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Big Bang Faith – The Who Banged It Theory

April 17, 2012 by 1 Comment

Big Bang Faith

Big Bang Faith – The Who Banged It Theory
Sycamore Creek Church
April 15, 2012
Tom Arthur
Genesis 1:1

Peace Friends!

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.
~Richard Dawkins

Religion and science are incompatible, incongruent, and irreconcilable.
~Christopher Hitchens

So say the new atheists.  Science and faith just don’t go together.  Science is about truth.  Faith is about something else.  But is this really true? Are science and faith so incongruent after all?  Or do we need to divorce the two and get on with our lives?

I’d like to suggest to you over the next four weeks that science and faith are not in contradiction to one another.  Sometimes they overlap more than other times, but all in all, science and faith can not only coexist but thrive together.

Perhaps a quick analogy is in order.  Science asks the question How? Science tells us that a kettle boils because gas combusts with oxygen and releases energy in the form of heat.  But is this all that can be said about what’s going on here?  What about the Why?  A kettle boils so friends can sit down for a cup of tea.  Or in the case of one group of friends, a men’s tea party!  Can science answer the question of why a men’s tea party?

Men's Tea Party

Literal or Something Else?

Ok, let’s back up a bit.  Let’s go back to the very beginnings of the clash between science and faith.  Who do we go back to here?  Galileo.  Right?  The big controversy of the day was between Galileo’s teaching that the earth moved around the sun and the church’s teaching that the earth was the center and everything else moved around it.  Who was right?  Galileo.  OK, Galileo, the church was wrong.  We’re sorry.  Please forgive us.

Actually, in apologizing to Galileo we’re making an apology within the Christian community because Galileo was a Catholic and remained one (on house arrest).  He even saw that what he was doing was part of fulfilling God’s purposes for his life.  So when we, the church, apologize to Galileo, let’s remember that we’re apologizing to one of our own.  Just in case he missed it the first time: Galileo, we’re sorry.  We were wrong.  You were right.  Please forgive us.

Now let’s look at some of the scriptures that the church used to argue against Galileo:

The world is firmly established; it cannot be shaken.
Psalm 93:1 NLT

The sun rises at one end of the heavens and follows its course to the other end.|
Psalm 19:6 NLT

Does any Christian of any stripe or flavor today believe that these verses (and others like them) require us to believe that the Earth doesn’t move and that everything else (sun, stars, galaxies, etc.) revolves around the Earth?  No. I have never met even the most ardent fundamentalist who wants to hold that because these two verses are in the Bible that Christians must believe in an Earth-centered universe.  We have noticed since the time of Galileo that these verses are poetic in nature.  They are in the Psalms, a book of poetry!

So let’s look at another more contentious (by today’s standards) verse:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis 1:1 NLT

If we continue reading this we all know that the way the story goes, God created everything in six days and rested on the seventh.  The question before us then is this: is this story at the beginning of Genesis more like the poetry of the Psalms or is it more like the history of some other books of the Bible?

You may think that this is a question that has only arisen in modern times by modern Christians wrestling with science.  You would be wrong.  This is a live question throughout almost all of Christian history. Just to give you a taste of Christians who wrestled with this in much earlier times, here are two:

Now what man of intelligence will believe that the first, the second and the third day, and the evening and morning existed without the sun, moon, and stars?
Origin (2nd-3rd Century)

We do not read in the Gospel that the Lord said that I send to you the Paraclete [Holy Spirit] who will teach you about the course of the sun and the moon, for he wanted to make Christians and not mathematicians.
Augustine (4th-5th Century)

Did you catch that?  As early as the second century, Christians were thinking that Genesis chapter one is perhaps not to be taken literally.  So if not literally, then how are we to take Genesis’ creation story?  Here’s my educated guess at this point in my understanding of what is going on in Genesis’ creation story.

Genesis chapter one is a poetic account of God creating his very own temple.  The creation of this temple runs parallel to the creation of the tabernacle as it is told later in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible.  When someone creates a temple, what is the last thing that gets put in the temple?  The idol.  Right?  Interestingly enough, the word that is translated “idol” in other places in the Old Testament is translated “image” in Genesis.  Now who or what bears God’s image in creation?  Human beings are made in the image of God.  Creation is God’s temple, and we are God’s images, God’s idols, if you will.  Why is this important?  Because there is a political undertone, a subversive message in a story that says that all humanity (men and women) are made in God’s image.  Remember who was considered God’s image in ancient times?  The kings.  So if a story about creation suggests that the king isn’t the only one made in God’s image, whose power is that story undermining?  The king’s power!  So Genesis is a poetic story of God creating God’s temple and creating all of us as God’s image so that we wouldn’t forget that it’s not just the kings who matter to God.  Genesis’ creation story is less a science book and more a political manifesto.

The Big Bang Theory

Christians have often considered there to be two books by which we learn about God.  The first book is of course the Bible.  We’ve been looking at that book so far.  But there’s another book: the book of creation.  Science is the study of this book.  Science does its best to answer the question of How? when it comes to describing the book of creation.  It should be obvious but let me say it anyway, all truth is God’s truth no matter where you find it.  When you find truth in science, it is God’s truth.  When you find truth in people who aren’t Christians, it is God’s truth.  When you find truth in the Bible, it is God’s truth.  All truth is God’s truth.  Science is an exploration of the truth about creation.

Science tells the story of the beginning of creation in a different way than the book of Genesis tells it.  The title of Science’s story is often called the big bang theory.  In a nutshell, science has shown mathematically how the universe is expanding.  If you take those trajectories and run them backwards, you end up with what science calls a singularity: the moment when all matter is condensed into a single point.  It all had a beginning.

Did you know that the first person to prove this idea mathematically was a Belgian Catholic priest named Georges Lemaître?  Yes, it was a Christian who first proved the Big Bang!  Lemaître even went head to head with Einstein on this.  Einstein said, “Your math is right, but your physics are abhorrent.”  In the end Lemaître won that argument.

Not only did Lemaître win that argument with Einstein, but he also took his information to Pope Pius XI.  This was so compelling to Pope Pius that he proclaimed the big bang theory as compatible with Christian faith.  Pope Pius was more confident than Lemaître about this.  Lemaître was concerned that should his math or physics be proven wrong, then the faith would be disgraced by the Pope’s public proclamation.  Well, in the end neither Lemaître nor the Pope proved to be wrong and the vast majority of physicists believe that the big bang theory is a correct way to describe the beginnings of the universe.

One very interesting piece of science that goes along with the big bang theory is what some physicists call the anthropic principle.  “Anthropic” means human-centered. Here’s how it works: There are six fundamental constants of matter that allow human life to exist because they are exceptionally fine-tuned.

Let’s look at one of those constants called Lambda or sometimes “dark matter.”  Lambda is the parameter which controls the long-range acceleration of the expansion of the universe in relativity.  Did you catch that?  Neither did I.  But basically it has to do with how fast the universe expands from that moment of singularity in the big bang.  The value of lambda is a factor of 10-120.  That’s a one with a hundred and twenty zeros following it.  If lambda were a shade off one way or another, human life could not exist.

So how improbable is it that lambda and these other five universal constants are so finely tuned?  Just to have one of them so finely tuned would be would be equal to “getting the mix of flour and sugar right to within one grain of sugar in a cake ten times the mass of the sun” (Tony Hewish as quoted by Polkinghorne).  Or consider making a hole-in-one on the golf course.  The current record is 448 yards.  The fine-tuning of one of these constants would be like hitting a hole in one teeing off from Pluto times thirteen!  Put all these together, and I’ve heard it described this way: It’s like a tornado blowing through a junk yard and creating a fully functioning 747.  The probability of these things happening as they have is beyond minute.  The universe is exceptionally fine-tuned to support human life.  Did it just happen that way?  Or were the dice loaded?

A Strange World

The world is stranger than we all thought.  In some ways it’s stranger than we could have ever imagined.  Quantum theory has shed a strange light on what we know about the way the universe works.  Classical physics, the brain-child of Isaac Newton (who was a Christian), attempted to describe mathematically the way that objects move, but as we began to be able to see ever smaller and smaller objects (protons, electrons, quarks, and now bosons, nick-named “the God particle”), physicists noticed that they didn’t move the way that classical physics said they should.  Things are weird at the subatomic level.  Matter and energy act like both waves and particles.  Werner Heisenberg developed his famous Heisenberg uncertainty principle: you can know where something is going or where it is but not both at the same time!  In fact if you shoot an electron at a wall with two openings on it and record where it goes, you’ll notice something strange: it appears to have gone through both openings!  String theorists think that the electron going from point A to point B takes every possible path to get there.  This means that every possibility is possible.  And this has led some physicists, like Stephen Hawking, to believe in a multiverse: multiple universes where every possibility plays out at least once.

Faith Seeking Understanding

The world is definitely even stranger than you can imagine.  And yet when I read about these developments, I am inclined to simply be more and more in awe of God.  I don’t see the progression of scientific knowledge as antithetical to my faith.  I see it as informing my faith in a very interesting and dynamic conversation.  And I’m not the only one.  One scientist I have learned a lot from is John Polkinghorne.  Polkinghorne was professor of Mathematical physics at the University of Cambridge from 1968 to 1979 before he left his endowed chair to become a priest.  Now he spends his time lecturing and writing about the intersection of faith and science.  I listened to his introductory textbook , A Short Introduction to Quantum Theory, while preparing for this series.  It’s not a book about faith or God. In fact God never comes up in the book.  It is a basic text book for upper-level physics classes, or perhaps physics for non-physicists.

Polkinghorne is a theoretical physicist scientist through and through, and yet in his book he told the story of researchers finding the positron.  The positron is a subatomic particle the size of an electron (much smaller than a proton) but positively charged.  No one even looked for this particle until a new radical theory suggested it should be there.  So researchers went about looking for it and found it.  They even went back to old experiments and noticed that it could be seen there too.  Polkinghorne comments that “researchers tend not to notice things they aren’t looking for.”

Several hundreds of years earlier, Augustine said basically the same thing: “Therefore do not seek to understand in order to believe, but believe that thou mayest understand.”  We tend to think that you have to understand before you can believe, but as the search for the positron shows, sometimes you have to believe before you can see or understand it.  Anselm, a Christian scholar writing in the eleventh century wrote a book called, Faith Seeking Understanding.  In it he suggests that Christians should seek understanding about God and our world from a foundation of faith.  There is a kind of humility in both Augustine and Anselm.  It is a humility that recognizes that we don’t know everything.  Our knowledge is and always will be finite.

Christians can learn from science and science can learn from Christians.  Science seeks to answer the question of How?  And faith seeks to answer the question of Why?  Why is there something rather than nothing?  And that brings us back full circle to that men’s tea party.  I’m not so interested in how this exists, but why does it exist?

Men's Tea Party

For Further Exploration
www.testoffaith.com
John Polkinghorne – Questions of Truth
John Lennox – Seven Days that Define the World

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Prayers that Stick – OMG

March 19, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Prayers that Stick

Prayers that Stick – OMG (Prayers of Wonder)
Sycamore Creek Church
March 18, 2012
Tom Arthur
Psalm 148

Peace Friends!

Have you ever been totally overwhelmed with wonder for God’s creation?  Completely in a state of awe?  A couple of years ago Hungrybear9562 uploaded a video of just such a moment to You Tube, which has since become known as the double rainbow video.

You can hear Hungrybear9562, also known as Paul Vasquez, say several times in the video, “Oh my God!”  I don’t think that his statement is really a literal cry out to God, but there’s no reason why it couldn’t be.  The shorter, OMG, also isn’t usually used in our culture as a real prayer, but literally it is.  It’s a cry of wonder and awe at the creation of God.

Today we’re continuing a series called Prayers that Stick, by looking at prayers of wonder and awe, particularly wonder and awe at creation.  Have you ever heard someone pray or prayed yourself in a way that just didn’t stick.  It didn’t seem like it stuck with you and you wondered if it even stuck with God.  In this series we’re exploring the prayers in the book of Psalms, and we think these are prayers that stick, both with us and with God.  Last week we looked at Psalm 103, a prayer of praise.  Today we look at Psalm 148, a prayer of wonder and awe at creation.  So let’s begin with the psalm.

Psalm 148 NLT
Praise the LORD!
Praise the LORD from the heavens!
Praise him from the skies!
Praise him, all his angels!
Praise him, all the armies of heaven!
Praise him, sun and moon!
Praise him, all you twinkling stars!
Praise him, skies above!
Praise him, vapors high above the clouds!
Let every created thing give praise to the LORD,
for he issued his command, and they came into being.
He established them forever and forever.
His orders will never be revoked.

Praise the LORD from the earth,
you creatures of the ocean depths,
fire and hail, snow and storm,
wind and weather that obey him,
mountains and all hills,
fruit trees and all cedars,
wild animals and all livestock,
reptiles and birds,
kings of the earth and all people,
rulers and judges of the earth,
young men and maidens,
old men and children.
Let them all praise the name of the LORD.
For his name is very great;
his glory towers over the earth and heaven!
He has made his people strong,
honoring his godly ones —
the people of Israel who are close to him.
Praise the LORD!

All Inclusive Praise of Wonder and Awe

Did you notice the all inclusive language of praise in the psalm?  It’s as if Hungrybear9562 is standing before a double rainbow shouting out, “Let every created thing give praise to the LORD.”

Now the all inclusive language of Psalm 148 shouldn’t really surprise us.  Throughout the entire Bible God shows care and interest in all of creation, not just humans.  In Genesis after the flood, God tells Noah, “Yes, this is the sign of my covenant with all the creatures of the earth” (Genesis 9:17 NLT).  “With all the creatures of the earth.”  God didn’t just make a covenant after the flood with humans, but with every living creature too.

Then in the story of Jonah there’s a very unusual ending.  After Jonah has run from God’s call to preach to Nineveh, been swallowed by a whale, gives in and goes to preach to Nineveh, Nineveh repents and changes their ways, and God is merciful and forgives them, Johan is a little upset. He didn’t want to go to Nineveh in the first place because he knew that God was merciful.  He hated the people of Nineveh more than he loved God’s mercy.  So Jonah is upset with God for being merciful.  God responds saying, “And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” (Jonah 4:11 NLT).  That’s the last line in the book of Jonah.  And that’s the last word in the book of Jonah too.  “Animals.”  God is concerned not only with the people of Nineveh but also the “many animals”!

Then the last psalm, Psalm 150, says, “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.”  In other words, all living creatures.  Humans and animals.  So it seems from all these examples that animals and humans both praise God in some way or another, and both are important to God.

But Psalm 148 takes this all inclusive praise of God a step further.  Did you catch it?  Psalm 148 says that not only do all creatures stand in wonder and awe of God and praise God, but all creation!  Animate and inanimate alike!

There are three movements to the poetry of Psalm 148.  The first in verses one through six is a praise of wonder from the heavens.  The second in verses seven through ten is a praise of wonder from the earth.  The third and last in verses eleven through fourteen is a praise of wonder from humans.  Including all three of these realms right alongside both animals and humans, we see the sun, moon, stars, vapors, clouds, fire, hail, snow, storm, wind, weather, mountains, fruit trees, and cedars all praising God in wonder and awe.  OMG!

Creation’s Praise

The question immediately comes to my mind: How does creation praise God?  How does creation stand in wonder and awe of God?  I think there are two ways that creation praises God in wonder and awe.

First, we recognize the creator in creation, and we praise the creator having been prompted by creation to do so.  We give creation the words that it lacks.  Psalm 19 says, “The heavens tell of the glory of God. The skies display his marvelous craftsmanship.”  We look at creation, and we see God’s fingerprints all over it and we say, “OMG!”

Second, and a step deeper into who creation praises God, is that regardless of whether we recognize creation’s praise or not, God recognizes it.  You might put the question this way: If a tree stands in a wood and no one is there to see it, does it still praise God?  The answer to that question is, “Yes.  Because God still sees it.”  Creation brings God joy.  It is God’s temple.  In the creation story of Genesis we read that every day of creation, God sees what God has done and exclaims, “This is good!”  Then on the last day of rest, God looks over all that God has created and says, “This is really good!”  God enjoys and delights in creation whether we do or not.  OMG!

Why is this?  Why does God delight in creation?  That is a deep mystery but maybe we catch a glimpse of the answer when we read the first chapter of the book of John in the New Testament.  There we read that Jesus, the Word/Reason/Intellect of God “created everything there is. Nothing exists that he didn’t make” (John 1:3-4 NLT).  Maybe God the Father looks at creation and delights in it because God the Father sees the fingerprints of the son all over it.

On Valentine’s Day this year I got a very special card.  It was the first drawing I received from my son, Micah, who is almost a year and a half old right now.  My wife gave him some crayons for the first time and he made some marks and lines on a piece of paper.  She spruced it up and wrote his name next to some of the lines so that I would know which ones were his lines.  Those lines sang praises to me because in them I recognized the love I have for my son.  Maybe God the Father looks at creation and recognizes in it the love he shares with the son.

Creation praises God not just because we recognize its creator and we praise God for it, but also because God recognizes the love of the Son in it and it brings joy to God.  OMG!

Creation Care

This kind of prayer sticks to us in some unique ways.  I think this kind of prayer pushes us to live differently, to pay special attention to caring for God’s creation and the creation’s praise of God.

Notice in verse five and thirteen of Psalm 148 that the psalmist begins saying, “Let them…praise.”  Don’t hinder them.  Don’t get in the way of creation praising God.  Don’t you dare take that Valentine’s Card from Micah away from me!  The psalmist is speaking to us in those verses.  Do not hinder creation from praising God.  OMG!

I think there are three reasons that compel us to care for (I’m not talking about worshiping, but caring for) creation.  First, it is an expression of your love for your  neighbor.  Creation points others to God and to praise God.  Here at SCC we like to talk about helping people connect to God.  Creation’s praise is a very significant way that we connect with God.  Paul, the great early missionary of the church, said to the Christians in Rome, “From the time the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky and all that God made. They can clearly see his invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse whatsoever for not knowing God” (Romans 1:20 NLT).  When people look at creation, they see and understand that a divine power exists, and it puts within them a longing to know that divinity.  They look at creation and say, OMG!

Second, caring for creation is also about taking care of ourselves and our neighbor.  It is about serving our neighbor, because we all are dependent upon creation.  I recently read about research in Mexico City, one of the most polluted cities in the world, on the effects of pollution on the brain.  Did you know that smog can have negative effects on your brain?  We love our neighbor and serve them by caring for creation.  It’s the basic Golden Rule, “Do for others as you would like them to do for you” (Luke 6:31 NLT)

Third, caring for creation is also about growing in your own love for God.  Because our creator delights in creation, when we delight in creation by caring for it, we are taking on the character of God.  We are becoming more like God.

Proverbs says, “The godly care for their animals, but the wicked are always cruel” (Proverbs 12:10 NLT).  Which one do you want to be?  Godly or wicked?  “Let them all praise the name of the LORD” (Psalm 148:13 NLT).  OMG!

Living Differently

So this prayer of awe and wonder compels us to live differently, to live in a way that cares for creation.  Let me make some practical suggestions about how to do this.

First, live simply.  Consume less.  I recently took an online inventory at www.myfootprint.org that calculates how many acres it takes to support my lifestyle.  Then it multiples that by the number of people on earth and tells you how many earths it would take to support everyone living the way I lived.  My footprint equals 4.26 earths!  Yikes!  So how do I consume less?

Eat lower on the food chain, it consumes less energy and saves that food for others.  It takes three pounds of grain to produce one pound of chicken and thirteen pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef.  Eat local and in season.  Much of the food we eat is shipped 1500 miles to get to your table.  Fresh pineapple in March probably produced a lot of smog on the way to your stomach.  Tending a garden in your backyard guarantees that you eat local.  Better yet, start a community garden amongst your neighbors.  Garden without all the chemicals.  Get rid of the pesticides and fertilizers.  Go organic.

Use less energy.  Consider walking or biking instead of driving.  Try riding the bus from time to time.  The next time you buy a car, buy one that gets better gas mileage.   Turn off your lights.  Turn off your computers when you’re not using them.  Use less water.  Take shorter showers.  Turn the water off while you’re brushing your teeth.

Buy used rather than new, and don’t buy anything unless your old stuff is worn out and needs replacing.  We’ve gotten so used to having to have the newest and latest and most fashionable thing, that we’ve ignored the impact that all this newness has on creation.  It takes a lot of resources to keep producing all that new stuff.  And where does the old stuff go?  Into landfills.  Recycle what you can.  Coming up is our local Recycle-Rama.  Save up all your hard-to-recycle stuff throughout the year (Styrofoam, corks, appliances, plastic, books, CFLs, oil and grease, and all kinds of other stuff www.lansingrecycles.com) and bring it in.  Consider volunteering for this event.

Go back to the basics of kindergarten and share your stuff: your toys, your tools, your home.  My neighbor Paul shares his snow blower with us.  Why do we both need snow blowers?  I share my gardening tools with everyone in my community garden.  I’ve got lots of backpacking and camping equipment.  If you’re interested, don’t buy new stuff.  Just borrow it from me.  I have friends in Petoskey who share their boats with me.  That’s the best way to own a boat!

Lastly, get out and enjoy creation.  Turn off the “vast wasteland” of TV and the internet and go outside.  Play.  Wonder.  Be in awe.  Meditate on creation.  One great way to meditate on creation is to make art.  Forget about trying to make good art.  Enjoy the process.  I’m not a painter.  I don’t make great paintings.  But when I go backpacking, I like to bring paints with me.  It slows me down.  I notice all kinds of things about creation that I wouldn’t have noticed by trying to replicate it on paper: the way the light and shadows fall on a blade of grass, the way the wind blows across a lake, the way dune grass dances in the wind.  And now we’re back to enjoying creation and taking on the character of God.  When you enjoy creation you connect with God.  You pray to God.  A prayer that sticks.  Let all creation praise the LORD.  OMG!

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The Big Story

February 14, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The Big Story.  I love this.  It includes creation and community as part of redemption.  This is an “update” of the classic “four spiritual laws”, which have been critiqued for having no description or need of the church and being very individualistic.  This is anything but individualistic.  Check it out…

 

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Christmas String Theory

December 24, 2011 by Leave a Comment

I am always amazed and deeply in wonder of our world.  This little video by Dr. Kaku, the co-founder of string-theory and the Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics at the City University of New York (CUNY), does a great job of explaining some pretty complex ideas.  If he’s right and there are multiple universes, a somewhat mind-blowing idea, why can’t we also believe that God became a baby at Christmas, a mind-blowing idea?

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Four Circles Story

August 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Of all the “tracts” that describe the four spiritual laws, this is probably my favorite.  I like how it includes the entirety of creation.

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The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking

June 21, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The Grand DesignThe Grand Design
By Stephen Hawking
Audio Book
Library (Audio/Book)
Rating: 7 of 10

If you’re looking for an accessible book that brings you up to speed on the current state of physics and what physics has to teach us about the beginning of the universe (cosmology), then this is your book.  While Hawking probably makes this stuff about as easy to understand as anyone would, it still isn’t always easy.  Sometimes the material was flying over my head, or past my ears.  Still, the book is very short (four CDs in the audio version), and after this quick read you come away more amazed at the beauty and complexity of our universe.

Let me give you just a little taste of some of the things Hawking explains (assuming I understood them correctly!).  First, Hawking points out that current quantum mechanics holds that when a subatomic particle moves from point A to point B it takes every possible route to get there.  Yikes!  That’s a lot of movement.  I walked away from this description scratching my head, but also a lot more in awe of the creation.

Second, Hawking explains that current M Theory (no one is really sure what the “M” stands for but maybe, Hawking says, it stands for “mystery”) allows for an infinite number of universes in an infinite number of dimensions.  Hawking goes on to point out that the “anthropic principle” (the idea that our universe is uniquely fine tuned to allow for life) becomes less remarkable when one considers an infinite number of opportunities for fine-tuning.  If the multiple universes theory is correct (it seems there is still significant debate around the issue) and because the anthropic principle has been used to defend the existence of God from creation’s fine-tuning for life, then theologians and Christian who are scientists will have some more creative work cut out for them to integrate this idea with belief in God’s existence.  God’s creation is even more magnificent than we ever understood.

This book is probably not for everyone, but if you’re an armchair cosmologist (someone who studies the beginning of the universe; not to be confused with a cosmetologist who studies beauty, fashion, and style!), The Grand Design is a must read.

Currently Reading/Listening
Generation to Generation by Edwin H. Friedman
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Phillip Pullman
Love Wins by Rob Bell
Exponential by Dave and Jon Ferguson
The Organic Lawn Care Manual by Paul Boardway Tukey
Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer
Sacred Parenting by Gary Thomas
The Busy Family’s Guide to Spirituality by David Robinson
Parenting with Purpose by Oddbjorn Evenshaug, Dag Hallen, and Roland Martinson
At the Still Point compiled by Sarah Arthur

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Exposure in Creation

February 21, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Exposure in Creation
Sycamore Creek Church
Song of Songs 4:1-7
Tom Arthur
February 20, 2011

Peace, Friends!

Exposure.  That simple word has several different meanings.  Exposure can be a disclosure of something secret.  It can also mean vulnerability to the elements or being in a general state of vulnerability.  Today we continue our series on the Song of Songs called Exposure, and we’ll be exposing the Song of Songs through the lens of its second meaning: vulnerability to the elements.

Over the centuries Christians have tended to debate about the Song of Songs.  Early in history, before the sexual revolution of the 60s, Christians tended to be very uncomfortable with the eroticism of the Song of Songs.  Why is that in the Bible?  So they allegorized everything and made the book all about God’s love for God’s people.  They exposed Song of Songs through a spiritual lens.  So then came the 60s, and today commentators want to say that the Song of Songs is all about sex.  They expose the Song of Songs through a literal lens.  Which one is right?  I’m not sure this is a helpful question.

I love photography.  I studied it extensively while in college, and one of the things I came to realize is that you can take a picture and expose it three or more different ways and get multiple different images.  Which one is right?  That’s probably not the right question to be asking.  Rather, what do we see more clearly in one that we don’t see in another?  What comes to the foreground and what recedes to the background?

In the same way, Song of Songs can be exposed at least three different ways: literally, morally, and spiritually.  Through the literal lens, we learn something about sex.  That’s what we did last week.  We learned that sex is faithful, equal, emotional, physical, and spiritual.  Through the spiritual lens, which we’ll be looking through next week, we learn something about God’s love.  Today we’re going to be exposing the Song of Songs through a moral lens, and we’ll learn something about creation.  Song of Songs is definitely about sex, but it’s also about a whole lot more.

Peace with Creation

Let’s go back to the beginning of the Bible for a moment.  In Genesis we run into what is usually called The Fall.  Adam and Eve disobey God and eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  There are three consequences of The Fall.  The first is that there is a brokenness between Adam and Eve and all lovers and spouses who follow them.  Then there is a brokenness in creation.  Lastly, there is a distance that forms between humanity and God.

Through each of these exposures of the Song of Songs, we find a correction and healing to the brokenness and sin of The Fall.  Through the literal exposure of Song of Songs, we see a healing in the exposure between husband and wife.  In the spiritual reading we see an intimacy and vulnerability between God and humanity.  And in the moral reading we see a delight and peace with creation.

We can see the effects of The Fall all around us in creation.  I asked Lori Miller, a member of our church who works for the City of Lansing’s Capital Area Recycling and Trash what were some of the ways that we are vulnerable to the elements of pollution in creation right here in Lansing?  She pointed out several to me.  For those who live along heavy traveled corridors like Pennsylvania and Cedar, there’s exposure to exhaust and the pollutants that get into the soil along those streets.  There’s the greenhouse gas emissions that BWL’s coal power plants create.  If you live in an older home there’s the potential for exposure to asbestos, lead paint, and radon.  Then there’s the landfills.  She told me that while landfills have improved significantly over the years, there is no 100% safe  landfill.  When we throw especially tech trash into the landfill the contaminants in our electronics and computers will eventually make their way into the environment.  Getting more specific, she pointed me to the Motor Wheel Landfill on the north side of Lansing on High Street.  This was a pre-regulated landfill that has contaminated the ground water.  She also pointed me to the Adams Plating sight on the west side on Rosemary Street which has contaminated the soil with chromium.  Chromium causes all kinds of problems with health including skin, lung, immune system, kidney, and liver problems.  It also causes cancer.  She did say that this site has been stabilized and that there are no immediate risks because the soil has been cleaned up.  But still, you walk outside your house (or stay in it), and you’re exposed to the broken and polluted elements of creation.

In contrast to this experience of creation, Song of Songs presents an image of delight and peace with creation:

Song of Songs 4:1-7 (NLT)

Young Man: “How beautiful you are, my beloved, how beautiful! Your eyes behind your veil are like doves. Your hair falls in waves, like a flock of goats frisking down the slopes of Gilead. Your teeth are as white as sheep, newly shorn and washed. They are perfectly matched; not one is missing. Your lips are like a ribbon of scarlet. Oh, how beautiful your mouth! Your cheeks behind your veil are like pomegranate halves — lovely and delicious. Your neck is as stately as the tower of David, jeweled with the shields of a thousand heroes. Your breasts are like twin fawns of a gazelle, feeding among the lilies. Before the dawn comes and the shadows flee away, I will go to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of frankincense. You are so beautiful, my beloved, so perfect in every part.

This is God’s story for us today.  Thank you, God!

Peace with the Land

So what is this?  Isn’t it just an erotic poem?  Yes it is that.  It’s actually a very specific kind of poem.  It’s called a “wasf” and was used by many different kinds of poets in the culture of its day.  The poet attempts to connect the emotional experience of different body parts with the emotional experience of different moments in creation.  Does it sound a little strange?  It shouldn’t.  Our modern day poets do the same thing.  Consider John Denver’s song, Annie’s Song.  He sings:

You fill up my senses
like a night in the forest
like the mountains in springtime,
like a walk in the rain
like a storm in the desert,
like a sleepy blue ocean
you fill up my senses,
come fill me again.

This isn’t intended to be a literal description.  You can’t go in a room and pick out the woman that this describes.  Um…Yeah…go find the woman whose hair is like a frisky flock of goats, who fills up your senses like a night in the forest.  Doesn’t work.  Because that’s not what it was intended to do.  This kind of poem is intended to connect emotional experiences.

When we look closely at those emotional experiences in the Song of Songs we see that there is a deep delight in creation rather than creation being something that we are exposed to in a vulnerable fashion where there is no peace with the land.

Back to Genesis for a moment.  In The Fall we see no peace with the land.  God says to Adam, “Because you listened to your wife and ate the fruit I told you not to eat, I have placed a curse on the ground…” (Genesis 3:17, NLT).  I said this last week, but it is worth repeating again.  I don’t think this “curse” is that God is saying this is how it should be.  I think it is God saying this is how it is now that sin has entered into the story.  If we thought that this is how it should now be, then we wouldn’t allow men to use tractors.  That would be cheating them of the “benefits of the curse” on the ground.

Continuing on, we see that Adam and Eve are separated from this idyllic garden of paradise.  We read, “So the LORD God banished Adam and his wife from the Garden of Eden, and he sent Adam out to cultivate the ground from which he had been made” (Genesis 3:23, NLT).  Here there is no peace with creation.

The Song of Songs exposes a different image than that of The Fall.  We read:

Song 2:10-13 (NRSV)
Now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.  The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

The winter is past.  It reminds me of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe where because of the White Witch, Narnia is stuck always in winter and never Christmas.  There is no spring.  But then one day the snow starts to melt and spring starts to come.  The Narnias know that something has happened.  Aslan, the Lion King, has come back to remake Narnia.  So too in the Song of Songs.  Winter is past.  The Fall is coming to an end and creation is remade.  We partake in this remaking through the care and service of the land.

This image of peace with the land goes quite far in the Song of Songs.  At the end of chapter one, we read about a bedroom where the ceiling is made of timbers.  It is as though the couple is so at peace with creation that they are like God’s making love on the tops of mountains.  What a beautiful image of being at peace with creation.

Peace with People

Of course creation isn’t just made up of animals and trees and flowers and mountains.  Part of creation is you and me and all the people that are creatures too.  Going back again to Genesis and The Fall we see right off the bat after being banished from the garden that peace between people disappears.  Adam and Eve’s sons have a run in with one another.  We read, “Later Cain suggested to his brother, Abel, ‘Let’s go out into the fields.’ And while they were there, Cain attacked and killed his brother” (Genesis 4:8, NLT).  Yikes!  The first murder.  It didn’t take long for humanity to lose the peace of the Garden of Eden.

Song of Songs exposes us to a different image of being at peace with people.  The groom says to his bride, “O my beloved, you are as beautiful as the lovely town of Tirzah. Yes, as beautiful as Jerusalem! You are as majestic as an army with banners!” (Song 6:4, NLT).  Unless you’re up on ancient geography, what just happened here probably passed you by.  The groom compares his bride to two cities: Tirzah and Jerusalem.  So what?  Well, he’s comparing his bride to two capitals that have been in civil war with one another.  Tirzah is the capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the Washington D.C., if you will, of Israel.  Jerusalem is the capital of the Southern Kingdom of Israel, the Richmond, if you will, of Israel.

Let’s make this whole thing a little more understandable.  We’re talking about the Sue Sylvesters and Will Shusters getting together (the geeks, or gleeks, and the jocks/cheerleaders).  Batman and Joker.  The USSR and the US.  North Korea and South Korea.  East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem.  The Israelis and the Palestinians.

What a comparison!  Who compares their beautiful bride to two warring cities and people groups?  Only one who thinks that peace between them is more beautiful than the current hostilities.  We keep reading and the groom takes this a step further comparing the bride to a dance between two armies: “Return, return, O Shulammite! Return, return, that we may look upon you. Why should you look upon the Shulammite, as upon a dance before two armies?” (Song 6:13, NRSV).  Whew!  How do two armies dance together?  They do so by bringing both peace and justice.

Did you notice that the bride is given another name here?  She’s called the “Shulammite.”  Umm…What’s that mean?  Well, “Shulammite” comes from the same root as the word “shalom” which means peace.  Shalom means peace, but it also means a whole lot more.

We read in Psalm 34:14, “Turn away from evil and do good. Work hard at living in peace [shalom] with others.”  Friendship.  Contentment.  Tranquility.  And of course, no war!  Shalom is all these things, and more.  We read in Psalm 72:3, “May the mountains yield prosperity [shalom] for all, and may the hills be fruitful, because the king does what is right.”  Justice.  Wellbeing.  Welfare.  Ethical living.  The word “shalom” has a kind of grand vision for the whole person—mind, body, spirit.  Care for the whole person and you’re participating in shalom.

Yes, the Song of Songs is about sex, but when you expose it a little more, you realize that it’s not just about sex.  It’s also about creation. Song of Songs exposes us to the best of the best: an image, vision, imagination of peace or shalom with all of creation—both the land and other people.  So…

Shalom, friends!

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