The 1st Sunday After the Epiphany, January 11, 2008
“But I’d like to make a distinction between believing “in” something and believing “that” something. I believe “in” the Genesis creation stories. But I believe “that” Darwin’s theory of evolution is true and correct.”
Click here for audio recording of the sermon. (Starts out slow! Couldn't find my sermon. Had left it in the parish hall. One of my worst fears. While Bill Borchert went after it, I made small talk.)
May I speak only the truth, and may only the truth be heard by you, in the name of God our Creator, our redeemer, and our sanctifier.
Amen.
Wednesday, in the ice storm
Wednesday afternoon I came down here to the church to makes copies of the Sunday booklets.
You may recall that Wednesday was the day of the ice storm.
Jackson-the-dog, by the way, came with me.
I let him out of the car.
He immediately spotted the church’s family of wild turkeys way down at the bottom of the cemetery.
Jackson took off after them running down that icy hillside like a racehorse that had just left the starting gate.
That was HIS big excitement of the day.
But not mine.
Mine was seeing the splendor of our world that afternoon.
Everything, every twig on every tree, every pine needle, every wire, every single thing, ice-covered, dazzling, the world transformed into an enchanted place.
On the way home, I took the long way around, up Western Avenue, and then north on Lattintown Road, working my way among the orchards and vineyards.
Simply breathtaking.
Even Jackson, who ordinarily collapses on the back seat, was standing on all fours, taking it all in, noticing that the world had changed.
And it was true.
The world was different.
For me, it pointed to a truth that the world is always changing.
An evolutionary process is going on right before our very eyes, all the time.
Creation is not something that happened.
It’s something that’s happening.
What a coincidence
Seems a coincidence that this week’s awe-inspiring ice display, and my reaction to it, should precede our reading today of the first verses of the first book of the bible:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth….
And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
It also seems a coincidence that almost simultaneously, we’re coming upon Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday.
And this year:
it will have been 150 years since his publication of a book that continues to rock the boat, The Origin of the Species, in which he tells of an ongoing, evolving creation, creation, not yet complete, even now.
Darwin Day
Friends of mine winter in central Florida.
It’s a place where the population prides itself in its biblical conservatism.
It’s a community where a large and vocal number of people view the Bible as the literal, inerrant, word of God, divinely dictated.
Pam and Tom are part of a radical minority group that’s planning a birthday party for Darwin, right there in the buckle of the Florida Bible belt.
They asked me if I’d join them on Darwin Day, in my clerical garb, to demonstrate that there are alternative ways to read the creation stories, and ALL of the Bible for that matter.
It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
Actually Darwin Day is an annual, international celebration of science and humanity held every year.
Right now birthday celebrations and badminton parties and Sunday sermons are being planned for early February in churches and synagogues and schools all around the world.
Darwin Day celebrates the discoveries and the life of Charles Darwin.
But more generally, Darwin Day expresses gratitude for the enormous benefits that scientific knowledge has contributed to the advancement of humanity.
Darwin was an Anglican
I expect that most opponents of evolutionary science don’t know that Charles Darwin was brought up Christian.
He was an Anglican.
He was a member of the Church of England.
And he held onto his faith even after he published The Origin of the Species.
And he was never happy about being called an atheist.
About the book
When the book was published, it created quite a stir.
There were two main issues.
One was that people mistakenly believed that Darwin was denying that there could be any kind of divine purpose in nature.
The other was that Darwin included human beings as part of the evolutionary process as well.
This was particularly shocking.
Humans, after all, had been God’s special creation.
The problem for biblical literalists
In the United States, it’s said that 50 percent of the population still believe in the literal truth of the biblical creation stories, a much higher percentage than in other parts of the world.
I find our high percentage hard to believe.
Nonetheless, it’s clear that even today, teaching of evolutionary science is a huge “hot button” for many fundamentalist Christians.
The problem, I think, is that if you begin with the premise that all of the Bible is the inerrant word of God, you’re building a very flimsy house of cards.
If any one part of the Bible is called into question, then just about ANY other part of the Bible becomes vulnerable to question as well.
And then the house of cards begins to collapse.
Genesis: a story of all sorts of beginnings
The Genesis creation stories (there are two of them, you know) the two stories are not science as we understand it.
They come from a time when physics and metaphysics were not separate.
They were lumped together.
The physical and the spiritual were woven into the same cloth.
God spoke from the clouds.
Snakes could talk.
Angels appeared from out of nowhere.
The creation stories are not science.
Instead, they belong in the classification of “myth,” but it’s myth in its most awe-inspiring form.
It’s a form of literature that was our religious ancestors’ way of asking themselves a number of questions:
Who are we?
How did we get here and where are we going?
Why are we here?
Why is there something rather than nothing?
What’s our place in this world?
These, I think, are the big questions that emerge from the Genesis creation texts.
Science answers “How?”
Religion answers “Why?”
Science leaves unanswered the greater question of why we’re here, of what’s the point of life?
I believe “in,” not “that.”
We read in the book of Genesis that God created the heavens and the earth,, God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.
And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
I believe in that story.
But I’d like to make a distinction between believing “in” something and believing “that” something.
I believe “in” the Genesis creation stories.
But I believe “that” Darwin’s theory of evolution is true and correct.
What I believe “in” is the idea of God, a prime cause.
What I believe “in” is that there is a God who was present at The Big Bang that started the creative process going.
What I believe “in” is the idea that all of creation, particularly humanity, is created in the image of God.
What I believe “in” is the idea that we have responsibility for creation, that we are here not to destroy the world, but to look after it and tend it.
I believe “in” the Genesis stories of our beginnings.
They are about faith.
They are about pausing in astonishment at the size and the scope and the beauty of creation, pausing in astonishment at the symmetry and the mathematical precision and the diversity of creation, pausing in astonishment at all of the possibilities of life.
I saw it there in that ice storm on Wednesday.
Everything, every twig on every tree, every pine needle, every wire, every single thing, ice-covered, dazzling, the world becoming, the world transforming itself, into an awesome enchanted place.
Prayer
Let us pray.
Eternal God, the Great Mystery that is outside everything and yet at the same time inside, keep alive in each one of us the search for a faith that is real, a faith that helps us to live happier lives, a faith that gives us a fuller meaning to life and the events of life.
Bring us to know the goodness that flows from the heart of the universe and may we be expanded in heart and soul by that goodness.
This is our prayer. Amen.
Amen.
Wednesday, in the ice storm
Wednesday afternoon I came down here to the church to makes copies of the Sunday booklets.
You may recall that Wednesday was the day of the ice storm.
Jackson-the-dog, by the way, came with me.
I let him out of the car.
He immediately spotted the church’s family of wild turkeys way down at the bottom of the cemetery.
Jackson took off after them running down that icy hillside like a racehorse that had just left the starting gate.
That was HIS big excitement of the day.
But not mine.
Mine was seeing the splendor of our world that afternoon.
Everything, every twig on every tree, every pine needle, every wire, every single thing, ice-covered, dazzling, the world transformed into an enchanted place.
On the way home, I took the long way around, up Western Avenue, and then north on Lattintown Road, working my way among the orchards and vineyards.
Simply breathtaking.
Even Jackson, who ordinarily collapses on the back seat, was standing on all fours, taking it all in, noticing that the world had changed.
And it was true.
The world was different.
For me, it pointed to a truth that the world is always changing.
An evolutionary process is going on right before our very eyes, all the time.
Creation is not something that happened.
It’s something that’s happening.
What a coincidence
Seems a coincidence that this week’s awe-inspiring ice display, and my reaction to it, should precede our reading today of the first verses of the first book of the bible:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth….
And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
It also seems a coincidence that almost simultaneously, we’re coming upon Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday.
And this year:
it will have been 150 years since his publication of a book that continues to rock the boat, The Origin of the Species, in which he tells of an ongoing, evolving creation, creation, not yet complete, even now.
Darwin Day
Friends of mine winter in central Florida.
It’s a place where the population prides itself in its biblical conservatism.
It’s a community where a large and vocal number of people view the Bible as the literal, inerrant, word of God, divinely dictated.
Pam and Tom are part of a radical minority group that’s planning a birthday party for Darwin, right there in the buckle of the Florida Bible belt.
They asked me if I’d join them on Darwin Day, in my clerical garb, to demonstrate that there are alternative ways to read the creation stories, and ALL of the Bible for that matter.
It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
Actually Darwin Day is an annual, international celebration of science and humanity held every year.
Right now birthday celebrations and badminton parties and Sunday sermons are being planned for early February in churches and synagogues and schools all around the world.
Darwin Day celebrates the discoveries and the life of Charles Darwin.
But more generally, Darwin Day expresses gratitude for the enormous benefits that scientific knowledge has contributed to the advancement of humanity.
Darwin was an Anglican
I expect that most opponents of evolutionary science don’t know that Charles Darwin was brought up Christian.
He was an Anglican.
He was a member of the Church of England.
And he held onto his faith even after he published The Origin of the Species.
And he was never happy about being called an atheist.
About the book
When the book was published, it created quite a stir.
There were two main issues.
One was that people mistakenly believed that Darwin was denying that there could be any kind of divine purpose in nature.
The other was that Darwin included human beings as part of the evolutionary process as well.
This was particularly shocking.
Humans, after all, had been God’s special creation.
The problem for biblical literalists
In the United States, it’s said that 50 percent of the population still believe in the literal truth of the biblical creation stories, a much higher percentage than in other parts of the world.
I find our high percentage hard to believe.
Nonetheless, it’s clear that even today, teaching of evolutionary science is a huge “hot button” for many fundamentalist Christians.
The problem, I think, is that if you begin with the premise that all of the Bible is the inerrant word of God, you’re building a very flimsy house of cards.
If any one part of the Bible is called into question, then just about ANY other part of the Bible becomes vulnerable to question as well.
And then the house of cards begins to collapse.
Genesis: a story of all sorts of beginnings
The Genesis creation stories (there are two of them, you know) the two stories are not science as we understand it.
They come from a time when physics and metaphysics were not separate.
They were lumped together.
The physical and the spiritual were woven into the same cloth.
God spoke from the clouds.
Snakes could talk.
Angels appeared from out of nowhere.
The creation stories are not science.
Instead, they belong in the classification of “myth,” but it’s myth in its most awe-inspiring form.
It’s a form of literature that was our religious ancestors’ way of asking themselves a number of questions:
Who are we?
How did we get here and where are we going?
Why are we here?
Why is there something rather than nothing?
What’s our place in this world?
These, I think, are the big questions that emerge from the Genesis creation texts.
Science answers “How?”
Religion answers “Why?”
Science leaves unanswered the greater question of why we’re here, of what’s the point of life?
I believe “in,” not “that.”
We read in the book of Genesis that God created the heavens and the earth,, God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.
And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
I believe in that story.
But I’d like to make a distinction between believing “in” something and believing “that” something.
I believe “in” the Genesis creation stories.
But I believe “that” Darwin’s theory of evolution is true and correct.
What I believe “in” is the idea of God, a prime cause.
What I believe “in” is that there is a God who was present at The Big Bang that started the creative process going.
What I believe “in” is the idea that all of creation, particularly humanity, is created in the image of God.
What I believe “in” is the idea that we have responsibility for creation, that we are here not to destroy the world, but to look after it and tend it.
I believe “in” the Genesis stories of our beginnings.
They are about faith.
They are about pausing in astonishment at the size and the scope and the beauty of creation, pausing in astonishment at the symmetry and the mathematical precision and the diversity of creation, pausing in astonishment at all of the possibilities of life.
I saw it there in that ice storm on Wednesday.
Everything, every twig on every tree, every pine needle, every wire, every single thing, ice-covered, dazzling, the world becoming, the world transforming itself, into an awesome enchanted place.
Prayer
Let us pray.
Eternal God, the Great Mystery that is outside everything and yet at the same time inside, keep alive in each one of us the search for a faith that is real, a faith that helps us to live happier lives, a faith that gives us a fuller meaning to life and the events of life.
Bring us to know the goodness that flows from the heart of the universe and may we be expanded in heart and soul by that goodness.
This is our prayer. Amen.
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