Seeing and not seeing

During last term I waged an intermittent and, it has to be said, ultimately completely unsuccessful war with some of the boys of Sherborne School over their use of the Abbey Close (and in case you think I am telling tales out of school, let me reassure you that I will be saying exactly the same thing to them at their Sunday service here in about two hours' time).

The problem is that when a intelligent chap, or groups of chaps, from say The Digby , or Wallace, is heading towards school he finds a large expanse of greensward in the way, called the Close. Now such is his spiritual hunger to get to chapel on time, or intellectual thirst to get to lessons on time, or panic about not being late for breakfast, that he goes straight across the grass. That's fine in the dry season – if we ever have one again – but when the grass is waterlogged as it was for much of last term, it simply gets churned up to create a number of muddy rat-runs, and very soon the whole area is looking decidedly down at the mouth.

Now none of this is malicious, you understand. It is simply a matter of perception. The Shirburnian sees the quickest way from A to B and goes for it. But I see an ancient churchyard dedicated by a Saxon bishop – perhaps even Aldhelm himself – which for over a thousand years was the burial ground for this community until my predecessor Edward Harston a hundred and fifty years ago closed the area for burials and founded the cemetery in Lenthay . It is a hallowed place, a holy place, and with the best will in the world I don't want large muddy tracks criss -crossing it.

Everything depends on how we see, on our perceptions. Take the farms of our land, on which we traditionally ask God's blessing on this Rogation Sunday. Are they essentially theme parks for our entertainment, with a right to roam wherever we wish? Or environmental hell-holes of wildlife destruction and chemical and animal abuse? Or places of grinding hard work and sometimes very little reward struggling to keep the nation fed? Those of you who come from a farming background will know how hard it can be to get the great British public to see the truth about farming, and seeing, to understand.

Jesus spent much of his earthly ministry trying to teach people how look at things, how to see into the deeper meaning of things, how to perceive the inner reality of things. And it was often hard work. Sometimes he literally gave the blind their sight. More often he tried over and over again to help sighted people to see properly. And in particular he worked on his disciples, challenging them time and again to look deeper, to see more clearly. Here he is again in today's Gospel, warning them of what will happen after his resurrection. He will not be able to stay with them for long, but they must not be afraid: I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live [John 14:18-19].

It will all come to a head this Thursday, Ascension Day. That is the day when we celebrate the fact that, after those glorious post-resurrection days when Jesus was restored to his disciples (who thought that after his crucifixion they had lost him for ever), he was finally taken from them. We celebrate Ascension Day. They must have hated it. It must have been like a second bereavement, even worse than the first.

But only because they could not see – they still did not realise that Jesus must no longer be confined by time or space. After the resurrection, when he was in Jerusalem he could not be in Galilee; when he was by the lakeside he could not be in the Upper Room. He had to go back – ascend – to his Father in order to return to his followers not just in the land we call holy in the first Christian century, but in every part of the world in every age since. And until Pentecost, that first Whit Sunday, it was all so difficult to understand. But then Jesus returned as spirit, so powerfully that the disciples afterwards said that it was like a rushing mighty wind and like tongues of fire descending upon them, and from that moment they no longer talked of Jesus being with them, but of Jesus being in them.

And still it was hard for people to understand, until they too had experienced the reality of it all. Saul on the Damascus road had to be dazzled with a blinding light, literally blinded, before he could see. For many people it still takes a Damascus Road experience before they can see. So many of us, as we hear Sunday by Sunday the great truths of the scriptures, still do not see : we are like those African villagers in colonial days to whom the District Commissioner gave a sundial. They were sure it was important. They knew they must look after it. But they simply couldn't see what it was for. So to keep it safe they built a hut round it and put a roof over it.

Ascension and Pentecost are the opposite of ‘safe'. The time is coming when all our little securities will be torn away. Christ will ascend to the Father and then his Spirit will come upon us, like a mighty rushing wind and tongues of fire – if we will let him. And then we will begin to see properly for the first time.

Our faith, because it is about life, is full of paradox, and one of the greatest paradoxes of all is that sometimes it is those who can see who are blind, and those who are blind who can see. Cecil Northcott tells this story in his book Christianity in Africa:

I noticed a man walking towards me down the village street. He was barefoot and dressed in a long robe. He came slowly along, feeling his way by tapping with his stick. He was blind. We sat down by the roadside to talk. He was the village postman, messenger and general errand man. He had heard that a stranger had arrived in the village, so he came along to greet me. He had two parcels with him. Out of one came a typewriter and there on the roadside he tapped out on a piece of rough paper a message, in Braille, of welcome to me and a greeting to his friends in England.

Then he unwrapped his second parcel. Out came a large book about the size of a family Bible. Made of thick brown paper, the pages were studded with the Braille characters. He ran his finger along the lines until he found the passage from St John 14: ‘Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me'. We sat there by the side of the dusty road in silence. Then he packed away his treasures, shook hands and away he padded down the road.... I was moved by the man's inner serenity. He had turned blindness into sight and dark into light.

So may God open our eyes, to behold his wonder, his glory and his love.