Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Deuteronomy 30: 15-20; Ps 1; Phil 1-21; Luke 14: 25-33
One hundred years ago, in 1925, John Scopes, a young math and science teacher in the state of Tennessee, volunteered for a hazardous undertaking. The state of Tennessee had just made it a crime to teach “any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” The American Civil Liberties Union recruited Scopes to challenge the law by teaching evolution in his classroom. Scopes’ arrest touched off what became known as “the trial of the century,” a public spectacle which cemented among millions of believers the false idea that Christian faith is incompatible with science.
Today is the Feast of the Creator, a newly-ordained celebration to start off the Season of Creation, in which we are invited to give thanks to God for the world and universe that God has made. Giving thanks with reverence and wonder is a holy impulse, and my own faith is deeply nourished by the beauty of the natural world, but I wish the name of the feast made it sound less like we are endorsing creationism. Particularly since an anti-scientific tide seems to be ascendant in our world right now, rising even in this country, with the rejection of vaccines, ecological conservation, green technology, and even, in some quarters, of the reality of human-caused climate change. So today I want to ask, What is the proper relationship between science and faith?
Christian theologians speak of the two books of revelation, Scripture and nature. Jesus himself often taught through parables about nature: consider the lilies, the birds, the ravens, the grain; and the contemplative tradition of the church picked up this idea that creation itself reveals the glory of God. As early as the fourth century, St. Augustine of Hippo wrote, “In your great wisdom you, who are our God, speak to us of these things in your Book, the firmament made by you.” Later theologians carried that imagery forward even into the Reformation, with statements such as: “We know [God] by two means: First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe, since that universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God…Second, [God] makes himself known to us more openly by his holy and divine Word, as much as we need in this life, for his glory and for the salvation of his own.” (Belgic Confession) Scientists such as Galileo and Newton also saw their work as an exploration of God, not as a repudiation of faith.
But if the church has taught all along that scientific inquiry can and does reveal God, how have we reached this sorry state of affairs, in which large numbers of Christians, and whole branches of the faith, see scientific progress as a threat to their faith and not as a path into the divine? Through a profound lack of humility. Each of the famous flashpoints between science and faith has come about because a new or emerging scientific understanding has appeared to contradict a particular interpretation of Scripture — and because Christian authorities were not willing to entertain the possibility that their interpretation might be flawed. For example, when Galileo Galilei suggested that the earth was not the center of the universe, but that it and other planets revolved around the sun, astronomers working at the Vatican itself suspected that his results were true. However, the Catholic church had endorsed a different theory, drawn not from scripture but from a second-century astronomer, and had used that theory as the basis of some of their Scriptural interpretation. Faced with scientific evidence, they refused to consider that they might be the ones who were wrong.
And yet, knowing when we are in error lies at the heart of Christian practice. Over and over, Jesus calls us to repent, not so that we can live in perpetual shame, but so that we can walk away from deadening things and embrace the life which truly is life. That movement — away from broken things and into greater wholeness — is the gift that Christ gives us: we are not tied forever to the worst that we have been, but have been freed by God’s grace to reach for the good person we may yet be. It is the commandment which resounds through today’s first reading: “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life, that you and your descendants may live.” (Deut 30:19)
That commandment — to choose life — is more important than ever in this time of ecological crisis, and this is one of those times when the church needs to adjust its understanding. For too long, missionaries have focused on “saving” souls, reaching out to unbelievers or to backsliders, proclaiming the good news of God’s love and mercy given to us in Jesus Christ, and teaching that those who believe in Christ will be saved, and those who do not may not be. But the ongoing disintegration of the ecology which sustains all life shows us that, at least in earthly terms, saving some people or some countries is not an option. Glaciers are melting; hurricanes intensifying; rainfall patterns shifting away from fertile earth and toward barren lands. We can choose to work together to sustain as much as we can, or we will perish together. Those are the choices.
Jesus asks us whether we can, with our current resources, build the tower we are making. It’s equally important to ask whether what we are making is the world we wish to live in. My friends, God’s world cannot be built with what we are currently offering. We need to change.
In the very early days of the church, St. Paul wrote to his friends Philemon, Apphia, and Archippus, asking them to free an enslaved man named Onesimus, who had been sent to care for Paul while Paul was in prison, and who had embraced the faith. The letter asks Philemon to set aside the old, pre-Christian relationships of master and slave, and to enter a redeemed way of life in based not on dominance but on brotherhood. What would it mean to extend that generosity of relationship, rooted in the truth, not only to one another, but to the earth itself? To see it, not as a slave — something to be used, or even to be used up — but as a companion to be cherished, to be nurtured, to be set free?
It might begin with wonder, with taking seriously Jesus’ urging to consider the lilies and the ravens, to revel in the mystery of productive fields. Step outside your door, without being connected to a device. Head to Mount Royal or Parc LaFontaine or even to the canal or the beaches in Verdun. Go early, when you might see a beaver or a heron; there is an astonishing variety of wildlife even here, in the city. Or go further; last week, I led a retreat in Ile-St-Bernard, a wildlife sanctuary half an hour from this cathedral. I walked for two hours among birds and reeds and trees tossing in the wind; that kind of attentiveness gives back our soul. And, yes, praise the creator, who has given us so much.
And then remember that true praise is not only a matter of our heart, but an offering of our lives, doing the daily work of tending this earth with patient, loving care. Just as human love involves doing the dishes, so our love for the earth necessarily involves us in sustaining it. The environmentalist Paul Hawken writes, “It’s not your job to save the planet. The idea of saving the earth is a heavy burden and you can’t do it anyway….[But] when we feed the earth, we heal the climate. Regeneration is the default mode of life…We can kill, poison, burn, or quell life on earth, but when that ceases, regeneration begins.” (Regeneration: Ending the climate crisis in one generation) In that work of sustaining what we love — our selves, our communities, this good earth we have received— lies our truest freedom, the freedom to choose life daily, life for ourselves and life for those who come after. What did Christ do among us, if not that?
I will leave you with the words of Adrienne Rich:
Freedom. It isn’t once, to walk out
under the Milky Way, feeling the rivers
of light, the fields of dark —
freedom is daily, prose-bound, routine
remembering. Putting together, inch by inch
the starry worlds. From all the lost collections.
(“For Memory,” A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far)