I wouldn't have it any other way.

I think I may have blogged about this before, but it's something that I keep coming back to. It bothers me when people have a neat and tidy faith. When they have an answer for everything. I'm just not sure that's what we are supposed to have. That's why these words from Richard Hall struck home with me. And they've stayed around...

Mark D Roberts considers the book of Job:

"Yet Job is also one of the messiest of all the books of the Bible. It doesn’t lay out a systematic theology of suffering. Rather, it tells a story, the main part of which is a complicated dialogue. There are no easy answers here, and the conclusion of the book comes as quite a surprise. Even after you’ve finished Job, you might not be sure what to make of it."

These words struck a chord with me. I preached tonight at a harvest festival service where the gospel reading was Mark 4: 1-9, the parable of the sower. It’s such a familiar story, I was anxious to find a new angle on it. Not easy, since the gospels record that Jesus gave the explanation, leaving little for the preacher to do!

I found myself asking why it was that Jesus used parables. Mark records Jesus saying that he taught this way that ‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding’, which is counter-intuitive to say the least. Teaching in order to be deliberately obscure is not teaching! The most common assumption I’ve encountered is that Jesus told simple stories to engage with simple folk, using idioms that they’d understand. But apparently the disciples did not understand. We’ve become so familiar with the parables of Jesus, so used to what we think they mean, that we perhaps find their puzzlement difficult to understand.

Stories, by their very nature, are open-ended. They may have a meaning, but the meaning you take is not always the meaning that’s intended. It’s easy to be suspicious of this. Most of the time we’d rather have clear, consistent and (preferably) concise instructions. Stories offer ambiguity, and that can be hard to deal with. Textbooks for preachers often say something like: “Remember that a parable is not an allegory. It is a story with one clear simple message; the preacher’s task is to offer that message.” But the more I think about that sentiment, the more sure I am that it is rubbish: no story, however simple, has only one clear and unambiguous message.

That’s the point of parables, I reckon.

The truth about God cannot be packaged, systematized and presently neatly and tidily. How could it possibly be? The truth about any of us cannot be told that way, and if it is true of Mr Dai Jones of Swansea, it is all the more surely true of God. No, the truth about God (to borrow a phrase from my friend Kim) must be crept up on, circled around. Parables do not attempt to ‘explain’, but rather offer a truth which must be met and lived with, chewed over and digested. (Horrid mix of metaphors there!) The depth of God’s truth can never be fully plumbed. That’s why Jesus taught in parables.

And that’s why God’s revelation is a man, not a text.

God is bigger than me, He's more than I can grasp. And I'm glad that He is, actually. If I could understand Him completely I don't think that I'd need Him. It's pretty clear to me that understanding the world is beyond me. If He's going to make sense of it (transform it, renew it) then He's going to have to be a bit smarter (more complex, more aware, more powerful) than I am. So it doesn't bother me that much that I don't have all the answers. If anything, it's a relief. Kind of like when I was in grade 3 and the star High School football player defended me from the bully on the bus. I didn't stress over the fact that the football star was stronger than me - and it didn't even occur to me to wonder why he was protecting me. I was just glad that he was.

So here's to a big God. Even when I don't understand all that He does. I wouldn't have it any other way.