Born Again (and again and again and again): an introduction to 12 Step spirituality

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.”

Those are the first words of Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount. They are the only words possible for this the beginning of this series, and I’ll spend the next ten weeks or so telling you why.

The Twelve Steps are a program put together initially by two men, Bill W., an insurance salesman, and Dr. Bob, a surgeon, in their founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, in the 1930’s. That program has saved the lives of thousands and thousands of persons since that time, and remains relatively unchanged since its earliest beginnings.

But this will not be a series about alcoholism, although a drunk or two may show up in a story from time to time. It will not be a series about overeating, narcotics, sexual misbehavior, gambling, or even religious addictions, even though some of those persons, too, might have a word or two with us.

This is will be a series about the poor in spirit, and finding the Kingdom of God, which, Jesus also said, is already right there in each of them.

Now, the challenge for me is to transform a series about “them”- those people- into a series that is meaningful to us- all of us, the rest of us. My challenge, our challenge, is to discover what it is that all humans share with each other, and what all humans share with Jesus, that caused him to point to those people at the edges of society, at the furthermost edges of hearts, and say “there I am.”

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, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me. (Matthew 25: 35, 36)

You’ve no doubt realized by now that those are among the ten or so verses I could talk about every week. And that is so because they speak most loudly and clearly to me about both the mystery of Jesus and the practicality of following him. People in need, according to those words, are the people from whom we can learn the most about Jesus, by being with them, and from whom we can learn about the Kingdom of God in each of us, by serving them.

Which brings us back to “them” and “us.” Who are those people in need? Who was Jesus talking about- those people “poor in spirit?”

We understand, at least intellectually- we say the words from time to time- that “…God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3:17) Who did Jesus come to save? Who was it that he came to repair the separation for, between them and God?

Yes, indeed, it was those drunks, those addicts, those religious crazies, all of those who try to numb the pain of separation from God or others through some initially satisfying but ultimately destructive behavior. And indeed it was all of those who, grasping at the brass rings of earthly pleasures, sought to make themselves more powerful, more beautiful, more fun, more happy, but who found themselves gaining nothing but the need for more of whatever it was that they thought would make everything better.

That’s “them”: those guys.

But, have you ever been hungry or thirsty, maybe not for water or food, but for companionship, respect, love? Have you ever felt left out, in a prison of lost opportunities and personal regrets? Have you ever been the stranger, the new guy, the one passed over for a job you deserved, the one who got bullied, the one who never felt quite good enough, or smart enough, or worthy enough for what everyone else seemed to have? Or the one who felt all alone, even in a crowd?

For the fortunate ones among us, those are fleeting moments, common feelings we all share at crucial points in our lives. But for others of us- not just them, but us- for others of us those feelings become a definition of who we are. We learn to live with and even hide those feelings that grind at us in the night, that affect our decisions throughout the day, and that we even pass on to our children with about as much effort as it takes to pass a plate at the dinner table.

When we get trapped that way within our own selves, it is easy to feel separate from God, from the rhythms and the symphonies of life. We may not rush for the bottle, or a baggie filled with crystallized hope, but there are dozens of other ways we tend to shield ourselves from the truths we don’t want to face. “I have a bad temper,” we might say, somehow blaming our anger on our DNA. Or, “I’m just not very lucky”, which is a whole lot easier than admitting, “I’m afraid to try.” We may find ourselves looking out on the world through the blue lenses of regret about the past, or the red lenses of anxiety about the future. Some people find themselves almost immune from the enjoyment of today- these moments- as they nostalgically ruminate endlessly over some vague “good old days” or as they wait for, hope for, wish for some magic that will miraculously fix things in the future.

Those are all things that, left unsaid, or not confronted, build up over time into half-lives: lives lived outside the joy and the peace that God has placed within us, that God has for us within the Kingdom of heaven that is ours right now, Jesus said.

The Twelve Steps of Recovery offer anyone who enters into them, the chance, the opportunity, the assurance of being better than they were before entering into them, because they are about recovering the relationship with God that Jesus has demonstrated is possible for any human to have. It is not about being drunk and getting sober; it is not about being addicted and getting clean. It is about being broken and getting fixed- not with the tools we’ve tried and failed with in the past, but with the love and intentions of God, and because of the sacrifice and example of Jesus Christ.

Each week, we will look at one or sometimes two of the Twelve Steps. I’ll talk about their biblical counterparts and their spiritual truths. And you will, I hope, be able to see clearly, maybe even in a way that affects you personally, why I say it is possible, maybe even necessary, to be born again, and again, and again and again and again.

The Twelve Steps are about vulnerability- openness to God and with each other. They are about honesty, with ourselves and one another. They are about forgiveness, maybe above all about forgiveness- the letting go of anger and blame we hold for ourselves and others. They are about the miraculous turning of fear into love and then, finally, about being willing, willing and wanting, to share that love with others.

In Psalm 139, the psalmist wrote a powerful statement about God’s presence:

¹O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
²You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
³You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
⁴Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
⁵You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
⁶Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.

No matter what our concept of God is- we are inside that God. To try to define ourselves outside the parameters of what the natural forces of the universe are, is a uniquely human and silly endeavor. In fact, most addicts, and many of the rest of us are engaged in a way of behaving and thinking that says we are “different, special, and have different needs.” The best phrase I’ve ever heard to describe this is terminal uniqueism. People are dying- killing themselves- because they feel so unique, so different, so left out, or so special, that nothing can help them. “Nobody understands me” is their war cry as they refuse to surrender to the God who loves them.

⁷Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
⁸If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
⁹If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
¹⁰even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.
¹¹If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light around me become night’,
¹²even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

The Spirit of God blows through time. It is God’s breath, God’s intentions for all of Creation as evidenced in the harmonies and rhythms of Creation. When we try, and my oh my how some of us have tried, to step outside and away from that Spirit of God, we suffer. When we place ourselves with those harmonies and rhythms, when we allow God and those who care for us to help us escape our terminal uniqueism, we can know peace. And beyond peace, joy. We can begin to know that Kingdom of God is not some far away place that we might, if we’re good, get to enter when we die; the Kingdom of God is not a reward deserved by someone else, or something that we merely read about, or a place that we can hold over someone’s head like a weapon. Blessed are the poor in spirit, theirs is- is is is is is- the Kingdom of God, right here, right now. The terminally unique don’t see that though. It is the tragedy, suffered by so many people, of lives half-lived. Lives of waiting to die. Lives blurred by alcohol, or drugs, or fear.

¹³For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.

The metaphors of God’s presence in our lives, in all of Creation, are perfect here. We are woven together in our mother’s womb and even before that, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Sounds like an evolutionary statement to me- but no matter how one reads it, it says there is way, a truth, a commonality that runs through all of humanity. We share our beginnings, we share the imprimatur of God on our souls, we share the ability to align or re-align ourselves in the wind, the Spirit of God. We share the ability to follow Jesus, to take him at his word, and to realize and let loose the Kingdom of God that is within us.

Let me summarize the rest of Psalm 139 as I read it and as I have allowed it to shape and bend my own thinking: God knows me- God knows my shortcomings, my failures, my betrayals, my mistakes. God knows all that stuff about me that ha separated from the Spirit of God so so so many times in the past and probably will again. God knows me, but loves me anyway.

As we gather around these 12 Steps over the next several months, my words may cause, from time to time, the Spirit of God to tweak a memory, or a feeling, or a new discovery about yourself that you aren’t too happy about, maybe even ashamed of. So hang on to what I’ve just said- God loves you anyway. There’s nothing any of us can do to stop that love, either. Even those in the throes of dying from their terminal uniqueism are loved, known by God, loved by God, as the persons God intended them to be.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.

Next week, Step One, the first and most difficult step: “We admitted we were powerless over ourselves--that our lives had become unmanageable.”

Be here, bring a friend.

Amen

The Journey to Easter: One Last Story

It’s the final journey to Jerusalem. There’s not much more time left for teaching. No more days left for walking into the hills, or beside the sea. The time is running out. What has begun happening now is what Jesus has been expecting would happen.

He’s here in the temple with some of his disciples and other people who have come to hear him. The people who are following Jesus around now are of serious concern to the temple priests. Those followers are, after all, seated in front of Jesus, not in front of them. They’re listening to this upstart rabbi from out in the sticks, not them. The priests are about to lose the people, and that means nothing but trouble with a capital T. Rome depends on the priests and scribes and elders to maintain calm among the Jewish people. If things get out of hand it will be the priests themselves who will be called before Pilate, the emperor’s representative, to explain what has happened. The priests have seen the dozens of crosses on the hill just outside the city, and they have experienced the Romans unhesitating ability to use those crosses to put their enemies out of circulation.

No, no, no, no..they must take control from this trash-talking preacher!

“By what authority are you doing these things?” one of the priests shouts at Jesus, interrupting him. “Who gave you this authority?” ( Luke 20:2)

They’re trying to trap Jesus now by making him answer in a way that will get him indicted by the civil authorities. That way, their hands will be clean when the Romans come to take him away. But Jesus, being Jesus, doesn’t answer them, he returns the volley, and asks them a question which will get them in trouble with the people no matter how they answer. It’s a trick question, a very smart question, and you can read it in verse 3 if you’d like, but I want to stop right here and point out something about the way Jesus taught people- teaches us- about the Kingdom of God.

When Jesus teaches, he never goes to the blackboard. He never turns on a Powerpoint presentation or starts handing out topical outlines for the day. He is always operating from the presumption, the knowledge, that the important answers, the stuff we need to know about, is already in us. On another occasion, when confronted by the Pharisees and priests, he told them to stop thinking about when and how where the Kingdom of God would come: “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation,” Jesus told them, “the kingdom of God is within you." (Luke 17: 21)

I don’t think I personally can overemphasize this enough. Jesus didn’t teach with answers, he taught with questions, and as we’ll see again in a moment, stories. He asked questions and told stories because of the respect he had for the people who were listening to him. Jesus knew the yarn God had used to knit people together in their mother’s wombs. He knew the Image of God that was imprinted on each and every person. All that Godstuff in a person was still there even if it had been buried for years under the cultural and religious debris of life, and what Jesus did better than any teacher before or since was help people to rediscover the God in them, on their own.

The Kingdom of God is within you, he told them, and then he began to help them find it again. By doing it this way, Jesus wasn’t always successful. Some people wouldn’t get the point of his stories- “So, what are you saying, Jesus- that we should all join the Church of the Good Samaritan?” Not everyone gets the point, or they are too uncomfortable with the answer that comes bubbling to the surface of their hearts when confronted with one of Jesus’ pointed questions. But for those who do get it- for those who have ears to ears, as Jesus said over and over again- for those people the world becomes different. The world changes forever. The Kingdom of God begins slowly leaking into their worldview and, if they allow it to, it becomes a thunderstorm that never stops.

Back to today’s story. Jesus has effectively, for the moment, hushed the priests who are interrupting him. I can imagine him shifting his eyes from them, and back to the people who are feeling a little bit uncomfortable right now, a little bit scared. Jesus has just shut down the priests who hold a great deal of real power over the people, and they know those priests right now are most likely in the process of taking names. I can imagine, easily, Jesus giving the crowd a quick wink at this point. Verse 9:

He went on to tell the people this parable: "A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time. 10 At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 11 He sent another servant, but that one also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away empty-handed. 12 He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out.

Stop. This parable, this story, is different from any Jesus has told before. This is the last story he would tell before the events of the last week of his human life would begin the next day. This was the Saturday before Palm Sunday. Everything he teaches from this point on will told only to the disciples. This is the final story he has for the people. And while he speaking it into the ears of the people, he is aiming it at the hearts of the Pharisees and priests who are still listening, even though they are pretending not to.

He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out. Verse 13 "Then the owner of the vineyard said, 'What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.'

14 "But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. 'This is the heir,' they said. 'Let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' 15 So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

"What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? 16 He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others."

When the people heard this, they said, "May this never be!"

Most of the people are getting most of this story. They’re putting 2 and 2 together quickly. God had sent the prophets over and over again to the vineyards of Israel but just like the servants in the story, the prophets had literally been beaten and treated shamefully by the people- the sharecroppers of the vineyard. As a result of those rejections, the people of Israel had been kicked out of their homeland. That fear of being sent from their homeland is where the priests and Pharisees had stepped in. When people, then and now, are afraid, they are willing to hand over the control of their lives to others claiming authority.

But what about this “son of the vineyard’s owner”? Who’s that? This is the first and last parable Jesus told in which one of the main characters of the story was himself. How many mouths dropped open that day as that realization began to dawn?

Certainly not all of them, because there is still enough fear in the room for some of the people to protest the ending of this story. “May this never be!” they argued, I’m guessing with a sidelong glance back at the priests who were by now seething.

So Jesus brings in some supporting data from the Psalms. He uses the priest’s precious scriptures to write up a writ of indictment against them:

Verse 17. Jesus looked directly at them and asked, "Then what is the meaning of that which is written:

"'The stone the builders rejected

has become the cornerstone'?

18 Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed."

19 The teachers of the law and the chief priests looked for a way to arrest him immediately, because they knew he had spoken this parable against them. But they were afraid of the people.

They were afraid of the people. Fear begets fear begets fear. What the blackboard and Powerpoint teachers of the law did at this point was to stomp out of the room in a flurry of huffiness and insult. And we know from what follows that they hid out from the people for the next several days and began sending spies to gather information about Jesus which they could go the Roman authorities with. In fact, that the priests even found a special spy named Judas, inside Jesus’ inner circle.

Jesus could have jumped all over the priests and Pharisees, got the crowd all stirred up, and begun right here the kind of insurrection that Judas and others were hoping he would. Instead, he told a story. It was a story designed to do exactly what all the other stories Jesus told had been designed to do- cause the Kingdom of God to come to the surface in those who were hearing it.

And it did in two ways. For those with ears to hear and hearts to be changed, they had just heard Jesus clearly identify himself as the son of the vineyard owner, the son of God, the cornerstone- referred to in the Psalms. They would be among the few who would know what was really happening on that cross the following Friday.

Others with ears to hear, but hearts unwilling to change- the teachers of the law- had the Kingdom of God stimulated in them that day too, but for those with a vested interest in the status quo, the Kingdom of God is worse than a salmonella stomache ache.

As with all of Jesus’ parables, there was the local and immediate meaning and a larger, universal, and eternal meaning. This parable meant something specific to those in front of Jesus that day. But what does it mean to those of us with Jesus this day?

At this point I could give you a 1, 2, 3 list of major points and we’d remember them all about as long as it takes to hit the sidewalk just outside. Or, I can try to do what Jesus did and tell you a story:

Once upon a time there was a woman who raised roses. She had tea roses in the window boxes, antique roses in the backyard, and hybrid roses of all colors tastefully planted throughout her front landscape. She worked hard to grow them; she had special soil and fertilizer delivered from the gardening center, hovered nearby while her yard man spread the soil and fertilizer, and personally checked the Rainbird water controls daily.

It was her greatest desire to win “Best of Show” at the Rose Nationals each year and she’d come close in the past. Each September, on the day before the Rose Show was to begin, she would put on her L.L.Bean muckaboots, her Abercombrie and Fitch garden apron, and with her Swedish steel scissors, imported from the Dieter-Schmidt Tool Craft Center in Dresden, Germany, proceed into her gardens with a Styrofoam encased vase, a stainless steel metric ruler, and high hopes. Checking each rose for size, petal count, and swirl balance, she would choose five of the very best roses to enter into that year’s contest.

She stressed all of that night and throughout the following day as she and her husband drove to the show. Arriving hours before the judging would begin, she spread her fine Irish linen tablecloth, chose five of the seven cut glass antique rose vases she’d brought along, fretted and fussed over the perfect angular placement of each rose and each vase, brushed each them carefully with a tiny ultra-fine sable brush, and misted each of them with a blend of water and sucrose so that precisely placed drops would enhance each petals beauty.

Some years she had won First Place. Many years she had won 2d or 3^rd place. And each year’s failures- and that’s all they are if you don’t win Best of Show- each year’s failures would be unceremoniously dug up by the yard man and thrown in the front yard dumpster.

This year, though, would be different. The woman had worked throughout the winter, spring, and summer, grafting, transplanting, and daily fussing over a hybrid rose born of two of the antique roses from the backyard. The Queen Victoria Pink and the Grover Cleveland Yellow would she knew, produce a one-of-a- kind peach colored beauty come September and indeed it did.

It was the Best of Show that year and the woman was the talk of Rose Societies everywhere. When it came time to name the rose, she named it the Peachy Elizabeth Carson Shaw, which was, of course, her own name.

Still beaming with the pride that only a Best of Show award can bring, Elizabeth, upon arriving home, made a beeline for her closest neighbors, so she could share with them the pictures and the trophy she had won, all by herself.

In the neighbor’s front yard, she noticed that the neighbor’s 6 year old granddaughter, come for a visit, was lying on her elbows in the front yard staring intently at some weed there. “What on earth are you doing, honey?” Elizabeth asked the little girl, but then the neighbor’s door opened and Elizabeth didn’t have time to wait for an answer

Melanie- that was the little girl’s name- Melanie didn’t want to answer anyway. She didn’t want to scare away the little white butterfly which had landed on the yellow, end-of-summer dandelion in front of her. She tried to count the petals but forgot she was counting when she saw that each petal looked the same but was just a little bit different. Then she saw the butterfly’s long tongue dipping into the dandelion, and then..and then, she thought she saw the butterfly’s little black marble eyes move in her direction!

And it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen and she would never forget it. Twenty-seven years later, in fact, she took her own three children into the backyard one September afternoon to see if they could find dandelion’s of their own, and maybe even have their own breath taken away by a little white butterfly’s friendly greetings.

Let anyone with ears, hear.

Amen

Islam..WWJD?

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of it's furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

--Jalaluddin Rumi

Next week, we will begin a “proper” series of Lenten messages leading to Easter on April 8. I promise.

But there is one more, very important subject to talk about before I finish this month’s series on “controversial” topics; and that topic is Islam. And I’ve chosen to study Islam this week by seeking an answer to the dangerous question, “What Would Jesus Do?”

I call that a dangerous question because there is never a clear answer. Jesus didn’t teach in clear, formulated answers. He taught in parables-stories- and by example. And those ways of teaching led to problems then, even as they continue to lead to problems now. Here’s an example: Luke 22: 36. It is the verse, taken out of its context, which is most often used in connection with present day discussions of Islam:

It was spoken by Jesus to his disciples just after the Last Supper in the Upper Room, and immediately after telling Peter that Peter would betray him. It was a warning- Jesus knew that for the next several days, after his death, the disciples would be in a fair amount of danger. Here’s what he said:

Verse 36: “He said to them, But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.”

It’s one of the great mystery verses of the New Testament, because there is no evidence anywhere in any of the gospels, or in Acts, or in any of the epistles that a single disciple bought a sword, nor that any of them ever used one in their own defense. It goes against everything demonstrated by him as Jesus was being crucified. Despite that, though, it is a verse which has been used, over and over again to justify aggression on the part of Christians.

And that’s the trouble with the question, “What would Jesus do?” It is possible to dig around and find an easy answer. But rarely is the easy answer the right answer. Beware of easy answers!

So here’s the question for this morning: What should we as Christians, think or do about Islam? And I’ll let you decide whether my answer is the easy answer or the right answer, or..none of the above.

First, There were no Muslims in first century Palestine. But there were Samaritans and they were a pretty interesting group of people: They believed that the Jews were wrong about almost everything. They believed there had only been one true prophet- Moses- and that all the rest of the Jewish prophets were false prophets. They had their own version of the Torah- Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy- and it was written very differently from the Jewish Torah. They believed the true Holy Mountain was not Mt. Sinai in the South, but Mt. Horeb, in the North, where they lived. They believed their priests were the only true priests.

Now for their part, the Jews believed Samaritans to be unclean, to be avoided at all costs, and to be wrong in every possible way about the way they worshipped their “false” God. they were never to be trusted, never to have business dealings with, and to be spoken to as little as possible.

It really is OK to think of Samaritans as modern day Muslims, because the attitudes held toward them were very similar to the attitudes held toward Muslims by non-Muslims today, and for many of the very same reasons. So, what would Jesus do? Well, here’s what he did:

John 4:4

Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

Point #1: Jesus was not afraid to enter Samaria. He refused to be bound by religious law that separated human beings, one from the other.

7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?"

Point #2: Jesus spoke first. He spoke to someone the Jews would have labeled as inferior on two counts- a Samaritan and a woman. And he spoke out of his vulnerability, as a person in need. He was thirsty.

9 The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?"

10 Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."

Point #3: Jesus makes the woman curious about him. He is respectful, but mysterious. He has something for her, and he wants her to know it, but he wants that need to rise in her, and not be inflicted on her.

11 "Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?"

13 Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

15 The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."

Point #4: Kindness and gentleness works! The Kingdom of God within this woman has been aroused! She wants to know more!

16 He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."

17 "I have no husband," she replied.

Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."

Point #5: There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus. He doesn’t preach, he doesn’t shame, he doesn’t tip his Jewish nose up in the air in self-righteous authority, he simply states the facts as only a prophet- a true prophet- could know them.

19 "Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."

(Since Samaritans believed that there have been no prophets since Moses, this is one whale of an admission!)

21 Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

Point #6: Jesus does not hide the fact that there are differences between Jews and Samaritans. But these are not fighting words. They are followed with an inclusionary vision of “true believers,” a status which the woman is just inches from at this point.

25 The woman said, "I know that Messiah" is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."

26 Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."

Point #7: Ta-da!

27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?"

28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 "Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?" 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I ever did." 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41 And because of his words many more became believers.

Point #8: Jesus stayed with the Samaritans- he would have eaten their food, drunk from their vessels, looked them right in the eye, and right in the heart.

42 They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world."

Notice: No sword talk. No high-fives- “My team is better than your team.” No listing of points 1 through 8. Just conversation, openness, a willingness to go against the religious and cultural law, and..dare we say it?..love.

None of those things are easy to do. For most of us today, here in the U.S., breaking fee of the cultural bias toward Islam and Muslims is very difficult. Since 1979, when the Ayatollah took over the government of Iran, and especially since 2001, we have been fed particular images of particular Muslims in such a way by our media and by our government, so that it is almost impossible for us not to think of Muslims as anything but flag-burning, mob-crazed, oil-spoiled, Jew-hating maniacs.

And, indeed, some are. But most of those we see, because it is easy to see them (some of them love network cameras), most of those we see are nationalists using the language of Islam. They are not at all unlike the Nazis in that regard- nationalists who used the language of the Bible- specifically the gospel of John which we just read from- to further their nationalistic goals. Not at all unlike Timothy McVeigh who truly believed that by blowing up the Mullah building in Oklahoma City, he could help return this country to its so-called Christian roots.

One of the very real problems we must deal politically and spiritually with the reality of when dealing with Islam, is that it is not a hierarchical religion. There is no Pope, no international governing body. The nature of Middle-eastern and Asian Islam is that it becomes indistinguishable from the government of a country. Think of Saudi Arabia or Iran or Egypt. And then, when billions of dollars of oil are mixed into that formula, fundamentalist Muslims- who are usually among the have-nots- grow in political power, legitimate and otherwise.

When Church and State are one and the same, that’s called a theocracy. And, thank God, it is something we don’t know much about in the United States and must always be on our guard against this country ever becoming a theocracy. Theocracy always- always- leads to killing in the name of whatever God is fashionable at the moment. That’s true in the Middle East, just as it was true for awhile in the American colonies.

But even judging Islam by their Church/State connectivity can be confusing at times. Here’s an example: the three countries in the world most heavily populated by Muslims are, in order- Indonesia, India, and Pakistan. Now we know about the repression of women in Islamic societies, right? Or, do we? All three of those Muslim-heavy countries are democracies, or representative republics, similar to the U.S. system. Yet, unlike the U.S., where Christianity is predominate, Indonesia, India, and Pakistan have all, within the last forty years, elected women as presidents or, in the case of India, prime minister. We talk about equality here, but in those three countries, anyway, they demonstrated something we have not been able to yet.

Confusing? Yes. But then, most human things are, which is precisely the reason that easy answers are almost never the right answers. Here’s some more confusing statements for most Americans.

“The Detroit-based Shari'a Muslim Scholars Association of North America (SSANA) strongly condemned the 9-11 attack and said that there is no cause that justifies "this type of an immoral and inhumane act that has affected so many innocent American lives."

“These fundamentalist groups are endangering and embarrassing ordinary Muslims”
Inayat Bunglawala
Muslim Council for Britain

"Anyone can prove anything from any scriptures, provided he has a $2 piece of equipment," said Jamal Badawi, head of the Canada-based Islamic Information Foundation. "That is enough to buy a cheap pair of scissors to cut up verses and put them together the way you want."

“This despicable incident is an unacceptable outrage, regardless of who is ultimately held to be responsible, and we condemn it as fundamentally un-Islamic and against all the principles of our holy faith. We pray God to have mercy on the souls of the murder victims and to punish all evildoers who perpetuate and support such an act of Terrorism.” Islamic Association of Egypt.

“It's not courage in any way to kill an innocent person, or to kill thousands of people, including men and women and children..”

Sheik Mohammed Sayed Tantaw, Syria

That’s five of literally hundreds and hundreds of such statements issued by Islamic groups and scholars from around the world and available for anyone to see on the Internet, including Fox News and all the various preachers who seem to think God needs their special protection.

I maintain again, as I have for the past several weeks, that fear is the main culprit, not Islam. Fear sells television advertising, fear has a free hand in the public treasury, fear causes people to reach in their pockets and buy salvation from whatever hustler is screaming the loudest in the God-language of their own secret terrors.

Should we be wary of certain Muslims? Absolutely! Just as we should be wary of certain Christians, Buddhists, atheists, and Jews. The weapons of today are heinous and American and European factories are designing and manufacturing them at greater levels than anytime in history and they make their way- wink, wink, nudge, nudge- into the wrong hands all the time. We would be stupid not to be vigilant and wary.

But we are also- and that’s a collective ‘we’, my taxes buy the same percentage of weaponry as yours do- we are also..well, less than smart, less than our Savior would have us be, if we continue to fail to follow Jesus in this most important of challenges.

What if we put aside the normal human responses of fear, anger, greed, revenge, and dogma that we apparently cherish because we- humans- have been using them to no avail throughout all of recorded history? What if, instead, we, like Jesus, put ourselves purposefully and intentionally into positions to empathetically communicate with those we fear, to be respectful of differing ideas, to be motivated by Jesus’ kind of love, to identify the source of such of such love in kindness and gentleness, to sit knee to knee, eye to eye, stay with, eat with, and genuinely be with other humans as people born in the Image of God? And then, if it didn’t work the first time, to start all over again?

No, we won’t change everyone, through force or love. But we can change us. Our responses to Islam, and all things and people, must be as similar as we can make them to the responses of Jesus to all things and people. That’s not an easy thing to do: Jesus demonstrated that for us, too. But when you ask the question, “What would Jesus do?”, there’s a couple of answers.

One more by Rumi, to end these thoughts for now:

Tender words we spoke

to one another

are sealed

in the secret vaults of heaven.

One day like rain,

they will fall to earth

and grow green

all over the world.

Global Warming: A Changing Earth

Today is Transfiguration Sunday on the Christian Calendar. It marks that event described in Matthew 17: 1-6..

1 After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. 2 There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. 3 Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.

(When I was a kid reading comic books, this is where there would have been a picture of open-mouthed, forehead-slapping disciples and a word balloon containing the words “What the..?” That’s how Peter reacts, anyway; he’s excited, confused, and more than a little frightened.)

4 Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters-one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah."

(Forgive Peter for acting silly, which is what he’s doing here. He wants to do something to mark this moment- make it last. So he offers, of all things, to build houses for everyone!)

5 While he was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!"

(This is the voice of gentle invitation, but it is terrifying to the disciples. Again, we may find it easy to judge them as we sit here in a comfortable, warm, and safe place but, as we’ll be talking about it in a moment, that same voice of God, that same gentle invitation, might be heard by any of us in equally discombobulating circumstances.)

6 When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified. 7 But Jesus came and touched them. "Get up," he said. "Don't be afraid." 8 When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.

And there is some good news! It comes in the form of a command from Jesus- “Get up! Be resurrected! Don’t… be… afraid!”

And that’s our segue into today’s topic of the day- Global Warming, or, as it is also being called, Climate Change. It is part of the Transfiguration of our own planet, and one in which we are all, by the nature of being human, playing a part. And I think that it is a phenomenon that will cause us all to be reminded again of those words of Jesus, “Don’t be Afraid.”

I’m not here today to debate the accuracy or inaccuracy of some of the predictions being made by diverse scientists and climatologists from around the world about the changing climate of the planet. The novelist Upton Sinclair wrote 80 years ago that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” None of us here today are unaware that oil and the raising of livestock are two of the factors identified by many scientists as being primary contributors to global weather changes. Almost every dollar that passes through this area, has its beginnings in one or both of those two commodities. So, admittedly, we all have some reluctance to embrace some of the doom and gloom predictions being made.

But there are some things we an agree on, I think. Here’s an example that has been helpful to me in understanding the problem in the first place. It is the greenhouse effect, which is what the real culprit in global warming is.

To illustrate the greenhouse effect, consider a car with the windows rolled up:

• The sun's rays- visible light- pass through the car's windows, and hit the car's seats.
• The visible light is absorbed by those car seats, and re-radiated to the interior of the car as Infrared heat.
• But the car's glass windows, while transparent to visible light, are opaque to Infrared heat, so the heat is trapped within the car, and the car's interior temperature becomes unbearable. It’s why the air in a car with the windows rolled up is 10, 15, 30 degrees hotter than is the air outside of the car.

The atmosphere of the earth is exactly like the windows of that car. Sunlight passes through the 8 mile high transparent atmosphere, and is absorbed by everything on the earth. Not only is it absorbed by everything on the earth- water, land, etc.- but it is absorbed by carbon and carbon dioxide molecules in the air. For millions of years there has been a perfect balance between what’s in the atmosphere and the ability of the planet to clean itself. Rainforests and ocean plankton were the perfect vacuum cleaners. Plants breathe in carbon dioxide and release it as oxygen, which doesn’t hang on to the sun’s heat. That balance has enabled life to thrive on earth, instead of turning it a desert planet like Venus.

But since the Industrial Revolution began 200 years ago, and as it has been fueled by the burning of fossil fuels ever since, a whole lot more carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere than can be absorbed by the plants of the earth. There is simply more and more stuff in the air to trap the infrared heat reflected by the earth. It’s measurable, it’s real, and about those facts there is no debate. We are putting more and more carbon into the air, and decreasing our abilities to clean it out of the air. The rainforests are being chopped down, China and India- the two most populous countries in the world- have entered the fuel-burning Industrial Age, and glaciers are measurably melting.

The good thing, and the bad thing about all of this is, is that it is all happening in relatively very slow motion, in most places. It is hard to see and, therefore, it is easy to ignore. And there is still an argument over the percentage effect that humans have in all of this versus what Nature itself has. The fact remains, however, that there has been the same amount of new carbons put into and suspended in the atmosphere over the past 100 years as were put there the previous 10,000 years. And we know that from analyzing the ancient ice of the now melting glaciers.

We can talk for the rest of the day about what unchecked climatic change will mean to life on the earth, long term, including the migration of humans and animals and plants northward, the changing of ocean currents, and the flooding of every ocean shoreline on earth. A ½” rise in the ocean has already engulfed two long-inhabited islands- one in the Bering Straits of Alaska and one off the coast of India. What will happen in Amsterdam, Miami, New York, and Boston and a thousand other seashore towns will be catastrophic.

“Get up. Don’t be afraid.” Hang on to those words now.

Climatic Change is happening, but- again- in slow motion. It is one of many reminders that the earth is not a series of parts but an integrated, functioning whole. There are other reminders that we have much geological history of, but little modern experience with, including: Super-volcanoes. The one we know as Yellowstone National Park has an average 200,000 year cycle. It last erupted 240,000 years ago. When it erupts, and someday it will, it will be equivalent to 2000 Mt. St. Helens eruptions.

Or, Super-tsunamis. We saw a big one in the area of Indonesia at Christmas in 2005, but there could just as easily be on in the Atlantic. The volcano Cumbre Vieja in the Canary Islands off of Africa caused part of the island to drop partway into the Atlantic in 1949. Another volcano, or even an earthquake there, could cause the other half of the island to fall all the way into the ocean. And when it does, an inland flood of unimaginable devastation will engulf shores 10 miles inland in England, Ireland, France, and the United States. That might not happen for 10,000 years. But it also could also happen in ten days.

In either one of those scenarios, Walmarts everywhere, among many other things, will be closed, for a long time.

I’m talking about these things this morning as a realistic reminder that we walk upon a liquid, changing, and fragile planet. We have some control over some of the disastrous potential scenarios- climate change and nuclear weapons among them- and no control over others. What we do have control over, because it is something given to us, a gift from God, is our fear about such events.

“Get up. Don’t be afraid.”

The disciples were afraid because they were seeing something that they had never seen before, or could even have imagined: Jesus transfigured, talking to the long-dead Moses and Elijah. It wasn’t a disastrous scenario, but it was just incomprehensible. It didn’t make sense. 2 + 2 no longer equaled 4.

And even if we don’t have to face any of those potential BIG earthly disasters, we all have to face from time to time, those events which personally are just as devastating, just as incomprehensible. And it is in those times, just as it might be, some day will be, when we humans must face true worldwide calamity, it is in all of those times that we can- against all odds- have the hope in our hearts made evident by Jesus’ transfiguration. The disciples saw the living Moses and the once again alive Elijah. What the…indeed! But Jesus came and touched them. ”Get up,” he said, “and don’t be afraid.”

The psalmist said all of the things I’ve just been saying, another way. Psalm 29:

3 The voice of the LORD is over the waters;

the God of glory thunders, the LORD thunders over the mighty waters.

4 The voice of the LORD is powerful; the voice of the LORD is majestic.

5 The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars;

the LORD breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon.

6 He makes Lebanon skip like a calf, Sirion like a young wild ox.

7 The voice of the LORD strikes with flashes of lightning.

8 The voice of the LORD shakes the desert; the LORD shakes the Desert of Kadesh.

9 The voice of the LORD twists the oaks and strips the forests bare.

And in his temple all cry, "Glory!"

And this brings us, I think, to the really exciting part of living in a faith that enables us, like the disciples, to expect Jesus to touch us, to reassure us, even in the midst of the incomprehensible- in the midst of disaster, trials, sadness, grief, and pain. For Jesus to touch us that way- and many of you have personal experience and evidence of that calming touch!- for Jesus to be able to touch us with the peace that passes understanding, and whisper in our ears, “Don’t be afraid.” For Jesus to be able to do that means that Jesus is present with us right now.

It’s not that Jesus will come to us at the time when we need him to, it is that Jesus is already here, right now. We walked up the mountain with him. Like Peter, we have sometimes reacted foolishly when we saw the things he wanted us to see. We have even, because Jesus was sensitizing us to it, we have even heard the voice of God at times- not always booming from a silver cloud, but more often in the still, small sounds God most often speaks with. And those things make it possible, even in the midst of chaos, even in the center of those situations which are causing others around us to react in fear and panic, that experience with Jesus makes it possible for us to live in no fear.

Stand up- be resurrected- and don’t be afraid!

Everyone who spent time with Jesus- beginning with his Mother Mary- saw things, experienced things which made no sense. “Don’t be afraid” The angel Gabriel told Mary. “Don’t be afraid” Jesus told his disciples again and again when thy saw things no humans had ever before seen. The importance of that phrase cannot be overemphasized. Walking with Jesus, following Jesus, opens our eyes to the tragedies and sufferings of the world- and those things are often frightening.

But Jesus’ approach to the world and all that he encountered in his world- his approach to it all, was with love. He embraced it, accepted it, touched it. It was a radical response.

The opposite of love, we sometimes think, is hate. If we don’t love something, we hate it. But the real opposite of love is not hate, but fear. We are in love, or we are in fear. And Jesus showed us that even though fear may be the initial response to a problem, it is not the Godly response; fear is not the response that will change anything, it only adds to the problem.

Being proactive in the face of that which causes fear is the very best way to turn that fear into love. And here is where many of our brothers and sisters in faith make a mistake, I think. (You might notice in this series how good I am at pointing out the faults of others. So be it) When many Christians encounter difficulties, they go ahead and built those little houses up on the mountain. They retreat into church. They start living in the Bible, instead of from the Bible. Where Jesus led his disciples down off the mountain, back into the world, after this fearsome encounter with God, there are those who “hole up”, go through holy motions, and-in effect- ignore the very problems that Jesus plunged himself into.

So, the opposite of fear is love, but that love translates into coming down off the mountain and doing something to alleviate the causes of fear in the lives of others.

We can live in fear of the havoc Global Warming will cause in the lives of our grandchildren, or, we can come off the mountain and…change the light bulbs. Really. You do the smallest things first. These new lights up here in the choir loft not only give better light, but they emit about 60% less carbon into the atmosphere. They are cheaper to use, and they burn more efficiently. Same with these guys (smaller fluorescent bulbs) in your homes. Over their 5 year lifetime, they will give off about 65% less carbon into the atmosphere than the old incandescent globes. And even when we are talking about light bulbs, small as they are, we are talking in terms of tons of carbon emissions.

I won’t bore you with a list of all the other things that it is possible to do. Magazines from Redbook to Popular Mechanics are full of ideas. I will tell you that, based on some recently completed research at M.I.T., areas like ours are going to be in the near future, prime areas for new manufacturing plants to be built in the United States. Abandoned gas and oil wells are perfect receptacles, it turns out, for factory emissions. One day there will be no more smokestacks. There will be pipes going underground where the shale we live on top of, it turns out, is one of the best absorbents of all that smoke which now goes straight into the atmosphere.

It’s proactivity in the face of fear. Doing something, anything, besides trembling on top of the mountain. Loving instead of fearing. Living with the touch of Jesus: “Get up, don’t be afraid.”

Evolutionary Creation..Where's God?

Let’s begin looking forward by looking backwards:

Ten years ago- 1997. Among other events, the Hale-Bopp comet, remember that? Also, the deaths of Mother Teresa and Princess Diana.

Ten times ten years ago- 1897. The first Oldsmobile was built and Pope Paul VI was born.

Ten times one hundred years ago- the year 1007. The first Viking settlement was begun in Newfoundland and new pueblos were being built in what is now New Mexico.

Times ten again. Ten thousand years ago- The last great Ice Age was melting. The Great Lakes were being filled, and wooly elephants- mastodons- roamed the upper Midwest. Some tribes of Asian Mongolians began moving their way northeast toward the frozen Bering Straits toward a new continent where, 9000 years later, some of their descendents would be found building pueblos.

Ten times that- One hundred thousand years ago. There are tribes of people in places scattered throughout Africa, the Middle East, and in Australia. A few of those from the Middle East have begun trickling into the very cold and hostile environs of Europe. In 50,000 years, some humans- Cro-Magnons- will paint pictures of buffalo and bears and holy men on cave walls in southern France.

Ten times 100,000 years, 1 million years ago. Ten times that, 10 million, Ten times that, 100 million, and 3 ½ times 100 million- 350 million years ago- and we’re getting close to the birthdays of all these little fossilized creatures you’re holding in your hands today.

All of these fossils are mollusks- bipods, some of them, ancient clams. And they resemble exactly the same little bipods still able to be fund alive in lakes everywhere. Most of these fossils are a type of cephalopods- snails with octopus- like appendages reaching out from them. These specifically are a class of cephalopods called ammonites (not to be confused with the Mooninites, lately in the news.) They no longer exist anywhere in the world, even though we’re sitting over top of billions of their relatives right here where we live.

All of these come from the shale hills out by the lake; my wife and I picked them all up there. Some of you may also have some of these cylindrical or round fossils- those are probably pieces of coral. Because for several hundred million years, we were at the bottom of an ocean here. You can also find the occasional shark’s tooth fossil amongst these ammonite and coral fossils- big ones- ten bigger than present day White Sharks. This might be one of them.

About one hundred million years after these little ammonites began frolicking in the surf, their days began to be interrupted by large creatures swimming by, or casting shadows from up in the sky, or, stomping around on the shores of the now receding oceans- dinosaurs. The dinosaur heydays were from about 250 million to 65 million years ago. As these oceans over North America began to recede into what is now the South Pacific, lush jungles- giant ferns, massive trees, an explosion of all kinds of great and huge tropical plants began to thrive, and the dinosaurs lived among them. As they and the plants died, great deepening piles of rotting animal and plant flesh accumulated. In many areas of the world, those garbage piles, under ever-increasing pressure, became coal deposits; in other areas, and we’re sitting on a massive one, they became shale and oil.

But then something happened in this dinosaur and ammonite Garden of Eden. An asteroid about the size of Rhode Island smashed into the ocean about 1200 miles from here. What is now known as the Gulf of Mexico, was first an explosion that sent enough debris and water into the air to envelope Earth in a dirty cloud for many years. long enough for all of the dinosaurs, except the very smallest ones, and for all of the ammonites to die. We know why the dinosaurs died- they either choked on the dirty air or they died because much of their plant food died when it couldn’t get enough sun. But we can only guess at why the fragile ammonites died worldwide. One theory is that the waters became too acidic for them.

Anyway, a lot of that dirt from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico ended up here, as it rained back down here on top of the dead ammonites, covering the vast pools of oil and hills of shale, eventually to be covered by the growth of bluegrass and other prairie grasses and grains.

One other very important benefit, besides oil, of the dinosaurs dying off is that the many tiny mammals which had begun making appearances around the world had the opportunity now not to be eaten. And that’s why we’re sitting here today. And why we’re sitting here holding ammonite fossils. All of us- ammonites and humans alike- have spent a loooong time, and a very complicated route, getting here today, and that’s what I want to talk a little more about this morning.

Ten times 350 million years ago, the birthday of these ammonites- that’s 3.5 billion years ago- and the Earth was still cooling off, from it’s 10 billion year history before that of being a mass of burning hydrogen- goodness gracious, a great ball of fire that eventually cooled off and became rock.

Let me say all of this another more familiar way:

Genesis 1

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

9 And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good.

11 Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning--the third day...

20 And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth." 23 And there was evening, and there was morning--the fifth day.

Two stories about the same event. One was expressed in the best scientifically verifiable way I can muster, given my own scientifically limited vocabulary. And the other, the better known one, was expressed poetically, mythically, liturgically, as a prelude to the ancient story of the Hebrew tribes.

In the first one, I left out all references to the Cambrian and Paleozoic Ages, and the very important Carboniferous Period. I did not reference at all the various radioactive carbon dating methods and other radiometric methods that allow us to know when these events occurred, and how old these fossils are. I left those things out because I figured a few of you might be as confused by that jargon as I am.

In the second story- the Genesis story- whether you believe it was written by God himself, related by Moses, or gathered together from the oral tradition by several priests with the ability to write, the same thing is happening. The audience for these words was being considered. A nomadic tribe of people, all of them illiterate, with the mud of Egypt still drying under their fingernails- what chance would there possibly have been for them to understand any but the most basic language about where they had come from, and how?

Evolution is not merely a theory, it is the central theory around which all of science has been gathering since Darwin first wrote down, in a readable way 150 years ago, what had been thought about and talked about since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers. The theory of evolution is not yet a complete theory; there are still many holes of understanding in it, just as there are huge holes in the various theories of gravity, the reality of which everyone accepts, because we live inside of it. But why and how gravity works, is not yet fully known.

Nor do we understand exactly how bacteria, throbbing with life, came to be, even though we do know that the waste from their munching of the rocks and of the sun’s photons produced the first oxygen on earth and gave that bacteria the ability to become lichens and fungus and which became gradually, over those 100s of millions of years, sharks, palm trees, and ammorites. We don’t know exactly, but we learn bits and pieces every year.

Those who fear evolutionary theory point to those holes in our knowledge- an easy thing to do because there are many of them. But to do so, they must ignore some pretty significant truths, many of which have been arrived at and are being arrived at in our own lifetimes; DNA, for instance, those miles long strands of information packed into every one of our cells- half from our mom, half from our dad. Not only does DNA tell us about the inherited color of our hair, but it also tells us that we share the gift of life- the same gift of life- with all living creatures. When the mushrooms pop up in our yards this spring, remember that we- humans- share 78% of the same DNA with them. When those of you who ride horses next get on the back of one, remember that you and that horse share over 93% of your biological substance with each other.

Those scientific facts affirm for me the truth, said in another way, of Genesis 2:7: “the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” What we all have in common- all of us, every living thing- is that dust, that molten starstuff, those eroded rocks of 10 billion years ago, that cooled off hydrogen which began it’s explosive journey from the beginnings of all we know 14.6 billion years ago.

Those who fear our relationship with mushrooms and horses are attempting, sometimes through legal coercion, to keep God in a humanly understandable box. And that leads to real problems. I talked to a woman in Dallas once who said she preferred the 7 day creation story because it was “easier to explain to her children.” I listened to a preacher, also in Dallas, who I admired greatly until that moment, when he said that Satan was responsible for burying all those dinosaur bones in order to confuse Christians.

As I said last week, when we use the Bible as a stopping point in our understanding of God and God’s Creation, we cut ourselves off, sometimes in very foolish ways, from experiencing the incredible grandeur of God’s Continuing Creation. If we close our eyes and ears to the colors and the music of God’s ever-moving presence in the universe, then we are participating actively in the turning of this book (the Bible) into pages full of flat, dead ink.

Here’s what I think, four things:

1. Science and spirituality, or religion, are not two separate things. Religion simply asks, “Why?” Science simply asks, “How?” Those who oppose certain areas of scientific inquiry often call such inquiry a conspiracy against their faith. But if one reads any of the scientific journals, they would see that scientists fuss and fight with each other over what they have published more than junior high girls fuss and fight over boyfriends. But the evidence of evolution is so overwhelming, despite the holes, that even the strangest of scientific bedfellows agree on its principles. The religionists accuse scientists of hijacking the Truth. But that is wrong. Science, simply and elegantly, defines a way of knowing.

2. The greatest gift humans have been given is this: for the first time in the 14.6 billion year history of the Universe, the Universe now has the ability to reflect upon itself. Through us- through our eyes and ears, through our ability to imagine then build the polished lenses of telescopes and microscopes, and then imagine and send those lenses into orbit around distant planets or on trajectories toward other galaxies- through us, the universe can now begin to think about and understand itself. We can reflect on the meaning of dying stars in the cosmos which cause the birth of yet more stars. We can understand poetically, mythically, then factually, something about the movement of God through time, and begin to do what we can to cooperate and harmonize with that movement. Here’s what I mean by that:

3. We can believe that every inch of the ground upon which we live, and every living creature we live with, is ours to exploit. Or, we can cooperate with the billions of years of life yet to be lived on this place. The study of evolution has revealed, in our lifetimes, the interdependence of all things, and the need for cooperation on larger and wider scales. We didn’t know the extent of that need even 150 years ago, when our pioneering ancestors shot every passenger pigeon out of the sky and almost did in the buffalo and the indigenous people who already lived here. We have, to our great credit, stopped oohing and awwing over the skins of endangered animals draped around our shoulders. We have stopped dumping the ancient saltwater from oil well drillings onto fertile prairie land. At the same time, we have yet to fully realize- as a species- the dangerous nature of our prolific breeding habits and our life-ending rush to deforest the rain forests of the world.

Those are a few examples- good and bad- of the vital work which lays ahead for every young person in here. And they need good educations to that- educations not inflicted upon them by popular political movements, but educations which unleash and inspire the God-imaged brains God has enabled to evolve in each of them. And that responsibility will lie not just with our American children, but every child in the world. We must also be doing what we can for them as well. Examples: The price of an Ipod will keep a kid in Thailand in school for two years. The cost of one movie ticket will keep a child in Zaire in school for six months. Those facts, among many, demand changes in attitudes which I think our children will have a much greater capacity for than we do. If we allow them to.

4. Understanding evolution- or, at least, beginning to understand evolution, has for me, deepened my relationship with God. I better understand that I share something of his Image- we all do- in our ability to Create, cooperate, and be in community not only with each other but with the universe and every single thing in it. But I also understand that I must never, ever try to re-create God in my image. God is not a projection of my political beliefs, my selfish economic desires, or of my limited intellectual abilities. When I make God into any or all of those things, then I am not serving God; I am standing in the way of God’s breath moving in time, and of God’s Continuing Creation of all that is.

Closed minds do not protect God. God will be God no matter how angry we get at each other, or how stubborn we are about cooperating with each other. When we live in cooperation with the movement of God through our lives and through the universe, we can live in happiness and satisfaction. When we are living outside the rhythms and harmonies of God, we suffer, as individuals, and as a species, and take many other species down with us.

On the Sunday before his death, Jesus came into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey and the crowds went wild, cheering and praising the Messiah. The soldiers warned Jesus about the noise and fanfare. “Get these people to shut up!” he was told.

“I tell you the truth,” Jesus said, “if they keep quiet, then the stones will cry out.”

I maintain that that is exactly what these ammonites, these tiny little 350 million year old stones are doing today, in our lifetimes- crying out, affirming the ways of God in the universe, and helping us all to better understand, and praise, and live in the movement of the God of all Creation.