Come Again? (Advent 1, Nov 30 2014)

Homily:  Yr B Advent 1, November 30, 2014, St. Albans

Readings:  Is 64:1-9;Ps 80:1-7,16-18; 1Cor 1:3-9; Mk 13:24-37

Come Again?

Have you noticed that it’s getting darker these days?  

I have friends, newlyweds in their first year of marriage.  He goes to work early in the morning; she gets home from work late in the afternoon.  Last week he said to her, “I never get to see you in the daylight anymore.”

We can all relate to the darkness these days.  For some, it’s an inconvenience, but for many it’s more serious.  It affects our mood, it curtails our activities, it increases our isolation.

The gospel reading is set as the sun is going down.  Jesus has gathered his disciples on the Mount of Olives just outside the city of Jerusalem, and they are worried.  They can see the gathering darkness.  They’ve witnessed first-hand the confrontation between Jesus and the authorities, a confrontation which will result in Jesus arrest the following night.  They’re worried, and so they ask about the future, about the end times spoken of by the prophets.  And Jesus answers them, using the apocalyptic language and images of the times:

“But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light and the stars will be falling from heaven”

Yes, he tells them, you’re right, it’s dark and it’s getting darker.  Then he makes them a promise:

“Then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.”

What do you make of the promise that the “Son of Man will come with great power and glory?”

It’s not the first time we’ve heard it.  We say it whenever we recite the creed, “he will come again to judge the living and the dead”.  We proclaim it every time we celebrate the Eucharist together:  “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.”

What do you make of it?  Is Christ coming again?

I think for many of us, this talk of a future coming of Christ is all a bit unsettling.  

“But in those days, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.  Then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.”

These are words that were spoken as promise and they were heard by those gathered around Jesus as words of great hope.  So why is it that many of us hear them and feel so unsettled?

I think it is in part because we live in an affluent society.  21^st Century Canadians as a whole are wealthy by historical and global standards.  Most of us do not know oppression. We live, for the most part in peace.  Many of us are satisfied with the status quo.  And so our hope for the future is, often, what might be called a negative hope.  We hope that nothing will change.  That we keep our jobs and homes.  That violence will not come to our land.  That our kids will stay in school.  That the university will not go on strike.  That our children’s lives will be as good as ours have been. No need to call on God to shake things up.  That would be unsettling.

But in Isaiah’s day, at the time of our first reading, there was no such satisfaction with the present times. At one time, Israel had been a mighty kingdom under the Kings David and Solomon.  But in the 6^th century BC, the southern kingdom of Judah had been defeated by the Babylonian empire, and the Babylonians had destroyed Jerusalem and taken the people into exile.  It was a time of desolation, and a time of questioning.  Why has this happened?  Are we still God’s people? It was a time of uncomfortable darkness. 

Finally, when the people were allowed to return to Jerusalem, they found their homes in ruins and the Temple destroyed.  They were still oppressed.  They still felt abandoned.  And so the prophet and people turn to their God and cry out “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down so that the mountains would quake in your presence”.

In Jesus’ day too, there was a dis-ease with the present times.  The people of Israel lived under military occupation, and we know only too well from the images that come to us from parts of Syria and Iraq what that can look like.  The people gathered around Jesus had known war in their lifetime, and they knew what it was like to be poor and to worry about whether this day would bring enough food to feed their family.

And so when Jesus talks about the future and the coming of the Son of Man in power and glory, his words are heard not as a threat to a comfortable status quo, but as words of comfort and hope. God sees your desperate situation, God hears your cries for help and God will act to make things right.

So stay awake and be ready, cause when Christ comes, you don’t want to miss it.  There is a sense, an expectation that God has something great in store for us and for all of creation. Wait for it.

Last Sunday, the Sunday we call the Reign of Christ, we talked about what things would look like if Christ was King, if our lives and our communities and our world were the way that Jesus wanted them to be.  And it didn’t take long to discover that a lot of things would have to change.  Because, despite our affluence and our comfort, as soon as we start to dig a little deeper, any sense of satisfaction we have with the status quo begins to erode.  We realize that our relative affluence depends on the consumption of a disproportionate and unsustainable amount of the earth’s resources.  We realize that in the midst of plenty there are those who are in need.  We scratch below the surface of our daily interactions and discover the world of hunger, illness, violence and desperation that underlies our status quo.  We too live in a world that needs to be put right.

So what do you make of the promise that Christ will come again?

For me, the first thing it does is remind me of the truth that the way things are right now is not good enough, is not the way that we want them to be and not the way that God wants them to be. We need to acknowledge this, it’s good to talk about it, we can lament, and our lament will be heard. In our present reality, we may get glimpses of the divine, but the fullness of God and of God’s hope for this world has yet to be fully realized.

But, the promise that Christ will come again also reminds me that God has a dream for us, a dream that has yet to be realized  That dream is a dream of peace and justice, of joy and belonging where we will become, individually and collectively, the people that God created us to be.  Where every human will be honoured as a child of God. That is our future, that is where we are heading, and God will act to make this great vision a reality.

How will we get from here to there?  That I don’t know.  I don’t get too fussed about whether there will be clouds or not.  The timing is certainly not mine to know.  I don’t know whether this will all take place on this earth or in some spiritual recreation of the world we know or in some place we can’t yet imagine that we might want to call heaven.  I don’t know if it will take place all at once, or day by day. But I can wait for it, I can watch for it and I can work for it.

I believe that Christ will come again, and that God will set things right, and that the pain and suffering that is part of our present reality will one day be no more, and that God is calling us to get on board and to be part of the solution, to participate in the in-breaking of God’s reign in our world.

Sometimes I wonder why it is that every year we begin the season of Advent with these apocalyptic readings about the end times and the return of the Son of Man.  I mean, isn’t Advent all about getting ready for Christmas?  Well, sort of.  But if Advent was only about getting ready to celebrate something that happened 2000 years ago, that would be kind of backward-looking.  Advent is meant to be forward looking.  Advent is a time of waiting in expectation, a time of preparation, a time to renew our hope in the wonderful future that God has promised us and is getting ready for us.

That’s important because the future has the potential to shape our present. We are a people who have hope. We know where this train is heading.  It’s time to get on board.

Amen.

You Know Where to Find Him (Christ the King, Nov 23 2014)

Homily:  Yr A Reign of Christ, Nov 23 2014, St. Albans

Readings:  Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Psalm 100; Eph 1:15-23; Mt 25:31-46

Creative Commons - Photo by Michael Swan

What would it look like if Christ was king?

Today, in this our final Sunday of our church year, we celebrate a festival day which we call Christ the King, or sometimes, the Reign of Christ.  And so it makes sense, I think, to ask the question: 

What would things look like if Christ was King? 

What would our lives, our communities, our world be like if they were the way Jesus wanted them to be?

What would things look like if God was in charge?

I think it’s safe to say that they’d look a lot different than they do today.  On Thursday evening we had an event here at St. Albans called Stolen Sisters where we learned about the thousands of murdered and missing aboriginal women in Canada.  We heard about how predators often target these women because they know that we as a society value them less than we do non-aboriginal women.  We learned about how aboriginal girls as young as seven to twelve years old are lured and abducted by human traffickers and forced into prostitution.

If Christ was king, that wouldn’t happen.

This week, we had a memorial service at Centre 454 for men and women who have died this year in the shelters and on the streets of our city.  What I found particularly poignant was that most of those we remembered died before the age of 60. In fact studies have shown that the average life expectancy for a person experiencing homelessness in Canada is 39 years.

If Christ was king, it wouldn’t be like that.

How do we get from here to there?  From our present reality to that promised reality of God’s kingdom of peace and justice.

The prophet Ezekiel in our first reading has a vision of the day that God himself will put a stop to injustice and oppression.  Using the image of a shepherd, which was a political and a royal image, Ezekiel dreams of the day when God will act to cast aside earthly rulers, take on the role of shepherd and king and put things right.

For thus says the Lord God:  I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out.  I will rescue them, I will gather them and bring them into their own land.  I will feed them, I will gather the lost and I will bind up the injured and I will strengthen the weak.  I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep.

That’s what it will look like when God is king.  But that’s not all.  Because in this great vision of Ezekiel’s, God pledges not just to care for those who are in need, but also to stamp out the root causes of that need.  For there are things that will not stand when God is king.  No one will be allowed to do violence to another.  No one will be allowed to take the food that should go to the hungry.  No one will traffic seven year old girls and sell them into a life of prostitution.  No one’s life will be cut short because of homelessness.  Oppression and injustice will be no more.  And so, of the sheep who have become fat and strong by pushing and butting the weak aside, the Lord God says through Ezekiel, I will judge.  The fat and strong I will destroy.  I will feed them with justice.

Because in order to get from here to there, there are things that will have to go.  Oppression, violence, injustice, these will not stand and will have to be destroyed in order for God’s reign to be fully realized.

That is Ezekiel’s vision of how God will lead us from our present reality to his promised reign of peace and justice.  That’s how it will look when Christ is king.

But there is another question of importance for us this morning, and it is this:

How do we allow this great vision of God’s future reign, the day when Christ is king, to shape our present reality?  What difference do these promises make for us today?

We’ve come to the end of our year of readings from the Gospel of Matthew.  Do you remember the very first words of Jesus public ministry that Matthew records?  “Repent, for the kingdom of God has come near.” 

We know that God’s kingdom is not fully realized in our world today.  But it is close enough for us to glimpse, close enough even to grasp.  How do we bring this great vision of the future into our lives today?

Today’s gospel is Jesus final public speech, not by choice, but because the next day he would be arrested.  It’s his last chance, his final attempt to get his message across.

Did you get the message?

Actually, it’s hard to miss.  It’s repeated four times.  We are called, we were created, we are commanded to respond to human need with loving service.

When you see the hungry, give them food.  When someone is thirsty give them something to drink.  Welcome strangers.  Give clothes to those who are naked.  When someone is sick, take care of them.  Visit those who are in prison.  The list is repeated, four times, in its entirety, in today’s gospel.

We live in a world where people are hungry and thirsty even though there is enough food and drink for all.  We live in a world where people are intentionally marginalized and made to feel unwelcome.  We live in a world where those who are sick and in prison are often isolated and lonely.  There are times when we respond to these needs with loving service.  Thank God for those who do.  But there are times when we don’t.  Why?  Sometimes it’s deliberate.  Sometimes it’s because we’re afraid, because we ourselves feel vulnerable. Sometimes it’s because we fail to see the needs around us, because we’re too busy or too focused on ourselves.  Sometimes it’s because we’re caught up in social structures and global systems that create injustice and suffering and we just don’t know what to do.  In theological language, all of this is called sin.

And Jesus says in today’s gospel “this will not stand”.  That God will not allow it to stand.  That God has promised to put the entire world right, showing up sin for what it is, judging it and destroying it so that it no longer has the power to infect his good creation.  That when God’s kingdom comes on earth there will be no more neglect of neighbour, there will be no more failure to respond to another’s need, there will be no more doing evil and injustice to one another.

This is Jesus’ last chance, and he wants to make sure we get the message.  That’s why he repeats it four times.  That’s why in today’s gospel, Jesus talks about judgement and hell. 

And he does get our attention, at least in part because we have unresolved issues with hell.  And I could say a lot about that, and I have on other occasions, and for those who wish I’d be happy to give you the links.

But for today, I want to say this.  In many ways the whole question of heaven and hell, of the sheep and the goats, comes down to this:  do you want to be with God or not?

Because if you want to be with God, to experience God deeply and truly, to be in relationship with the one who created you, then you can start now, and this is how  you will find God.

You will find God in the one who is hungry.  You will discover him in the one who thirsts.  You will meet her in the stranger.  You will experience him in the one who needs clothes.  You will care for her when she is sick, you will visit him in prison.  When you meet and care for those in need, you will meet and care for God, face to face.

This is the surprising twist in today’s gospel, the unexpected turn that neither the sheep nor the goats were expecting.  Jesus, Christ the king, is to be found in the poor and oppressed of our world and it is in service to these that you will have your deepest and most profound experience of God.

You know, I can’t make this stuff up.  Sometimes I have a hard time grasping it myself.  But this is the surprise of the gospel of Christ.  The kingdom of God is in our midst, here and now and you know where to find it.  Repent, for the kingdom of God is near.

Amen.

Shaped by Perception (Nov 16 2014)

Homily.  Yr A P33   Nov 16 2014, St. Albans

Readings:  Judges 4.1-7; Ps123; 1 Thess 5.1-11;Mt 25.14-30

Shaped by Perception

“For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them.”

And with that we enter once more into the world of one of Jesus’ parables, told during the final week of Jesus’ life, in response to questions about ultimate things, in the language of the day, the end times and the return of the Son of Man.

In this parable, there is a man who is going on a journey, there are his 3 slaves and there is the man’s property, large sums of money which are entrusted to the slaves.  Eventually we’re going to want to ask the allegorical questions, who is the man, who are the slaves and what is the property, what do all of these represent or correspond to.  But for now let’s start in the world of the parable.

The man is going on a journey, so he summons his slaves and entrusts his property to them.  Two of the slaves receive a large sum of money and go off immediately and trade with it, doubling the return.  But the third slave takes the talent, gold worth several hundred thousand dollars in today’s currency, and buries it in the ground.  Two very different responses.  And so a first question is, why do the slaves respond differently to the master’s entrusting them with the talents?

As far as we know from the story, there is no difference between the first two and the third slave except for this one thing:  the third slave believes the master to be a harsh man, and because of this he is afraid.  And as a result he goes and hides the talent in the ground for safekeeping.

So the first lesson that I draw out of the parable is this:  what we believe about someone, whether it’s true or not, shapes how we respond to that person.  And I think that most of us know this from experience.  If we believe someone to be dangerous, we will be cautious around them.  If we believe them to be trustworthy, we will be more inclined to trust, to be less guarded.  What we believe about someone shapes how we respond to that person.  And that in turn will also shape how we experience the person.  Perception shapes our reality. The slave believes the man is harsh, and he is afraid and he acts out of fear and buries the talent instead of investing it.  And as a result, when the man returns, he does respond to the slave harshly!  It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The third slave experiences the master as harsh because he believed the master was harsh.  Whereas the first two slaves, who didn’t believe the master to be harsh and were not afraid, when the master returns, their experience is one of being praised, not of rebuke.  What we believe about someone impacts not just how we will respond to that person, but will also shape how we experience him or her.

Now let’s look at the story again and this time let’s take it up a level.

“For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them.”

Who could the man going on a journey be?  Here we are, in Jerusalem, a few days before the day we call Good Friday.  Who could the man about to go on a journey be?  Well, Jesus was on a journey, a journey that would take him into a garden to be arrested, put him on trial for blasphemy and insurrection and lead him to a hill outside the city where he would be put to death. 

Jesus is the man going on a journey, a journey to and through death.  For me this is a particularly poignant reading of the parable.  In a few days he would summon his disciples to an upper room and share a final meal with them.  And at that meal he would entrust to them his life’s work.  His teaching, his ministry, his proclamation of the kingdom of God, even his death and its significance.  And then again, when he was raised from the dead, he would gather them once more, one final time and say to them, “go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  And so if we read the story in this way, the man going on a journey becomes Jesus, the slaves become his disciples, and the treasure is not longer simply money, but it becomes the gospel which has been entrusted to the disciples, the mission and ministry of Jesus which is now theirs to carry out.  And if that’s the treasure that’s been entrusted to you, woe to you if you simply take it and bury it in the ground.  That would be entirely the wrong response.

And now, let’s look at the story again, and take it up another level.  For this could be a story not just about a man and his slaves, not just about Jesus and his disciples, but just maybe it is also a story about God and us.

“For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them.”

The gospel has been entrusted to us by God, through Jesus.  We are God’s servants in building of the kingdom of God.  This is a great treasure that has been entrusted to us.  How do we respond?  Are we like the first two slaves who respond with excitement, energy and enthusiasm, who get out there and do business?  Or are we more like the third slave, the one who is afraid, and buries the treasure he’s been given?

I think at least part of the answer lies back in the first lesson that we drew out of the parable:  how we respond depends upon how we imagine God, who we imagine God to be.  If we imagine God as harsh, demanding and punishing, we are more likely to be afraid, to be hesitant, to act defensively and with caution.  If we imagine God as loving, compassionate and forgiving, then I think that would empower us to take action, even to take risks for the sake of God’s kingdom.  What you believe about the master shapes your response to the master, and it will also shape your experience of the master.

And so I think that it’s important to stop for a moment, and think about the ways we imagine God.  Is God a judge?  A friend?  Remote?  Close?  When I was in seminary, I remember some organization did a survey on how people imagine God.  They asked people what images they had for God.  And you know what came back as the most commonly held image of God:  a border crossing guard.  Think about that.  A border crossing guard!  Someone who checks your passport and plugs your name into a database to figure out if you get to cross the border or not.  Someone who asks you how much shopping you’ve done in order to calculate the amount of tax you have to pay.  If that’s your image of God, well, you’d better play it safe.  Take that treasure and bury it in the ground.

So I want to stop here and turn things over to you.  Take a moment on your own and reflect on how you imagine God to be.  Don’t do this too quickly.  Often our images of God are lodged deep in our memories and even our subconscious and may take time to emerge.  Think, reflect, and pray.  And then if you’re comfortable, turn to your neighbour and talk about the way you imagine God.  You may find enough to talk about.  But if you want to move on, you can then start to think about how your image of God shapes your response to the treasure that God has entrusted to us.

Amen.

Are Faith and Science in Conflict? (Nov 9 2014, St. Al's@5)

Are Faith and Science in Conflict?

Readings:  Psalm 19, Rom 1.20-21

“The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork.”

So says the opening line of Psalm 19.  And I believe it.  I believe that the heavens and in fact the whole universe declare the glory of God.  I believe it as a Christian, as a theologian.  And I believe it as a scientist.  As a scientist, as one who seeks to understand and explore and make sense of the natural world, I am often struck by a sense of awe and wonder.  I am amazed at the vastness of the universe.  I am overwhelmed by the beauty of nature.  I am awe-struck by the way a vast array of natural phenomena can be explained in simple mathematical equations.  The use of the equation Force = mass x acceleration to explain the motion of the planets leaves me gasping in wonder.  OK, I know that’s a bit geeky, but it’s true!

One of the reasons that I do science is that it reveals to me the glory of God.  And one of the reasons that I believe in God is the experience of wonder that I have when I do science.  I agree wholeheartedly with Paul when he writes “ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.”  This verse is a manifesto for science, for exploring the natural world.  As a Christian, this verse motivates me to do science, as it has motivated many great scientists, men like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton, or more recently Werner Heisenberg, Teilhard de Chardin and Francis Collins.

Now, I don’t get to do much science these days, at least not in the professional sense.  I used to.  I did my graduate work in theoretical quantum physics, my work was published in physics journals, and for a time I was a lecturer in the history of science.  I love science, I love God, and I have never personally experienced a conflict between science and faith.  On the contrary, my science inspires my faith and my faith motivates my science.

Are faith and science in conflict?  For me personally the answer is no.  But speaking from a historical perspective, the answer must be, sometimes!  There a have been periods where faith and science, or at least their practitioners and authorities, have been in conflict.

Let’s take a look at Psalm 19 again.  Did you notice that the first half is about nature, how we can know God through his creation, but the second half is about the law of the Lord?  By law, the Psalmist means the Torah, the holy Scriptures which reveal God’s law or teaching, which is greatly to be desired and which enlightens us.  So there we have it.  Nature and the Bible.  God has written two books.  Galileo, the great scientist of the late 16^th and early 17^th century used to talk about these two books written by God, nature and the Bible, each of which contained truths that could not contradict each other, provided their true meaning is understood.  And yet, ironically, even though Psalm 19 would seem to support Galileo’s understanding of the complementarity of Science and Faith, it was one of the scriptures used to attack Galileo.

Can anyone see how Psalm 19 could be used to attack Galileo?  Remember that Galileo was an advocate of the new Copernican astronomy that took the earth out of the centre of the universe.  Copernican astronomy said that it wasn’t the sun that went around the earth, it was the earth that went around the sun.  Have a look again at Psalm 19.

Verse 6 says that the sun goes forth from the uttermost edge of the heavens and runs about to the end of it again.  “Aha!” said Galileo’s opponents.  “The Bible says that the sun moves, but your science says it is the earth that moves.  Your science must be wrong!”  And before of you start blaming the Catholic Church for this, let me tell you that this particular argument actually came from the Protestants, not the Catholics!

Galileo, as most of you know, was condemned by the Catholic Church in 1633 and sentenced to house arrest.  He was however, and this you may not know, he was completely exonerated by the Catholic Church by the 20^th century, and not only that, but he was also recognized and commended by Pope John Paul II for not just his scientific theories but also for his theological views on how to interpret scripture in the light of science.  As Pope John Paul II said in 1992,

“there exist two realms of knowledge, one of which has its source in Revelation and one which reason can discover by its own power.  To the latter belong especially the experimental sciences and philosophy.  The distinction between the two realms of knowledge ought not to be understood as opposition.”

So if church leaders from Thomas Aquinas to John Paul II to Pope Francis just last month have endorsed science, why have there been these periods of conflict between faith and science.  Usually these happen when science discovers something that shakes up our worldview, something that changes the way we understand nature, something that changes the understanding of nature which has been built into our faith and theology.   When Copernicus proposed that the earth was no longer the centre of the universe, he shook up the prevailing worldview.  Moving the earth from its central position didn’t just change science, it also changed our whole way of understanding ourselves as God’s special creatures, placed in a special position in the centre of the universe, with heaven above us and hell below.  That kind of shake up in what we think and believe creates the conditions for conflict!

But we sorted it out.  We realized that the Genesis declaration that we are created in God’s image didn’t mean that we had to be in the centre of the universe.  We realized that when the Bible says “the earth cannot be moved” as it does in Psalm 93, we didn’t have to take that literally and refuse to believe that the earth orbits the sun.  We sorted it out, we moved on.

The next big shock came in the 19^th century, when geologists realized from their study of rock formations and fossils that the earth must be much older than previously thought, and then biologists, and Charles Darwin in particular, proposed the theory of evolution based on their study of plant and animal species and characteristics.  Again, this shook things up.  There was the simple fact of the new time scale which seemed beyond human imagination.  Previously, there had been no pressing reason to think of the days of creation found in the first chapter of Genesis as anything other than normal days.  Now there was!  But much more was at stake.  For Catholics, the scientific theory that humans evolved from animals challenged the theological understanding of the uniqueness of the human soul.  And for Fundamentalists, having to let go of the literal truth of the creation stories in Genesis would mean that the “Fall” which played such an important role in their theology would no longer be conceived of as a real historical event.

Most Christians have by now sorted this one out too and have moved on from this shake up as well.   Not all.  Some still have doubts about evolution, or reject it entirely.  For Christians whose faith is wedded to a particular literal interpretation of scripture or to the insistence that the Fall was a specific historical event, evolution is still problematic, and the conflict with science remains.  Some of us here tonight might be in that situation.  That’s ok. We can talk about that in more detail later if you like, this evening or at our young adult group on Tuesday.

But most Christians have moved on.  They are content to regard the story of the Fall as symbolic and metaphorical, rather than historical, and that takes away none of its power.   They have no problem regarding the language of days in Genesis as poetic rather than literal.  And the common ancestry we have with other life forms which is revealed by evolution actually serves to remind us that we are meant to be in relationship with all of God’s creation.

Sometimes, however, there is another faith-science problem that arises, and that is when scientists or others make the claim that science is the only way humans can know things, and that therefore faith is irrelevant.  Let me first of all point out that the claim that science is the only way to know things is not a scientific claim, it is actually a statement of belief or faith!  But it is a real concern.

The claim of the completeness of science has its origins in the success and power of science, especially the success of Newton’s science which fuelled the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and the Modern Age.  In Newton’s physics there is matter, that matter is in motion, and that motion is caused by forces.  Those simple principles and a handful of simple equations were used in the 19^th century to explain just about everything that moved in the natural world.  There is a famous story that when Laplace used Newton’s Laws to explain planetary motion and presented his text on astronomy to the King, the King read the text and asked Laplace where was God in all of this.  To which Laplace replied, “I have no need of that assumption.”

Science no longer needs the assumption of God to do its work.  It is an attempt to understand our experience of the universe based on a particularly powerful methodology:  empirical observations, controlled, repeated experimentation, measurement, mathematics and reason.  Science teaches us a great deal about ourselves and about the world God made. 

But our Christian faith goes beyond science.  Our faith welcomes the insights of science, because “the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork.”  But our faith also asks the question of why the world is the way it is.  We ask questions of meaning and purpose, we ask how things should be, we talk about the importance of relationships, of loving God and loving each other, we talk about God who is both immanent in this universe but also transcends it.  These are questions that science cannot answer. And as people of faith we explore these questions based on our own experience of the divine, based on the collected wisdom of others who have been in relationship with God, especially as these experiences have been recorded in our sacred text, the Bible, and, most importantly, because we as Christians believe that the same God who created the universe actually took on human form and walked this planet, we seek to answer the most important questions of our lives based on the words and deeds of Jesus.

So I encourage all of you to be both scientists and people of faith.  For ever since the creation of the world, God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things God has made.

Amen.