Preached November 28, 2007
First Presbyterian Church
Waterloo, Iowa
Texts
Jeremiah 14:7-10, 19-22
Psalm 65
II Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18 Luke 18:9-14
This has been a wonderful ten days. I’ve had a chance to see how tractors are made. I’ve had a chance to talk with an agricultural scientist who is concerned not only about the land but also about the families and communities that cultivate it. I’ve seen how the solar energy captured in corn is being liberated through distillation to become not only fuel for our vehicles but also feed for livestock. I’ve had a chance to ride in a combine and share in the fellowship of conversation with a family who, if not typical of those who farm the land, ought to be.
One might ask what any of these experiences have to do with science, technology and the Christian faith. But I was struck in each of these instances by how we live our lives in an inescapable web of science and technology and seek to discern the meaning of our lives in the midst of this web. And this seeking is, in my view, what it means to be religious.
We are also in the midst of an election process. Iowans are particularly aware of this. We as a nation face daunting challenges in terms of our care for one another, our relationships with peoples beyond our borders, and our relation to the very Earth itself and all our fellow creatures.
We who stand in the Reformed tradition should be especially attuned to Jeremiah’s assessment of the human condition. We can hardly do good without doing evil. We claim to be champions of liberty but deliberately take the lives of combatants and non-combatants alike, and in the process injure in body and spirit our own children, parents, brothers, sisters, husbands and wives. We seek to develop the creation in the name of providing sustenance and well-being for people but despoil the gifts of God in creation. We claim to be committed to proclaiming the Gospel but are more interested in persuading others to agree with us than inviting them to become students of the Word that is becoming flesh and making all things new.
As Jeremiah well knew, our only hope is in God who knows exactly who we are and does not hold it against us, who does not change the past but graciously and creatively invites us into a new future in which we can live abundantly.
Paul’s second letter to Timothy was written toward the end of his life. Looking back over his own personal history he recognized that, whatever his accomplishments, they were the consequence of his persistence in his understanding of his call, relying on the grace of God, often over against the objections of his brothers and sisters in the faith. The early leaders of the Church, including and especially Peter, initially opposed his mission to the Gentiles. Paul’s use of the metaphor of a race has always been very provocative to me. Too often, I think, we act as though, like many employees, we seek to follow God’s will only so that we can eventually enter into a good retirement in the kingdom. We put up with adversity in order to gain deferred benefits. But in a sense, I think that Paul is saying that the race is the thing and that crossing the finish line is simply the completion of the race.
We live our lives in an inescapable web of science and technology
Have some of you raced in marathons or 10 Ks or 5 Ks? How many of you have won the race? I suspect your primary goal was to finish, to complete the race whatever place that meant. Also, I suspect that you did not casually stroll across the finish line. You ran through the finish as best you could to achieve your own personal best.
A people who prepare for a race have to be committed to finishing it. Though they may pray that they perform well, they do not expect a flight of angels to carry them across the finish line. And so, in their preparations, they attend to their bodies, to their material reality. They prepare a strategy for the race, a plan of how they will use their understanding of their bodies and of the course they will run, so that they can run the best race of which they are capable.
As we run our race of life, we need to understand ourselves and the course we are running. Science is a source, perhaps the most reliable one, that we have for understanding ourselves and the course, which is the world. Technologies are the skills of living (be they material technologies or social technologies), by means of which we run the race. And it is our religious faith that informs us about what the race means.
But what is the chief barrier to running a good race? You might say it is sin, but I’d like to be a bit more specific. I’d suggest that it is arrogance, pride, and disdain for others because we have an elevated sense of ourselves. Arrogance has a way of disguising itself. It does not have to be flashy like the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable. It can express itself in a soft sense of superiority that we feel in relation to the foreigner, the poor, and the disenfranchised. We often think that if they were only like us, all their troubles would be over. Such pride can express itself in an attitude that the Earth is ours. Or we may say that the Earth is a gift to us from God or maybe that we have been given charge over it by God, to manage it on God’s behalf. Whichever of these attitudes we exhibit, we act as though the Earth does not have interests of its own that we are obliged to honor. It is an attitude much different from many hunter/gatherer peoples. Many of you may have seen the film, The Last of the Mohicans. It opens with a deer hunt in which a buck is slain. The first thing that Chingachgook, the Mohican, does over the deer’s body is to offer a prayer of thanksgiving, not to the Great Spirit, but to the deer, a prayer of gratitude to the deer for giving its life.
There is a form of religious arrogance and pride which holds not only that our vision of the ultimate is definitive but also judges all other views to be not merely erroneous but pernicious and worthy of dismissal along with all who hold them. The Pharisee in the parable not only prayed ostentatiously, he disdainfully dismissed the tax-collector.
Pride impedes the progress of science when scientists remain committed to favored theories in the face of significantly challenging evidence. No matter how reliable the knowledge that science delivers, we should stand humbly before the depth of our ignorance about the world God is creating. In like manner, no matter how comfortable we are in our understanding of our faith, we should stand humbly before the ultimate mystery that is making all things new. Micah said it very succinctly: What does God require of you; but to do justice, and to love kindness, and walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8, NRSV)
Humility is essential to the scientific search for understanding, the just use of scientific knowledge in life altering technologies, and the right worship of God in faithful living. We are far from achieving such humility, but we live in hope that its achievement will enlighten our lives. God invites us into a future filled with promise. We need only look beyond ourselves to accept that invitation. The French Jesuit paleontologist, Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, wrote hopefully of such a prospect when he penned these words: “Someday after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we will harness for God the energy of love; then for the second time in the history of the world, humanity will have discovered fire.”
