Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost

I'm reading today from Psalms 8, 3 through 9.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established, what are humans that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?

Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.

You have given them dominion over the works of your hands.

You have put all things under their feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the air and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

O Lord our sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth.

May we hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.

There are some subjects that are hotly debated in our society today.

We know a bunch of them.

Religion, politics, sometimes even science.

Just say the word evolution in certain Christian circles, and things can get real contentious really quickly.

Mention Christianity in certain scientific circles, and some folks can wonder if you really are interested in pursuing the truth.

A lot of times there's this idea that you have to choose between Christianity and science.

You can believe the Bible or you can believe science.

You can have faith or you can trust evidence.

You can be religious or you can be intellectually serious.

But these are false choices.

And I don't just mean that because there are plenty of Christians who are also scientists, and I don't just mean that because there are lots of scientists who are people of faith, but I mean that if we actually look at the Bible and look at the history of how human beings have thought about the natural world, we discover that the relationship between faith and science, or faith and observation, goes back a very long way.

And so on this Earthcare Sunday, let's wrap up our Sunday, excuse me, let's wrap up our summer sermon series by asking the question: what does the Bible really say about faith and science?

Okay.

First, human beings have always tried to figure out how things work.

They've tried to figure out how the world works long before anybody ever had a laboratory, human beings were watching.

They watched the sky.

They watched the seasons.

They watched plants grow.

They watched animals.

They watched the weather.

They noticed that some things happened over and over again.

They began to connect those observations.

They began to notice those patterns.

They're able to make predictions based on those patterns.

If the sun appears here, the shadows fall there, something predictable is happening.

If the rains come at a particular time of the year, farmers can plan accordingly.

This may sound very obvious to us, but that basic impulse to observe the world, to identify patterns, and use those patterns to make predictions that didn't emerge at the Enlightenment.

We have a whole lot more scientific knowledge nowadays than the ancients did, but the ancients have always paid attention to these patterns, to these observations.

The civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia, they were carefully observing the heavens.

And ancient Greek astronomers developed increasingly sophisticated mathematical models of the sky.

By the time the biblical writers were on the scene, the lunar cycle was not some mysterious secret.

Ancient people understood calendars, lunar and solar.

While there was still so much to learn and so many inventions to come, the ancients could look at something and they could observe the natural world and say, I've seen this before, I recognize this pattern.

I think I know what's gonna happen next.

They tried to observe what we might today call natural laws.

They knew the seasons, they knew the moon, they knew when the crops should be planted, they knew when the rains would fall.

And there are times whenever the biblical stories give indication of this.

So, like in um 2 Samuel chapter 23, verse 4, the writer describes the righteous ruler like the sun shining on a cloudless morning, like the rain that makes grass spring from the earth.

2 Samuel 23:4

It's an observation of cause and effect.

Rain produces growth, farmers know that.

You don't need a modern scientific textbook to understand that.

And Genesis 13, it gives us a practical observation about livestock.

Abraham and Lot.

They've accumulated so many flocks that the land cannot support all of them together.

They need to separate, they need to part company.

There's simply not enough pasture.

Now, I learned this when I lived in Hominy, Oklahoma.

I was surrounded by ranchers.

I felt as if I was waking up in an entirely new world.

I was a fish out of water.

But ranchers now and then are aware of how much land is needed for your livestock.

It's ecology, land has a carrying capacity.

Biblical writers understood that.

And people today try to understand that even more.

A lot of times in science, we're trying to understand how things work.

And you can understand how something works and still marvel and be in wonder.

We can understand photosynthesis, or we can try.

I remember photosynthesis in school.

I studied hard during science, let me tell you.

I love the humanities department.

I was afraid of the science department.

But I have a deep appreciation for science, deep appreciation for math, even though they don't come easy to me.

But we can understand photosynthesis and still be amazed that a tiny seed becomes a tree.

I remember when I was a little kid in elementary school, and we got to plant seeds and watch them grow.

That's amazing.

I'm still amazed we put seeds into the ground, bury them.

They get water, but the sun shines, and beautiful flowers and plants emerge.

Scientifically, we can understand how that works.

Some understand it better than others, but we can marvel at the beauty of it all.

We can understand the biology of the human body and still regard life as a precious gift.

Understanding the mechanism does not destroy the mystery.

Sometimes it makes the mystery even bigger.

So I remember a scene out of a movie several years ago called Licensed to Wed.

Starred uh Robin Williams, Mandy Moore, and John Krasinski.

And Robin Williams, you can tell what role he plays here.

He's a priest.

He does a lot of premarital counseling.

And so uh John Krasinski and Mandy Moore's character go to Reverend Frank for premarital counseling.

And in one of the sessions, Reverend Frank is playing catch with John Krasinski's character in a gymnasium.

And they're playing kind of like the equivalent of the game of burnout, if you've ever played, if you've ever seen that.

So so it's two people playing catch, usually with a uh a ball and glove, and they're throwing it increasingly at higher rates of speed and velocity.

Uh, and and they're trying to like kind of see who can throw it the hardest.

Well, at one point, Reverend Frank uh breaks the nose of John Krasinski's character.

Um, and and just blood goes everywhere.

And so Reverend Frank comes up to John Krasinski and he starts to pray for him to help.

And then in the middle of a prayer, he's like, wait, we need to get you to see a doctor.

And he calls 911.

You know, they or they they I can't remember, they they get him to medical care.

You know, the obvious implication being that there there are times whenever uh scientific knowledge can be really handy, even for people of faith.

Um there are times in which trying to bracket those things as being separate is is not helpful at all.

Uh there's there's a place for science and faith, and Christians have known this for a very long time.

This isn't just a 21st century kind of problem.

Um and sometimes I I showed the the the uh the fish earlier.

We used to see these on uh vehicles a lot, the the ichthus, the the Christian fish symbol, and then Darwin with the feet, uh kind of a uh stand in for evolution, and then truth eating Darwin, and so anyway, like all those like part of the culture wars.

Um, those are not necessarily new.

Um back in the second century, there was a critic of Christianity named Khalsus, he was a Greek philosopher, um, and and and he criticized Christianity on on several accounts.

One of his most practical questions, among his criticisms, uh, had to do with biblical claims, including Noah's Ark.

Um, so he essentially asked, like, how could the Ark possibly contain all of the different animals in existence?

He's like, I know how to do math.

And the math doesn't add up.

This this doesn't this doesn't work.

I mean, it's a worthy question, and a lot of people have asked those kinds of questions down through the the years.

Um, and and Christians have have responded.

So one of the folks who responded to uh Kelsus was St.

Augustine or Saint Augustine, depending upon how you pronounce it.

Uh and and Augustine, he wanted to talk about the ways that scripture should be interpreted sometimes uh in terms of literally, historically, but also sometimes in terms of uh figuratively or symbolically.

And he would talk about stories like Noah's Ark uh as being a story that was not intended to be understood literally, uh, but rather to be understood figuratively or symbolically.

Uh and so ideas about reading the Bible that way are not new.

Those go back as old as St.

Augustine and even before.

Um, there's probably a time.

So, so so in the ancient world, there were a lot of flood stories.

So it wasn't just like the story about Noah and the great flood.

Uh, there were a lot of different flood stories in the ancient Near East.

Probably there were major storms that occurred, and people were trying to make sense of, like their whole world might have felt flooded, uh, and they were trying to make sense of all of that.

And and sometimes they would they would tell these stories as a way to talk about who God is and what God is like.

And so, in one of the ancient Near Eastern flood stories, uh, you have the gods who are really annoyed at all of the noise that the human beings are making.

Uh evidently it's like like grown-ups who are trying to get some rest and and the kids just won't be quiet.

Uh, and and so the the gods are are really annoyed at all these really loud human beings.

And so they kind of like arbitrarily are like, let's just wipe them off, let's just, let's just, let's just end them.

You know, they're bothering us.

Let's just end them.

And and the story that emerges in Genesis counters that, uh, not to say it it paints a perfect portrait of God, but it counters that by saying that that God doesn't arbitrarily just destroy human beings on on a whim.

Uh, in in Genesis, the idea is that the human beings are violent and God grieves the violence.

It's a it's a different kind of story.

Uh, neither of them necessarily to be understood literally, but trying to listen for what the story is is trying to evoke.

Um, some stories in the Bible are poetry, some are metaphor, some are history.

Uh, some try to describe the natural world.

Sometimes that reflects the language of the people who wrote the scriptures.

But Augustine and others always wanted to make sure that we don't end up defending something the Bible itself never intended to defend.

And so being mindful of the times when the Bible is trying to speak scientifically and the times whenever it's trying to speak uh more metaphorically, we need to keep that in mind.

Um Tertullian was another formational thinker in the early days of Christianity.

Christianity?

That's not a word.

I just need to slow down and breathe.

Tertullian, I need to increase the font too, sorry about that.

That's uh the slide where I was supposed to put replace background, but I did not, so sorry.

Uh the font should be bigger.

Uh Tertullian lived uh in and around the year 200 uh CE.

Uh that's a like kind of a means common era, similar to what AD would reference.

Um he thought that nature and divine revelation were related.

He really valued the way that God would reveal, and sometimes that would come through books and stories like the Bible.

Sometimes God would reveal that way.

But Tortulian also thought that God revealed through creation, through nature.

And we should listen to both.

We should listen to all the different ways that God is revealed, and to listen to all of the different wisdom that emerges, not just from the book, but also through creation.

He talked about how reason and revelation don't have to be opposites.

Reason and revelation, these things can go together.

Ultimately, science and religion are not about competing truths.

They're not about competing truths, they're about different kinds of truth.

Um, you don't have to compartmentalize your life and be like, oh, oh, I'll follow scientific evidence here, but then I'll have faith over here.

Uh I can I can go to work and you know, honor science, logical deduction, but then I'll bracket all that when I go to church.

No, these these things can go together, and there's a deep long history of these things going together.

Um think about examples related to technology.

Um, maybe it's nuclear weapons, maybe it's AI.

Okay, science can tell us how these things work.

Science can help us develop these kinds of technological tools.

But science doesn't answer the questions about the ethics behind them.

Is it permissible to ever use nuclear weapons?

Is AI harmful for our Earth?

Do we have problems with overconsumption that threaten life and the planet?

Science can help in terms of understanding how things work.

Faith helps us ask questions related to value and ethics.

Um, I'd like to show you a short video by Francis Collins.

You're a man of faith and a man of faith of faith does not conflict uh with your science.

How does it inform it?

Huh.

I'm fortunate, I think, to be able to have a worldview that both encompasses rigorous science about how nature works, but also has the opportunity to ask and answer questions that science can't help me with, like, why am I here?

And is there a God?

And why is there something instead of nothing?

It seems to me that being able to bring both of those perspectives together on any given day and not have to keep them off in separate parts of your brain is a real wonderful gift.

Francis Bacon, way back centuries ago, said God gave us two books.

He gave us the book of God's words, the Bible, but he gave us the book of God's works, nature.

They're both God's books.

So being able to study both of them on any given Thursday is like a really wonderful experience.

And for me, that's been a critical part of being able to size up complicated issues and trying to ask myself, am I doing the right thing?

Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project, a really well-known contemporary scientist.

Uh I wish I could remember the name of a presenter.

I I had a chance to go to a conference, and one of the presenters was a like a literal rocket scientist.

Um, and and he talked about the chance.

Uh, at one point he got to go up, uh, and I can't remember exactly which flight it was, but he got to go up with NASA.

Um, and and and people asked him, What were you thinking while you're up there?

And he responded by saying, All I could think was about that hymn I learned as a kid, and someone we sang earlier this morning, How great thou art.

He was just filled with awe and wonder that was beyond anything he could describe.

Uh, and that that beauty of creation, that question of, you know, like there's these wonderful unfolding questions that feel like they have no end.

Why is there something rather than nothing?

It's a great question.

Is nothing something?

I mean, I mean, I don't know.

I guess.

But some questions that we can never get to the end of.

Uh, the beautiful, mysterious wonder, that the gift of of life itself, that that we are here, that we have a chance to love and know one another, to breathe and to be present in this space.

That is a gift.

You know, there are different understandings of who God is and and how all of this might have been ushered into existence.

But just the gift of life itself and its value.

There's no just a little wonder that we call it sacred.

Uh, Francis Collins stands in a long line of scientists who are also Christians.

Here's three doctors, Jennifer Wiseman, Deborah Harsma, Catherine Hale.

Um, they talk about how faith and science are not competing truths, but are different kinds of truths.

And there are folks that go back a long time.

Uh Gregor Mendel, uh, he was an Augustinian monk, so Saint Augustine, who I mentioned earlier from like around the year 300.

Uh Mendel, an Augustinian monk, uh, he helped establish modern genetics.

This next name I'm not going to be very good at pronouncing uh because it's French.

Uh George Lematre.

Uh, he helped develop the Big Bang Theory, a priest.

Uh, for us to be sold the false bill of goods, that that science and faith can't go together, it's to miss out on just recognizing the different kinds of truths that are revealed.

Uh, some of the examples here, uh, Dr.

Jennifer Weisman, she's from the Ozarks, y'all.

She's from Mountain Home, Arkansas.

Uh, she's an astrophysicist, a senior project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope at NASA.

Uh, she's what you might call uh a theistic uh evolutionist, so someone who believes that God created through evolution.

Uh Deborah Harsma, an astrophysicist, also a philosopher of religion.

Catherine Hayo, she studies climate change and she helps us understand the effects of climate change, but her faith component, she says, how are we responsible ethically in this moment of climate change?

So it's not just understanding what's going on, but how do our values inform what we do?

Because science and faith, they're asking different questions.

Science is really good at answering questions that can be investigated through observation, through experimentation, through evidence, through repeatable testing.

Science asks important questions.

Science asks, how does this work?

What causes this?

What happens under these conditions?

Can we observe it?

Can we measure it?

Can we reproduce it?

And science has given us extraordinary answers.

But there are also other questions that science cannot answer, that are beyond that is beyond the purview of scientific inquiry.

Things you can't put in a laboratory.

What is love?

Should I forgive?

Why is cruelty wrong?

What makes life meaningful?

What gives life value and progress?

Should I care for my immigrant neighbor?

Is it okay that we have a wealth of resources?

You have historic rates of poverty?

What gives hope?

Why should I choose compassion?

These are just different kinds of questions.

You can't put forgiveness under a microscope, you can't weigh compassion on a scale, you can't measure love in a test tube.

It doesn't make those things unreal or untrue or imaginary.

It just makes them a different kind of truth.

Faith in science, it's about engaging the world in different ways.

Science helping us understand the world we can observe, and faith helping us wrestle with questions related to meaning, value, purpose, relationship, mystery.

Not competing truths, different kinds of truths.

And these truths are ever unfolding, thanks be to God.