Video for May 1st, 2025.
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video.
As we continue through the Easter season for the next few weeks celebrating the resurrection one would expect the emphasis in all the readings to be on banishing questions and doubts. A yet many of the accounts present the participants as bemused and uncertain. Their later preaching was filled with conviction, but conviction is not the same as certainty. No-one after the death of the first eyewitnesses to Jesus’ resurrection can say with certainty that Jesus bodily rose from the dead, any more than you can express certainty about any historic event you didn’t witness yourself. The weight of evidence at the time and in the continuing existence of the church at all is compelling. Many Christians can testify to a deep and powerful encounter with the risen Christ. I absolutely agree with Paul’s assertion in 1 Corinthians 15 that if there is no resurrection there is no Christian faith. But I am aware that deeply sincere Christians do wrestle with doubt, especially in hard times.
I have been struck recently with the partnership model for the spread of the Gospel envisaged in the Parable of the Sower. The world record for commercial wheat production is held by Tim Lamyman in Lincolnshire. In 2022 one of his fields yielded 17.96 tonnes to the Hectare. This is 89.8x what was sown. So, when Jesus talks of seed yielding 100, 50 or even 30 times what was sown an ancient farmer would have laughed out loud. There would have been gripes at the back of the crowd suggesting Jesus stick to carpentry – rather like the disciples were tempted to say to him when he gave fishing advice. The Gospel of the resurrected Christ, symbolised by the seed, is an extraordinary thing. I haven’t encountered anything else with the same power to transform people’s lives and character when it is truly received and embedded in the heart.
However, in the parable Jesus posits that there needs to be a co-operation, both individual and corporate for this to happen. We can read this as saying the deficiencies in the expression of the Gospel are the fault of the individual who receives it. But there is a responsibility for church communities here as well. The seed that fell among thorns is interpreted by Jesus as those who do not understand it. If I think about my own growth in understanding in any area of life, practical or academic, that rarely happens instantaneously. Ideas must be grappled with; space must be given to try and fail; questions must be allowed and explored together. I am grateful for those who nurtured me in faith as a teenager for allowing that to happen. I received a letter from one of very gifted clergy a few days ago sharing their experience of something similar. Discussion groups in their university years which were safe spaces for questioning laid a foundation for a faith that has sustained them and led them eventually to a distinguished vocation. They commented that without that group their faith might not have survived their teenage years at all. I understand that if we have conviction rather than certainty such open questioning can feel very threatening. But unexplored questions have a nasty habit of accumulating and in the end snatching faith away. I have every confidence that faith in the resurrected Jesus is quite robust enough to survive serious exploration and enquiry. It has managed if for the last 2000 years. Whilst weakened by the onslaught of secular materialism it hasn’t gone away and is even showing signs of a revival among younger people disillusioned with modern culture’s inability to supply answers to the great questions of life. The challenge to us is to provide those safe spaces in our churches to enquire and explore and live non-anxiously with the mystery of faith as well as those historical truths that I believe are convincing.
As part of our year of engagement we are continuing to offer spiritual question time evenings across the diocese. We should really call them ‘grill the Bishop and Dean evenings’ where people can gather and explore faith together. They are especially useful to invite friends. There are details on the website and its still not too late to organise one in your own parish. I like to make such things a diary priority if I can.
We need not be anxious that opening the door to questions will threaten us. Its more likely to lead to deeper engagement and ownership. The resurrection accounts reassure us that questions are Ok and the church can provide a safe place for that to happen.
+Richard