A YES TO GOD’S EARTH
Scriptures: II Corinthians 1:15-22
Mark 5:21-24, 35-43
Ours is an age when scientific discovery and technological advance seem to outweigh the claims of faith. Throughout the 20th century and certainly continuing in these first few years of the 21st we have witnessed amazing advances in human knowledge and invention – from the Model T automobiles of 1905 to the cloning of human embryos in 2005. And, for the most part during this century of scientific achievement, religion seems to have been in conflict with the claims of science – especially when it comes to issues centering on creation, as in the current dust-up over “intelligent design” (which in my mind is neither intelligent nor particularly well designed).
I was reminded of this a week ago Friday when Ann and I went to see the extremely well-done Nevada Conservatory Theater’s production of “Inherit the Wind”. This courtroom conflict is a dramatization of the Scopes “monkey” trial in 1925, and it poses a clear-cut clash between espousers of evolution and those with a literal belief in creationism. Of course, the cards are stacked in favor of the scientific theory of evolution, and those who support that “old time religion” (as they sing throughout the play) are made to look fairly foolish – enough so that I sometimes wanted to shout, “That doesn’t represent the kind of faith I know.” The climactic moment comes when Henry Drummond (the Clarence Darrow figure) gets Matthew Harrison Brady (the William Jennings Bryan figure) on the witness stand, and finally gets him to admit that the first day of creation in Genesis was not necessarily a 24-hour day – that it could have been 25 hours or ten years or 30,000,000 years. The dialogue illustrates the inanity of trying to put scientific data or theories together with religious literalism. Both science and religion tell us something about creation. Viewing creation, as theologian Emil Brunner reminds us, is a lot like looking at a great painting: you can get up close and analyze the pigments and the brushstrokes and the artist’s technique (the scientific method) but you can also step back and see the painting as a whole and marvel at its beauty (what religion teaches).
As with the fundamentalists of Scopes’ time in Tennessee, so those who try to introduce intelligent design into classroom curricula today are coming at the supposed conflict between science and religion from the wrong direction. Religion – faith –Christianity – is not there in order to critique and challenge scientific advances. Rather, faith is part in our lives because it forces us to deal with ultimate questions. Confronted by senseless death and unnecessary suffering (the tsunami, Katrina) or by overpowering evil (Hitler, bin Laden) we ask ourselves “Why?” “How could this happen?” Or, more personally: “How can it be happening to me?” “What meaning can I find in all of this?” And the same questions can be asked when we find ourselves experiencing utter joy or uncompromising integrity or unadulterated love. When it seems too good to be true we also ask, “What meaning do I find in this experience?”
Now, there are philosophical answers that can be given to the ultimate questions of meaning. But I sense that when you and I are brought up short by the questions of meaning and purpose we turn to what meaning life can have in the light of God’s purpose for it – a meaning which God has shown us primarily through the life and death of a Son.
So, all of these ultimate questions come together in the one thought: “What is the meaning of it all?” Now, this can be asked in despair: “What’s the sense in going on?” Or, it can be asked in hope: “What meaning can I find in the life I am given to lead?” But perhaps most often it is asked in honest wonder: “What ultimate meaning is there to my life?” At all three levels – despair, hope, and wonder – faith has something to say to us. But I want to concentrate today on the honest wonder – what does it take to say an affirmative Yes to life in the midst of much evidence that no such affirmation should be possible.
Once on a warm summer day I was sitting around with a youth group, and, perhaps not surprisingly since young people will get into serious discussions on almost any occasion, they began to discuss the difference between Christianity and atheism. I think they surprised themselves by discovering as they talked that there were two different approaches that an atheist could take toward life – an atheist could respond nihilistically – that is, denying any meaning to existence – or humanistically – that is, discovering meaning in human progress.
Nihilism, the members of this youth group found, is not a philosophy that you can hold consistently, for it denies any meaning, purpose, or worth to human life. Albert Camus, for example, was an author who tried to get humanity to deny any purpose by having us realize that we are trapped into living with the absurd. Camus and other post-World War II writers looked at events such as Auschwitz and Hiroshima, at the phenomenon of rich getting richer at the expense of the poor, at the existence of repressive governments, and they said, “how in the light of all of this can human life have any ultimate meaning or purpose?”
It’s impossible to live with this kind of a philosophical approach to life, and so what grew up over-against nihilism is humanism – the idea of human progress – and this is an attractive alternative for those who cannot see God’s purpose for our lives. Humanism understands that even though there are absurdities and moral ambiguities human beings can learn from the past and progress toward a better future. The meaning to be found in life, then, is to work toward offering something better to the world than when you entered it, to pass on moral values to your children even greater than those you learned, to find a sense of fulfillment in what you can leave for succeeding generations so that the meaning of corporate human life does progress.
But the trouble with this philosophy is that Auschwitz and Hiroshima, even after 61 years, still cause us to wonder if we are really progressing. And, even more significantly, on the personal level where you and I live, the question of meaning is probably not resolved by thinking about the progress of humankind as a whole. While racism and poverty and militarism play havoc with our sense of human purpose, the more personally disturbing questions for us have to do with boredom and complexity. If life consists of a 9-to-5 senseless job or sitting around all day in retirement with hours of inane television in the evening, how can I find any meaning in it? If I spend hours at the slot machines or play golf every chance I get or have a series of extra-marital affairs in order to break out of a pattern of boredom, what purpose is there to be found in this? If I get a recording device whenever I try to call an office, if I get lost in the maze of forms required by all levels of bureaucracy, if I am reduced to my Social Security number, how can I affirm my self-worth as a unique person? Atheism – whether nihilistic or humanistic – has not really helped us with these questions of boredom and complexity as we move into the 21st century.
Nor does the answer which Christianity has sometimes offered help us much in our search for meaning – namely, that this life is a “vale of tears” and we must wait to find fulfillment in our other-worldly existence after death. This other-worldly religious answer is just as negative as nihilism, because it refuses to take the human element seriously enough. More importantly, it is an un-Biblical approach to how Christianity understands the meaning of life. If there is no meaning to be found in the events of this life other than just enduring them, why should God have bothered to give us life on this earth at all? Indeed, why in the world would God have sent to this life, to this earth, a Son?
Even though he talked a great deal about his “Father in heaven”, Jesus constantly showed his concern for those who were around him. The Biblical witness is that of building a meaningful existence in this life – first in terms of a people, Israel, and then in terms of encountering a person, the Christ. Eternal life is an important part of this witness, but the significant thing to remember is that we are living in eternal life now – eternal life is not just life-after-death, but rather it includes who and what we are right now and what meaning we find to give to our existence.
So, how do we answer that question asked in honest wonder: “What ultimate meaning is there to my life?” The answers – plural, not singular – come as we discover gestures of meaningfulness – affirmations of trust in the future even in moments of despair – saying Yes even when all around us would bid us cry out No.
One of the great gestures of meaningfulness in the Bible comes when Israel is moving into exile in Babylon -- one of the lowest points in the nation’s history. Yet, God directs Jeremiah to buy a field at Anathoth. This is a sign of faith – that the despair of the moment is not a lasting thing – that plans and preparations can be made for the future. When he prays to God Jeremiah gives vent to his despair. Yet, he refuses to let despair be the last word. He takes the action, buys the field, and prepares for a time that will go beyond despair. He is saying Yes to God’s purpose for him and for his people.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the great Christians of the last century, sitting in a Nazi concentration camp, knowing that he would soon die, wrote to his fiancée a grand gesture of contemporary meaningfulness. Using Jeremiah’s action an Anathoth, he writes, “Jeremiah says at the moment of his people’s great need ‘still one shall buy houses and acres in his land’ as a sign of trust in the future. This is where faith belongs. May God give it to us daily. And I do not mean the faith which flees the world, but the one which endures the world and which loves and remains true to the world in spite of all the sufferings which it contains for us. Our marriage shall be a yes to God’s earth; it shall strengthen our courage to act and accomplish something on the earth. I fear that Christians who stand with only one leg upon earth also stand with only one leg in heaven.”
The story in Mark of the raising of Jairus’ daughter is a Biblical example of Yes-saying to life. If Jesus had practiced an other-worldly religion, it would have been easy for him to say, “Don’t worry. Your daughter is now safely with her God. She will no longer have the pain of illness, and you won’t have the psychological pain of being concerned about her.” And taking this approach would have meant that Jesus wouldn’t have had to perform a miracle. But this is not the kind of witness Jesus wants to make. Christ wants to affirm that there is value in this life when it is led in faithfulness to a loving God. So, the girl is brought back to life in order that she might live – truly live, not simply exist as a walking corpse. This 12-year-old, and her father, and the crowd who later heard of this all were given the opportunity of seeing life re-born into a meaningful existence. The crux of the matter comes in Jesus’ words to Jairus: “Do not fear; only believe.” Do not fear despair, ambiguity, contradictions, the seeming absurdities of life. Say Yes to the life you are now living through belief in the one who offers you both life and its meaning.
“…only believe.” Or, as other translations put it, “…only have faith.” The kind of faith which is, as Mary Jean Irion puts it, “not a label on your sleeve saying Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Atheist, or what-have-you. It is the healed place on your ulcer that says, even so – yes!
“Faith is not kneeling to the past, but walking, serving in the present.
“Faith is not making religious-sounding noises in the daytime. It is asking your inmost self questions at night – and then getting up and going to work….
“Faith is thinking thoughts and singing songs and ‘making poems in the lap of death’.”
Our response to a loving God is to make gestures of meaning – to say Yes to God’s earth when everything about us wants to cry No. Events and our life’s activities have that meaning which we give to them. We can look with horror at Auschwitz and find senselessness, but we can also look at the many people who hid Jews and helped them to escape. This is not an attempt to strike a balance or to minimize the absolute horror that was the Holocaust, but rather such an approach to life signals that meaning is found as much out of our perception of events as from the events themselves. We don’t need to play false with reality to find a sense of purpose and meaning and direction even in the greatest absurdities. We can find gestures in the midst of our boredom and complexity that say: I am an individual; I can say Yes I want to be alive and not just existing. We can then affirm as Paul does to the Corinthians that in Christ Jesus “every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes’.”
At the end of the play “Inherit the Wind” Henry Drummond – that “celebrated atheist”, according to Matthew Harrison Brady – weighs a copy of Charles Darwin’s The Origen of Species in one hand and a Bible in the other. Finally, he slams the two of them together and walks out – a wonderful visual symbol for affirming that science and religion both have their parts to play in creating meaning for our time. Such gestures of meaningfulness are what we can all look for.
The most negative nihilistic events in human history are symbolized by the cross and the tomb. Yet, from these events we have come to find such meaning as to shake the foundations of the earth. It is possible to not be afraid, to believe, to say a resounding Yes to God.
Amen.
Dave Pomeroy
First Congregational Church, UCC
Las Vegas, NV
February 19, 2006