“Evolution Sunday”
Scripture Readings:
Hebrew Scriptures – Genesis 1: 26-31; 2: 4b-9, 18-25
26Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”
27So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 28God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” 29God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. 30And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. ….
In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, 5when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; 6but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground—7then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. 8And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9Out of the ground the LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. ….
18Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” 19So out of the ground the LORD God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. 21So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23Then the man said,
“This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.”
24Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. 25And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.
Psalter – Psalm 8
1O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens. 2Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger. 3When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; 4what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? 5Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. 6You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet, 7all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, 8the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
9O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Epistle – Revelation 21: 1-5a
1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
“See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; 4he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” 5And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.”
“Science without Religion Is Lame; Religion without Science Is Blind.”
Albert Einstein
[following a choral presentation of Days of Elijah, composed and written by Robin Mark]
In that last line just sung by our choir – “salvation comes” – is expressed the deepest hope of humanity.1 It is both a profound affirmation and a desperate plea that God will be there when we need God the most. We hear it over and over again as a plea for a messiah from the people of Israel who cry out, “Hosanna!” – literally, “Save us, we beg you!”2 We hear it as a plea from Jacob as he wrestles with God, and exclaims, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.”3 We hear it from Moses, desperately wanting to know who this is who is revealed to him “in a flame of fire out of a bush.”4 The only response that he hears is “I am who I am.”5
Face it – and let’s be honest with each other – we have no idea “who” or “what” God is. No, that’s not quite correct: we have all kinds of “ideas” of who or what God is; we just don’t know whether or not those ideas are true. As a wonderful professor of mine at Duke University would constantly ask us, “How do you know what you know?”6 Our somewhat sheepish answer to that question usually amounted to saying, “Someone told me.” Who told them?
This Bible on which my hands rest, as sacred as it is, is not the word of God…until we say that it is. That’s as true about the two different stories of creation that were read from Genesis this morning as it is of our opinions about slavery, divorce, and sexual orientation – each of which have both been supported and condemned by appeals to scripture.
The Bible is not science. The Bible was written by a particular people, in a particular cultural context, and thus reflects their particular (and, all too often, limited) point of view of reality. It's about one group of people, then, and their own experiences of God – some of those experiences in reaction or opposition to other cultures around them. The Bible is only one source, among many, of humanity's experience of God. The scientific truth in Darwin's Theory of Evolution need not be in conflict with our faith – indeed, we may celebrate the wonder of it without knowing the whole of it. The best discoveries of science and our best thinking about God belong together. In fact there is nothing about the scientific method that would require a scientist to declare that God doesn’t exist. True, some scientists might look at their models of nature and conclude that there is no God. And yet, others, looking at the same models – the evolutionary one, for instance – are struck by the wonder and beauty of God’s creation.
Both Copernicus and Galileo considered themselves to be Christians, and yet they knew that their beliefs conflicted with the official teachings of the church on matters of science. Almost everyone today, Christian and non-Christian alike, accepts the scientific validity of the theories of Copernicus and Galileo. Biblical passages that at one time were interpreted as proving that the earth was stationary and sat on a set of pillars,7 or that the sun revolved around the earth,8 were reinterpreted by Christians, explaining that so much of the language of the Bible is figurative and metaphorical and not meant to be read literally. The problem (as some of us Christians began to see) was not with science, nor with the Bible, but with the ways in which the Bible was being interpreted – forcing it to be literal when it should have been taken figuratively or phenomenologically (i.e. describing events as they appear from a human perspective, like the "rising" of the sun).
When Anna Abbot, from the Napa Valley Register, asked me why evolution was so controversial, I simply said “because fundamentalists and biblical literalists have made it so.” The science of evolution does not teach that human beings evolved from monkeys. Species change through time. Evolution deals with the evidence of cumulative change through time. We’ve still much to learn about how all of that actually happened. And while scientists are almost always able to say, “I don’t know enough about it yet,” all too often the faith-based (or religious) community is uncomfortable with saying, simply, “I don’t know.” We should be saying that – especially when it comes to the Mystery we call God, and all of what might still be revealed to us about that Mystery.
Much of the controversy has revolved around a misunderstanding of how scientists use the word "theory." In our everyday usage the synonym for “theory” is a “guess” or “hunch.” And yet according to the National Academy of Sciences, a theory is defined as “a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.”9 Relying upon our power (I would say our God-given power) to infer from observation and testing, and then to posit rational conclusions, is simply an essential part of coming up with a theory of how things work and are put together.
That controversial phrase, “intelligent design,” has been attributed to Jon Buell (a fundamentalist Christian), from his “Foundation for Thought and Ethics” in Richardson, Texas, which wrote and published the textbook Of Pandas and People – supposedly presenting “scientific data” (in support of Creationism) that every organism’s structure already existed from the very beginning so could not have evolved. According to the creationist point of view God produced humans, fully formed, with no previous related species. All of this flies in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. "Intelligent design," then, is actually just another name for "Creationism," and Creationism is not science, so it should never be taught in our public schools masquerading as science. On the other hand science doesn't "prove" or “disprove” religion either.
Even if someone thinks of God as a separate, distinct being that manipulates the universe (which, as far as I’m concerned, is a limited conception of God), “intelligent design” doesn’t give me any intelligent reason to consider that evolution just might have been God’s way of creating the universe to begin with.
This is the kind of thinking that has led the theologian Beatrice Bruteau, in her book God’s Ecstasy, to say that every Christian contemplative needs to understand science. She remarks:
The conclusion for the religious person should be that the world is God’s most personal work, therefore something for us to know and admire and revere, to take part in, to contribute to creating – since it is made as a self-creating universe.10
It could very well be, then, as Danish theologian Niels Gregersen has put it:
We are living in a world which is so designed that we are enabled to live beyond design. The world is graciously designed for the freedom of self-development and co-evolution.11
As we consider the wonders of the universe – all around us as well as within us – the truth is we are still in the process of becoming, still undergoing creation, so in that sense evolution is very compatible with a Christian view of the cosmos. And so, far from understanding the Book of Revelation as God’s apocalyptic rescue of a corrupt creation, a creation undergoing evolutionary change is how I choose to interpret these poignant words from that final book of our Bible:
…the home of God is among mortals. [God] will dwell with them; they will be [God’s] peoples, and [the very being of] God…will be with them…. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away. And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.”12
As someone colorfully put it: “Like a cake in the oven, we and all of reality in the universe are not done yet.”13 So I’m ready to put on that T-shirt again that says, “Be kind to me. God isn’t through with me yet.” How about you?
* * *
1In the words of the author and composer of Days of Elijah, Robin Mark, it “is in essence a song of hope for the Church and the world in times of great trial.”—this from his notes explaining the meaning of the words and themes contained in this song. The full explanation is at his website: http://www.robinmark.com/DaysOfElijah_Story.htm.
2Psalm 118: 25 (cf. 2 Samuel 14: 4 and Psalm 20: 9) and in Mark 11: 9, Matthew 21: 9, and John 12: 13 – in each the sense is the same.
3Genesis 32: 26 – generally thought of as a time that Jacob wrestles with an “angel,” but nowhere in that text does it say this; in fact it says that his mysterious opponent was just “a man” (only much later, in Hosea 12: 4, do we find that the tradition has come to call his “opponent” an “angel”). Jacob asks for the man’s name but receives a blessing in response. Jacob then names the place of this encounter, Peniel (or Penuel), which means “the face of God,” because, as he claims, “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved” (Genesis 32: 30).
4Exodus 3: 2
5Op. cit., verse 13 – alternately also meaning “I am what I am” or “I will be what I will be.”
6This from a dear friend and mentor to many of us Duke graduates, Father Roland Murphy. See something about him at his obituary on the Order of Carmelites website: http://carmelites.ie/Archive/remurphy.htm. There’s also a touching tribute to Fr. Murphy at http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0LAL/is_3_33/ai_107759380.
7Psalm 75: 3.
8Psalm 50: 1.
9Eugenie C. Scott, Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction (University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2004), p. 14.
10Beatrice Bruteau, God’s Ecstasy (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1997), p. 10.
11Niels Henrik Gregersen, “Beyond the Balance: Theology in a Self-Organizing World,” in Design and Disorder, ed. Niels Henrik Gregersen and Ulf Görman (London and New York: T. & T. Clark, 2002), p. 79 – the italics are Gregersen’s own.
12Removed of most of its cultural anthropomorphisms, this is how Revelation 21: 3b-5a reads.
13Ted Peters and Martinez Hewlett, Can You Believe in God and Evolution? A Guide for the Perplexed (Abingdon Press, Nashville, TN, 2006), p.