First United Methodist Church of Reno

^1:
1In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, ²the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. ³Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. ⁴And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. ⁵God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

⁶And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” ⁷So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. ⁸God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

⁹And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. ¹⁰God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. ¹¹Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. ¹²The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. ¹³And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

¹⁴And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, ¹⁵and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. ¹⁶God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. ¹⁷God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, ¹⁸to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. ¹⁹And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

²⁰And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.” ²¹So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. ²²God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” ²³And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

²⁴And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.” And it was so. ²⁵God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.

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.

^2:
1Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. ²And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. ³So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.

⁴These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

²⁰Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; ²¹nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is within you.”^¹

¹His disciples said to [Jesus], “When will the kingdom of God come?”
²[And he responded,] “It will not come by watching for it. ³It will not be said, ‘Look, here!’ or ‘Look, there!’ ⁴Rather, the kingdom of God is spread out upon the earth, and people don’t see it.”

Did any of the rest of you find it significant (as I did) that just after that former junior senator from Illinois became the newly sworn-in President Obama, he would mention in his inaugural speech God, faith, and religion no less than six times and that he would go on to say, “We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders...” Here was a walking, talking, free-world-leading example of how one person can view both science and religion as good and powerful forces that can work together for a better world. Such a complementary, synergistic approach, I fervently hope, will bring new energy and possibilities to many science and religion-heavy issues like stem-cell research, abortion, homosexuality, and health care.

It’s ironic, then, that Charles Darwin, that iconic naturalist, biologist, zoologist and (I would add with all sincerity) deeply religious scientist, is being recognized far and wide in honor of his 200^th birthday this past Thursday, February 12^th. I find it incredible that two centuries later, though, Darwin is still managing to stir things up. Chris Eckert, a Canadian evolutionary biologist said this recently:

The thing that blows me away and continues to blow me away every single day when I come in to work is that Darwin proposed the theory of natural selection with a tremendous amount of supporting evidence that species were descended from common ancestors and that there's one magnificent tree of life.^²

I’m convinced enough by the astonishing record of his work to call this scientific genius “religious” because of something that Darwin himself wrote near the conclusion of his treatise on the origin of species:

It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.

These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.^³

It’s also sadly ironic to note that the Vatican has just recently lifted a centuries-old veil of official hostility toward and denial of the Theory of Evolution and finally admits that it was actually compatible with the Bible. The Church of England (as the Anglican Church is officially known in the U.K.) wasn’t about to be left behind, either, and issued their own confirmation that Darwin’s theory never conflicted with the literal biblical account of creation. So just last fall, the Church of England issued a formal apology to Charles Darwin for “misunderstanding [him] and...encouraging others to misunderstand [him] still.”^⁴ While couching their apology in a warning of the social interpretation of Darwin's work, the fact that it took 150 years since the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species is testament to the huge divide that his work created.^⁵

It’s hard to imagine what Charles Darwin would think about the ongoing hullabaloo that his work has created – especially in the schools. He would probably be more than just a little bit frustrated. After all, if his first critics, the vaunted Church of England of John Wesley, the group who has had the most time and opportunity to pick apart his arguments and theories, if they can accept the importance of the work of Charles Darwin, why can't everybody else?

Both Copernicus and Galileo considered themselves to be Christians, and yet they also knew that their beliefs conflicted with the official teachings of the church on matters of science. But almost every educated person today, Christian and non-Christian alike, now 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^⁶ or that the sun revolved around the earth (i.e., that it “rises and sets” as we say^⁷) have been rightly reinterpreted by Christians to explain that much of the language of the Bible is figurative rather than literal. The problem, Christians began to see, wasn’t with science, nor with the Bible, but with misusing it, forcing it to be literal when so much of it should have been taken figuratively or phenomenologically – like describing events only as they appear from our extraordinarily limited perspective. So much of the church’s earlier opposition to the theory of evolution is based on either a faulty understanding of science or a decidedly questionable interpretation of scripture.^⁸

The opposition of Christian fundamentalists to evolution – based on the idea of a “young earth” – is not only a misinterpretation of scripture but a willful rejection of compelling scientific evidence. It’s based on a literal reading of Genesis 1, where God supposedly creates the earth in six days. “Young-earthers” interpret these as six 24-hour days. It’s perfectly possible – and more reasonable, I would say – to read this material in a figurative or poetic sense, allowing creation to happen over a much, much longer period of time. Given the overwhelming scientific evidence, it’s clear that Genesis 1 has just got to be interpreted in some way other than literally. If we would read it in the way that it was meant to be read – as a literary work of theologians from the Ancient Near East whose purpose was to portray the order and beauty of God's creation – then all of the problems with a 4.5 billion year old earth and a 14 billion year old universe disappear.

Science is not the enemy of either Christianity or the Bible. As Christians, we can have both reason and faith.^⁹ Thank God. The only aspect of the modern theories of the origins of the universe and evolution that is contrary to the Bible is the idea that they must have occurred in a universe without God. Nothing about either cosmology or evolution, though, disproves the idea of God. In fact, you could argue that creating a universe and establishing its laws in such a way that evolution could happen requires a much more powerful, mysterious, and infinitely more intelligent God than one who simply created everything and left it as it is today.

That’s why, along with other progressive clergy, I’ve joined my name in support of the “Clergy Project” that’s attempting to make religion and science allies, rather than adversaries. We’re saying, in part:

We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as “one theory among others” is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator.^¹⁰

It’s a mistake to treat the theology of creation in the Book of Genesis, then, as a scientific textbook. It does unfold a profound and valid truth about the world in which we live – its order and its purpose. The Book of Genesis speaks about the relationship between Creator and creation and especially about the place of humanity in that relationship. That wonderful narrative offers us a first vision, you might say, of an “ecology of holiness” in which every material and living thing has a place and its creativity is consecrated in goodness. The account of creation in Genesis is pointing us beyond the question “how” to the question “why”. Ultimately, both science as well as our faith have got to come to that most fundamental of all questions: the question of meaning and purpose.

The whole universe is alive and changing, continually co-creating new possibilities of life. Change simply is! Or, to put it another way, change is at the very core of cosmic evolution, biological evolution, as well as cultural evolution.

Fifty years after Charles Darwin, Alfred North Whitehead, that Anglo-American process philosopher and mathematician, could then describe life as an adventure – that “novelty and surprise made life interesting…the open-endedness of life provides opportunities for the exercise of creative freedom, which gives life meaning.”^¹¹ “This life is meant to be enjoyed,” writes theologian Carol Christ. “To enjoy life is to cherish the beauty of each living thing, to be interested in diversity and difference in the web of life…”^¹²

This is why on this particular Sunday for the past three years, we’ve celebrated Evolution Sunday here in this place. It’s why many of us have come to think of God as the creative process – or “creativity” itself – instead of a being who creates. It’s why I keep searching for non-personal metaphors for God, instead of anthropomorphic ones. As contemporary progressive theology reminds us time and time again, God – or the Sacred or the Spirit – does not reside in some other place called “heaven”. Wherever God is, there is heaven; and heaven is right here, or it isn’t anywhere.

About now some of you might be saying to yourself, “Tell me something new, Doug; you’re ‘preaching to the choir’ here!” Okay. I suggest that if there should be a gospel lesson for us to contemplate this morning, then – a proclamation of good news – I think it would be this one from the Gospel According to Luke:

Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is within you.”^¹³

…and its corollary from a gospel that didn’t make it into the Bible as we know it, the Gospel According to Thomas, puts it this way:

His disciples said to [Jesus], “When will the kingdom of God come?” [And he responded,] “It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, ‘Look, here!’ or ‘Look, there!’ Rather, the kingdom of God is spread out upon the earth, and people don’t see it.”^¹⁴

In the end, as it was at the beginning, it all might best be portrayed in some lines of poetry – like these by T. S. Eliot:

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.^¹⁵

1 I am aware that the end of verse 21 is more often translated “…the kingdom of God is among you,” but it’s just as accurate a translation of the Greek word entos to say “within” – as I have here.

4 See the whole article at http://www.cofe.anglican.org/darwin/malcolmbrown.html. Its conclusion, by The Rev. Dr. Malcolm Brown, Director of Mission and Public Affairs, reads this way:

Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practice the old virtues of 'faith seeking understanding' and hope that makes some amends. But the struggle for your reputation is not over yet, and the problem is not just your religious opponents but those who falsely claim you in support of their own interests. Good religion needs to work constructively with good science – and I dare to suggest that the opposite may be true as well.

What’s more (and I do see this as a very hopeful sign!), John Wesley’s Chapel in the heart of London just had a lecture series last week at which people were encouraged to discuss the life and work of Charles Darwin (see their website at http://www.wesleyschapel.org.uk/).

6 Psalm 75: 3, which reads, “When the earth totters, with all its inhabitants, it is I [God] who keep its pillars steady.” What’s more, even God through the prayers of Joshua wouldn’t stop the spinning of the earth (see Joshua 10: 13) without having everything on its face then go sailing off into outer space!

8 For example, some conservative or fundamentalist Christians oppose the theory of evolution on the grounds that it’s “just a theory.” This comment betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of the nature of modern science. Unlike math, which allows theorems to be proven logically, “proof” in science is based on testing hypotheses and, ultimately then, creating theories. So-called “laws,” like the Law of Gravity or the Laws of Motion, are really just theories that have been supported repeatedly by experiment. In this sense, the theory of evolution may also be called a law, because repeated experiments have confirmed so much of it, while also modifying or building on aspects of Darwin's original model. Not surprisingly, when Darwin proposed his theory of evolution by natural selection in 1859, his was only one of a number of competing hypotheses, and although his ideas gained quick and widespread notice, they were not universally accepted in the scientific community. But with the emergence of the field of genetics in the early 20th century, coupled with the discovery of the DNA molecule in the 1950s, Darwin's theory was confirmed to an amazing degree, so that it’s now considered the foundational principle of modern biology.

9 This, in essence, is one of the positions behind one of the books being offered in our Lenten study: When Faith Meets Reason, in which biblical scholars from the Westar Institute (aka the “Jesus Seminar”) reflect on their own spiritual journeys in light of their collective lifetimes of experience and research.

10 It’s called “The Clergy Letter – An Open Letter Concerning Religion and Science” – take a look at the project site at http://www.butler.edu/clergyproject/Christian_Clergy/ChrClergyLtr.htm. By the way, The United Methodist Church also has officially recognized and supported this position ( http://www.umportal.org/article.asp?id=3869).

14 Thomas 113: 1-4. This is why I continue to be struck and so deeply moved by the works of artists and naturalists like John Muir and Ansel Adams, T. S. Eliot and Robert Frost, Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, Annie Dillard and Kathleen Norris, Thomas Merton and Wendell Berry, Bernard Leach and J. Phillip Newell, Loren Eisley and Brian Swimme, Walt McLaughlin and Ethan Hubbard, Martha Graham and Claire Dacey, Denise Levertov and Mary Oliver, Rachel Carson…and, yes, Charles Darwin. The list, thank God, goes on. May it be without end.

15 From T. S. Eliot’s, “Little Gidding” – this the ending excerpt from Number 4 of “Four Quartets”. At its reading here (admittedly quite shamelessly) I engaged in a bit of a dramatic portrayal of my own: holding up a rose next to the lighted candle on the communion table.

The First United Methodist Church of Napa, CA

February 15, 2009 – Evolution Sunday