Text: Psalm 139
Over the last year and many years, many of you have seen some amazing and beautiful scenes: whether in a sidewalk puddle reflecting trees and skies, a double rainbow arching over our countryside, or an aerial view of the magnificent Grand Canyon. Many of you have heard glorious sounds—perhaps the song of a mockingbird singing in your backyard, or the soaring music of Brahms or Sibelius coming over the airwaves from your radio. Perhaps your tongue and palate and nose have, been nearly overwhelmed with the goodness of food that defied description in its capacity to elicit bliss. Or you have been touched, physically, by the flesh of a dear companion whose physical presence next to you made your heart sing. Each of our senses can singularly, or in combination together, awaken us to wonder, awe, even reverence.
St. Augustine, I’m told, long ago, noted his bewilderment that people who “go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars” would yet pass by themselves—their bodies, their physical being, their minds, their deepest selves without wondering.
We do take much about ourselves for granted, ignoring our physical selves and our psyches, without so much as a moment of curiosity. Sometimes we abuse this amazing life we have been given. Sometimes we will bemoan our aging, our girth, our hair or lack there-of, our faltering vision and hearing, our clumsiness or downright stupidity when it comes to certain things. Despite our neglect of wonder when it comes to ourselves, and our complaining, I think that we know—in some deep inner place—that we—you and I, and every human, and every living thing—that all are fearfully and wonderfully made, that there is something sacred deep down at the core, the essential level of being itself.
We stand beside a crib and marvel at a newborn babe, or in a stall and see a newborn calf or foal or kid, and know that they have come from cells so small we cannot see them with the our naked eyes. We go to the hospital for some procedure and are highly aware that we are both fragile organisms, and strong beyond our understanding. We have stood by bedsides watching our loved ones come to that great moment when biological life ends, and awe is born once more. Something in us tells us that we are more than cells, and protoplasm, and chemistry and water. More than a beating heart and a muscle full of neurological electrical activity lodged in our heads.
Is it the divine spark? the presence of God? or is it the peculiar neurological accident stemming from the amygdala or from the right and left sides of our brains just happening to connect through some rare synapse—a happening which is more common to some people and not to others? Of my two children, I used to think that one was more naturally “religious” or “spiritual” than the other. Did one have more capacity for left and right brain communication? No, that won’t fit, because the one who seemed more “religious” in childhood, is the one who is now very much the left brain thinker, but I still have this hunch that she is more religious than her sister, who is more of a believer and a church-goer. However, that still may not have any correlation with their individual capacity for spiritual experiences.
Over the past decade there have been various news reports of neurological experiments to show that stimulation of certain parts of the brain can elicit a “spiritual experience of transcendence”. Newsweek and Time, at various times over the past 5-10 years have had cover articles about whether or not we are “hard-wired” physiologically “for God”, as they put it.
All of this is not new: in 1902, William James gave the Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh, Scotland on the Varieties of Religious Experience. With an understanding of physiology, psychology, and philosophy, James studied cases of religious inspiration and concluded there were specific aspects of human consciousness that contained energies that could come to a person’s assistance in time of great need. The result is what he refers to as the religious experience. James did conclude, based on his own belief systems, that there was an external reality, God if you will, which human beings could access, unlike the current crop of neurological and other scientists who argue that God is a projection, and creation of the human mind.
Across the pond this week in Great Britain there has been a fair amount of discussion over the fact that Stephen Hawking’s new book concludes that science excludes the possibility of God, and that it is unnecessary to “invoke God to light the blue touch paper [whatever that is] and set the universe going.”
Does this mean that the deep inner sense we have of being known and understood, of having been made and unable to escape the ineffable Transcendent Holy Source of ALL—another way of saying God—is merely something caused by our synapses and that God doesn’t exist?
Such reasoning could be symptomatic of the “genetic fallacy”, which argues that because you know the genesis, or origin, of something does not mean that the experience itself is without reality, or power, or capacity to cause consequences.
So Lord Sacks, the chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, argued this week against Stephen Hawking that the Bible simply isn’t interested in how the universe came into being. Rather, he said that there is more to wisdom than science. Science cannot tell us why we are here or how we should live.
Yet the fake arguments between science and religion rage on. Noteworthy among such arguments are the spats taking place among evangelicals represented by Al Mohler, president of the largest Protestant seminary in the world, Southern Baptist Seminary up the road in Louisville, and a number of evangelical Christian scientists who have no problem with Darwin and probably even Hawking. Both Mohler and Ken Ham, the developer of the Creation Museum up in Hebron, KY, say that to accept even the Christian scientists’ arguments in favor of evolution would be to begin sliding down the slippery slope to apostasy and heresy.
Well, that particular intellectual tar pit may not be one where we are even inclined to watch the maneuvering of the players. Most of us, I dare say, have accepted evolution as a real factor in the universe as we have it now, and as it continues to unfold. We might even accept that scientists can elicit an experience of God by stimulating certain portions of our brains.
The question remains about whether we are “hard-wired” for religious experience. John Dominic Crossan, a theologian and not a scientist, argues that we human beings may not be “pre-programmed for any specific religion” or specific understanding of God, but that just as human creatures seem to have a neurological hard-wiring in our brains for language, so we also have a natural propensity for religion. He notes that we human beings are hard-wired to search for meaning, even ultimate meaning. Crossan says: “we are only able to express those names for transcendent meaning by metaphor and indeed, by mega-metaphor”. He further notes that “…across time and space, across religions and faiths [of all sorts], the great grounding metaphors for transcendent meaning are to imagine and experience it as Power, as Order, as State, or as Person.”
Like the Psalmist who wrote the achingly beautiful words of Psalm 139, Crossan notes that he himself begins with that profound inner sense of being surrounded by a profound mystery of meaning. Because it is relational—that is, it not only knows us, but invades us to search us deeply—we use relational metaphors to speak of this holy mystery. So, we find names: Father, Mother, Almighty, Holy One.
As Christians, we point to Jesus as the way we know with some clarity, but perhaps not final, for he promised us a Holy Spirit who would continue to teach us, this transcendent mystery of meaning.
This psalm, more than any other words of Scripture, speaks of what I know, not intellectually, but somehow down in my very cells—that deep down aching, yearning, inner sense, and yes, perhaps even psychological desire, to be known through a relationship that forms me and shapes me and will not let me go. I cannot prove that there is a God, a metaphysical being out there, in here, beyond the knowable, but faith—as always, is not about proving, or believing—but trusting without reservation.
What I love about the psalm is the image of God as this invading truth that will not let me be who in laziness, or selfishness, or just plain old stubbornness, I might be inclined to be. In my prayer about Truth on Saturday, a friend wrote to me and said: “Now you are knocking on doors that I don’t wish to open.” Indeed, an experience of God can be so searing that we tremble at the very truth it reveals to us about ourselves and our world. To know that we are never beyond the pale of the influence of holiness, of God’s presence, cannot be proved, and yet…it is in those darkest times and difficult, seemingly insurmountable situations, that our religious natures awaken and we come to trust that we are being sustained—not by ourselves, our friends, our doctors, our connections, our wealth—but by a reality greater than words and inescapable. I know that you know this, as I have known this inner truth, because you have shared as much with me, many of you, in those hard moments of your lives.
Worship, doxology, praise, thanksgiving are what follows from such wonderful words. And more: if this inner sense bubbles up to expression in our lives, how can we not see every other being as also infused with this sacred power, as reflecting a divinity not of their making or ours? And does this inner sense not bind us together in a web of interdependence, so that what happens to the least of these, our brothers and sisters, happens also to us? This inner sense changes everything, and us…and glory be to God, we are made new in every moment of every day. Praise be. Amen.
