Someone's Behind the Curtain
The First Congregational Church
United Church of Christ
Columbus, Ohio
July 7, 1996
Memory Verse: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1)
Today's Texts: Proverbs 8:22-36 and Colossians 1:11-20
Opening Prayer: God of Mystery and Might, we want to hear your word and to see your face. We want to be renewed by the power of your Spirit. Speak to us now and reveal your presence, that we might know of your grace. Amen.
It will probably come as no surprise, but the world into which Allison Lange was just baptized is not the same world as the one into which many of us were baptized some decades ago. Not only is there new technology and new ideas, but many of the basic assumptions and deep values have begun to change as well. Even the physical universe has been shifting under the weight of these developments. People neither see nor experience things the way they used to as we move through the latter decades of the twentieth century.
This will probably come as no surprise even if you haven't done extensive research into the changes which are shaking up the world. We can look around, in any direction, and know that it's true. Every area of human endeavor is confronting the same reality. We are living in a transitional era of epic proportions. Listen to this chorus of informed voices.
Social analyst Alvin Toffler writes: "We are the final generation of an old civilization and the first generation of a new one. And although a new civilization is emerging in our lives, blind (people) everywhere are trying to suppress it. ... What is happening is not like a hurricane that sweeps across the landscape, leaving the earth itself unchanged. It is more like the beginning of an earthquake. For the subterranean structure on which all our economics are based is now, itself, shifting, and cracking." (Through the '80s, World Future Society, 1980)
Pollster Daniel Yankelovich writes: "Tomorrow is not going to look like yesterday. In fact, tomorrow -- to the extent that research data can yield clues about it -- is being shaped by a cultural revolution that is transforming the rules of American life and moving us into wholly uncharted territory, not back to the lifestyles of the past." (Psychology Today, April 1981).
Management consultants Nicholas Imparato and Oren Harari write: "Whatever we choose to call these upheavals (in society), the basic and common truth is that they are signs of a new order breaking out from the old, a global society moving slowly and fitfully into a new epoch. More than just economies are changing. Civilization itself is being transformed." (Jumping the Curve, Josse-Bass • San Francisco, 1994, 1996).
Journalist George Leonard writes, "The current period is indeed unique in history.... It represents the beginning of the most thorough-going change in the quality of human existence since the creation of an agricultural surplus brought about the birth of civilized states some five thousand years ago." (The Transformation, Delacorte Press, 1972).
Church consultant William Easum writes, "North America is caught in the crack between what was and what is emerging. This crack began opening in 1960 and will close sometime around the year 2014. Trusted values held for centuries are falling into this crack, never to be seen again. Ideas and methodologies that once worked no longer achieve the desired results. This crack in history is so enormous that it is causing a metamorphosis in every area of life." (Dancing with Dinosaurs, Abingdon, 1993)
By now you get the drift. One expert after another, in one field after another, has identified this time as a pivotal time in the history of the world. If they are right, and I see no reason to argue otherwise, future generations may look back on this period of history even as we look back on the Renaissance and the Reformation. We may very well be part of history in the making.
To understand the changes that are taking place in the world today, it is helpful to look back 600 years -- to the start of another great epochal change in history -- as Europe emerged from the Middle Ages. For more than a thousand years, everything had been seen and interpreted through religious eyes. God was the power behind the universe, the man behind the curtain, and the church was the official custodian of those beliefs and practices which could win God's favor. Even as the Old Testament prophets made a connection between obedience and prosperity, so did the church make a connection between religion and the empire. It was all part of a coherent system which fused Christian ideals with economic, political, and military institutions.
The only problem is, life doesn't always work out that way. As a religion, Christianity is no better than any other at manipulating God. In the waning centuries of the Middle Ages, the church lashed out in ever more desperate attempts to keep people on board with their religious system. This was the era of the Crusades -- Holy Wars against the Moslem infidels -- and the beginning of the Inquisition -- religious courts which relied upon torture and death to suppress heretical beliefs and practices. The church had all but forgotten the Spirit of its founder in an adolescent attempt to play God.
The straw which broke the camel's back came to Europe in the summer of 1348. Yersenia pestis, a bacterium responsible for the bubonic plague, ravaged the population. As more and more people died, the church tried ever more desperate means to get things under control. By September they had found their scapegoat. The Jews were held responsible for this obvious provocation of divine wrath. In city after city, Jews were rounded up, quarantined, starved, and burned. But still the plague continued. Within two years' time, forty-four million people had died or more than one-third the population of Europe. A crack had opened in history. The religious system which had held things together no longer worked, and people started to look for different answers in different places. The Renaissance was born, leading to the Reformation and the Enlightenment.
People began to see and interpret things through scientific eyes. If we could no longer be saved by the church with its messiah, its creeds, and its sacrifices, if we could no longer count on the spiritual realm to safeguard our lives, then perhaps the scientific method with its careful attention to the material realm could produce the desired results. The objective was the same -- to control the world around us -- but the technique was different. Alchemy gave way to chemistry, astrology gave way to astronomy, magic gave way to medicine, and mythology gave way to psychoanalysis. Scientists took the place of clergy as the guardians of truth and the conduit of power.
One could say that a new religion was born based upon the empiricism of Francis Bacon, John Locke, René Descartes, and Isaac Newton. For the past three hundred years, this religion has ruled the day in the Western world. The old Christian religion was relegated to an increasingly private sphere; the new scientific religion was the new keeper of the public sphere -- with big budgets and even bigger ambitions. Reflecting a machismo that had formerly been reserved for the bishop of Rome, scientists expected to discover the secrets and subdue the forces of nature.
Even the language was reminiscent of the old Middle Ages. Francis Bacon used the imagery of the torture chamber to talk about the scientific method. In order to get the answers we want, nature had to be held like a prisoner. It had to be studied under duress, with mechanical devices, if you wanted to produce a confession. Bacon compared nature to a rebellious female and a common harlot, making it the task of male scientists to bind her to their service and to make her their slave. Descartes and Newton compared nature to a machine, giving us even more license to push and pull until we had gained total understanding and absolute control. (L. Robert Keck, Sacred Eyes, Knowledge Systems • Indianapolis, 1992).
The only problem is, things haven't exactly worked out that way. As a religion, science is no better than any other at manipulating God. For all its accomplishments, science has failed to deliver on its promises. The wild optimism of the 1950s about our ability to eradicate infectious diseases from the face of the earth has been replaced by the growing realization that nature may never reveal all her secrets and that we may never win control in any permanent or definitive sense. It's ironic that a plague would once again produce a crack in history. The AIDS virus has now spread to some 20 million people worldwide, with predictions that it will double in the next four years.
Having tried both religious eyes and scientific eyes, and having found them both wanting, people are now fumbling around to find a new set of eyes through which to see and interpret the world. Astronomers and physicists have been on the vanguard of this new synthetic enterprise. With their ability to see ever further out and ever further in, they have become increasingly humbled and mystified. What do you make of two sub-atomic particles which interact with each other apart from the four forces which define the parameters of the universe? What do you make of a universe which gives every evidence of having started with an Inflationary Big Bang about 15 billion years ago?
Scientists seem to be making ever more frequent leaps from physics to philosophy. On April 24, 1992 newspapers around the world heralded a breakthrough by an American research team. The discovery made the front-page headlines of The London Times for five consecutive days. American TV networks gave the story as much as forty minutes of prime-time news coverage.
What was all the fuss about? A team of astrophysicists had reported the latest findings from the Cosmic Background Explorer or COBE satellite -- stunning confirmation of the Inflationary Big Bang creation event.
Scientists extolled the event with superlatives. Carlos Frenk, of Britain's Durham University, exclaimed, "It's the most exciting thing that's happened in my life as a cosmologist." Cambridge University's Lucasian professor of mathematics, Stephen Hawking, said, "It is the discovery of the century, if not of all time." Michael Turner, astrophysicist with the University of Chicago and Fermilab, termed the discovery "unbelievably important.... The significance of this cannot be overstated. They have found the Holy Grail of cosmology." George Smoot, University of California at Berkeley astronomer and project leader for the COBE satellite, declared. "What we have found is evidence for the birth of the universe. It's like seeing the face of God." (Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos, NavPress • Colorado Springs, 1993).
The crack in history is at once swallowing our old assumptions about the world and giving us new ways to approach reality. There is someone behind the curtain after all. Like Dorothy and her companions in The Wizard of Oz, once the person's been seen there's no going back. Scientists have discovered sacred eyes, producing a new engagement with life itself.
This engagement has been part of our tradition from the beginning, regardless of the abuses it has suffered at the hands of its human chieftans. "Does not wisdom call and does not understanding raise her voice? The Lord created me in the beginning, the first act long ago. Before the earth had heights and depths, before the universe had space and time, I was there, like a master worker, rejoicing in God." (Proverbs 8:1, 22f, 30).
The apostle Paul saw in this proverbial ode to ancient wisdom the truth of the gospel. "Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God and the firstborn of all creation. He is before all things and in him all things hold together. In him all things were created, both visible and invisible. In him all the fullness of God was please to dwell, that all things in heaven and on earth might be reconciled with God." (Colossians 1:15-17, 19-20).
For all its uncertainty and all its anxiety, it would seem that the transitional age in which we live may yet give birth to a renewed understanding of the mysteries of God. For the next three weeks we will look at some of the recent discoveries of science in order to appreciate their connection with the Christian faith. Perhaps we too can be encouraged, rather than discouraged, by the changes which are swirling all around us. Perhaps we too can learn to view our life and the world in which we live with sacred eyes. Amen.
Someone Cares About Life
The First Congregational Church
United Church of Christ
Columbus, Ohio
July 14, 1996
Memory Verse: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1)
Today's Texts: Genesis 1:1-2:4a and Hebrews 11:1-3, 6
Opening Prayer: Creator God, breathe upon us now with the wind of your Spirit. Stir our hearts and touch our souls. Make us know your word and see your face. Amen.
It's the subject of many a stand-up comedy routine, perhaps because it's also one of the most basic and profound questions of life, "Daddy, where did I come from?"
Little Jimmy was given the class assignment of writing about his origins. He went to his mother and asked: "Where did grandmother come from?" His mother answered: "The stork." He asked his mother where she came from and received the same answer. "Where did I come from?" he asked, and again came the answer: "The stork." Jimmy went to his room and began to write: "There has not been a natural childbirth in this family for three generations."
We all want to know where we came from. What's the story, not only of our birth, but of the birth of life itself. As the astronomer Carl Sagan once posed the problem, "If you wish to make an apple pie truly from scratch, you must first invent the universe."
You may not have been following the debate, but science has been engaged in a titanic struggle between two competing theories as to the origin of the universe for most of this century. The steady state theory is based upon the work of Sir Isaac Newton, whose Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687) was once thought to explain the mechanics of the physical universe. Given that these mechanics were understood to be universally true, it was a small leap to also understand them as infinitely old.
The steady state theory argues that the universe was never invented at all, let alone by anyone in particular. It has always been much as we find it today. Space and time, matter and energy, have no beginning, they just have certain immutable and timeless laws according to which they operate and interact. The timelessness of the steady state theory eliminates the need for God. With an infinite number of building blocks and an infinite number of chances to assemble them in random ways, any kind of final product would be possible -- including the favorable conditions for life as we know them today.
By the end of the nineteenth century, this mechanistic world view had achieved complete hegemony. Astronomical observations and physical experiments had confirmed the hypothesis. God was neither necessary nor apparent, not even as the primal cause of the universe.
The concrete began to crack, however, almost before it dried. As physicists made their first accurate measurements of the velocity of light, they were taken by surprise. Their measurements no longer fit the Newtonian paradigm. The universal laws of motion were apparently not so universal. A revolution was beginning. It took a young German-born Swiss engineer named Albert Einstein to put forward a new theory with profound implications about the nature and origin of the universe. The general theory of relativity, first published in 1915 and 1916, led to the big bang theory which has recently been confirmed by observations from the COBE satellite.
Einstein's equations show that the universe is simultaneously expanding and decelerating. This leads to the conclusion that the universe must have started with a terrific explosion of enormous intensity. When a grenade is detonated, the pieces of the grenade expand outward from the pin assembly. As they expand, they also slow down until they eventually stop. So too with the universe. If Einstein's equations are correct, there must have been a time before time when someone pulled the pin on the biggest grenade of them all. Although Einstein initially resisted this conclusion, experimental evidence eventually led him to acknowledge "the necessity for a beginning."
Scientists have now confirmed Einstein's equations and the big bang theory from many different angles. The findings from the COBE satellite, which I mentioned in last week's sermon, is one of six enormously significant discoveries made during 1992. Together these discoveries prove the stability of the big bang model. They also reflect its beauty. The photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope, which recently made the cover of Time magazine, are far more than just awesome displays of light. They are evidence for the creation of the universe itself, some 15 to 22 billion years ago.
You can imagine that many scientists have gone down kicking and screaming. There is much at stake in whether or not the universe was created. If it was created, then we have to contend with the Creator. If it is infinite, then the universe is everything we have to work with. The old steady state theory has been continuously reworked by its proponents, to try and fit the evidence, but it's becoming harder all the time. As one atheist astronomer from the University of California at San Diego complained, everyone's rushing off to join "the First Church of Christ of the Big Bang." He may not be that far off, since the space-time theorem of general relativity leads not just to a theistic conclusion but specifically to the God of the bible.
"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Science itself has given us the proper translation of this ancient Hebrew doxology. The text itself is of no help, since the Hebrew word which begins the hymn is ambiguous. It can either be translated, as in the New Revised Standard Version, "In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth," or it can be translated, as in the King James Version, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." The difference is more than just semantic.
Was the universe created out of nothing? Creation ex nihilo. Or was it created out of some eternal formless matter? Creation as separation. Although the text might permit either reading, and although theologians have argued both one way and the other, the general theory of relativity argues in favor of the more traditional Christian view. In the beginning, there was no space and time. There was no matter or energy. There was no light or sound. There was only God, a Being who brooded over the void in terms we can neither measure nor imagine.
Everything was hanging in the balance, like a giant boulder perched at the edge of a towering cliff. Then, on nothing but a whim, God breathes. Ruach! And the boulder begins to fall. God says, "Let there be light" and the nothingness begins to explode. In this initial incandescence, space and time are created. Ordinary and exotic matter bursts forth with such energy that the ripples are still being felt throughout the universe. This is the story of creation as found in scripture and as confirmed by science. The convergence of the two has given the faithful followers of Jesus Christ new reason to believe.
It didn't have to be that way. The ancient world was filled with one creation myth after another. The Hebrews could have picked from among the Babylonian, Indian, Egyptian, or Greek myths -- all of which were familiar from their various times in exile. The Babylonian myth of Enuma Elish, dated to around 1250 B.C., is typical. They are all steady state theories of creation, dressed up with human characteristics, motivation, and behavior.
"In the beginning, Apsu and Tiamat (the sweet- and saltwater oceans) bear Mummu (the mist). From them also issue the younger gods, whose frolicking makes so much noise that the elder gods cannot sleep and so resolve to kill them. This plot of the elder gods is discovered, Ea kills Apsu, and his wife Tiamat pledges revenge."
"Ea and the younger gods are terrified, and they turn for salvation to their youngest sibling, Marduk. He exacts a steep price: if he succeeds, he must be given chief and undisputed power in the assembly of the gods. Having extorted this promise, he catches Tiamat in a net, drives an evil wind down her throat, shoots an arrow that bursts her distended belly and pierces her heart; he them splits her skull with a club, and scatters her blood in out-of-the-way places. He stretches out her corpse full length, and from it creates the cosmos." (Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers, Fortress Press • Minneapolis, 1992).
The differences could hardly be more dramatic. This is clearly, "In the beginning, when..." When the waters were formed and the gods were having as many problems as their human supplicants, a great conflict emerged out of which the cosmos was created. Creation itself is an act of violence. Tiamat is murdered and dismembered; from her cadaver the world is formed. Order is established by means of disorder. Creation is a violent victory over an enemy older than creation. The origin of evil precedes the origin of things; it has an ontological necessity which determines life itself.
These elements of violence and eternity are picked up in the other ancient myths as well. The Indian myths, contained within the Rig-Veda, preserve the violent dismemberment and add the twist of what scientists now call an oscillating universe. There is no true beginning, since the universe alternates for infinite time between phases of expansion and contraction. The Greek myths, codified in Hesiod's Theogony, talk of gods who generate the universe primarily through sexual procreation. The Egyptian myths, which are perhaps the oldest of them all, talk of a primordial chaos over which the Sun god wrests control.
Reading through the ancient cosmologies makes me proud to be a Christian. There is no violent conflict here, no sexual generation, and no metamorphosis from early embryonic forms. There is only God, who is capable of cause and effect operations before the time dimension of the universe existed. God creates time, not the other way around, and God does so with a concern for life which science is only now beginning to appreciate.
The chances that life could have developed accidentally here on earth, in just 15 to 22 billion years, are extremely small. The universe is too well organized to make life possible here on planet earth. The structure of Genesis, chapter one, reflects this sentiment. Certain things had to take place before plants, animals, and humans could come along and survive. It sounds fantastic, but the whole vast construction of the universe is tailormade to maintain life. No wonder it has been said that the purpose of life is to glorify God: God has made things just right -- and for that we can be thankful.
"To put this in perspective," writes astrophysicist Hugh Ross, "imagine the possibility of a Boeing 747 aircraft being completely assembled as the result of a tornado striking a junkyard. Now imagine how much more unlikely that possibility would be if bauxite (aluminum ore) is substituted for the junk parts. Finally, imagine the possibility if instead of bauxite, river silt is substituted. So, too, as one examines the building blocks necessary for life to come into existence, the possibility of that happening without someone or something designing them stretches the imagination beyond the breaking point." (The Creator and the Cosmos, NavPress • Colorado Springs, 1993).
Dr. Ross goes on to identify more than two dozen parameters which must take on narrowly defined values for any kind of life to possibly exist. If things were any larger or smaller, any faster or slower, any older or younger, any smoother or coarser, any closer or further away, any more or less, there would be no life at all. We really have much for which to celebrate and to sing.
The author of Hebrews tells us how to find God: we must believe that God exists and then we must seek God. (11:6). The results of science in recent decades are a testimony to this affirmation. As scientists posit the existence of God, they find more and more evidence to support their conclusion.
It's really no different than the ancient theologian who gazed at the night sky and saw angels moving the spheres in mysterious harmony. Only today they use telescopes and cyclotrons. Scientists have so much evidence about the origin of the universe that they can hardly keep from making the leap to religion. The order, the beauty, and the coincidences of nature are so great that they've begun to talk as though they have stumbled upon scientific proof for the existence of a Supreme Being who providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit. If we have indeed reached this point in the history of science, Christians can say little more than, "Amen."
Someone Cares About You
The First Congregational Church
United Church of Christ
Columbus, Ohio
July 21, 1996
Memory Verse: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1)
Today's Texts: Genesis 2:4b-25 and Acts 26:12-18
Opening Prayer: Loving God, shower us with the blessing of your Spirit. Speak to us with the blessing of your word. Make this time of preaching a testimony to your love and grace. In Christ's name I pray. Amen.
The leap from last week to this week in my sermon series on science and religion is a rather large leap indeed. Scientists are willing to grant, more now than before, that something mysterious happened 15 to 22 billion years ago which got this show off and running. The hot big bang has moved from being a hypothesis to a theory. That means there is now enough experimental evidence to consider the hypothesis proven, even though certain aspects will forever be shrouded in mystery.
The reason for the mystery is not just because it happened such a long time ago. Science has had extraordinary success in tracing the chain of cause and effect backward in time. In fact, scientists can now reconstruct the origin of the universe back to one trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second. That's 10-43 of a second -- an infinitesimal moment after the hot big bang itself, after which point the expansion of the universe proceeds according to the standard laws of physics.
The problem with going any further back in time is that scientists have determined mathematically that in order to get from nothing to that infinitesimal moment, the creative blast had to take place in a total of ten dimensions at once. Given that we can only measure and imagine four dimensions -- time plus the three spatial dimensions of length, width, and height -- the other six dimensions apparently disappeared once the universe was created. "They must have curled up," writes Leon Lederman of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, "to an unimaginably small size so as to not be evident in the world we know." (The God Particle, Delta • New York, 1993).
This means that scientists have resigned themselves to a rather humbling admission: they will never build a telescope large enough nor an accelerator strong enough to produce the conditions which had to exist in order to create the universe. You will never see a cover story on a legitimate magazine such as the Weekly World News ran at the end of April. "HEAVEN PHOTOGRAPHED BY HUBBLE TELESCOPE!" shouts the headline. "We found where God lives," says scientist. Turn to page 9 and you get a map which positions heaven just past the edge of the ever-expanding universe.
That's not the way it works. As far as scientists are concerned, they will never be able to raise the curtain on the moment of creation since it took place in dimensions our instruments are unable to detect or recreate. Many scientists believe the God particle has vanished altogether. Since the extra dimensions are mathematically required only for the act of creation itself, and since they cannot be measured by human instruments, some scientists argue that the extra dimensions were incinerated in the high-intensity heat of the big bang itself. Whatever existed in those dimensions would also have been destroyed in the process, making God a casualty of his or her own creative genius.
This hypothesis is little more than the latest variation on the Renaissance theme of God as the divine clock maker. Build it, wind it up, then let it go. Someone built the clock, and set it to ticking, but then left it alone. It runs according to its own internal logic -- the laws of nature. God is the chief architect and the primal cause, and that's where it stops. Now I suppose that's better than those who think it's all a big accident, which -- as we saw last week -- has become an increasingly untenable position. But it's a far cry from the traditional view of God as revealed in the scriptures and known in the spirit.
Christians are called to make a leap of faith which is no more incredible than the notion that six dimensions, essential to the birth of the universe, somehow burned up and disappeared in the blazing light of creation. Just because those six dimensions are now hidden from view, doesn't mean they went out of existence. It just means they went out of the space-time continuum, the Weekly World News notwithstanding. These dimensions are, in other words, exactly what the theologians have always said about God: invisible, immeasurable, and imponderable.
Christians are called to believe that God not only created the universe some 15 to 22 billion years ago, but that God continues to exist and to interact with the universe today. God exists in dimensions we cannot see, but God is nevertheless close to each and every one of us. Indeed, God may be closer to each and every one of us than we are to each other. The extra dimensions which serve as the habitat for God can be at once everywhere present and yet nowhere in view.
Although this paradox appears to be a conundrum, it actually follows from the nature of dimensionality itself. Dr. Hugh Ross reports that "an analogy of how this might work was developed by Edwin Abbott, a nineteenth-century schoolmaster and preacher who published the book Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions in 1884. Imagine a universe where only two dimensions of space exist instead of three. In such a universe, flatlanders would be confined to a plane of length and width with no possibility of operating in the dimension of height." It would be perfectly flat and infinitely thin.
"A three-dimensional being then could approach the plane of the flatlanders without being detected," regardless of how close he happened to get, as long as he didn't break through the plane of flatland. "He could place his hand just a tenth of a millimeter above the two-dimensional bodies of two flatlanders separated from one another by just one centimeter. Since the three-dimensional being is slightly above the plane of the flatlanders, there is no possibility that the flatlanders can see him. And yet, the three dimensional being is a hundred times closer to each of the flatlanders than they are to one another."
"As with the flatlanders, so it is with human beings. God is closer to each of us than we can ever be to one another. But because God's proximity to us takes place in dimensions we cannot tangibly experience, we cannot possibly see him. The only way we could see God is if he were to place a portion of his being into our dimensional realm. This would be analogous to the three-dimensional being poking his finger through the plane of the flatlanders. If one of the flatlanders were to investigate, he would draw the conclusion that this visitor to their realm is a small circle."
Poke through three fingers, and the flatlanders would conclude that the visitor is three small circles. Some flatlanders might even found the Church of the One Circle while others might establish the Church of the Three Circles. And they would both, in a sense, be right. The nature of extra-dimensionality allows beings from outside the plane of existence to appear both singular and plural, depending upon one's point of view. (The Creator and the Cosmos, NavPress • Colorado Springs, 1993).
All this talk about the extra-dimensionality of God and its ramifications has been preserved in a much more personal way within the pages of scripture. Some have found it troubling that scripture preserves two different stories of creation. Genesis 1 presents the hot big bang model, with God creating the universe out of nothing in a blinding flash of light. Everything is painted in very broad strokes: earth, sky and sea -- plants, animals, and humans. It reads like an epochal evolutionary tract, worthy of Darwin himself. There is design only in the largest and most abstract sense of the word.
Genesis 2 presents a very different model indeed. Here the creator takes a personal interest in his or her creation. There is a common ancestor who is given a name, and who shares with the creator in the work of creation. Then there are two, Adam and Eve, who are known by God even more intimately than they know themselves. God knows the stuff out of which they were created, the plants which they were to eat for food, and the purpose for which they were to live as companions in the rich and fertile garden of life. There is design down to the last detail.
The apparent contradiction between these two stories disappears from an extra-dimensional point of view, even as the two churches of flatland were, in a sense, both right about their visitor from above. God can at once be impersonal and personal, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. God can launch huge cosmic paroxysms by speaking the word, and God can also launch the faithful fashioning of individual human lives.
That is the tradition out of which we come, and which the discoveries of science have now helped to explain.
In case after case, God breaks through the plane of our four limited dimensions to reveal a concern shared even by the lilies of the field and the sparrows of the air. God is not only a chief architect and a primal cause. God loves us and knows us like only parents can love and know their children. Every mole and blemish. Every gift and talent. Every hope and dream. This is not only someone concerned about life, this is someone concerned about you. Someone who walks with you through the valley of the shadow of death, that you might fear no evil. Someone who stays with you and brings you home.
This is the real problem with the story in the Weekly World News. It makes God so far away when God is really right here involved in the smallest details of life. God's involvement with the details was captured in an essay written some years ago by an eight-year old boy from Chula Vista, California. Listen to what Danny had to say:
"One of God's main jobs is making people. He makes these to replace the ones that die so there will be enough people to take care of the things here on earth. He doesn't make grownups. Just babies. I think because they are smaller and easier to make. That way he doesn't have to take up his valuable time teaching them to talk and walk. He can just leave that up to the mothers and fathers. I think it works out pretty good."
"God's second most important job is listening to prayers. An awful lot of this goes on, as some people, like preachers and things, pray other times besides bedtime. God doesn't have time to listen to the radio or TV on account of this. As he hears everything, not only prayers, there must be a terrible lot of noise going into his ears unless he has thought of a way to turn it off. God sees everything and hears everything and is everywhere. Which keeps him pretty busy. So you shouldn't go wasting his time by going over your parents' head and ask for something they said you couldn't have."
"Atheists are people who don't believe in God. I don't think there are any in Chula Vista. At least there aren't any who come to our church. Jesus is God's Son. He used to do all the hard work like walking on water and doing miracles and trying to teach people about God who didn't want to learn. They finally got tired of him preaching to them and they crucified him. But he was good and kind like his Father and he told his Father that they didn't know what they were doing and to forgive them and God said OK. His Dad appreciated everything he had done and all his hard work on earth, so he told him he didn't have to go on the road anymore. He could stay in heaven. So he did. And now he helps his Dad out by listening to prayers and seeing which things are important for God to take care of and which ones he can take care of himself without bothering God about."
Out of the mouths of babes. Yes, there is a God who designed the laws of nature and fashioned the course of time. But that same God takes an interest in people like you and me. That same God knows everything about you and is hovering over you, like the visitor to flatland. Scientists may not be able to study this God in the confines of the laboratory, but every once in a while -- if we keep our eyes open -- we may catch a glimpse of what this God is doing with us. A portion of God's majesty may cross our paths like a flash of light, stirring our soul to say with Isaiah of old: "Here am I, Lord, send me." Amen.
Someone Likes Surprises
The First Congregational Church
United Church of Christ
Columbus, Ohio
July 28, 1996
Memory Verse: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1)
Today's Texts: Isaiah 52:13-53:6 and Luke 24:36-49
Opening Prayer: God of Mysterious Ways and Deep Magic, move among us now with the power of your Spirit. Speak to us your word and bring us close to your grace. This we ask in the name of our crucified yet risen Lord. Amen.
These Olympics have given new meaning to the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. For my money, it doesn't get any better than last Tuesday night. I have never seen a more dramatic or compelling moment in sports, even though I lived in Chicago for many years, as a die-hard Bulls fan who held his breath through more than one Michael Jordan fade away jump shot, with no seconds left on the clock, to beat the Cleveland Cavaliers in the playoffs. I thought those moments were dramatic, but they didn't come close to what I saw on Tuesday night.
The Russian media are probably right; Americans are too involved emotionally in the success of "our" athletes at the Olympics. Rather than rooting for the games, with a may-everyone-do-their-best and may-the-best-athlete-win attitude, Americans are expressing their nationalism by aggressively rooting for the home team. There's even talk about the home court advantage. It's us against the world, and it's being viewed as yet another expression of the ugly American.
Nevertheless, on Tuesday night I found myself rooting with reckless abandon for the U.S. women's gymnastic team who had a chance, for the first time in history, to win the gold medal. In the end, it came down to the moment which many of you no doubt saw or heard about. It was late and I was tired, but this one had me on the edge of my seat. The television voice announced that Kerri Strug would have to get a 9.463 on her vault in order to secure the gold medal for the team.
On the first vault, Kerri fell backwards and suffered a sprained left ankle and two torn ligaments. She should have quit, but she didn't get a high-enough score, forcing her to go back and try again. Kerri could hardly walk back to the starting position. She said later that the pain was so great she couldn't even feel her leg. But something came over that young woman. She mustered the courage to run down that runway, hit the vault, endure the pain, flip, twist, and land on her one good leg -- keeping her balance and signaling the judges before collapsing to the mat. Kerri Strug had helped team U.S.A. win the gold medal. As she was later carried by her coach to the medal ceremony, there wasn't a dry eye in the place. It was the stuff legends are made of, and if it wasn't for the bombing yesterday morning, she'd be on the cover of more than one news magazine next week.
After it was all over, her coach, Bela Karolyi, made the following statement. "I never thought Kerri would be able to do it. She was never the toughest, roughest girl. She would be the last girl I would think would go through the pain and sorrow." (The Columbus Dispatch, July 24, 1996). So where did that surprising act of valor and discipline come from? What welled up inside this ordinary teenager to produce a response of such extraordinary proportions? Was it just adrenaline, excitement, and pressure? Or was it a sign of how God chooses to act in the world? And what about the bombing in Centennial Olympic Park? How does it all fit together? Or doesn't it?
In this sermon series we have considered the discoveries of science in order to learn what we can about God. Over the past decade, there has been a convergence of science and religion such as the world hasn't seen for centuries. Scientists have now proven:
You might say that scientists have been on a roll when it comes to cosmology, the origin and structure of the entire physical universe, but they've gone about as far as they can go. Scientists now believe:
These aspects of cosmology are considered to be established scientifically beyond a reasonable doubt. We're not talking about any leaps of faith here. We're talking about logical deductions and mathematical calculations from experimental evidence. If Christians ever had reason to believe, they have it today. Science has been in the business of discovering God, which is not to say that we no longer need faith or traditional wisdom. It's rather to say that we have a new basis upon which to believe. The old argument from design has been improved considerably.
Everyone is familiar with Sherlock Holmes, whose powers of observation and deduction have become legendary. Tucked away in "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty," Holmes is found studying a rose. His trusty companion, Dr. Watson narrates: "Holmes walked past the couch to an open window and held up the drooping stalk of a moss rose, looking down at the dainty blend of crimson and green. It was a new phase of his character to me, for I had never before seen him show an interest in natural objects."
"There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion," said Holmes, leaning with his back against the shutters... "Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers."
This is the leap which we began to make last week, and which Christians have to contribute to the current conversation between science and religion. The God who created the universe, and who exists in extra-dimensional space and time, is not as unknowable as scientists may think. We can see the heart of God in the favorable conditions which exist for life on planet earth, and in the constant surprises which manage to work their way to the surface on a day-to-day basis.
Just as Sherlock Holmes saw the goodness of Providence in the frivolous beauty of a moss rose, so can we see the hand of God in the incredible twists of fate for which life has become famous. Whether it be the surprising vault of Kerri Strug, or the bomb which could have done far more damage than it did, there are signs that the extra-dimensional God manages to cross our path more frequently than any of us realize.
This, indeed, is one of the chief characteristics of the biblical God. God is the one who always has the initiative, and God usually takes that initiative to turn the tables on the systems and expectations of this world. Whether it be politics or religion, science or technology -- there is one who refuses to be controlled or manipulated. There is one who seeks the goodness of life, even when the odds would suggest otherwise.
This is, perhaps, the most surprising and yet the most common twist of them all. How God uses the most unlikely and tragic of events for a noble and holy cause. "See how my servant shall prosper! His appearance was beyond human semblance, so despised and rejected and marred was he. A man of suffering and infirmity. Yet he has borne our infirmities. He was wounded for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. The Lord has laid on him the sin of us all."
No wonder the early Christians saw this Old Testament passage, and others like it, as referring to Jesus. A man of common birth, away from the seat of power, who rocked the foundations of society. A man without credentials as a Pharisee or a Sadducee, who held his own in any conversation. A man who would never have been selected by his high school class as the most likely to succeed, but who nevertheless changed the world and divided the very passage of time.
Nothing could have been more surprising than Jesus. In death, as in life, the agency of God was making itself known. Walking through doors and yet eating fish. Acting like a ghost and yet having flesh and bones. The resurrected Jesus was the epitome of what an extra-dimensional God would look like if he or she were to cross the plane of our existence. Demonstrating both metaphysical and physical qualities; confounding our understanding and yet comforting our senses.
Scientists have recently had their own close encounter with extra-dimensional and multi-faceted space. Although it didn't make front page news, perhaps because they still don't understand what's going on, scientists have now created two sub-atomic particles which interact without apparent reference to the standard laws of physics. These particles are created normally enough in a particle accelerator, but that's where normalcy ends. Once these particles are created, and for as long as they are in existence, they interact with each other in contemporaneous and mysterious ways.
Move one particle to the left, and the other goes to the right. Move the other particle down, and the one goes up. It all happens instantaneously. Whatever you do to the one particle is reflected immediately and simultaneously in the other. You might say they are communicating, or somehow connected, apart from the four known forces of the universe. It does not depend upon distance or any other variable; the two particles are seemingly linked by an invisible thread which, when scientists describe it, sounds as spooky as Newton's aether to freight the force of gravity.
Nothing could have surprised the scientists more than to have Jesus himself walk in the laboratory. Here are sub-atomic particles which are demonstrating the same extra-dimensional qualities as the resurrected Christ. They are at once interacting with the physical world, according to the known laws of physics, and they are interacting with each other, in total violation of the known laws of physics. These scientists may have picked up on the hiding place of God, or one of those extra dimensions we've been talking about.
What particle accelerators will never pick up on is the personality and character of the one who inhabits such exotic space. It's the stuff of which science fiction is made. Is the extra-dimensional one friend or foe? Are we talking about E.T. or Independence Day?
For this we must turn to the stories of scripture and faith. We are not without clues. When the resurrected Christ appeared to his disciples, his first words were not without significance: "Peace, be with you." The one who inhabits extra-dimensional space is heaven-bent upon nothing less than love and grace. There is a benevolent design within the universe and a constant pull for life. Our God may not control the course of events down to every last detail, but our God is in the midst of life to work and to will that which is good. This can take place in both ordinary and extraordinary ways, as an act of courage or of total coincidence, but take place it does -- of this we can be sure.
Things do manage to fit together, whether in triumph or tragedy. There is one who loves us through it all, and manages to keep us whole. "I refuse to believe," said Albert Einstein, "that God plays dice with the cosmos." Christians have never thought otherwise. On the contrary, we are the ones who acknowledge the mysterious ways of God. We are the ones who see coincidences as God's way of remaining anonymous. We are the ones who trust that God is working out a larger purpose in the course of human events. We are the ones who believe that nothing -- neither death nor life, neither things present nor things to come, neither powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all of creation -- can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.