Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor Sermon Podcast
Science and Faith at the Crossroads of Creation (Part Four): The Biblical Creation Story (Ken Wilson)
Science and Faith at the Crossroads of Creation (Part Four): The Biblical Creation Story as Told to the Society of Evolutionary Biologists (Ken Wilson) :: September 30 - October 1, 2006
We're in a little series called Science and Faith at the Crossroads of Creation and there are outlines for today's session on the sound board back there. So your place for sound doctrine right back there on the sound board. We've also got full article length write-ups of the previous sermon. So last week's sermon is all written up also on the sound board back there as well as Don's Excellent Sermon two weeks ago is written up back there so you can go get that any time and hang with us. The story of Faith at the Crossroads of Creation, I've actually gotten quite a bit of them surprisingly. Positive feedback about this series, I wondered about it beforehand but what really moved me though was last weekend after the 11 o'clock service. A 53 year old man came up to me, shook my hand, said thanks for the series, it was this issue of science that kept me away from God and away from church for 20 years and I really missed those 20 years and as he said that his lower lip began to quiver, his face became flushed, the water works began and he was just beside himself with regret for the 20 years he spent away from God over this particular stumbling block and he actually, right out on the lobby he just, we hugged and he left the lobby still overcome with that sorrow. Now today by popular demand, albeit my own, I'm to tell the story of creation and new creation as though I were a missionary speaking to the Society of Evolutionary Biologists. I have provided you the listener with a role play fact sheet, do you have that in your possession, the role play fact sheet, if not raise your hand, we'll make sure to get one for you so that you can put yourself into the mind frame of my intended audience, forgive me if my tone is lectureally but this is after all the Society of Academics then you are all members of this society whose views are as follows. This is the most powerful story you've encountered, I'm simply reading from your fact sheet to make sure you do. The most powerful story you've ever encountered, the source of much good in the world and much wonder as you study it. You're also good at it and that's a wonderful feeling to be good at something. You especially enjoy the thrill of discovery stumbling into what wasn't previously known before. You have a general distrust toward religion which you see as the source of much evil in the world, in your view the more strongly religious a person is, the more intolerant and even dangerous they seem to become. When you run into people who are distrustful of science you discover it as often for religious reasons. In fact the more a person speaks of a personal relationship with Jesus the more likely they are to doubt the value of what you do for a living. You're intrigued by the prospect of a personal experience of God but the associated posture of protest toward mainstream science makes you feel that people who think like you do aren't likely to end up as the friends of such a deity. Whether God exists or not is beyond you. You hope so but you don't have much hope of finding out with the current data. Here's what you believe based on the evidence of science concerning the emergence of life. All life is related in the great tree of life with a common root. Life began on earth mysteriously about 4 billion years ago whether it was seeded by life begun on another planet or emerged from scratch here you don't know but you're dying you're dying to find out. Life was marked by the remarkable new ability to make copies of itself to replicate according to kind. In the early stages life took relatively simple forms like bacteria over vast periods of time it became more diverse including increasingly complex forms along with the simple ones. How did this process unfold? It all boils down to information copied and passed down in the genetic code embedded in the DNA of our genes. Mostly the copies of DNA are very accurate to an incredible degree in fact but occasionally once in a million data bits there are changes in the copy compared to the original. The slight variation in the copy compared to the original is called a mutation. In fact on average each person's DNA contains about 60 such variations compared to the information passed on by their parents. Most variations are inconsequential and simply exist without hurting the body in which the code is embedded. Very rarely the variation hinders the body or even keeps it from surviving and even more rarely still it's a slight improvement allowing the body in which it's embedded to adapt more effectively to its environment because populations of a species become more like the individuals within it who breed the most. The rare improvements in DNA tend to get passed along at a higher rate. The process that, oh you're turning the page as if you're actually reading along. I feel wonderful. The process that allows for slight variations in the copies of the DNA mutations can't be predicted by science. From the perspective of science they just happen. Therefore the copy variations are called random. If it weren't for the possibility that some copying variations could be useful to the body as it adapts to its environment species would be in even bigger trouble because over long periods of time environments change in what work to the old environment doesn't work in the new. Evolutionary biologists call this adaptation. There's no doubt that from its very humble and mysterious beginnings life has been wonderfully adapted to a changing environment and as human beings we are exhibit A in that adaptive process. The entire process is called evolution. It's your bread and butter. It's unrelentingly conservative. As long as something works it continues but it's also unrelentingly progressive because over vast stretches of time it allows life to adapt to new environmental challenges. As an evolutionary biologist you view evolution as a thing of immense scale and beauty. It helps you make sense of the world around you and is the source even of what some might call religious wonder. That in the beginning information gave birth to energy which gave birth to matter which over billions of years and against incredible odds gave birth to organic life which over more vast stretches of time produced a form of life which is aware of itself and has the capacity even to look back and understand something of how this billions year old universe unfolded. That's what you believe. So thank you for the time you give me today to share the biblical story of creation and new creation with you. I'm amazed by the humility of the society of evolutionary biologists that a pastor in these days of culture war would be invited to speak at one of your plenary sessions. I'd like to match the humility of your invitation with a little humble pie of my own. I wish to apologize for the way we Christians too many of us have responded to your findings about the development of life on planet earth. I have to admit that many of us have failed to love you by not listening to your story as well as we would want you to listen to ours. This is in direct violation of our founder's golden rule do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The sad fact is many of us have tried to share our story with you by attacking yours. This is not an authentic part of our tradition. When Charles Darwin first published the origin of species many of his peers didn't buy his theory but Asa Gray a botanist from Harvard and a devout follower of Jesus came to be convinced that Darwin's theory had merit and so Gray became Darwin's advocate in the United States while maintaining his own devout faith. Gray had in fact had a long correspondence with Charles Darwin who struggled over the question of God's existence because of the suffering he experienced in his own family. Many others including the biblical author of the book of Job struggled over how a good God could allow such awful suffering it seems so unfair. I'm also encouraged by B.B. Warfield no relation to B.B. King a devout follower of Jesus in the 19th century who founded a movement called biblical inerrancy in fact. Warfield also believed that faith in Jesus and love for his book was compatible with the findings of Charles Darwin. There have been many others including most recently Dr. Francis Collins head of the Genome Project who sees no incompatibility with a theory of evolution and an ardent faith and devotion to Jesus and his book the Bible. I'm encouraged especially though by an early disciple of Jesus named Paul who showed us how to tell our story without attacking the story of others. Now I'm assuming that as participants in this symposium you may not have brought your Bibles with you today and so I'm going to read from mine and let you read on the screen from Acts chapter 17 while Paul was waiting for them in Athens he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and Godfearing Greeks as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happen to be there. A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked what is his babbler trying to say? Others remarked he seems to be advocating foreign gods. They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. Then they took him and brought him into a meeting of the Ariapagos where they said to him, "May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? You're bringing some strange ideas to our ears and we'd like to know what they mean. All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest new ideas." The gospel itself was a new idea, it was a new teaching and so it was often misunderstood by well-meaning people. Even today it is new being rooted as it is in a kingdom not of this world and thus beyond the powerful lens of the scientific method to pin down. Anything beyond our current lenses is new. In the grand scheme of things, evolutionary science is also a new teaching so we have that in common. We both know what it is like to be misunderstood, let's hope for better days in that regard. Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Ariapagos and said, "People of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription to an unknown God. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship and this is what I am going to proclaim to you now." Being a person of the book, Paul valued education. Athens was a university town known for its love of learning, in fact it was their love of new teachings that gave Paul the opportunity to share his. Paul approached the Athenians as we can see respectfully. He complimented them for their sincere quest for truth, for their being religious. He refers to the Athenian God simply as objects of worship. Now as a Jewish man, his nation under pagan rule, a man I would say temper mentally wired to enjoy a good argument. He might have gone into a tirade, but he chose not to because it's hard to perceive the gospel as good news when people are yelling at you and Paul understood that. Like Jesus before him, Paul was looking for common ground with those on the outside of faith looking in. All communication begins with common ground and the news that Paul brought was of a God eager to communicate with those of us on the outside looking in. Let's finish the episode in Athens. "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything. Rather he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations that they should inhabit the whole earth. And he marked out their appointed times and histories in the boundary of their lands. God did this so they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he's not far away from any one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, we are his offspring. Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image made by human design and skill. In the past God overlooks such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has said a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead. So Paul finds at another point of agreement with his listeners, the stoic philosophers agreed with him that God does not live in temples made by hands. Paul even quotes one of these philosophers when he said for in him we live and move and have our being. And he quoted one of their poets who said we are his offspring. These were not Bible quotes at the time, but they found their way into sacred scripture through Paul. All of this to say, please accept my apologies on behalf of Christians who have failed to approach you as we would want to be approached ourselves, especially since it's our religious duty to listen to your stories as Paul listened to the stoic and Epicurean philosophers well enough to quote them and visited the Athenian shrines to understand them. It's our duty as Christians to look for the common ground between our story and the story of science. So let me try that now. Evolutionary biology as well as I understand it tells us that all life is related by common ancestry. This is a very foundation of evolutionary thought. This in fact is a profoundly biblical perspective. Our inspired creation text, not written in the age of science and thus not meant to be read as science, nevertheless holds much in common with your findings. All life is related and can be traced to a common ancestor, a common source who is in the ultimate sense God himself in the beginning, God. But only are we humans from God, but all creation is the work of his hands. Science tells us how integral, how essential is common ancestry, but it's there in these ancient accounts of creation as well. Evolutionary biology tells us that information is the key to life. Without the information embedded in the DNA packed into every cell of the body and all other living things, life could not exist. The creation text tells us the same thing, that the whole idea of information goes back to God himself. In the beginning, God said God created through information. In fact, Christians believe that the divine son who appeared as Jesus of Nazareth in space time has always been involved as the creative agent through information because he's known as the word, word being an expression of course, of information. In the beginning, God said let there be light. That's the sequence as well of the story of science, information, then energy, then energy organizes into matter and matter organizes into life and life adapts and becomes more diverse and more complex just as our ancient story tells us. Science in fact conclusively demonstrates that the more complex the life form, the later it's likely to have appeared and that we humans are very late arrivals in the universe just as in Genesis we arrive on the last day of creation and we humans, while profoundly related to all forms of life and the matter which in the biblical view is good and energy from which all matter organized yet we are uniquely adapted to the universe, perhaps not for long-term survival but at least for appreciating and understanding the universe. We are the only species so far as we know aware of ourselves in the universe. The only species aware of the vast extent of the universe, 13.5, give or take a few billion years old and still expanding. We're the only species able to ask so far as we know God, are you there? Can you imagine God's delight when we came along under his mysterious oversight beneath his mysterious hand working through the simple elegance of evolutionary process and let us never forget that our understanding of evolution itself is still evolving. As the ancient said in him we live and move and have our being for all things are in him through him and for him. This God in other words is too intimately involved and too infinitely beyond to pin down through the creation of our own hands which is what science is. This is the God of necessity who sets boundaries which we cannot cross and the God of freedom who shapes as a father and not as a puppet-maker would, incorporating our freedom and through redemption even our mistakes and the freedom of the physical realm itself into his purpose. In the biblical creation account God said, "Oh, this is very good when we appeared and he paused in his creative work because this is someone at long last in his image. With eternity embedded in their hearts who had a capacity to blink back at God and say, "Hello!" And how like him we are able to become co-creators with him through the mysterious and powerful capacity of information sharing through complex language and symbolic thought by which we can create rough drafts of reality in our minds that we work to implement and which can be shared across the species so we can pool our resources and things like science can proceed and we can begin to fathom a mechanism as simple, as ingenious, as evolution. We are also the first species to be held accountable for our actions so far as we know because we have a moral awareness, a sense of justice and we have failed from the beginning to live up to what we know to be most true. It began our story tells us with a breach of trust, nearly simultaneous with our uniquely human awareness. Instead of loving the God who was waiting 13.5 billion years for our arrival, we violated his trust reaching for knowledge we were not yet ready for. The great physicist, Oppenheimer, who worked on the Manhattan Project knows the tragedy that unfolds when we grasp for knowledge we are not ready for. It's been the ruin of us and may yet be the extinction of the species so this is a story this biblical one that absolutely pertains to our day. We are also the first species able to charge God with injustice. We are the first to feel how unfair life can be in this universe. Of all the baby turtles born on a beach perhaps 5% survive to eat their first meal. This creation as you biologists know has more losers than winners by far. Vision loss is bad enough but add the losses of all sentient creatures and the suffering is staggering. For every cat living safe and sound and a cat lovers home, there are 100 roaming in the streets ravaged by disease lucky to find a gently euthanized end at the Humane Society. Those who refuse to believe in a loving and purposeful God cite this reason more than any other. It was an evolution that turned Charles Darwin from a mild believer in God to a mild unbeliever. It was the problem of suffering. None of us has a single and direct ancestor who didn't survive long enough to sexsexfully breed, we know that thanks to evolutionary science and simple logic. The biblical term for this is overcomers. We are all of us the product of those who are overcomers biologically speaking. But the daughter of Charles Darwin died at the age of 10 and did not become an overcomer in the biological sense. When this loss was piled on top of other losses, his dear mother when he was only 8 years old and two other of his children. The story of evolution has nothing to say in the face of such loss. As one of your own poets has said, a man said to the universe, "Sir, I exist. That may be the universe replied, but it creates in me no sense of obligation." The story of evolution in the face of suffering can only say, "So what?" That may seem like enough understanding to live your life and to adapt to your environment, but we have a unique experience of our environment. We have a unique experience of our universe. We can't help but wonder if the universe itself is winking at us. We can't help noticing a shimmering transcendence of the gay, great happening, illimitably earth. The story of science as true and as powerful as it is and as useful is not enough to adapt as we long to adapt to the haunting beauty of life and our instinct to love and our craving for our eternity, our sense of wonder, our capacity to rail against injustice. From the God of the Bible, we receive no full explanation of suffering. There's a response to suffering but no full explanation. Yes, humans have brought a good bit of it by their own choices. That much is true, but our story tells us that evil was an operative mystery long before we hit the scene and long before we got into the habit of mistrusting God, feeling alienated from ourselves and one another and the world and its maker. Instead of an explanation, what we have is an amazing story based on amazing events in actual history centered on one of our own species, Jesus of Nazareth, who was, we believe, with God in the beginning, the word through whom he spoke and speaks still through all of life's information and the wisdom with God in the beginning, with God who danced with God and delighted as the creation unfolded before them. This same Jesus came fully into the realm of biology and the human experience and lived an extraordinary life of love and power, paying special attention to the losers, the outsiders, the exiles, the castaways. This Jesus died an awful death involving great suffering and such suffering as only a human being could suffer, the only one who knew intimacy with God as father because in his suffering he felt God's abandonment. And perhaps what you evolutionary biologists, thank you for coming, perhaps what you evolutionary biologists can help us to see is that he came not just for human suffering but for the suffering of the whole creation. St. Paul himself, without the benefit of evolutionary science, intuited this very reality I read from Romans 8. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. As you know better than most, there's a heavy cost to evolutionary process. There's an enormous amount of missing the mark of trying and failing of copying variations that don't help a body adapt to its environment. In fact the whole created order is a great mass of beauty and wonder and goodness but laced through, shot through with unbearable suffering for sentient creatures. His weight was felt in a very personal way by Darwin himself, whose beloved daughter Anas have already mentioned. His delight is pride and joy and his admittedly favorite daughter died at the age of ten before accomplishing Darwinian success without leaving a trace of her own DNA behind for successive generations. In despair we can understand how we lost hope in the future or in any purpose or in any design or in any ultimate victory for love. For that a lens beyond science is necessary, the lens called faith. The lens that sees in Jesus of not Nazareth God himself bearing in his own being the weight of all that suffering of the entire created order. We hold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. World in Greek means cosmos. The entire created order and sins also means not something beyond the, it's beyond a word for simply moral failure, it comes from the archers vocabulary, it means missing the mark. Through the lens of faith, in other words, not only bearing the unbearable weight of this suffering, the price of evolutionary process made even more costly by the price of human sin but perhaps taking it away. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. That cross being a tear in the fabric of space-time, a tear in the veil between what is and what is to come. The cross, both a great presence and a great absence, like a star collapsing upon itself and the intense gravity of that collapse forming a black hole at the center of space-time like the cruciform black hole at the center of the whirlpool galaxy, labeled M51, recently discovered by the Hubble telescope, not only bearing but taking away all the sins, all the mark missing of the world. Because the weakness of God confounds the best of human wisdom and the foolishness of God confounds the best of human strength. And on the third day he rose again, not his spirit lived on, but his dead body was transformed into the phase changed and transformed nature of the new, the coming creation, a sign of what is to become of this creation when it's run its course and the next big bang resounds throughout a new one. The physicists, your colleagues, who once argued with the miraculous can do so no longer. Physical reality is too mysterious and too fantastic to rule out the mysterious and the fantastic. It's not a closed system anymore but an open one with particles flying into and out of existence and no one able to predict what's going to happen next at the quantum level. The empty tomb of Jesus of Nazareth remains a sign of hope. Hope that the whole awful weight of creation is not a weight that we can or must bear alone a weight in fact that God bears with us and ultimately bears for us. That there is a place of such great presence and such great absence where the cost of evolutionary process and the cost of human failure is paid is taken away. The cost of Calvary rooted as it is in this age and in the age to come which brings us at long last to our place in all of this, our ecological niche in the vast universe. That niche I submit is not dominance, is not control through knowledge but surrender through knowledge what is also called worship. I read one of our songs from Psalm 148, praise the Lord, praise the Lord from the heavens, praise him in the heights above, praise him all his angels, praise him all his heavenly hosts, praise him sun and moon, praise him all you shining stars it's a creation sequence. Praise him you highest heavens and you waters above the skies. Let them praise the name of the Lord for he commanded and they were created. He set them in place forever he gave a decree that will never pass away. Praise the Lord from the earth. You great sea creatures and all ocean depths lightning and hail snow and clouds stormy winds that do his bidding. You mountains and all hills fruit trees and all cedars wild animals and all cattle small creatures and flying birds kings of the earth and all nations you princes and all rulers on earth young men maidens old men and children let them praise the name of the Lord for his name alone is exalted his splendor is above the earth and the heavens he has raised up for his people a horn a Messianic symbol the praise of all his saints of Israel the people close to his heart praise the Lord. We human beings have a significant role to play in this order of things because so far as we know at least in this neck of the cosmic fabric of space time we are the royal priesthood of creation the heavens the sun and the moon and the stars and the earth the mountains and the hills the fruit trees and the cedars the wild animals and the cattle are all called to praise but without us they have no voice we are the ones who give the voiceless creation a voice through us the dumb creation speaks wild energy is tamed and channeled inert matter becomes responsive and through us the God of creation whose creative embrace is the longest kiss thirteen billion years long is able to receive a kiss in return from the work of his hands this is who we are and this is what we are for amen if our worship band can come back up we will wow a good reception from the society maybe I will be invited back next year let us stand and not play a role that be ourselves for I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you that the Lord Jesus and the night he was betrayed took bread and when he had given thanks he broke it and said this is my body which is for you do this in remembrance of me likewise after suffering took the cup saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me for whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes God our creator God our maker we gather before you join one to another joined with the whole of creation and we lift up our voice and thanksgiving we lift up our voice and gratitude we lift up our voice and praise for your entry into our existence through your beloved son and for what he's done for us the sign he is to us of coming attractions and so we come as we are today because you are the real God and so you only receive the real us so receive us God in all our glory and in all our humility and all our beauty and in all our brokenness all that is wonderful about us and all that is hideous about us receive it all and transform it and plunge it under your awesome mercy through your powerful blood this we pray and this we we ask in Jesus precious name amen two rows down the center aisle and you come and receive [BLANK_AUDIO]