Religion and Science

            When we were in Jerusalem, we were on a tour of some of that city’s important sites.  At one point, our guide showed us a rock with a footprint in it that he said was the rock from which Jesus ascended into Heaven.  He said that there was another rock like it somewhere, but he didn’t know where.  That is the only scientific proof that I have ever seen that Jesus ascended into Heaven.  It’s not much, I know, but it is the best that I can do.

            Of course there isn’t any real scientific proof of the Ascension, it is a mystery.   And like all mysteries, it is just that: something beyond our scientific understanding.  That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, it just means that we can’t prove it.  But that is the story with most of the things that we have as a part of our creedal belief.  “Only begotten Son”; “rose again on the third day”; “sits at the right hand of God”; these are all part of our creed, but there is no scientific proof of any of them.  We hold them as a part of our belief system, sworn to by all of us in the Nicene or Apostle’s creed when we worship.  Most of the time, we don’t even give much thought to what we are saying. These creeds were worked out by the church in its history and even though we might have argued about some of it from time to time, we have mostly stopped arguing and simply accept these things as religious truth.  They have all become a part of the great cloud of mystery that surrounds all of us.  These are those things that we can never prove, but have become a part of the religion that most of us celebrate.

            I watched a dear old woman die last week.  I comforted her family, people who I have known for a long time, with the certainty that she is with God and beyond the loss of memory and the sickness that comprised the last years of her life.  This wasn’t the first time that I have been with people who have had a loss.  As a priest, I have often been with families who have experienced the loss of members of their family, and who have grieved over these deaths.  I remember losing my own mother and father, and Rosie’s mother and dad and how these weren’t easy times at all.  We needed to find some comfort in their passing and I was glad for the promise of eternal life to think about in those moments. 

            But this isn’t only about the problem that we have with death.  It is also about the comfort that we need in our lives.  Our God is constantly with us, whether we know it or not.  There is a sign in front of our local Roman Catholic church that says: God loves you, whether you like it or not. That wonderful sign is a great statement of religious truth.  God is a part of all of our lives, whether we like it or not.  That gives us the freedom to ignore it if we like and pay no attention to God until we are in dire need.  That is why we focus on death rather than life, because death is the ultimate mystery.  None of us has any scientific proof of resurrection, eternal life, or anything at all pertaining to it.  We simply live in the face of these ultimate mysteries.  But our religion is there to give us that wonderful thing called hope in the middle of uncertainty.  That is perhaps the greatest gift that our God has bestowed on us.  We can be sure because of what Jesus has said and done that God’s limitless love extends to all of us, in whatever condition that we are in; and that we will know that love for eternity.

The Presence of the Spirit in My Life

            Having an experience that includes the Holy Spirit is very rare. I have heard people talk about how the Spirit did this, or the Spirit did that, but I have always found myself a bit skeptical when I have heard them, when generally the telling of the experience always seemed to be more about the teller than the Spirit. 

            I have had very few encounters like this.  I remember once when I was a freshman in college, late at night walking beside a pond when I was driven to my knees by a strange presence that I couldn’t define.  I knew that it was a holy moment, but I got no clear direction at that time, nothing beyond the experience.  I didn’t tell anyone about it, there being in my mind nothing to tell.  But I have never forgotten about it either.

            As my life went on from there, I went from one thing to another.  College didn’t work out very well for me, so I took a course in radio and television and got a job as a disc jockey at a radio station, married my beautiful Rosie and the two of us went off to Texas where I worked at a couple of other stations on what I thought was my way up in the radio industry.  I got drafted into the army, served two years and when I was discharged tried to return to radio, but I discovered that radio had changed drastically in the time that I was away.  Instead, I got a job at a television station and continued a career in a new form of broadcasting for me.  After a number of years at this, I found myself working for a station that ran out of money, went bankrupt and I was out of work. 

            While we had lived in Texas, I had joined an Episcopal church in Midland, St. Nicholas Church, with a dynamic rector who influenced me greatly about my faith.  This continued when we came back east, when I met another great priest, who continued my training and drew me into a solid faith and knowledge of what religion could mean for my life.

           

            After the station went bankrupt, I called my current rector and told him that I thought I wanted to enter the ministry.  He was very helpful, got me an appointment with my bishop, who agreed with me and got me enrolled in Virginia Seminary that fall.  I had been taking courses at Pitt while I was working and this was enough to satisfy the seminary.  Rosie, my three kids and I went off to Alexandria, Virginia for me to continue my education. 

            Seminary went well enough, Rosie worked, I studied and the kids went to different schools, but we all survived.  I graduated, was ordained and began a career as an Episcopal priest that turned out to be probably the most fantastic experience of my life.  I loved every minute of it and would gladly do it again.  After I retired, I went on to take three interim positions in churches that were between rectors. 

            The reason that I am relating all of this is to go back to that moment on the shore of the pond when I was in college.  I know that something touched me in that encounter, and  made itself known to me later in my life.  I believe it was the Holy Spirit touching my life and drawing me in.  When I look back on my life, things seem to almost have been orchestrated to have drawn me to my ministry.

            I have also felt the presence of the Spirit at times when I have been preaching.  I have strangely found myself feeling that I was outside myself, listening to my own words that came from a source beyond me.  I can’t explain that, except to wonder at it myself.     I read the words of John’s Gospel when Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to leave them, but will send them an Advocate who will be with them.  He calls this the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it doesn’t know him, but Jesus says: you know him because he abides with you and is in you.  I’m not so sure of the gender designation that Jesus uses, but that is really a process that only involves the biblical writers.

            This is, I believe, the essence of my experience at the pond, and is the core of the Spirit that stayed with me in my life, and in my work.  I thank God for that powerful touch.

Where Can We Find the Truth?

            There are a lot of people who claim to have religious truth.  They proclaim it in loud voices from pulpits in large churches filled with people who have come to feel as if they are the chosen people who have heard the words from the master.  So called “Mega Churches” are all over the place and have become somewhat of a rage in these times.  The strange thing about them is that while they seem to grow way out of proportion to other churches around them; they also seem to lose people just as quickly.  Somebody said that their back doors are as wide open as their front doors. 

            I have heard some of these preachers give us their word and I have become convinced that what they are selling is certainty.  They offer a gospel that isn’t vague at all and offers a message that gives the hearer answers that are certain and sure.  The problem is that often the message leaves out a good portion of the Gospel that Jesus gave us in his ministry on this earth.  What I will always remember about Jesus’ life and ministry is that he attracted a small number of people, twelve apostles and a number of other followers.  The number of these followers waxed and waned according to the times and the message. 

            I have always been attracted to the first deacon, Stephen, who told the truth about Jesus to the religious leaders of his time and for his pains was stoned to death, becoming the first Christian martyr.  In Acts 7, the scripture says that those who stoned him to death laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.  This, of course, was the same Saul who was converted on the road to Damascus and became the great Paul who wrote all of the letters and started so many churches.  The truth that Stephen told before his death was that he saw the recently crucified and risen Jesus standing at the right hand of God.  This was too much for the leaders who had taken a part in the crucifixion, so they dragged Stephen away and stoned him.  While he was being stoned, the martyr said:  Lord Jesus, receive my spirit and then right before he died, he said:  Lord, do not hold this sin against them! This echoes closely Jesus own words from the cross before his own death: Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing!    

              

            I know that this is the essence of Christianity.  This is the truth that Jesus came to tell us: that our sins are forgiven, and that we are loved eternally and always by our God.  The only proof of this that we need is how Jesus willingly gave his life for those who crucified him, and indeed for us all.  That isn’t an easy thing to grasp and it leaves the door open for people to claim all kinds of certainty in the name of Christianity.  Over the centuries, this has produced some terrible manifestations of the faith.  Certainty has given us the inquisition, the crusades, countless divisions of the church through the ages that has resulted in the incredible number of denominations of faith that we have before us today.  Each of our religious denominations is a moment in time when we couldn’t agree on anything but our own certainty.  The number of people who have, like Stephen, died because of all of this is staggering.

            The only certainty that we have before us is that we are all sinners that have been forgiven by our God and loved through our lives.  We are called because of this love to show it to those around us.  Love your neighbor as a person like yourself, commanded   Jesus to his disciples and to all of us.  This means that this church that we are attached to is here to take care of the need of the world that is so vast around us.  That is why we are here, and when we obey this simple commandment the world will become the creation that was meant from the beginning by God.

Who is Our Shepherd?

           Almost every time that I officiate at a funeral, we recite the 23^rd Psalm.  Not the one translated in modern English, we recite the old King James version.  It is thankfully reproduced in the Book of Common Prayer on page 476 at the bottom of the page.  I know why this was done.  We all learned this psalm when we were children and we remember it not only from those days, but because of the wonderful comfort it has been and continues to be for us in our lives.

            The Lord is my Shepherd is a wonderful statement.  I love sheep, they are such humble creatures.  When we were in England, they seemed to cover every green space that we saw.  Herds of sheep tended by shepherds were all over the place.  I loved watching them from the cottage that we rented in the Lake District.  They seemed to have developed their own community, with leaders and others directing their movement, but it was the shepherd who was ultimately responsible for them.  When the shepherd came to them at the end of the day to move them closer to the barn, they always responded with joy and went gladly with their caretaker.  That for me was always a re-affirmation of what this great psalm is trying to tell us.

            We are all the Lord’s sheep.  When we are members of the flock, we indeed shall not want.  Our needs will be supplied.  The problem with this is that we all want much more than we have.  We want more than we need.  The psalm doesn’t say that all of our desires will be supplied.  We won’t get a lot of the things that we hunger for in our fondest dreams.  We won’t get the nice car, or the beautiful home, or even the new décor that we want for our houses.  The psalm doesn’t say that.  It simply says that when the Lord is our Shepherd, we shall not be in want.  How does that happen?  I don’t really understand it because this is a world full of critical need.  There are hungry people all over the place; there are homeless under our bridges and trying to sleep in doorways.  We are inundated with want that isn’t being supplied.  Where is all of this supply going to come from?

            We are people of faith; faith in the promise of the risen Christ that when we give ourselves into the care of our Lord, all of our needs will be supplied.  One of the ways that I believe that happens is because of the community to which we belong.  We are not only people of faith, we are also people who are gathered in a community of faith.  We have been given a mission by our Lord to take care of each other in the name of the Christ.  In Matthew 25, Jesus speaks eloquently about how we fed him, clothed him, sheltered him when he was without any of the things that he so desperately needed.  When we asked him when it was that we did these things, he told us that whenever we did this for any of the least of our brothers and sisters, we did it for him also.  That is a powerful message of mission that the church has adopted for its own over the ages. 

            But when I look at the church, often I see an organization that has become more obsessed with its own needs than the needs of the community that it serves.  Also, when we were in England, I was sometimes astounded at the opulence of the large cathedrals that were built to the glory of God, but are now falling into ruin.  This is also happening in the same way in this country.  Churches that once prospered are finding themselves floundering as congregations diminish and money seems to become more and more scarce.  I know that the answer to this is to remember the wonderful words of Psalm 23 and to know that the Lord is our undiminished Shepherd and that the mission of our God is to take care of the needs that are so overwhelming not only in our own community, but also all around us.

            The question before us is not how to devise more and more elaborate prayers, but to rediscover our mission to extend the hand of God into the needs that we see around us.  We must understand ourselves to be the hands of our Lord the Shepherd,  and to look at our world with the compassion that has been given to all of us.  The need is great and the job is enormous.  God will bless our work as we endeavor to take care of those who are in need around us. That is our mission and the call of God is strong to us to get on with it.