The Good Shepherd, Tadworth

What We Don’t Know

I heard via Facebook the other day that a good friend of mine from my first theological college has been given the chair in Theology and the Arts at Regent College, the University of British Columbia.  Naturally I sent him a message of congratulations and suggested to him that he had come a long way since our time together at LBC (London Bible College – now renamed London School of Theology) to which he replied, rather wisely in my humble opinion, “LBC taught us all we still don’t know”.

I had good reason to be thankful to Iwan (my friend’s name) in our early days as students together.  We roomed in the same house.  I had been out of full time education for eight years and I found the getting back to study quite difficult.  I had particular difficulty with New Testament Greek and was almost at my wits’ end after one term with a grand score of 10% in the first Greek grammar exam.  One morning in the communal wash room I confessed to Iwan that I wasn’t coping too well and was feeling that I was a bit thick to put it mildly.  He turned to me and said something along the lines of, “Mick, to get on a degree course at all you are in the top ten percent of the country in intellectual terms”.  I believed him and things started to pick up from that point onwards; the rest, as they say, is history.  I reminded Iwan a couple of years ago how important this encounter had been and how his words affected me and motivated me.  He confessed that he couldn’t remember the incident at all.  What he did remember was that I had nick-named him “tomb features” (my reflection on how he looked first thing in the morning); cruel!  Sorry Iwan. 

This month sees two major festivals of the church being celebrated, Ascension and Pentecost.  Iwan’s words about “all we don’t know” seem to apply rather well to the former and his words to me, which helped launch my theological career, the latter.  In physical terms the ascension of Jesus into Heaven doesn’t make much sense.  Pictures of feet disappearing into a cloud may have cut the mustard in the Middle Ages but it seems almost laughable in the twenty first century.  In the gospels the risen Christ seems to have been able to appear and disappear at will, which again defies what most of us would consider being common sense.  Doesn’t the age of science make this seem like a childish fairy tale?  Well no it doesn’t actually; most scientists would run with Iwan’s statement and be humble enough to realise that our knowledge of how the universe works is even now quite limited, new things are being discovered all the time particularly at a subatomic level.  When it comes to the ascension of our Lord I don’t tend to think of Him going up in the air rather going into another mode of being: hidden at present from us, out of sight, a mode of being that one day we will all experience.

With regard to Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit – one of my favourite images of the Holy Spirit is that of counsellor or comforter.  Comforter, as it is understood today, is not a particularly good translation of the Greek original, its meaning is somewhat too soft.  The original sense is not “there, there, never mind”, it is more active a word in Greek than that.  St John’s Gospel pictures the Holy Spirit as the person of God encouraging us, provoking us, “you can, you really can, now get on with it!”   I would go so far as to say that all those years ago in the communal bath room at LBC Iwan was the mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit for me. 

So during May, let’s be humble about what we don’t know, trusting the Risen and Ascended Lord and let’s be encouraging of one another in our common endeavour to lead the Christian life.  Who knows you might be the instrument of God and help motivate someone who for lack of confidence is struggling to fulfil their divine calling.

All the best – Fr Mick