Inconceivable!
Whenever I mention this to folks, the first response I get is “Wait! The
Vatican has an observatory?”
This seems
more than a little ironic given that little falling out between the Inquisition
and the astronomer Galileo 500+ years ago.
Actually, the Church—Roman Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, and Protestant—has
supplied the scientific community with physicists, astronomers, engineers,
inventors, and all kinds of researchers for long time, many of them ordained,
since the beginning of what we now call “modern” science. In fact, there’s even
an Anglican religious order called the Society of Ordained Scientists.
But that’s not the point.
Basically, this
Jesuit priest said that it is okay for Roman Catholics (and the rest of us) to
believe in aliens. As Admiral Pike will someday say to Captain Kirk, “I am
relieved!”
This is not
just esoteric speculation. Since science is all the time showing us how vastly
big and how vastly small the universe is, is God really bigger than all that?
I am no
scientist, and I don’t play one on television, but knowing that we have the
technology to see to the very edges of the universe and, at the very same time,
we can also measure the smallest of particles, including one so small and so
basic that it was unofficially
named after God, what Fr. Funes said begins to make sense. God is greater
than all of everything and the more we see the vastness of the universe, the
more we see the majesty and power of God.
Okay. So, God
is very, very big. Doesn’t that also make God incomprehensible?
Well, except
for God’s grace and for the fact that we humans are wired to inquire, that
would be “yes.”
God has
always been incomprehensible by any ordinary standard. Justin Martyr, that
seeker for the truth who died in the year 167, said that anyone who thinks God
even can be named and understood in conventional ways is “hopelessly
insane.” And yet we still seek.
And we aren’t
the first. Would it surprise you to hear that in the 14th Century there
was a solitary English nun who once contemplated both the very small and the
very big?
Dame Julian
of Norwich was an anchoress—a kind of resident nun not attached to a
community—who lived in a private monastic cell attached to a Cathedral in
Norwich, England, when she had visions, or “showings,” of God. One of those
“showings” came as she contemplated the inside a walnut. She saw all of God and
God’s creation contained inside that little shell. To see the vastness of God
in something so small ought to appeal to us who know the wonder of DNA and
marvel at pictures sent back to earth from a spacecraft now
travelling outside our solar system.
And what did
Blessed Julian see in her walnut sized looking glass into the cosmos? She found
love. Rather than be overwhelmed by God’s sheer size, Blessed Julian found
love. Toward the end of her life, she penned this short but profound exchange:
“Would you know your Lord's meaning?” she asks. “Know it well, love was his
meaning. Who showed it to you? Love. What did he show you? Love. Why did he
show it? For love.”
We can seek
and ponder and reason…and because we are wired to inquire… and in the end we find
that God is always shown best in relationship.
This is where our evangelical friends, have it right, along with
sacramentalists like us: what really changes us is our relationship to God, who
comes to us where we are as we are and meets us at the point of our deepest
need.
Many years
ago, a good friend and golfing buddy, a Unitarian minister, invited me to come
and preach at his church… on Trinity Sunday (the stinker)! A more
intellectually and theologically inquisitive group I’ve never seen! So, I
decided to lean into the wave: I said that during the first Church councils
that were hammering out Christian doctrines that the majority of the Church
could sign onto, the first trinitarians were in fact the most fervent unitarians
and that they won the day. What I meant was that they affirmed the fullness and
oneness of God in three persons in specific contrast to the super-market of divine
beings that made up the Greek and Roman way of thinking for centuries. The
Christians who gave us the Nicaean Creed were all about the Oneness of God, Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. (Alas, preachers have been taking the veg-o-matic to Nicaea,
ever since, but that’s for another day!)
There are
people, some of whom are of a scientific mind, and even some religious folk, who
proudly wear the badge “skeptic”, who tell me that the Trinity is
incomprehensible. To which I say “yeah…and…?”
To which I might
reply, “… tell me again about the multiverse….?” You know, the idea that there
are multiple universes that exist at the very same time? Besides the fact that
it makes for some good (and some really awful!) science fiction, it reminds us that
we Christians aren’t the only ones in the cosmological marketplace where
apparently contradictory truths can co-exist at the very same time.
And how about
the mathematics that underpin modern physics, chemistry, astronomy, and make
all your favorite gadgets work…what is the basis for that? About a decade ago,
Scientific American spent a whole issue debating the assumptions—and the implicit
acts of faith—behind the high-level mathematics that undergird the advances we
take for granted. The wonderful thing about physics is that the more you drill
down the more our perceptions change, and that’s when the line between fact and
faith becomes blurry. The more we unravel the mystery, the more mystery there
is.
And to a
person of faith that, as the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan
Williams once said in an Oxford debate with the late Dr. Richard Dawkins, is
a beautiful thing.
The Trinity,
the Christian doctrine that says that the oneness of God is expressed in a
trinity of persons and a unity of being, tells us some things several things
about the very nature of God:
First, God is
complex to the point unknowing.
Second, God
is by definition relational and that means interactive; and
Three, God is
by grace knowable.
Christians
believe that the God of the whole vast universe, the One who made heavens and
earth, is also the One who walked the earth in the person of Jesus Christ. The
God whose Spirit moved at the beginning of the universe and brought it forth,
either by word or by big bang, is also the Holy Spirit who animates our hearts.
And as vast as creation is, God is this
close.
The Pop
Atheists do have a point, even though they often frame the question so that
only their answer makes sense (as human beings love to do!). They often claim
there is no God because of all the awful things people do in the name of God.
Of course, the problem with that argument is that it says nothing about God,
but a lot about us. And people will cite science (or something they claim to be
science) when they do awful things all the time. The big wars of the last
century, not to mention the calamities of pandemic, war, and dislocation in our
own time, all show us that. Besides, theirs is not a new observation. The Hebrew
prophets made those same observations and in more detail.
Similarly,
the folks who call themselves “spiritual but not religious” take the truth that
we are all spiritual and have the capacity to inquire and to know God and
assume, therefore, that there is nothing that the community of faith, ancient
liturgy, or scripture can teach us (except for perhaps some nice poetry and
cool music).
But we can’t
do all this inquiry—scientific or spiritual—alone. We can’t see the farthest
galaxy or the smallest particle without teams of people, curiosity, the right
tools, and the confidence that there is something to see. Inventors, explorers,
and researchers are often held up as individual heroes, and they may be; but
without the research, experimentation, and observation of those who went before
(even if their conclusions were different) their work would not be possible. If
good science is subject to rigorous peer review, then how can we think that we
can learn about the source of the universe, and the meaning of our place within
it all by our lonesomes?
In all this,
the common element is the human one. What really worries—and turns off
people—is not God nor science, but the messiness of human relationships. The
politics, the cruelty, the unpredictability, the irrationality, the selfishness
—the sin— of humankind, these are what really gets in our way. Blame it on God,
if you like, but the problem is us.
The Trinity
that we celebrate today tells us that our complex God is at once relational,
knowable, and intimate.
The second
half of our church’s year begins today, and from here until Advent, we’ll learn
about the nuts and bolts of everyday Christian living. Learning and doing the
teachings of Jesus begins by contemplating and celebrating the wonder,
complexity, and simplicity of the Holy Trinity. All of things we do as faithful
followers of Jesus, our prayer, worship, learning, and service; our community
here and our acts of care in the community we live in; all of it begins here—looking
with wonder and awe at our place in this wonderful cosmos and our living
connection to a loving God who loved us first.
Now if you’re
thinking “I’m not ready to take on that task. I don’t know anything… not even
where to start, it’s okay. We don’t have to know it all. God knows that we can
only know so much. We can’t get away from the fact that the universe is vast while
our brains can only fit under a baseball cap. The Trinity shows us the
remarkable truth that God is not so distracted and entranced by the bigness of
creation to forget about us. God comes to us in ways we can understand, know,
and touch; in beautiful things both small and vast; in redeeming relationships;
in prayer and silence, in music and art, in science and meditation; in broken
bread and poured out wine; in companionship and service to others; in the
incarnation and person of Jesus.
The Trinity reminds that the very bigness of God is as close to us as our hearts.
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