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Solomon and Jesus Clashlessly Considered Creation And Creator
By Riviera UCC | March 8, 2009
Solomon and Jesus Clashlessly Considered Creation And Creator
a sermon based on Matthew 6:25-33
given at Palm Bay, FL on March 8, 2009
by Rev. Scott Elliott
We humans tend to bandy about the word universe in a take-it-for-granted way, as if we look out our back yard and take it all in almost everyday.
The universe is, of course, well beyond our capabilities to see, let alone comprehend.
To get a picture of how vast the universe is picture earth as a marble. The sun in comparison would be the size of a beach ball nearly two football fields away. Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system would be five blocks away and even on this earth-as-a-marble scale the nearest star would still be 22,000 miles away, and our galaxy would be 55 billion miles wide. And that is just our galaxy, the universe is filled with other galaxies!
Who could comprehend or even imagine the size of this shrunken model universe, yet alone the full size universe we actually occupy a tiny, tiny portion of? 2
The cosmos is beyond our ability to take in scientifically and theologically.
And, you know, forget about the universe, just understanding our own planet is not even within our grasp. One anonymous quote on creation I like puts it like this:
Science continues to do amazing things, but sitting under a tree, looking at cows in the meadow on a summers day one has to remember that the greatest scientists in the world have yet to figure out how to make grass into milk. 3
And please don’t’ hear me wrong, I like science and most scientists. In fact in January I wrote a column in the Hometown News about science and religion and how they don’t have to clash.
Of course, they do clash.
The clash in my experience usually seems to come when someone tries to fit the round peg of theology into the square hole of science.
Or someone tries to put the square peg of science into the round hole of theology.
A lecturing astronomer is said to have once declared “I have swept the universe with my telescope, and I find no God.” To which a musician retorted that “[that] is as unreasonable as it is for me to say that I have taken my violin apart, have carefully examined [it] with a microscope, and have found no music.” 1 Science on its own can no more prove general theological principles than it can make music.
On the other hand, religion has it’s limits too. As much as some in the church would like it to be otherwise, the Bible was not intended to be used as a science book. Rational, reasoned, detailed scientific theories are not outlined in the pages of the Bible. Religion can no more prove general scientific principles than it can on it’s own make penicillin.
There have been media reports over the years about church leaders opposing science and you get the impression from them that, in order to be a Christian you have to believe science conflicts with Christianity, but that’s not true.
First of all, (as I ‘ve noted before) science, like religion, pursues truth. The pursuit of truth is never bad. Science seeks truth through reason and experience to understand how creation works.
Religion, on the other hand seeks truth through reason and experience to understand our relationship with creation and that which created it.
Clashes occur when science insists its reasoning applies to creational relationships.
Clashes occur when religion insists its reasoning applies to understanding the details of how creation works.
Square pegs into round holes and round pegs into square holes conflict, they don’t fit.
But science and religion don’t have to be in conflict. As I’ve also noted before admitting the common ground of the limitations and ends of each helps. Science and religion are both limited by human understanding, and neither can explain it all. And it cannot be reasonably denied that while each begins with an aim toward truth, each also ultimately ends in mystery and awe.
Even the stories of science and Christianity need not conflict.
For example, one science story reasons that the universe began as a big bang of light and cosmic dust. This need not conflict with the Bible stories reasoning that the universe began with God’s light and the creation of life from dust.
Much good has also come from both science and Christianity. Scientists, when thinking openly, have brought many to a way of great wisdom, inventions and medicines. Jesus and his followers, when thinking openly, have brought many to a Sacred way of a great wisdom, love and morals.
All told, God, Messiah, morals, medicine, discovery and methods of science need not be understood as mutually exclusive they can work together to wondrous affect. Indeed, one can even choose to hear Jesus suggest study and appreciation of creation in today’s reading.
“Look at the birds of the air . . . Consider the lilies of the field how they grow”
Nice words that trip off the tongue of Jesus.
Mostly they are heard as secondary to rest of the verses’ reference to human needs being a part of God’s desires. Sometimes I like to hear them differently. God, herself feeds the bird. God himself clothes the lilies– and Jesus, well, he looks at the birds; he considers the lilies– he gets that they are God’s creation and under God’s care and so he studies them. He urges us to study them.
“Look at the birds of the air . . . Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.”
And did you notice how Solomon was mentioned in the reading? Among the proof that Solomon was wise 1 Kings 4 (29-34) lists his knowledge of nature. Verse 33 reads:
[Solomon] would speak of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows in the wall; he would speak of animals, and birds, and reptiles, and fish.
34
If science aims for truth and brings about good, and if Solomon and Jesus studied creation, and Jesus tells us to consider creation, then there is no need to believe science must conflict with Christianity.
Indeed we can choose to hear scripture promoting the study of creation by holding up Solomon’ wisdom as including such study and by Jesus advocating that we consider how things like birds and plants function and grow.
God is, of course, everywhere; but there are places people go to feel closer to God.
Lent is the season we are now in. It’s forty days long precisely because Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days before his ministry began to focus on God’s call there.
We are at Lent to consider– among other things– how best to do our ministries as Christians and to focus on God’s call for us..
Lots of folks go to church or other buildings like this to find God.
Some folks also have a favorite park bench, or tree to sit beneath. Others still like to hike or bike or fish or lay in the sun by babbling brook. Somehow in such places the thin veil of everyday life that seems to separate us from God parts just a little and we experience God more profoundly, more personally, more passionately, more porously there, in those Scared places.
By considering the birds and lilies, acquiring even a little science about creation can enhance the appearance of the Sacred in the world.
For me the Light of God particularly peaks through the curtain of life and touches me intensely when I sit with nature especially near the ocean.
Part of it is I know a little bit about the coast. I often know where to look, what to look for, and what I am looking at. But there is a religious side to it too, the music of nature, sings to me there.
The rhythmic waves, screeching gulls, shells clinking together as the waves roll in and out all make for a symphony of sound. Those sounds somehow blends in perfect harmony with poetic smells and feelings of the salt water, the heat of the sand, along with the visual spender of the emerald, sapphire sea; blue or gray skies, white foam, tan sand, birds aloft. God’s just especially in all that for me.
I suspect that it has something to do with my consideration of things at the seashore. Iam not a scientist, but it helps that I have some knowledge of science of how creation works at the ocean’s shore
This was more so on the Pacific coast, in Oregon and California, where I know much more about things.
Here I see amazing animals I still know little about. A few months after we got here I saw a sea turtle the size of a pool table wink at me while I was in the waves.
A tarpon bigger than me got so close it scared Nancy and me out of the water.
A huge ray leapt out of the waves and glided back below the surface.
Pelicans constantly amuse me with their diving antics.
And dolphins and manatees frolic in and just beyond the green and blue breakers.
As I have considered all of these Florida fauna I have felt God’s presence spike up a tad. And that is one reason I try to go to the beach at least once a week. I better sense God there, it’s a thin place where I feel God’s touch on my shoulder.
While any ocean locale can bring me to the crossroads where God and I meet most intimately, there was one place by the sea in Oregon that really enhanced the sense of the Divine for me. At lunch I would often walk and visit an outcrop of land that jutted into the mighty Pacific bestride a huge sand dune.
The outcrop is called Cape Kiwanda. The name belies its small size. I’d be surprised if the cape is bigger than the twenty acres God’s provided Riviera UCC.
Aside from the huge sand dune, Cape Kiwanda is mostly rock with hardy trees and grass bent by never ending gusts. Rain falls there more often than sunshine. And the biting wind blows most everyday misting glasses, chilling bones and stealing your cap if you don’t hunker down and hold it to your head.
Out on the cape there’s a cliff surrounded by water for 280 degrees where you can sit curled up for warmth and watch the seas beneath a set of trees. It is there that I often felt in God’s presence as the buoy bell rang with the rise and fall of the waves in the shadow of a haystack rock. God never came in a burning bush or a thunderous voice, but always in the guise of nature as I considered it.
Sometimes it was just the waves. Pacific means “peaceful,” but the Pacific ocean on the Oregon coast is mostly a dangerous raw power. Huge, huge logs are tossed about like toy blocks. Water crashes so noisily its roar can be heard miles inland. Up on the cape that raw power was a thing of wonder tossing debris about and otherwise crashing into the cliffs with mighty fountains of water spraying high, high into the sky.
Miraculously animals live beneath the turbulent eddies and swirl, even surfacing for air or to play. Sea lions and seals, birds, fish and whales were, if you cared to look, almost always visible. In fact I do not recall ever going out on the cape without spying some amazing critter to consider.
One time I will never forget was when a gray whale and her calf surfaced in the waters just below my perch on the cliff. The two of them were so close I could hear their breath escape in a mighty gush through their blow holes. The mother came in close to cliff side and to my surprise rubbed her side against the rocks removing hitchhiking barnacles off on the cliff with her calf close by her side.
The majestic grey whale is not an uncommon sight, and I am pretty sure that a back scratching to a whale is common too. But somehow considering the whale’s itch and breathing and little family below made me smile from ear to ear. It made me feel in the presence of God.
Again, I am not a scientist, but, I knew enough about the whales from science to know where to look for them, what they were and what they were up to. Science taught me that.
At the time I was not much of a theologian, but I knew enough about the mystery of creation and Creator to know I was in the presence of both. Science and religion did not conflict they worked together and I was the better for it. I was in good company. I knew I was in the presence of creation and the Creator–and for a few moments I felt one with them both.
Solomon and Jesus clashlessly considered creation and creator too. And the good news is not that I am wise like Solomon or Christ like Jesus, the good news is that not only do science and religion not have to clash but together they can bring about places where the thin veil of everyday life parts just a little and we can experience God more profoundly, more personally, more passionately and more porously in creation which in reality contains as many Scared places as we care to stop and consider the birds of the air and the lilies of the field and how they grow.
Amen.
Endnotes
1. Hodgin, Michael, 1001 More Humorous Illustrations for Public Speaking, Zondervan Publishing-House
(1998) p 90.
2. Morgan, Robert, Preacher’s Sourcebook of Creative Sermon Illustrations, Thomas Nelson, (2007), 156
3. 1001 More Humorous Illustrations for Public Speaking, at p 89.
COPYRIGHT Scott Elliott © 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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