Cana Sermon 20060107

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Organ music from Holy Trinity Cathedral,
played by
Eugene Lavery,
Assistant Organist

Is the Dean an Agnostic?

14th January 2007
The Rt Rev’d Richard Randerson, Dean

The last two months have seen an astonishing public debate about atheism and religion. First, Richard Dawkins, the Oxford scientist and atheist, publishes his book The God Delusion which seeks to debunk religion, albeit in a very dishonest manner by focussing only on fundamentalist religious caricatures. Then we have a retired Auckland academic complaining publicly that atheists are not getting a fair go. And yesterday the NZ Herald ran a major story about your Dean as an agnostic.

Debate about God and religion may be upsetting for some, but for many it opens up the possibilities of exploring those things which are of greatest importance in life. When it comes to conversation about God, for example, we can only talk about God in terms of symbolism and imagery, because God is mystery. By way of comparison let’s think of the various ways we can depict the City of Auckland. One person might have a photograph of the city, another might have some pages from a tourist guide, another might have written a poem about the magic of the city, another might follow a sign-post pointing to the city. They are all about Auckland, but neither photo, nor tourist guide, nor poem nor sign-post would be mistaken for the city itself. They would all be recognised as no more than images or pointers about the city. You might even say no one could capture the essence of Auckland in any picture or set of words.

This is precisely how it is when we think about God. There are many symbols and images of God, none of which can fully represent God. The traditional image is of God as supernatural creator, and some go further to claim such an entity is scientifically verifiable. It is solely in relationship to that image of God as a scientifically verifiable entity that I used the word agnostic, meaning that you cannot prove the existence of such an entity one way or the other.

There are other images of God. The Bible says God is love, and God is spirit. These are images of God that I and many others feel much more helpful. I believe totally in God, and find these images of love and spirit more meaningful for me. But everyone needs to have an image that they feel is helpful to them, remembering that we are talking here about images, not the reality of God to which any image can only point. The traditional image of God as supernatural being works very well for many. But let us recognise that God is a mystery, the extent of which lies beyond any human words or image, and that there can be many images of the same God.

But if God is mystery, does this mean there is nothing we can know about God? Not at all. As Christians it is our central conviction that the nature of God is revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, whom we call Son of God. Through Jesus we find the nature of God to be one of love, forgiveness, justice, peace, and sacrifice for others. So while God is mystery, God becomes real to us in Jesus, the channel of God’s love, and source of meaning, life and hope as we live out our discipleship as members of God’s family.

The way in which we understand the stories and images contained in Scripture is also important. The Bible contains different literary forms : an historical thread winds through it all, but the Bible also contains poetry, symbolism, parables, prophecy and teaching. To know what literary form we are dealing with is essential. The language of science is a different type of language from the language of poetry and symbolism. Many of the Bible stories are of the latter kind, and to confuse symbolism with science is a category mistake, which both Richard Dawkins and fundamentalist Christians make. In reading many of the Bible stories the essential thing is to focus on the meaning of the story, not to get side-tracked by debating the stories as to whether they are literally factual or non-factual.

The Creation stories in Genesis, for example, do not offer an alternative scientific view as to how the world was made, as Creationists claim. The meaning of the stories is that we understand Creation as gift, and treasure it; every person and part of Creation needs to live in a relationship of inter-dependence; and as human beings we are called to act as stewards of the Creation to ensure its sustainability for all time. The truth of the Virgin Birth story is not discovered by a debate as to whether or not some gynaecological miracle took place, but in discerning the much deeper meaning that in Jesus both human and divine natures meet.

It is in this same way that we understand the story from today’s Gospel (John 2. 1-11) about how Jesus changed water into wine at a wedding feast in Cana of Galilee. The wine at a wedding had run out, and Jesus’ mother reports this to Jesus. There were six stone water jars standing by, used for Jewish rites of purification. Jesus instructs the servants to fill them with water and to take them to the wedding steward. The steward draws from the jars and finds wine of the highest quality, in super-abundance with around 150 gallons of supply, and he comments that it is unusual for the best wine to be kept until last.

Now you can have a great debate about how Jesus could turn water into wine, and you might decide it is quite impossible and write the whole story off, and Christian faith with it. Or you might decide Jesus clearly had some magic powers and regard him in consequence as a magician. But a magician falls a long way short of a messiah. Or you might decide that the water-to-wine dimensions of the story are not important in a literal way, but are highly significant for their symbolism. And this, of course, is precisely what John the Gospel-writer wants us to understand. The symbolism of this story is incredibly rich:

Jesus himself is referred to in several places in the Gospels as the Bridegroom come to save his people, and here he is incognito at another wedding as the ultimate bridegroom-in-waiting
the super-abundance of wine symbolises the rich and overflowing nature of God’s love
one might see a reference to the Eucharist, symbolising Jesus’ blood which is to be poured out on the Cross, and which will be life-giving in its consequences for all who believe
we see as a central meaning that the old Jewish rites of purification, and indeed the whole Jewish dispensation, will be superseded by a new dispensation of God revealed and achieved through the life, death and resurrection of God’s Son, Jesus.
the water-to-wine event is described by John not as a miracle but as a sign, something that points to a truth beyond itself, namely the saving and transforming power of God in Christ
the consequence of the sign is that Jesus’ glory is seen, and his disciples believe in him.

So here we have a story the truth of which is to be seen not in terms of whether Jesus was some kind of magician who could make wine out of water, but in terms of a story rich in symbolism of a truth much deeper, namely the life-changing presence of Jesus Christ in our lives. This is an experience which is as much available to us in our lives today as it was to those first disciples at the wedding in Cana of Galilee. Christ is in our midst, often incognito as he was at the wedding, but present with us in times of both joy and sorrow. We do not put our faith in symbols or images, but in the living God to whom all symbols and images can only point, and who is known to us most fully in the person of his son, Jesus Christ.