the full expression in a human person of that very life – then if we get into the game of saying Jesus was ‘just this’ or ‘merely that’ – a rather special Galilean peasant; or, as Elton John expressed it, an exceptionally intelligent and compassionate man – then we shall at best be stating a half-truth; not wrong, but not the whole truth.

II.

This does not mean, however, that we are left helpless, groping in the dark. The mystery persists, yes. But the whole of the Bible – not to speak of on-going Christian tradition – can be read as a sustained attempt to gain insight – always partial – into the mystery of Christ. We see a splendid example of this in the passage we have just heard from John’s Gospel. If we read it attentively, we see that John – through the mouth of the characters in the drama he relates – all have different – and more or less adequate – ways of confessing their faith in the person of Jesus who, even now, is breaking into their lives.

Some see him in purely human terms. He is Jesus the son of Joseph from Nazareth; a more or less charismatic Rabbi; the one about whom Moses and the prophets wrote (1:38, 45).

Others reach for well-known categories from the Scriptures to try to get a handle on this character who is now challenging them to become disciples. ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’(36); another, ‘We have found the Messiah (the one anointed with the Spirit of God)’ (41); another, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’ (49). These are all words of people undergoing a profound change of heart as they encounter Jesus; good-hearted, immediate, well-meant confessions of faith that – once again – contain a part of the truth, not the whole truth.

Notice they are all spoken from the side of the human; awaiting the word of revelation that opens up the full extent of the mystery of Christ. When it comes, we hear Jesus saying, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon on the Son of Man.’ In other words, we’re not playing mind-games or word-games any more. These confessions of faith have served their purpose. They enable us to come one step closer to God. But the real issue is: Do you – the reader or the hearer – recognize in the person of Jesus the very presence of the life and call of God for you personally? For this no words are adequate; only the complete giving of self; just as Jesus conveys the reality of God by the complete giving of himself.

III.

A moment ago I said that the whole Bible – and not just the passage in question – helps us gain insight into the mystery of Christ. Our Old Testament reading is a good example. Now we have the account of the Patriarch Jacob’s dream at Bethel (Genesis 28:10-22). Night has fallen; and as Jacob dreams, he sees a ladder reaching from earth to heaven; and on it, angels of God – that is, messengers from God – ascending and descending. In his dream, God stands beside Jacob promising him offspring and land. For a wandering immigrant like Jacob, this is the one thing he longs to hear. Centuries later, the writer of St. John’s Gospel picks this up – the image of the ladder and angelic messengers – and makes it part of the discourse of Jesus himself. But with a difference. Now we’re not talking dreams or appearances, but reality. Jesus himself is the angel, the messenger, the one who brings ‘tidings of great joy’, the place where all the promises of God find their fullest expression.

And indeed all the Patriarchs were visionaries. Abraham, we are told, was lead ‘outside’ by God – outside, that is, all his petty concerns and anxieties – and commanded to ‘look toward heaven and count the stars’. As he does so, he hears God saying, ‘So shall your descendents be’ (Genesis 15:5). This promise is picked up by his son Isaac. He too is a visionary: and he hears God saying, ‘I will be with you, and will bless you … I will fulfill the oath I swore to your father Abraham. I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven’ (26:2ff). And the impetus of this great pilgrimage of faith is maintained, as we have seen, by Jacob. It is carried on in turn by his son Joseph, another dreamer/visionary, whose destiny – through many ups and downs – is to be the one who sustains not just his own kin in a time of severe famine, but the whole human family. ‘God sent me’ says Joseph, ‘to preserve life’ (45:5).

IV.

So from promise and human life we move to Jesus, who is not only promise and life to every person, but also the very life of God, the one who heals our blinded sight, who offers true vision – meaning vision of God. ‘What has come into being in him was life, and the light was the light of all people’ (Jn. 1:4). What the Patriarchs wanted was family and land; and they got it. But now the desire for family and land is touched by Christ and put in a larger perspective, that of service to others and compassion. Or, time and again the Patriarchs dug wells, for how could there be life without water? But then again the challenge comes back to us. Where can we dig spiritual wells with water that truly nourishes us? Staring us in the face – as once with the woman at the well in Samaria – is the Jesus who says, ‘Those who drink of the water that I will give will never thirst. The water I will give will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life’ (Jn 4:14).

So we return to Jacob. As he awakens from sleep and his visionary dream, he exclaims, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it!’ And he was afraid, and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven’ (Genesis 28:16-17). This evening we are invited to transfer these words to the person of Jesus. ‘Surely the Lord is in this man – and I did not know it. I’m afraid. How awesome is this person. This is none other than the house of God, the gate of heaven’ - ‘the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man’.