Reality, Mystery and Fantasy
A sermon preached by the Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce
The Second Sunday before Lent
15th February 2009
Some years ago, I found myself having to share a car journey with a senior and rather dour work colleague of mine to a conference that we were both attending in the north of England. We had agreed beforehand that he would drive and I would be responsible for navigating, and so in order to be properly equipped for this daunting responsibility, I invested in a brand new, ‘state of the art’ road map.
The journey itself seemed straightforward enough, and we proceeded along our chosen route without too much difficulty at first, with me undertaking my navigational duties with commendable diligence and care; until at one point I alerted him in advance to the next turning we had to look out for. “It should be very easy to spot”, said I, consulting the map: “The road we are on now passes directly over a stretch of motorway, and the turning that we want is immediately after that on the right hand side; so all we have to do is look out for the motorway, and the rest should be easy.” We drove on, looking out for the motorway that should be passing beneath us; and we kept on driving; and we kept on driving, until my mounting suspicion that somehow we had managed to miss that stretch of motorway (and so miss our turn) proved correct.
Feeling rather foolish, and conscious of the raised eyebrows of my driver, I studied the map again in some perplexity: yes, there was the motorway, and there was our turning, absolutely unmissable, both roads there in glorious technicolour. So we turned round and retraced our steps, again looking out for the motorway that was the key to identifying our road turning. Again, we managed to miss it somehow, and clearly overshot. We must have spent about another twenty minutes driving up and down that strip of road, with my driver doing his level best to contain his increasing exasperation, in a very dour and controlled kind of way, clearly of the view that this is what is bound to happen if you entrust a simple navigational task to the female of the species. He did not actually say this. But there again, he didn’t have to.
Eventually, he could bear it no longer, pulled the car up, and demanded to be given the map. And then, to my immense relief, he soon confessed that he was as baffled as I was: there on the map, as clear as anything was the missing motorway. Then realisation dawned for us both simultaneously. The map that I had purchased earlier that day, was in fact so up-to-date that it was depicting a stretch of motorway that had not yet been built. We had been looking out for something that did not yet exist. But because we both had absolute confidence in the accuracy of the map, it was automatically assumed by us both that the problem must be an incompetent map reader rather than the map. I was hugely relieved to be vindicated, on this occasion at least.
But this kind of experience can prove unusually disorientating, precisely because we are not expecting it: the experience of finding that a bit of kit in which one would normally place one’s total and absolute confidence without even thinking about it was in fact technically inaccurate and, as a consequence, misleading, albeit for an entirely understandable reason.
But, of course, even the most absolutely reliable and authoritative of documents can sometimes get it wrong and mislead unintentionally: whether this is due to an unscheduled delay in a road building programme (which was doubtless the cause of our problem on that particular occasion), or simple human error: a misprint; a misinterpretation.
Possibly my favourite story about a published misprint relates to an edition of the Bible that was specially printed for King Charles I in 1631, which famously included a version of the seventh commandment that read, “Thou shalt commit adultery”. The things in which we readily, and justifiably put our trust, can sometimes fail us. And that can be disorientating; it may even cause us to ask ourselves, “If something as authoritative as this can prove fallible, how can we really be sure where the truth lies?”
Conversely, there are times when, against all the odds, in circumstances in which reason tells us it makes no logical sense whatsoever, we can come to recognise a profound truth – a truth so powerful that it overturns all our expectations and assumptions in an instant. I don’t know if any of you happened to hear Desert Island Discs last week, which featured David Suchet (of Hercule Poirot fame). He told the story of how as a young actor he was in his theatre dressing room one day, when a woman entered bringing him a message from someone – and he looked up at her and knew, instantaneously, without any shadow of a doubt, that this was the woman he was going to marry. She hadn’t even opened her mouth, but he just knew that it was true. As indeed it proved to be. He did indeed marry her, and they have been together very happily for many years.
Now what possible sense can one make of a human experience of that kind, which goes against absolutely everything that we would otherwise regard as rational and explicable?: how could he have known that she was the woman for him? He knew literally nothing about her. And yet, in that instance, he recognised a truth so profound that nothing else mattered.
My reason for telling you these two very different stories – the tale of the misleading road map, and the story of a man who suddenly and dramatically recognised his life partner in a single instant - is a very simple one, and it is this: truth sometimes comes to us in highly unexpected forms. The most reliable source of factual data may on occasions fail us badly; just as the most inexplicable of uncorroborated hunches may alert us to a truth so profound that it proves utterly life changing.
This second story, in particular, alerts us to the fact that there are dimensions to human life and experience that are deep, and mysterious and inexplicable – but no less real for that. And of course this is nowhere more true than in the context of our relationship with God.
By any objective standards, the claims of the Christian faith are far-fetched, to say the least. It is one thing to claim that a Galilean carpenter from 2,000 years ago, was a wise prophet; a great teacher, and a miracle worker of renown. But to claim that this man was God incarnate is utterly outrageous; scandalous: how could such a thing be so? And yet, reflecting on the actual events of the death and resurrection of Christ, and in the light of those experiences thinking back to his life and ministry, the disciples came to recognise a remarkable, profound and inexplicable truth: the deep mystery of the nature and identity of Jesus, the Christ. A truth that requires us to look behind the story of the man Jesus; behind the stories of the miraculous healings, and the wise teachings; behind even the cross and resurrection. We need to look back to the dawn of time; to the origins of Creation itself.
Today’s gospel reading, the opening verses of St John’s Gospel, does precisely that. It takes us into the very heart of that mystery. And it is an astonishing biblical text. Many of us have grown up with this passage as the words of the Christmas Gospel that we hear each year when we celebrate Christ’s birth. And yet despite their familiarity, they never lose their power. This Christmas, at the Elmhurst Carol Service that we held here, David Bintley, Director of Birmingham Royal Ballet, read this passage at the end of their service: and it was utterly spellbinding. It takes us far beyond rational explanation into the heart of the mystery of God.
During my final summer as a student in Cambridge, I lodged in the home of the man who was shortly afterwards appointed Dean of Westminster Abbey, Michael Mayne, who sadly lost his battle against cancer a year ago. He was a remarkably priest and pastor: one of the wisest, most extraordinary human beings I have been privileged to know; and he had a profound effect upon me. And he once wrote this on the subject of faith:
Faith is not absolute certainty, but a readiness to explore the mystery. It is not a method of finding all the answers, but of living with the questions. Like hope, it is an attitude of mind, an orientation of the spirit.
Faith is not the acceptance of a neat package of answers; is it accepting an invitation to undertake an extraordinary journey into the heart of the mystery that he describes.
Mystery is very different from fantasy; because fantasy is remote from reality; mystery, on the other hand, is what lies at its very heart.
Amen