February 14th, 2010
By Pastor Bill
Created by God
Genesis 1: 1-12/ Psalm19: 1-6/Luke 9:28-43
Transfiguration Sunday/ Evolution Sunday/ Year C/ February 14, 2010
“A rising winter sun gleaming burnished bronze on the pines, air sharp as ice, geese winging overhead, so much to do there is no chance for boredom … it’s another beautiful day in creation, one never to be repeated.”
My friend from high school Stephen sent this to me this past week . It pulled me up short and gave me pause to think. How many of us have really taken time to really stop and look at the world around us. How many of us have seen that rising winter sun gleaming bronze on the pines, felt air sharp as ice, seen the geese winging overhead… and then thought it’s another beautiful day in creation, one never to be repeated. As I read this I was reminded of Psalm 19. “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.”
The observation of nature has been for millennia the way that individuals have seen the hand of God at work in the world. Ever since Darwin suggested that life evolves upward from simpler forms, faith and science have butted heads … and a lot of folks have made monkeys out of themselves. That’s too bad. It’s an unnecessary conflict!
There is but one world, and one God, and one truth …
Truth in different forms … like colored lights on a Christmas Tree, or flowers in a garden … or like hands and feet, eyes and noses – a million varieties – but the green light isn’t better than the red; the tulip isn’t inferior to the rose … and the hand cannot say to the foot, “I have no need of you.”
Scientific truth … observation and experiment, verification and repeatability … I can prove to you that hot water burns the hand.
Stick your hand beneath a spigot of hot water and we’ll find out that hot water burns the hand … we can verify it; we can repeat the experiment.
But lots of things can’t be proved in a scientific way.
Can I prove to you that my mother lived? I could show you pictures, birth certificate, social security documents, and you could dismiss it all as an elaborate fabrication, or some kind of mistake.
Can I prove that Aristotle lived, or Plato?
There’s no verifiability for history … no repeating the lives of anyone …History doesn’t yield to scientific examination.
Nor can I prove to you that I love my children … Or they love me.
I know they love me, and I know that they know I love them, too. And I know that whatever it is I feel for them, it’s love, deep and abiding love!
Yet such things are beyond the range of scientific tests … brain scans and other physiological measurements might scientifically indicate increased activity in the pleasure centers of the brain when I’m with my children – but what is love, and how can I prove it?
Nor can I prove to you that this world was created by a loving God. I confess and believe in a Creator, the God and Father of our LORD Jesus Christ, but I can’t prove the Creator’s existence; neither can I prove the hand of God in every ocean wave nor the love of God in a sunrise over the mountains!
Nor can anyone prove otherwise. “Proof” for or against God doesn’t exist in the realm of scientific verifiability!
In recent years, however, some Christians have sought to establish a scientific basis for creation … called intelligent design or creationism.
Big money has been dumped into this project …
A multi-million dollar creation museum in Petersburg, Ky..
A lot of effort to establish a “creation science” that supports a literal reading of Genesis 1 & 2.
Law suits challenging text books.
Creationism folks elected to local school boards, forcing schools to teach creationism along side of evolution.
This is way beyond the boundary of faith … making faith say something that faith never intended to say … to force Genesis into a literal reading never intended by the poets who wrote it.
But if some Christians are way over the top, some scientists have gone over the top, as well.
Some have made a case against God … Some say: “The universe has no meaning beyond itself. Human beings are a protoplasmic accident. That we’re here at all means nothing, and though we choose to love or hate, our choices mean nothing in any ultimate or moral sense.”
When scientists says such things, they’re no longer scientists … they’re human beings expressing a point of view – they’re making faith-statements. To believe there is no God is not a fact of science, but a faith-statement of the heart. A faith statement no different than my faith statement: I believe in God … God the Father Almighty creator of the heavens and the earth …
That’s a faith-statement. If someone says: “I don’t believe in god,” that’s a faith-statement, too! No one can prove their faith!
No one can prove there is a god, nor can anyone prove there isn’t!
Faith and science have natural boundaries beyond which they cannot pass … faith isn’t science, and science isn’t faith!
So, an impasse, if you will … But such an impasse needn’t lead to conflict.
Let it be a delightful impasse … Like two dance partners … each different, each with their own intelligence and passion … like waltz partners … the quick-changing lead of the waltz, “he goes, she goes” …
Science and faith … faith and science … mind and heart; heart and mind … “He goes; she goes.”
This weekend is Evolution Weekend …
Scientists and people of faith …
More than 850 congregations around the world celebrating the cooperation of science and faith … Celebrating the waltz – two clever, determined, dance partners, dancing together … “he goes; she goes.” And the dance is beautiful!
If I want to know how the universe came into being, I’ll read a science textbook.
If I want to know why I’m alive, what I should do when I get up in the morning, I’ll read the Bible.
Science tells me what.
Faith tells me why.
And I need both!
There is no conflict …
During my college days, I had the pleasure of some remarkable Bible teachers … one of whom introduced me to the term “theistic evolution.” God-driven evolution … Evolution the means; God the energy! Theistic Evolution. No conflict here. No battle. No need for Christians to huddle behind the walls of the church. No need to be afraid of science … no need to manufacture pseudo-science.
The Bible says it well:“By faith, we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command” (Hebrews 11:3). By faith we believe what science can never prove or disprove. By faith we believe these things!
Good faith is reasonable, thoughtful and coherent, but faith can’t be proven like I can prove hot water burns the hand.
So where do we go from here?
I have some concerns. If a child is exposed to nothing but scientific materialism, and if some teachers happen to be angry atheists, it’s possible that a young student would acquire certain ideas:
- Life has no inherent meaning other than what I give to it.
- Death is the final fact.
- The universe is eternal, just a series of expansions and contractions – without purpose, without destiny, without moral underpinning or divine reference point.
- Morality is a human invention.
- Life belongs to survivors.
- And only the fittest survive.
That’s called nihilism … nothing-ism … All that exists is me and you and the material world, and look out if you get in my way.
Some Christians have responded with home schooling …
I recently saw the documentary, “Jesus Camp,” and it’s frightening how some Christians manipulate the minds of their children with trumped up claims and fearful preaching.
But they have a point …
I know that some school districts are doing well when it comes to matters of faith and science …
But it’s been tough in America the last 40 years. Religion has been leached out of our textbooks … as if one could teach history without reference to religion, or teach about the Pilgrims as if they were only political refugees rather than a religious community.
I remember when the Shah of Iran fell, 1979, displaced by radical Islamic rule.
Everyone was caught by surprise. But one wise diplomat offered sage insight: “Wewere caught by surprise because we don’t have the tools any longer to understand the roll of religion in history.” To remove religion from history is dishonest … about as dishonest as a homeschool parent filtering out science and telling the child that the world was created in six 24-hour days.
I was privileged to attend a high school in Knoxville, TN in the middle of the Bible Belt … a school without scientific or faith prejudice … teachers who simply and easily and joyfully taught the glory of God in everything … from a small stone in the ocean to a butterfly’s wing, from a majestic mountain, to a child’s small hand … from the intricacies of molecular structure to a novel by Upton Sinclair … the glory of God everywhere.
Several years ago the music director of the church I served made the comment about how she chose music for the choir to sing during worship, she said:“It’s my job to find God in the music.”
Because God is there in the music … And we can find God in the music, too.
We have to redouble our efforts in the church, and we have to reinvent our public school curricula – there are some excellent curricula, and we can do a better job on all fronts to help our schools deal with religion, because religion is a huge part of the human story.
But let’s not rely on our schools for the moral and spiritual orientation of our children. Most vitally, in the home – to give our children the eyes of faith … to see the world as God’s world … “this is my Father’s world” is one of the great confessions of faith … a confession of comfort and hope.
To give our children the heart of a poet … to see beyond the mere outlines of the material world … to see in all molecules and binary systems the intricacy of God’s love.
To hear Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, to see a sunset glimmering on the waves … to see the hand of God!
To live with one another well, to see one another as children of God.
And that makes us “our brother’s keeper,” and life is filled with meaning … eternal meaning – life filled with grace, filled with the glory of God … and death doesn’t have the last word … because Christ is risen from the dead.
One of my favorite poets, W.H. Auden, wrote to a seven-year old boy on his birthday:
So I wish you first a
Sense of theatre: only
Those who love illusion
And know it will go far:
Otherwise we spend our
Lives in a confusion
Of what we say and do with
Who we really are.
“Many Happy Returns”
A sense of theater … a poet’s heart … the eyes of faith … if all we see is what we can see, we’re blind … if all we know is what we know then we know nothing.
I choose to live by faith!
February 10th, 2010
By Pastor Bill
Wilson Memorial Presbyterian will be one of more than 790 congregations from across the country and around the world to participate in Evolution Weekend, Feb. 12-14, a period designed to recognize that religion and science, two fields of critical importance to humans, should be seen as complementary rather than confrontational.
The fifth annual Evolution Weekend event is particularly timely this year since we are entering the third century since the birth of Charles Darwin and the 151th anniversary of the publication of his book, On the Origin of Species.
Eleven countries on five continents as well as all 50 states will be represented. A list of participants can be found at www.evolutionweekend.org. More than 870 scientists on six continents, representing 29 countries, have signed on as consultants.
With clergy members and scientists banding together to proclaim that their two fields have much to teach us about the world and the people in it, with the two groups demonstrating that they can work collaboratively, there is now hope that we can put the divisiveness that has been the hallmark of this struggle behind us,” said Zimmerman. “We can look to a future in which it is no longer controversial to teach our children the best science has to offer. We can create a future in which experts in different fields respect one another and the ideas each has to offer.”
February 10th, 2010
By Pastor Bill
Catching People
Isaiah 6: 1-13/ I Corinthians 15:1-11/Luke 5:1-11
5th Sunday after Epiphany/ Year C/ February 7, 2010
The life to altering power of God’s word spoken, heard, and heeded, is dynamically evident in the story of the call of the disciples from the gospel of Luke from the very beginning the church is claimed that the word spoken in the beginning the word that became the incarnate in the fullness of time is the consistency and constancy of God at work in the world. From the moment that God spoke let there be light, there was light. When God spoke to Moses from the burning bush, Moses led the people of Israel out of bondage. When the word of the Lord came to the prophets, they called the people to return to God. When the voice spoke from heaven proclaiming the beloved son, God’s favor rested upon Jesus to go forth and spread the good news.
From the moment that Jesus left the wilderness, until he came to the seashore that day, his words, actions, and deeds brought the people out to hear his message of love, repentance, and salvation. What set Jesus’ words apart? From town to town and in the synagogues of Judea the people were given hope because Jesus proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God. They had heard of his remarkable powers of healing and never compelled to come, to see, to hear, and to listen. In this person, God’s word came alive and lived among them. In this story from Luke, God once again moves, as God has moved previously among and with the people of Israel, toward new and boundless horizons. Here God beckons; here in this place God’s anointed reveals and lives and makes real God’s word for the people to hear and see and experienced people.
The word has come to dwell in the midst of everyday lives, everyday people and everyday fishermen. Throughout Biblical history of the word has moved vertically from God to the people, now the word begins to move horizontally outward and outbound from Jesus to the people around him. It falls on the ears of crowds hungry for that word; it falls on the ears of Simon, James, and John, afraid, amazed, attracted, and ready. Not knowing what lay ahead on that open and uncharted journey. From their everyday lives and their fishing boats, they left everything and followed him, unbound, outward-bound, horizon-bound, captured by a word that they would, in turn, carry “on the ground” among people waiting for it, listening for it, yearning for it.
God’s living word cuts to a victim of pressing crowds and the lives and laborers of common people. It shakes the sweep of human history. It alters the lives of those who hear and heed. God’s living word cuts through daily life with the gift of freedom: the radical, radicalizing freedom that enables a person to leave everything and to follow. God’s living word draws people in. It calls and pulls and then pushes people out. As Simon, James, and John clean their nets after a night of unsuccessful fishing, they listen to this word that Jesus offers. And then they are astounded, when they find their nets filled to overflowing with fish that had eluded them only hours before. When they put back into shore, Jesus invited them to join in the journey, to become fishers of people, in that moment they left everything and followed him. The word came t them and captured them. They left their boats and nets. They left the old way and followed
Heard and seen and heeded, God’s living word demands our decision: it lays upon us the choice of staying in the boat or leaving everything and following, of moving into that transformative moment into the fullness of life. When our ears and eyes and hearts are truly opened, we cannot turn back. For followers of the living word, life is and can never be the same. It is forever altered.
But hearing word is not enough. Acting upon it is inherent. The demand to respond is always present when Gods’ living word is spoken. Jesus was very clear about those who heard but did not act: the word of the lord is not to be taken lightly. Hearing and acting upon the living word is not simply about “catching others” as the old Sunday School song used to say. God’s call has consequences. Following has a price.
But sometimes, I think, we have forgotten what it means to be called. We live in a time when it is difficult to hear the word, or see it made manifest in movement or in miracle. The crowds did not always press eagerly in to hear the living word and enact. Lives, nations, seemed empty. The workers are not always ready to leave everything and follow Jesus to the ends of the earth, or even into the neighborhood. We who proclaimed the word do not always believe fully in its power. We ourselves are not free of clogged ears or closed hearts, and we may not be ready to heed fully the living word, to that radical call to freedom; a call that compels us to turn away from accommodation to the ways of this world, ways that lure and entrap us and hold us in bondage.
A friend of mine a pastor in a small church in Wisconsin, just outside Madison sent me a link to a story about how his church responded to the call of Christ to leave their nets and go into the world. Last Sunday, they called of church, not because of weather, even though they have over 40 inches of snow on the ground. Instead people took seriously the call to reach out and touch lives of people around them. Instead of singing and praying and listening to a sermon as is their tradition, every member of the church volunteered to work that day at a local mission. People volunteered at the local nursing home to be adopted children for the lonely and the neglected. Some volunteered at the local food pantry restocking shelves, cleaning, sorting through the various applications for help and putting them into the priority categories that had been established but never really followed. Some members met at the church and baked hundreds of cookies for the local Habitat For Humanity Bake sale that was to take place this weekend.
Wayne told me that one family who came for the first time that Sunday got a Surprise when there was no worship service. But they joined in the fun that day and decided on the spot to become members. They said, if this is how they did church at least once a year, it was for them. That day over 100 people volunteered their time and talents and their energy to bring the Good News to their community in a concrete way. They left the security of their traditions, their nets so to speak and followed Jesus into the world. The Banner above the door to their sanctuary read: “JESUS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING! WE HAVE FOLLOWED!”
What does that mean for us? It means that when we see, hear and listen we too must make a response. When we follow, we take upon ourselves the work of Jesus. We become one with him. We’re no longer satisfied with sitting and waiting to die, we become involved. We’ve heard. We’ve seen. We’ve experienced the life giving presence of the living word. JESUS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING. LET’S FOLLOW HIM!
February 3rd, 2010
By Pastor Bill
What Are We Doing For God?
Nehemiah 8: 1-3, 5-6, 8-10/ 1 Corinthians 12: 12-31/ Luke 4: 14-21
Third Sunday after Epiphany/ January 24, 2010/ Year C
I have, as most of you have done, been watching and listening to the reports of the relief efforts that have been undertaken in Haiti since the earthquakes struck that tiny country 11 days ago. I have been amazed by the stories of heroic measures that have been done to save hundreds of lives, and brought to tears by the images that have been broadcast around the globe by the journalists and reporters on the ground there. I have cheered when stars like Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts, Bono and Rhianna, Justin Timberlake and Matt Morris, Mary J. Blige and George Clooney and so many others have given their time and their money to ensure that help is given to the hurting people of Haiti.
And yet I keep wondering how people can criticize doctors and journalists for assisting people who are injured, hungry, and homeless.
Sanjay Gupta the Doctor/ Journalist has been roundly criticized by the news community for helping care for the injured ( he is one of the few trained doctors in neurosurgery currently present in Haiti) when there is such a huge shortage of doctors and nurses to care for the victims of the quake. Anderson Cooper, the silver-haired Journalist from CNN ( Who was one of the first one the scene) has been cricified because he joined in the rescue efforts and got his hands dirty helping to dig a little girl trapped in the rubble. They have been criticized because they have crossed the line of what it means to be a neutral observer in the face of overwhelming destruction, grief, and despair. What has happened to compasssion and mercy, not to mention justice?
Jesus came to Nazareth his hometown to visit. It was the Sabbath. As was his custom, he went the Synagogue to worship and pray. He was there with family and friends that had known him since he was a child. On this particular Sunday, Jesus volunteers to read the sacred texts, choosing the section from Isaiah that describes the role of the one who had been promised, the Anointed one, the Messiah. He stands to read on a special platform before the whole congregation. Can you image how he felt to stand before family and friends and read these words aloud? It must have taken great courage. His voice rings out across the room:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
Because he has anointed me
To bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To let the oppressed go free,
To proclaim the year of God’s favor.
In that moment, the Spirit came upon him once again and filled him with the knowledge that he was doing and proclaiming the good news of God’s kingdom. He is living out the call to carry out the mission for which he had been sent. When he reads Isaiah 62: 1-2, in the synagogue he is declaring that his ministry in the Spirit as Messiah of God calls him to be an agent of mercy to the downtrodden in this world: he will be good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight for the blind, freedom for the oppressed, and new beginnings for all those who have failed. It is as some have said the defining moment of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus is saying to the crowd gathered, family and friends, stranger and foe alike, that is his life work will be to heal the broken hearted; announce release to the prisoners of war; recover sight for the blind; to heal the wounded, and to proclaim the acceptable Year of the Lord. Jesus’ announcement that day says to the gathered community that they can no longer see him simply as a village carpenter or as Mary and Joseph’s boy. He is the one they have been waiting to come all their lives, and their grandparent’s lives and the generations before them. The carpenter’s son is the Messiah.
The Holy Spirit now fills him with the will and the resolve to become for the people the Messiah. As the Rev. Joan Grey, Moderator of the 217th General Assembly of the PCUSA has commented, “When you really think about, this “dunamis”, (this power) of the Spirit is the only thing the early church had going for it. It had no buildings, no budget, no paid staff, and very few members.” (Feasting on the Word Vol. 1 Year c, p.286) The opposite is true today: we have buildings, budgets, staff and members, but do we have the power of the Spirit? It is the Holy Spirit that gives us something to do.
Everyone wants to know how we are doing as a church. The real question we must ask is “What are we doing for God? Jesus steps forward in the Synagogue that day and lays out his mission statement, the mission statement of the Church, our Mission statement as followers of the Anointed One. He was filled with the power of the Spirit to bring good news to the poor. To know our mission in life and understand what God has given us to do are as important to us as they were to Jesus.
If we are the body of Christ, as Paul says in 1Corinthians 12, we are called to live out this calling of Christ to live in the power of the Spirit, to reach out to the lives around us, to poor, the powerless, the hungry, the hurt, those who live under the oppressive structures of this world; the impoverished, the war captives, the poor in health, those who have lost their homes, their families and the little income that they had.
All of this is very threatening and challenging to those of us who are not among the poor, marginalized, oppressed or imprisoned of our society to hear. It is threatening to contemplate the turning upside down of economic structures from which we benefit; but we need to have the moral courage to listen to the intention that God has for humanity ad Jesus proclaims it in Luke 4.
In John Kennedy’s inaugural Speech in 1961, he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” I would like to rephrase that statement saying: “Ask not what God can do for you, but what you can do for God. “
What can we do for God? Jesus gives us the answer:
“Come, then, you that are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, for I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothing, and when I was sick or in prison and your visited me. Then the righteous will answer him, Lord, when was it we saw you hungry and gave you food, o thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you or naked and gave you clothing? When was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you? And the king will answer them “Truly I tell you when you have done it to the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25)
How can we know that we have the power of the Spirit? We know because the Holy Spirit gives us something to do for God and a time to do it. There is a sense of urgency in this message from Jesus that day in Nazareth, and there is still a sense of urgency in the message to us today. We cannot sit idly by, casting judgment on people because they are poor, or disabled, or suffering. We become true followers of Christ when we act on behalf of others rescue, feed, care for and support those who are the least of these the members of God’s family. So say thank you to those men and women who by the power of the Spirit, against odds so great they are staggering, are attempting to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, healing to the brokenhearted, sight to those who refuse to see God at work in the midst of suffering and pain, setting those who are oppressed by grief, destruction and pain free. When we act on behalf of God then “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your Presence” becomes reality. Amen.
