Wonder of Wonders, Miracle of Miracles

It was a sad day when Pastor Parker got pulled over while driving home one night. The police officer came to the driver’s window and leaned in and said, “Pastor Parker you were weaving back and forth a little bit on the road there. You haven’t been drinking have you?”

“Oh, no,” said Pastor Parker. “Certainly not.”

“Well, what’s in that bottle there in the passenger seat? It looks like a wine bottle.”

“Oh, no,” said Pastor Parker. “Just water. It’s only water, Officer.”

“Then may I have a look?”

“Absolutely,” the pastor said and he handed over the bottle.

The officer sniffed it and said, “Pastor Parker, I know you’ve got connections with Jesus, but that’s wine in this bottle.”

Pastor Parker looked up to the heavens and said, “Glory be, he’s done it again!”

Turning water into wine, of course, was Jesus’ first miracle, or sign, as the gospel of John calls it. It happened at a wedding in Cana of Galilee, which also happens to be the place where he did his second Galilean miracle, or sign, as we heard in the gospel reading today. So Cana is a good place for us to go today because the thing I want to talk about is miracles. What are they and how do we understand them?

We are now in the third week of this series on faith and science. In the first week we talked about the big bang and evolution. Last week we talked about psychology and faith. And what I have learned is that this series is opening up a huge area for exploration. A sermon series that was three months long couldn’t begin to touch all the issues raised by the intersection of faith and science. But it has been fascinating and I hope that by just beginning this conversation it will lead you to do some more exploration. If we are thoughtful about our faith, this conversation is unavoidable and I hope this will give you some confidence to see that your Christian faith is not something you have to hide when you are confronted with scientific discoveries.

No area has been more troubling to the scientific mindset, however, than miracles. We read the biblical stories and miracles are all over the place. Moses and the people of Israel cross the Red Sea by walking between walls of water that God has piled up. Joshua commands the sun and the moon to stop and they do. Elijah calls down fire on a sacrifice soaked with water in a contest with the prophets of Baal and the fire comes. Jesus turns water into wine, walks on water and feeds five thousand. Peter and John heal a lame man so that he goes off leaping and praising God. Miracles are the stuff of Bible stories.

Here’s the thing about miracles, though – for many years modern science has operated under the presumption, the firm presumption, that the universe is predictable. There is an order to things. There are natural laws that govern how things operate. For something to be true it must be true always. To prove that something can be done I not only have to do it but someone else has to be able to replicate it. Most of us would accept that that’s how science works and that that is how science needs to work in order to arrive at scientific truth.

Science has a hard time with miracles. They don’t compute. The doctor comes in with a report and says, “Mr. Conrad, I don’t know how to explain this but your latest CT scan shows that your tumor has completely disappeared.” Mr. Conrad may think it’s a miracle. Mr. Conrad may believe that God has intervened in answer to prayer. The doctor may believe the same thing. But science would look for an alternative explanation.

It is a wonderful thing that Mr. Conrad no longer has cancer, but modern medicine would want to know what happened in this case and how it might be replicated for other patients. Science might do a study on prayer and its effectiveness in healing patients. A few studies have been done with mixed results. More likely the doctor’s scientific side would say, “With a little more study one day we will know why Mr. Conrad’s tumor reacted the way it did.” God doesn’t have to be part of the equation. And the more science discovers, the fewer gaps in knowledge there are for God to fill. So goes the story.

Albert Einstein, the great 20^th century physicist who took science to some very weird and wonderful places as he unfolded his great scientific theories, had a great confidence that this way of talking about science that I’ve just described would go on. Even in his universe of black holes and a space-time continuum there was predictability. Einstein said famously, “I do not believe that God plays dice with the universe.”[i] Einstein didn’t have a traditional belief in God, but he did talk about God as the underlying order of the universe. That’s what he’s getting at with that statement – the universe is predictable ultimately. He felt there must be an objective reality that could be understood if we just had the right equations or the right instruments of observation.

Science, however, is changing. The weird physics of Einstein have gotten even weirder. On one level, Isaac Newton’s laws of physics are still true. An apple that breaks loose from a tree will still fall down and hit you on the head if you’re sitting under it. The theory of gravity is still pretty useful for understanding situations like that even after three centuries. But when you get down to the atomic level it’s a whole other ball game. At that level, we’re discovering that “anything can happen,” as the quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg said.[ii] At that level the apple, instead of falling, might appear over there or in San Francisco or split into two, or disappear. All bets are off. And even stranger, it seems that, at the atomic level, because something is being observed it behaves in unpredictable ways.

So what am I saying? Has quantum physics made it possible to talk about God again? In a sense. Two hundred years ago Thomas Jefferson, who was a great scientist himself in addition to being the founder of the University of Virginia and, oh, yes, president, was cutting up his New Testament, taking out the stories of Jesus’ miracles and republishing what was left as an acceptable Enlightenment book to give to members of Congress. He thought Jesus was a great teacher but could never reconcile himself to the idea that God would be actively involved in the world in a way that would defy the laws of nature, in other words God’s laws. God was very remote for Jefferson and Einstein.

Now, however, we have a whole new way of seeing. The physicist Paul Davies says that “when one gets to an indeterministic universe, if you allow quantum physics, then there is some sort of lassitude in the operation of these laws…God could load the quantum dice…this is one way of influencing what happens in the world, working through these quantum uncertainties.”[iii] It’s still a pretty remote God, but it opens the door for a much more complex understanding of how the universe works that could have more scientists talking about how God could be at work.

From a Christian understanding, though, we want something more. We need something more. What are miracles? Are they just magical things that prove how awesome biblical characters were -- like superhero powers? Moses with the Staff of Power!

The preacher and writer Frederick Buechner defines miracles this way:

“A cancer inexplicably cured. A voice in a dream. A statue that weeps. A miracle is an event that strengthens faith. It is possible to look at most miracles and find a rational explanation in terms of natural cause and effect. It is possible to look at Rembrandt’s Supper at Emmaus and find a rational explanation in paint and canvas.

Faith in God is less apt to proceed from miracles than miracles from faith in God.”[iv]

What I like about Buechner’s definition is that it doesn’t make miracles into superhero powers. They are events that show us that faith is already there. They are visible when we have the eyes to see them.

Which brings us back around to Cana. A royal official comes to Jesus in Cana. He lives in Capernaum, at least a half-day’s journey away. The man works for the king. Jesus is a nobody, only just beginning his ministry. His only public act in the area has been to be the best wedding party guest ever, turning six huge vats of water into truly excellent wine. There were stories. Stories of how he had overturned tables in the temple in Jerusalem. Of how he stirred up the crowds with signs. But in Galilee it was just the wedding feast trick.

The royal official comes because he has a sick son. Every desperate parent knows what it’s like to have a sick child. You do what you need to do to get help – even if it means trying out the new miracle worker. So he goes to Jesus and begs him to come with him to Capernaum. To heal his son because the boy was at the point of death.

The official is interested in one thing – a healing – but Jesus seems interested in something else. He turns to the man and says, “Unless you see signs and wonders you won’t believe.” It’s pretty much what he says to Thomas, his doubting disciple, after the resurrection. “You need to see so you can believe.”

If it’s a rebuke the man doesn’t catch it. He says, “Sir, come down and my son will live.” The important thing is to get Jesus to the boy. Get Jesus to the boy and everything will be alright.

But Jesus is not going. “Go,” he says. “Your son will live.” First, go, then your son will live. The man gets it. Believe first and then you’ll find life. Jesus had just told Nicodemus, a religious leader, pretty much the same thing a chapter earlier – “God sent the only begotten Son that whoever believes in him will have life everlasting.” Whoever believes lives.

So it’s really no surprise when the servants show up with the news that the boy was alive. In fact, he started to revive at exactly the hour that Jesus said he would live. The man had gone because he wanted the healing. Only then would he be able to think about who Jesus was. But when Jesus asked him to believe first and to act on that belief, the miracle followed.

Science is discovering that the way you see things really does make a difference. The lens you take with you into the world affects what you see. A scientific theory…and ‘theory’ is a word that goes back to the Greek word that also gives us ‘theater’ – it’s about watching and observation…a scientific theory is a way of looking at things that helps us understand them. Science moves forward by coming up with new ways of looking at things.

Guy Consolmagno is the curator of the Vatican’s meteorite collection. He’s a scientist and a priest and he sees how this happens in earth science – his field of specialty:

“While there's a lot of places where we can put measures and write equations, an awful lot of it is still being able to look at a road cut and saying these layers came before those layers and I can see it. And either you see it or you don't. There's a geologist friend of mine who came back from one of these trips saying, ‘You know, if I hadn't believed it, I'd have never seen it.’”[v]

“If I hadn’t believed it, I’d have never seen it.” Wasn’t that the experience of the man seeking healing for his son? Isn’t that the experience of so many miracles? They illuminate the miracles that pervade the universe.

Wendell Berry is a kind of modern-day prophet who continues to push those around him to see the dangers of our contemporary lifestyles. He lives on a farm and insists that only by cultivating the land and community can we find our way forward. He is also a critic of the way science has systematically reduced our understanding of life from something rich and mysterious to something mechanical. When he looks at new technologies like the human genome project that maps the building blocks of the human animal or the cloning of sheep, Berry worries that we will begin to think of animals less as creatures and more as machines:

“Though we have life, it is beyond us. We do not know how we have it, or why. We do not know what is going to happen to it, or to us. It is not predictable; though we can destroy it, we cannot make it. It cannot, except by reduction and the grave risk of damage, be controlled. It is, as [William] Blake said, holy. To think otherwise is to enslave life.”[vi]

For Wendell Berry, miracles are not just rare things that interrupt the world as we know it, they are necessary things, essential elements of everyday life. The most important things we have in this life are not reducible to formulas and chemical compounds. Life, love, soul, spirit – such things are mysteries that demand a different way of seeing. All good science begins with the recognition that every scientific exploration is ultimately a journey into the miraculous. And miracles are ultimately not about believing impossible things – they are about seeing the world through the eyes of faith.

A great contemporary novel for exploring miracles is Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River. Told through the eyes of Reuben, a young boy growing up in Minnesota in the middle of the last century, the book introduces us to a character who can do miracles--his father. A skeptic might say that the boy is really just seeing his dad through rose-colored glasses, but reading this story you believe right along with Reuben.

The first miracle is Rueben’s birth. He is born with his lungs filled with fluid, unable to breathe. At the moment of his birth his father, who is outside pacing and praying, senses that he is born and comes racing to the delivery room of the hospital. Here’s the scene as described by Rueben based on the stories his dad has told him about his birth:

“Dad lifted me gently…A little clay boy is what I was.

‘Breathe,’ Dad said.

I lay in his arms.

Dr. Nokes said, ‘Jeremiah, it has been twelve minutes.’

‘Breathe!’ The picture I see is of Dad, brown hair short and wild, giving this order as if he expected nothing but obedience.

Dr. Nokes approached him. ‘Jeremiah. There would be brain damage now. His lungs can’t fill.’

Dad leaned down, laid me back on the table, took off his jacket and wrapped me in it—a black canvas jacket with a quilted lining, I have it still. He left my face uncovered.

‘Sometimes,’ said Dr. Nokes, ‘there is something unworkable in one of the organs. A ventricle that won’t pump correctly. A liver that poisons the blood.’ Dr. Nokes was a kindly and reasonable man. ‘Lungs that can’t expand to take in air. In these cases,’ said Dr. Nokes, ‘we must trust the Almighty to do what is best.’ At which Dad stepped across and smote Dr. Nokes with a right hand, so that the doctor went down and lay on his side with his pupils unfocused. As Mother cried out, Dad turned to me, a clay child wrapped in a canvas coat, and said in a normal voice, ‘Rueben Land, in the name of the living God I am telling you to breathe.’”

Which he did.

Rueben’s learning from this is that “real miracles bother people…they rebut every rule all we good citizens take comfort in.” He credits his little sister with the insight that “people fear miracles because they fear being changed—though ignoring them will change you also…No miracle happens,” she said, “without a witness. Someone to declare, Here’s what I saw. Here’s how it went. Make of it what you will.”[vii]

A scientist’s job is to approach this miraculous world with the best tools available to try and see where the inquiry will lead. If they go into it with the naïve belief that scientific truth is the only kind of truth there is, more’s the pity for them that they have such an impoverished view of the world. And more’s the pity for us because we know how monstrous science can turn when it loses its wonder at life.

As people of faith, our job is to go into the world expecting that miracles will happen and to be unafraid to call them forth from this enchanted world, full of the presence of God. With the eyes of faith we can see incredible things happening. As Jesus told the man that day in Cana – Go. Believe. Life will come. And when it does – tell somebody, because miracles need a witness. Someone to declare, Here’s what I saw. Here’s how it went. Make of it what you will. Are you ready for a miracle? Go. Thanks be to God.

John 4:46-54 [NRSV]

Then he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Then Jesus said to him, "Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe."

The official said to him, "Sir, come down before my little boy dies."

Jesus said to him, "Go; your son will live."

The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, "Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him." The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live." So he himself believed, along with his whole household.

Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.

---

[i] Quoted in Krista Tippett, Einstein’s God: Conversations about Science and the Human Spirit, [Penguin Books: New York, 2010], ebook location 419-425.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid, ebook location 605.

[iv] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, [Harper Collins: San Francisco, 1973], p. 74.

[v] Guy Consolmagno, interview with Krista Tippett on “Asteroids, Stars and the Love of God,” Speak of Faith, American Public Radio, broadcast April 1, 2010, transcript at http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2010/asteroids/transcript.shtml.

[vi] Wendell Berry, Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition, [Counterpoint: Washington, DC, 2000], p. 9.

[vii] Leif Enger, Peace Like a River, [Grove Press: New York, 2001], pp. 2-3.

Body, Mind and Spirit: Engaging Psychology

Last week we began a series on faith and science and I have to say, it looks like we were ready for it. I have received a lot of comments, most of them appreciative, which told me that this is a topic that is just below the surface for many of us. We live our lives in a world formed by the insights of science and with commitments born of our faith and there are many people on both sides who tell us that we can’t let the two talk to each other. We’re told that they don’t get along. But as I said last week, I think they have to and we ought not to be afraid to create space for that to happen.

So last week we looked at what astrophysicists and biological anthropologists are telling us about the origin of the universe and the origin of the human species. We learned that in the grand scale of things human beings can seem very small, but we were also reminded of God’s promise. Even though we have come so late to the universe and to the earth…even so we have been chosen to play a unique role in the drama of creation and salvation.

Today we’re going to look at a different branch of science. Psychology and neuroscience are making incredible discoveries about the nature of the brain and the way that our thought processes work. They are challenging the notion of who we are as human beings and how we operate, but they are also opening up new frontiers for research into things like prayer and meditation. What does Christian faith tell us about who we are and how might it intersect with this emerging science? It sounds like the intro to a TV show, but it’s really just the intro to this sermon.

I want to start, though, with a picture of mental turmoil from the gospels. In the reading from Mark for today, we see Jesus confronting a man who is, as we would say today, out of his mind. Mark says that he has an unclean spirit. That sounds like a pretty archaic description to us. Nobody goes to the doctor these days and is told, “Well, I’m afraid to say you’ve got an unclean spirit there, Alex. We’re going to have to send you over to Rayfield’s for a prescription of Penicillin to take care of that.” Doesn’t happen.

So how would we describe it? The man tears his clothes. He’s got incredible strength. He breaks the chains that people put on him to restrain him. He lives among the tombs, an interesting place to hang out, and wanders along the mountains. He howls and does injury to himself with stones. And when Jesus confronts him he, or the unclean spirit within him, says, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” So what’s your diagnosis? Schizophrenia? Multiple personality disorder? Dementia? A little bit of depression thrown in? Let’s pull out the DSM-IV, the manual of psychiatric disorders, and see if we can’t put a name on this.

Jesus, of course, doesn’t do this. He recognizes that there is a spiritual battle going on and so he deals with the man on that level. He calls the demons out and sends them into a nearby herd of pigs that go racing over the cliff side to their death. The man is restored in his mind and, maybe just as importantly, he is restored in his relationships as the villagers come out and find him “clothed and in his right mind.” They’re scared at first and the healed man wants to leave with Jesus, but Jesus tells him to stay and to tell his friends what God has done for him.

Now what are we to say to this story? Is this a condemnation of how we address mental health concerns in our day? Should we use pigs instead of Prozac? Exorcism instead of Excedrin? (Actually I don’t think many psychiatrists are prescribing Excedrin for unclean spirits these days but it sounds better with exorcism, so we’ll go with it.)

It seems to me that at least some branches of psychology and psychotherapy have been evolving towards a model of healing that bears some resemblance to what Jesus was doing. It doesn’t talk in the same language that Jesus did, but it recognizes that often what is really troubling us is below the surface and maybe beyond our ability to consciously comprehend. And after a long period when industrialization and mechanization and urbanization and social dislocation and secularization had disrupted and uprooted people in Western cultures, psychotherapy developed as a way to give people what they critically needed – someone to talk to. A relationship with someone who really listened and tried to understand what was happening. What was the Gerasene demoniac except a hopelessly dislocated guy who had lost all of his connections to other people and to God? And what did Jesus do except to confront him where he most needed to be confronted – to comprehend what was going on at the level of his spirit and to restore his relationships?

It’s hard for us to remember that psychology, in its modern form, is a fairly young science. It’s only been a little over a century since Sigmund Freud started to spin out his theories of psychotherapy but think how influential he has been. Even though his method has been fairly thoroughly overhauled and in some ways discredited, all I have to do is say psychotherapy and many of us get images of a therapist with a pad sitting by a patient lying on a couch asking him or her to share their dreams and talk about their mother. It’s the stereotype of Freud’s method, but he touched on something deep. We do have a powerful subconscious. We are not always aware of why we do things. We do have drives – for power, for sex, for acceptance, for survival – that cause us to do things we’re not even aware we are doing.

Actually Freud was onto something that the Apostle Paul had observed almost 19 centuries before. Paul said, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” [Romans 7:15] Paul called it sin working in his flesh. Freud called it the subconscious but they were working in the same ballpark.

Over the last century there were others who advanced the field of psychology. Carl Jung saw the deep power in the archetypes of our ancient stories and in religious symbols and how these archetypes worked their way into our dreams. Jungian psychology introduced deep storytelling into the field. Then there were cognitive-behavioral therapies that emphasize analyzing our thoughts because, the theory goes, these control our feelings and behaviors, not external circumstances. And along the way hosts of other methods – transactional analysis, hypnotherapy, family systems theory, primal scream therapy. All of them pick up on some area of what it means to be a human with this mysterious thing we call a brain.

Psychiatry also contributes a huge number of drugs that have been very helpful to very many people. But we still don’t understand exactly how they work. By trial and error we have found some helpful things, but we have a long way to go to try and understand it all.

Let me be very clear about this. I don’t lift up all these things to say – “Wow, look what a junkyard this history of psychology has been.” I not only believe that there is value in the insights of psychology, I have had some of my most profound moments of transformation and some of my deepest spiritual experiences as a result of being in therapy. As someone who has struggled with depression in the past, I know how valuable the therapeutic process has been for helping me recognize it and deal with it. It should not be a sign of weakness or shame to seek help when we are hurting in our minds, just like it is no weaknesses to see a doctor about a strange pain in your chest.

Here’s the thing, though. I believe psychology works for us because it offers us two things that the modern world has taken away – it affirms the worth and importance of the inner life and it gives us a relationship of deep listening. These are also things that the church cares about and which the church can offer. In fact, we can offer this and something more – an understanding that our lives are only rightly ordered when they are directed toward God.

The first psychologist was actually not Sigmund Freud. It was Augustine of Hippo, the great Christian thinker of the 4^th century. Augustine knew that what was going on in his soul was the most important thing he could listen to. He knew that what the desires of his heart and his body were deep and inescapable and they weren’t to be denied but redirected toward God. And the way they get redirected is to fall in love with God.

Augustine was drawn to Paul’s description of who we are as described in the letter to the Romans. In chapter 12 of that letter, in the section we read for today, Paul says, “Do not be formed by this age, but rather be transformed by the renewal of your mind so that you may test what is the will of God -- what is good and acceptable and whole.” Do not be formed by this age – conformed to the world around you, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. How does this happen except by believing that what this world offers is often deception and lies and that truth and true personhood comes when we love God and what God loves.

Ellen Charry, who has referred to Augustine as the first Christian psychologist, says that what the early Church came to believe was that “God is the origin and destiny of human happiness, that knowing and loving God are the foundation of human self-knowledge and direction, and that life’s goal is conformation to God.”[i] Psychology does not have to be antithetical to this. For me it has been about freeing me from the distortions and the fuzzy thinking that keep me from seeing myself honestly and helping me see how the true desires of my heart can help me love God. But psychology, by itself, will not lead us to God. It takes the Christian story to give us the greater picture. It takes trust in who Jesus is and the love of God to help us look forward to the day yet to come. As 1 John says, “What we will be has not yet been revealed, but we do know this: when Jesus is revealed, we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is.” [1 John 3:2] We shall be like him. We can’t understand who we really are without that God connection.

That’s why involvement with small groups within the church is such a crucial thing for helping us remember that. Our Elijah House Prayer ministry is a great resource for opening ourselves and our wounds to two other Christians who can meet with you and help you remember who you are in God’s eyes. Accountability groups that put you in regular connection with fellow Christians do that as well.

Here’s an exercise to close, though. Dr. Daniel Siegel has written a book recently on the amazing capacity of the human brain to change itself through mindfulness. In Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation he gives a very helpful visual model of the complexity of the brain and you can do it. Just put up your right hand. This is going to be your model of the brain.

If you put your thumb on your palm and fold your fingers over it, you’ve got a good rough model of what’s going on inside your head. Your fingertips are the front of your brain and the back of your hand is the back of your head. So there are three major parts to your brain.

Your wrist represents your brainstem, or what is sometimes called your reptile brain. There are some basic functions going on here. Your brainstem controls basic processes like your heart and your lungs. But it also controls our states of arousal. It’s the part of our brain that says, “I want that,” and moves us to get it. Caveman brain. It’s also the part of the brain that controls the fight-flight-or-freeze mechanism. If all we were were a brainstem, we’d just be pretty much reactive to stimuli – in survival mode all the time. It’s important, because it helps us get what we need to survive, but thank goodness it’s not all we are.

Above that brainstem is the deepest part of our brain, represented by your thumb. This is the limbic system. Here you have a region that helps us evaluate our condition. As Siegel says, “’Is this good or is this bad?’ is the basic question the limbic area addresses.”[ii] It helps us form emotions to answer that question and it is a crucial area for helping us form relationships with others.

Finally, the third part of your brain is the cortex and the cortex helps to keep us from being entirely led by the emotions of our limbic region or the drives of our brainstem. And that most interesting part of this part of the brain is represented by the middle two fingers in the front – your middle prefrontal cortex. Here is where your brain bends back around to touch the brainstem and the limbic region. This area allows us to have ideas and concepts and to develop moral judgments and a sense of self. Siegel says this area is “literally one synapse away from neurons in the cortex, the limbic area, and the brainstem.”[iii] And amazingly this is the region that allows us to connect – to have that feeling that we are in touch with other people, that we know what they are thinking. It is also the region that lights up when we pray or mediate and try to connect with God.

All of this complexity is something that neuroscience is just beginning to understand in the last decade or so. And it might seem from this that all of our experiences, even our spiritual experiences, can be reduced to brain wiring and chemistry. But that’s not the case. The most amazing thing that brain science has discovered is the uniqueness of the human brain. There is something more than biology and determinism at work. We have the ability to think about thinking – to meditate and to pray – to regenerate connections. Through mindfulness we can change our brains. As far as we know, no other creatures can do that. And there is no “place” where this ability resides. We are not just brains – we are body, mind and spirit – we are souls who live in relationship with God and with each other. Brain scans can show us amazing things going on, but they can’t show us our worth and meaning in God’s eyes. They can only lead us deeper into wonder.

Psalm 139 says that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” We are called to love this God with all of our heart, soul, strength and mind. And the more we love God the more we will know our selves. Thanks be to God.

Romans 12:1-3

Therefore I call upon you, brothers and sisters, because of the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, a real evidence of your service. And do not be formed by this age, but rather be transformed by the renewal of your mind so that you may test what is the will of God -- what is good and acceptable and whole.

---

[i] Ellen T. Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine, [New York: Oxford University Press, 1997], p. 4.

[ii] Daniel Siegel, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation, [Bantam Books: New York, 2010] e-location 473.

[iii] Daniel Siegel, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation, [Bantam Books: New York, 2010] e-location 552-556.

The Big Bang and Beyond

I’m going into some awkward territory today. It’s a little like what it was like when I tried out one of the new exercises on the Wii Fit Plus we’ve got at home. It’s a video game that’s supposed to help you get fit and one of the exercises has you stand on the Wii Fit board and move your hips to hit numbered mushrooms that appear on the screen. Hit the right mushrooms to add up to 20 and you’ve succeeded. My family enjoyed watching me try this out because it combined two of my worst features – math and balance – to great comic effect.

Well, today’s sermon does something similar. We are beginning a series today on faith and science which means that I will have to combine two more of my worst features – understanding science and talking about it. There is a reason I am not a scientist. But I think it is worth doing because there are many people who believe that faith and science cannot coexist.

On the one side there are people who are so steeped in the scientific method that they think of religious belief as something akin to superstition. When you believe that science is the only reliable road to truth, then religion seems archaic and unhelpful. When you believe that nature is all there is, there seems to be no point in talking about meaning and purpose. Ideas of the soul and of eternity have no significance. There is no Creator and theology just seems to be a lot of invented language with no evidence to support it. Why do we need God or faith when I can explain the universe without reference to either of them?

On the other hand, there are believers who feel that science is a great threat to Christian belief. Ever since Galileo had his famous run-in with the Catholic Church in the 1600s because he refused to recant his belief that the earth revolved around the sun (and not vice-versa), there has been tension in the air between faith and science. The tension became intense in the 19^th century when Charles Darwin introduced the idea of evolution. The effect of these discoveries was to suggest that human beings had a different role in the world than Christians had assumed. If the sun didn’t revolve around us, then we occupied a place in the universe that didn’t seem as central as it used to. If creatures were evolving and had ancestors who looked quite different, then was that true for human beings, too? What, then, do we make of the biblical accounts of creation? What of the special role of humanity within creation – made in the image of God? What was that image and where was that God? Some Christians decided it was all a plot by scientists to destroy faith altogether.

I’m going to mark out some territory between those two poles today, recognizing that I still have a lot of questions, many of which are not going to get answered. I don’t believe that the discoveries of science have done away with the need for faith. We have learned a whole lot from the pursuit of truth in science. We know so much more about where and how and when the universe came into being and what the history of life in it has been. Science is great at answering those questions. It’s not so great at other questions that we also want to know the answers to – things like why the universe was created or what its character is – whether there is purpose and meaning in its history and what the significance of human life is. These are questions that take a different sort of knowing. I believe that faith is proper realm for asking these sorts of questions and the kind of truth we get by going to the Bible and to our experiences of God is still truth, though it may not have scientific evidence.

I also don’t believe that we have to reject science in order to pursue this truth, though. Astronomical discoveries, natural selection, the theory of relativity – all of these things challenge the way we understand God and they blow my mind – but they aren’t things we have to reject out of hand in order to hold on to our belief. In their own way, they expand our knowledge of the wonder and majesty of the universe. It is more grand and more intricate than we ever imagined. That doesn’t mean that God has disappeared – it just means that we have more ways to marvel and more language to do it in. As the psalmist says in Psalm 8, “When I look at the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars that you have established, what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” [Psa. 8:3-4]. That could have been uttered by a shepherd two thousand years ago looking into the night sky over Palestine or an astronomer peering into the deepness of space using the Hubble telescope.

So my opening response to the question of whether I believe that faith and science can co-exist is similar to the response of the man who was asked whether he believed in infant baptism. “Believe it?” he said. “Heck, I’ve seen it!” I have seen faith and science work together because I’ve seen it in my own life. Galileo himself was a man of faith and he said something that seems to me just right: "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same god who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use."[i] In other words, why would God give us the tools of science and forbid us to follow where they lead in understanding this universe?

Now this is where I get a little intimidated by the science. The picture of the universe that modern science presents us with is so vast that it does make us human beings seem very small. For many years we had a much shorter chronology for telling the history of the universe. When the Archbishop James Ussher used his interpretation of the Bible timeline to calculate the origins of the universe in 1654 he famously determined that it began on the evening before the 23rd of October in 4004 BC, right about suppertime.

A universe which began 6,000 years ago and in which human beings have existed since, O, about the 29^th of October, 4004 BC, is comprehensible. But what if the days that Genesis describes were not twenty-four hour days? What if Genesis presents us with a picture of a process that took place over millennia, eons, vast stretches of time?

Astronomers looking into the origin of the universe now tell us that it all began almost 14 billion years ago – an almost unimaginable length of time. George Coyne, a Jesuit priest who used to direct the Vatican Observatory, tries to put it all in perspective by comparing that vast stretch of time to a single year. If we consider the Big Bang that created the universe to be the event that starts the year on January 1, then it took over 7 months before the earth took a form somewhat like we know it. August 14 would be the birth of the earth. It took three generations of stars living and dying to sow the chemical abundance that led to life on earth. Even so, it was not until September 4 in this imagined year that the first life appeared on earth. Dinosaurs did not appear until December 25. They didn’t go extinct until December 30. And the first humans appear on December 31 at 11:58 PM. If the whole cosmic history is likened to a single year, we humans have been here for two minutes.[ii]

This is the kind of timeline that makes some of the New Athiests say that it is irrelevant to talk about a God and human relationship with humans occupying such a microscopic portion of the story of the universe. Richard Dawkins, who is one of these prominent New Athiests says, “Deep time makes theology superfluous.”[iii] If the Creator was so concerned about making people, why did it take billions of years and what seems like an accidental process?

Albert Einstein, the great physicist of the 20^th century, was not ready to stop talking about God, but he also thought that new discoveries about the nature of time and space made the idea of a personal God hard to hold onto. He could see the beauty of the underlying laws that bring a sense of order to the universe, but he could not imagine a narrative that made God more than the author of the whole thing. He couldn’t imagine a God you would talk to – pray to.

We do talk about that kind of God, though. We do talk about a God who is more than just a great clockmaker, putting the universe together like a finely-made clock and winding it up to work on its own without any more involvement from the maker. Maybe the God we read about in Genesis 1 might be that kind of God – speaking and bringing things into being…keeping an observer’s distance. But it’s certainly not the God of Genesis 2 who gets down in the mud and makes a human, breathing into its nostrils. A God who sees the loneliness of the human creature and makes a woman. A God who walks in the garden in the cool of the evening. And it’s a long way from the God who is born in a manger and eats by the lakeshore and washes feet and dies on a cross to free the people from death and sin.

Can we tell that story and still believe that the universe is the vast thing that astrophysicists tell us that it is? Is it reasonable to believe that we, who exist in just the blink of an eye on the grand scale of things, can really be the object of a Creator’s love and care?

What if the very fact that we are asking these questions points to the unique role that we play in this universe? Paul Davies, who is a physicist himself, says that “if the laws of physics hadn’t been pretty close to what they are, there would be no life. There would be no observers” of the universe.

“Now, sometimes we just shrug and say, ‘Well, so what.’ You know, ‘if it had been different, we wouldn’t be here to worry about it.’ But I think that’s unsatisfactory...because the universe has not only given rise to life, it’s not only given rise to mind, it’s given rise to thinking beings who can comprehend the universe. Through science and mathematics, we can, so to speak, glimpse the mind of God…And I think that this suggests…that life and mind are not just trivial extras. They’re not just an embellishment on the grand scheme of things; they’re a fundamental part of the nature of the universe.”[iv]

Which means that science may lead us to a more faithful understanding of who God made us to be. Maybe a universe that is much, much bigger than us, much bigger than we thought and of which we occupy only a tiny corner, can give us more humility. Maybe a world in which we share more with the creatures around us than we let ourselves believe before can give us more compassion for our fellow beings and more concern for this habitat we all share. Maybe a universe that is still evolving can help us understand that there is still a story to be told. The story of the ages is still unfolding and the creation remains unfinished and we have appeared in these latter days of the drama to play a role and to take our part as co-creators with God.

When we talk about creation in the Bible we usually look to Genesis to tell the story, but there are other books that tell some of that story. Psalm 104 describes God stretching out the heavens like a tent and setting the boundaries of the sea. The gospel of John begins with, “In the beginning was the Word – the pre-existent Christ who helped to form it.” And Job ends with God appearing to put poor, suffering Job in his place.

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” God thunders. “Who sends thunder and who is present when the beasts of the field need food and protection?” The answer is God. All through these final chapters of Job, God talks about a world that is wild and gritty and untamed. But it is also a world without humans. Everything God talks about is about God’s care for the creatures and the land.

So why does God tell Job this? John Holbert, a biblical scholar at Perkins School of Theology, says that perhaps God describes the world this way to show that “we are a part of God’s created order – simply a part.” And the amazing thing is that we are invited to join God in the wildness and the wonder – taking on the fight against chaos and evil, in confidence that God opposes it and has overcome it, and marveling in the majesty.[v]

The biblical story tells us this. Science can help us in this. They do not have to be alien methods. They can speak to each other and sometimes with each other.

The energy Christians have put into fighting evolution is misplaced. Yes, evolution is an inadequate way to talk about the creation of human beings. Every scientific model is inadequate and is only waiting the next discovery to be remade or replaced. But evolution, the Big Bang, quarks and dark energy are not deceptions. They represent the best attempts within the language of science to describe the world. Scientists are teaching us how to be better lovers of the universe God has created. And when we are steeped in our own story of how God is reconciling all things to God’s own self in Jesus Christ, we are offering the world the language that will help us love God and live out of that love. Thanks be to God.

“We find that science’s descriptions of cosmological, geological, and biological evolution are not in conflict with theology.” - from The United Methodist Church’s statement on Science and Technology, The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church 2008, para. 160.F.

Genesis 1:1-4 [NRSV]

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.

---

[i] Galileo Galilei, quote from the radio program “Asteroids, Stars and the Love of God,” Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett, April 1, 2010, American Public Radio, http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2010/asteroids/transcript.shtml.

[ii] Chart provided by Fr. George Coyne, from the radio program “Asteroids, Stars and the Love of God,” Speaking of Faithhttp://blog.speakingoffaith.org/post/491338401/the-dance-of-the-fertile-universe-trent-gilliss. with Krista Tippett, April 1, 2010, American Public Radio,

[iii] Richard Dawkins, quoted by Dr. John F. Haught, “Biblical Faith and Evolution,” Fondren Lecture delivered 1 February 2010 at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, author’s notes.

[iv] Paul Davies, in Krista Tippett, Einstein’s God: Conversations about Science and the Human Spirit, [New York: Penguin Books, 2010], e-book location 585-594.

[v] John Holbert, “Preaching and Creation: The Convenient Texts of Genesis and Job,” delivered 1 February 2010 at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, author’s notes.