First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: John 1:1-3, 14
When I was three years old, I used to think that the true measure of things was how big they were in comparison to how big I was. There were Billy-sized things. And there were bigger things. But when I was three, almost everything fell into the category of “bigger things.” Most everything was huge when I was small, but seems to have shrunk, now that I have become huge.
Whenever I go back to the house in which I previously lived….the school in which I previously studied….the fields in which I previously played….and the woods in which I previously roamed….I am amazed at how common, how ordinary, and (yes) how tiny they seem compared to the way I remember them. I find myself wondering: “How did it happen that (after I left it) they came along and downsized my entire neighborhood?”
But it wasn’t just my neighborhood, don’t you see? The world got smaller as Billy got bigger. When I wasn’t allowed to cross the street, there was no end of mystery about what was on the other side. Much of which has now disappeared, given the number of times I have crossed the Atlantic. Albion (on the day I went there to start college….which, ironically, was the first time I ever laid eyes upon the place) might just as easily have been the end of the universe. Given a car and a map, I was far from certain that I would have known how to get home to Detroit. Which changed quickly….not because Albion moved, but because I did.
When first I sang, “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are,” I really did wonder. And still do….sort of. But an introductory course on astronomy (coupled with seven Star Trek movies) have reduced my reverence. And every time I tilt back my head and belt, “O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all the worlds thy hands have made,” it occurs to me how little I consider such things at all. Until people I respect say: “Hey, take a look at this. It’s going to blow your mind.” So once in awhile I do. And once in awhile it does.
Just the other day, while reading to keep ahead of my Wednesday morning study group, I stumbled upon Leonard Sweet telling me that physicists are currently dismantling every boundary that separates us from the universe, meaning that we are learning more….drawing closer….and sensing connections that we never saw before. But the more we learn, the less we seem to know. For each step of science opens the door to several hundred miles of history. Speaking of the inability of science to measure the “blackness” of matter in space, University of Washington astrophysicist, Bruce Margon, confesses: “It’s a fairly embarrassing situation to admit that we can’t find 90 percent of the universe.” Which I can’t comprehend. Here I am, worrying about a clothes dryer that eats every seventh sock. And there he is, looking for 90 percent of the universe. (“Now slow down, Bruce. Think of where you last saw it.”)
We live in a galaxy so big, that a light ray (traveling at the rate of 186,000 miles per second) takes 100,000 years to go from one side of the galaxy to the other. And how many galaxies did God create? More than one, they tell me. But I’ve never seen ‘em. Which is not God’s fault….that I haven’t seen ‘em, I mean. Physicist Charles Misner believes this is why Albert Einstein had so little use for the church (even though he said a lot of things that seemed friendly to religion). He must have listened to preachers like me….talking about subjects like God….and figured that he (Einstein) had seen far more majesty than I’d ever imagined.
Still, there is Sweet’s suggestion that the old distinctions between out-there and in-here are breaking down…..meaning that we are connected to the totality of the universe (including the 90 percent of it we can’t find) in more ways than we previously expected, and that we are connected to the God of the universe in more ways than we previously believed.
Let me try and explain, knowing that in doing so, I am skating at the naked edge of my knowledge zone, and (quite possibly) your comfort zone. It all has to do with what the scientists call “Chaos Theory”…..which is anything but what the name would seem to suggest. So work with me, here.
Until very recently, we believed in a world that could be understood and managed. In fact, we believed that way since 1686 when Sir Isaac Newton wrote a startling book entitled Principia. In that book, Newton suggested that the earth circled the sun (rather than vice versa), and that the atom was the basic building block of the universe. He also suggested that the solar system worked like a vast machine, operating on a series of fixed laws. He summed up these laws in four relatively simple algebraic formulas, thereby putting the question of “how things worked” to bed, where it stayed nicely tucked in for some 300 years.
But now Newton’s model has come apart….the covers have become untucked….and mystery is once again loose in the cosmos. With the work being done in quantum physics, we are discovering a sub-atomic world that does not behave (at all) in the ways that Newton said it did. Things are impossible to pin down, what with particles turning into waves and waves turning into particles. Things that have shape and mass one minute, become pure energy the next. And nobody knows when such changes will occur….and why.
Which makes it hard to predict anything in the universe. Or study anything in the universe. In fact, the very act of attempting to study a particle, changes it (meaning that scientists can no longer stand outside of anything and observe it). Because the very particles and waves that are responding to each other, will end up responding to the watcher as well.
Picture a teacher saying to her class (at the beginning of the morning): “Class, that big guy sitting in the back corner is from the Board of Education. He has come to observe us today. But we will just go on with our work like we always do. So forget he’s here and open your books to page 132.” But they won’t “forget he’s here.” And very little will “go on like it always does.” Because his presence will have changed everything, don’t you see? I suppose he could observe the class through a two-way mirror so that nobody in the room would be able to see him. But the quantum physicists tell us that, in the universe, there is no two-way mirror behind which to hide. So every act of trying to chart something, changes it. Which means that everything reacts to everything else, and there is no such thing as pure scientific activity.
What this also means is that it is no longer helpful to think of the world as a machine. For machines are full of little parts….all doing what they were made to do….always have done…. always will do….until they wear out and (in order to keep the machine running) someone replaces the worn out part with another, to do exactly the same thing. Which is how machines work. But not universes.
A better image for the universe is that of a living body, in which no part operates independently from the rest, and where every change in one part of the body is noted, recorded, and adapted to by changes in every other part of the body.
For those of you who don’t like physics, consider economics. It used to be said….and probably still is….that every time Tokyo catches a cold, Wall Street sneezes. Which occurs not only because we are world-connected economically, but because we are world-connected informationally. Wall Street knows (or learns) of Tokyo’s troubles, almost instantaneously. And you and I understand the role of technology in the information-sharing process….meaning that we know how we know.
But when such connections are spotted in the universe, we don’t know how we know. A few of you may be familiar with the “butterfly effect,” first brought to our attention in 1961 by a research meteorologist named Edward Lorenz. Interested in why he could not come up with foolproof weather forecasts, he found that every weather pattern is acutely sensitive to conditions present at its creation. Meaning that when a butterfly beats its wings in Beijing, it affects the weather (weeks later) here in Birmingham. We are that connected.
But that’s not all. We have found that two particles separated by whole galaxies (you remember that I said there are more than one) seem to know what each other is doing. Change the spin on one, and the other reverses its spin….wherever it is….at the same instant. We don’t know how it knows to do that, since it happens faster than the speed of light. It probably has something to do with what is now being called “Field Theory,” which is more than I can explain and more than you need to consider (given my sense that your eyes are moments removed from glazing over).
All of this is related to what we call “Chaos Theory.” Which is a term I have recoiled against for years, because it sounded like reality was random, purposeless and wildly-out-of-control (all of which seem like synonyms for Godless). Perhaps “chaos” is a bad choice of words, but it doesn’t mean what it sounds like. It simply means that the universe is a giant web. Any place you touch it, everything else will feel it. All is connected. Meaning that we are all connected. And while there is an ultimate order to the chaos (in the sense of boundaries beyond which the web will not go and patterns to which the web will inevitably return), within the web, everything is alive, acting, adapting, participating, exchanging, relating, giving and taking, impacting and sharing.
So what? So plenty. But I will settle for raising a pair of implications in the time I have left. First, I would suggest that God is bigger than we ever thought God to be. And that God is more intimate than we ever thought him to be.
Let’s start with “bigger.” Much of the church’s theology has contented itself with declarations “of the wonderful works that God has done.” But can we declare what God has done, without shutting down a consideration of what God may do next? Chaos Theory is incredibly alive. Meaning that, within certain prescribed boundaries, every part of God’s web tingles….whether we be the tingler….or God. Which is most biblical, although we tend to gloss over such texts as Isaiah 43:18-19: “Do not remember the former things. I am about to do a new thing. Now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it?”
All of which means that while we should love God, praise God, adore and revere God, we should not sit too comfortably in the saddle of familiarity with God….assuming that we know everything there is to know about God. Almost everybody who is anybody in theology is now talking about “the re-enchantment of the universe.” But the theologians did not invent this term. They borrowed it from the scientists. What does it mean? It means that the scientists and the theologians are presiding over a rebirth of mystery, wonder and awe. Science has been humbled, learning that it does not know….cannot predict….and therefore is no longer able to dominate the universe, as was once thought possible. Dominion belongs to God alone.
Which leads Barbara Brown Taylor to suggest that perhaps (just perhaps) some of us have gotten a little too chummy with God. Tune in many sermons on Sunday morning and you will hear preachers speaking of God as they would a pet lion: “Oh, he was fierce once, but there is nothing to be afraid of now. You can climb up on his back if you want to. We’ve had all his teeth and claws pulled.”
Now, I am not suggesting that we should necessarily fear God (although the Bible is not afraid to offer that admonition). But I am suggesting that we should respect God. When a sailboat skipper tells me that he is doing this or that….or not doing this or that….because of the healthy respect he has for Lake Michigan, he is not saying that sailing is no longer fulfilling or fun. Indeed, he may believe that he is never happier, more alive, or at greater peace, than when he is five miles out on the open water. But by “respecting the lake,” he is acknowledging that the waters are cold, deep, challenging and (from time to time) utterly unpredictable. As a seasoned sailor, what he knows is wonderful. But he does not know it all. And what he does not know could change his life in an instant. Sailing begins in reverence. As does theology.
But if theology begins in reverence, it ends in intimacy. If, indeed, everything in the universe relates to (and is affected by) everything else….if, indeed, God is both the spinner of the web and the tingler of the web….if, indeed, it is impossible to know how any one thing works, but only that all things are connected….doesn’t it stand to reason that God (himself, herself, Godself) would want to be known in the most intimate, web-tingling, life-touching way possible?
And isn’t it possible that if the body (rather than the machine) is now the paradigm by which we understand the universe, doesn’t it stand to reason that God would want to become a body….so that through that relationship we might become somebody (and, collectively, God’s body). For this, in all of its mystery, is what the church means by the word “incarnation.”
* * * * *
Oh, God is so big. And yet God is so near.
Go back to the sea. I’ve told you this before, but let me tell you again. The first time I saw the sea, I didn’t so much see it as hear it. And it scared me half to death. I was eight or nine and on a vacation trip with my parents. Late at night, we reached the New England shore with no place to lay our weary heads. No reservations had been made….with mother and father carping at each other about whose fault that was. “No Vacancy” signs (in blinking red neon) dotted every hamlet of the landscape. No moon. No stars. Just the sound of wave after wave smacking the seawall, to the point of spraying the windshield. And although the sea was just being the sea….being true to its nature….doing what seas do….I was very much afraid.
Then in 1981….July….Honolulu.…Waikiki Beach….Kris and I took a taxi to a wonderful restaurant at the base of Diamond Head, where we ate our fill, spent our wad, foreswore the taxi and walked home along the shore. Taking off our shoes, we danced the line where the water quietly kissed the sand (except for those moments, of course, when we stopped to quietly kiss each other). And we were thankful that the sea….also true to its nature….was making itself known to us in this way.
* * * * *
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God. And the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him. And, apart from him, was not anything made that was made.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Full of grace. Full of truth. And we beheld….not comprehended, beheld….his glory.
Note: I am indebted to Leonard Sweet’s book The Jesus Prescription for a Healthy Life and Barbara Brown Taylor’s essay “Preaching Into the Next Millennium,” found in a collection of essays entitled Exilic Preaching: Testimony for Christian Exiles in an Increasingly Hostile Culture.
In a post-sermon conversation with Bob Pierce, I learned that, as a result of the Hubble space telescope, astronomers now estimate the number of galaxies in the universe to be at least 50 billion (and, with some 200 billion stars, the Milky Way is pretty much “an average player” as galaxies go). Larger galaxies are said to contain a trillion or more stars. Not that I’ve counted them.
