This past Tuesday, the people of the state
of Missouri passed an amendment to their state constitution that allows
students who believe in creationism, for example, to opt out of assignments on
evolution: “no student shall be compelled to perform or participate in academic
assignments or educational presentations that violate his or her religious
beliefs.”1 On one hand, I think legislation like that is just goofy
partisan grand-standing, but, on the other, the law really will allow the
educational standard of students in the sciences to drop another couple of
notches. Given that students in the US already score below students in 16 other
developed countries in science, it seems like bad news to me.2 Then, a little later, I came upon another
news article about a new find in South Africa:
A hominid skeleton, thought to be about 2
million years old, found supported in and around hard rock, said to be the
“most complete early human ancestor skeleton ever discovered.” This puts it right at the beginning of the
time when the species of the genus Homo – whose members walked on two
legs and had less hair than the apes – were beginning to emerge.3 So here might be a candidate for the
mysterious “missing link,” between apes and humans. I’m not sure but I think the term, “missing
link,” comes from the fight between Christian faith and evolutionary science publicized
almost a hundred years ago in the so-called “Scopes Monkey Trial.”4 We
haven’t been able to definitively move either side of the debate forward by
much, it seems. This issue is only one among many that divides
Christians and has us throwing insults at one another and at each other’s
throats. In a way, it comes down to a question of who we are, and how
are we to be the Church in our time when we can’t get along or agree?
Lest we fall into thinking these times---our
own times are worse than other times---we need only go as far as today’s letter
from Paul to little Christian community at Ephesus. Listen again: “Let no evil talk come out of
your mouths, but only what is useful for building up . . . so that your words
may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God,
with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from
you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with
all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another,
as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved
children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a
fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
In fact, I think it is safe to say that most of Paul’s letters are sent
in order to smooth over some kind of conflict among the faithful, which is to
say, there were many and they were various.
Some got uglier than others.
Paul, in at least one place that I know
of, loses his temper while trying to
quell the bitter dispute between Jews-turned-Christian, who believed that the
gentiles-who-became-Christian, had first to be circumcised as they were. It is suggested that it was no less famous a
person than James, the brother of Jesus, who lead the debate on the side of
those who were opposing Paul on this.5 Paul was adamant that all followers of Jesus
Christ were sanctified by faith alone, and circumcision had nothing to do with
it. In Paul’s letter to the Galatians he
goes off on those who insist on circumcision, “As for those agitators,” he
snarls, “I wish their knife would slip and go the whole way and just emasculate
themselves!” (Galatians 5:12)
Even a super saint, like Saint Paul at times
could not stop himself from giving in to wrathful anger and bitterness, and for
a time at least, lost the ability to “be kind, tenderhearted and
forgiving.” But we shouldn’t be at all surprised. This is the very same man who wrote in a
letter to the church in Rome, “What I don't understand about myself is that--I can
decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. I decide to do good, but I don't really do it;
I decide not to do what I know to be
wrong, but then I do it anyway. My
decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions. Something is wrong deep
within me and gets the better of me every time.” In the end, Paul says, the only help for him---or
actually, for any of us, is in Jesus. (Romans 7:15ff)
This is Jesus, who in the gospel this morning,
says, “I am the Bread that has come down from heaven. I am the bread of life.” Whatever else we Christians may find to fight
about, this fact remains, that we trust Jesus to be for us, the Bread of Life; to
be our deepest truth, and the way through death, every kind of death. Jesus says, “I am the Resurrection and I am
Life.” Christians may differ on what
exactly this means in their individual and imperfect lives, but the essential
truth remains the same. We can take the
same scriptures and argue about specific texts meaning this or that, and you’re
wrong but I’m right, someone else is going to hell, but I’m not; and how many
angels can dance the polka on the head of a pin. But in the end, we all find nourishment from
this same Bread, the Bread that has come down from heaven.
American astrophysicist Neil de Grasse
Tyson, when asked what was the most astonishing thing he’d learned as an
astrophysicist, said, “The atoms of our bodies are traceable to stars that
manufactured them in their cores and exploded these enriched ingredients across
our galaxy, billions of years ago. For this reason, we are biologically
connected to every other living thing in the world. We are chemically connected
to all molecules on Earth. And we are atomically connected to all atoms in the
universe. We are not figuratively, but literally stardust.”6
There are many things about life which we
don’t see but know to be so, to have existence, like say, the famous
God-particle, the Higgs-Bosun particle that is supposed to help scientists to
understand why atomic particles behave the way they do. We don’t see atomic particles, or gravity or
oxygen, bacteria or solar winds. But all
of these things can be known by their effect on other things or beings. We can’t usually see stardust with the naked
eye, and we can’t see love. In a
charming book by the same title, the main character, known as the Little
Prince, speaks this great truth: “It is only with the heart that
one can see rightly; what is essential
is invisible to the eye.”7 We are connected to everything else in the
universe, and every living being in this world, but we can’t often can’t see
it. Sometimes we look around, and we
don’t see the body of Christ either. But
it is there, and like those other things, the reality of that comes from the
effect that it has those on around it.
Bread can only be made if the grains of
wheat are roughly ground into flour, and prepared to feed the hungry. Jesus, compared himself and all of us with
kernels of wheat which only bear fruit when they fall into the earth to die and
become something else altogether. Two
different ways of looking at the same humble reality. If we are friends of Jesus, we also must
allow ourselves to be ground down a bit by clashes and friction with those who
don’t agree with us, who look at reality differently than we do---even as we
hold on to the integrity of who we are most deeply and essentially. Doing this requires profound humility and a
willingness to respect and love ourselves---and also those opposed to us, at
the very same time. We, too, are the
Bread come down from heaven for the life of the world, and so are they. The question of who we are now in this time,
and how we are to be the Church in the world, always comes back to Jesus. Jesus, lived and interpreted a hundred thousand
ways but always, always is revealed by his effect on those around in any time
and place----and that is always in humble love. As important as Paul was in the life of the
church, we aren’t called Paulettes---or little Pauls. We are called by Jesus’ title---we are
Christians, in ancient Greek, little Christs.
The final and definitive word on who we are now and for the life of the world
derives solely from our being in Christ.
In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel The
Brothers Karamazov, there is a wise old priest. He is considering the things,
the actions that drive people apart, even to violence. He says, “At some thoughts one stands
perplexed, above all at the sight of human sin, and wonders whether to combat
it by force or by humble love. Always decide ‘I will combat it by humble love.’
If you resolve on that once and for all, you can conquer the whole world. Loving humility is a terrible force: it is the
strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it.”8 May we
all take his words to heart.
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5. See Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, and Acts
15
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