Fifth Sunday after Trinity – evening
Sunday 1st July 2018
Proper 8 – 5th Sunday after Trinity – evening
Jeremiah 11.1-14 – Breaking God’s Covenant
Romans 13. 1-10 – State Authority
Revd Preb Maureen Hobbs
I am going to take for my starting point tonight a line from our psalm (53)
– The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.”
Well I don’t know how many of us here this evening would admit to being fools, but I suspect that there would be a fair few who at some time in our lives has echoed the words of the fool in the psalm. When things have seemed so difficult and so black perhaps; when we have felt utterly abandoned and depressed; when the black clouds have completely obscured any hint of a rainbow – then we might too have said – or at least thought, “There is no God – there can’t be to let me suffer like this!”
This week my timelines on social media have been full of excited ordinands and deacons experiencing the wonder and highs of ordination. For last weekend and this are the main time when most will be ordained in the Church of England. And it is a significant anniversary for me too – 20 years a priest this week! So how do we keep going?
There are those – a vociferous minority in our world today it seems – who make a living and a practice of shouting their lack of belief as loudly and as often as they can. The professional atheists and secularists who want to eliminate all signs of religion from our public – and ultimately our private – life.
Some have sought to use the weapon of Science against us and too often we as Christians have allowed ourselves to be portrayed as the enemies of science. But it has been said that – if we only allowed them to – scientists would do much of the work of evangelism for us!
Science depends on the faith that the world works according to logical principles.
Most scientists believe that the universe as we experience it began with an event known popularly as the ‘Big Bang’. The singularity when all matter and therefore time came into being. The theory is based on observations of the velocity with which all the galaxies are flying apart, calculated by the shift in the frequency of light they emit; and on the rate of decay of the radioactive elements. Even this is not the full answer it seems, but for now it is the best available explanation we have…. until a better one comes along!
So if everything that happens must have a cause, and all matter and the space it occupies and even anti-matter began at the Big Bang, and so did time, which is integral to the three dimensions of space, what caused the beginning of space and time at the Big Bang? There must be something, some force that is external to our reality; outside the dimensions of space and time. This does not mean that the first cause is like what Christians would call ‘God’, but you cannot call yourself a scientist unless you believe in something.
Then there is the so-called Goldilocks effect. As everything was coming into being and all the forces – like that of gravity etc., beginning to exert their logic, so that atoms, molecules and eventually stars began to form, so many things had to be just right so that the universe persisted and did not immediately collapse into itself. Then Planets had to form and at least one had to contain water, mostly at a temperature between freezing and evaporation, at the right distance from one particular star and of the right size for gravity to stop the atmosphere flying off into space, with the right mix of elements, so that life could evolve and survive.
In the fairy tale Goldilocks had to try three bowls of porridge before she found the one that was ‘just right’. We cannot imagine how many millions of stars and planets had to form before the conditions for our own evolution was judged ‘just right’.
And then life itself had to diversify and reproduce itself. Mutations happen apparently at random, creating small changes – some of which are more successful than others when it comes to surviving in the gene pool and being passed to new generations. There were many false starts and blind alleys. But amazingly eventually humans developed – who could think, choose, communicate by sophisticated means and love … they could even use mobile phones! Darwin tells us how this happens, but we are bound to ask why?
Faith tells us, ‘because something with the power to choose wanted it to, and was involved in the whole process from the beginning’ – and still is!
And even if we are not the only developed life form in the universe or universes, we are still left with that question, “Why?”
Nothing can really explain what the Eternal Being is like, but the best explanation that I know is that its nature is to love. And it wanted creatures to love, which could freely choose to love their Creator in return. And although such creatures would be born in time, the loving relationship thus created should be able to last into a timeless existence. But humans were never going to form a close relationship with an impersonal force or intelligence; so God had to find a way of showing himself in this world as a person who loves us. And there you have the Christian gospel – established through scientific reasoning.
Of course there are still lots of questions we cannot answer – maybe will never be able to answer, and doubt and questioning will always be a part of who we are and how we believe – but they don’t make us lesser Christians. Amen to that!