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The Rev. Clare Fischer-Davies

St. Martin’s Church

November 29, 2009

Advent 1 C

“It is as sure as can be, that humanity, and all forms of carbon-based life, will prove a transient episode in the history of the cosmos."

Those words were written by John Polkinghorne, who – in his long and illustrious career – has been both a noted theoretical physicist and an Anglican priest. He was a scientist first, working on the frontiers of particle physics until 1982, when he began preparing for ordination. His work since then has focused on the relationship between science and religion, and I had a chance to spend some time with him in Blacksburg a few years ago when he came to spend a week both with the scientific community at Virginia Tech and with local clergy.

A transient episode in the history of the cosmos. That’s a bracing corrective, isn’t it, to the arrogant assumption that human beings are somehow the crowning glory of creation, and destined to reign supreme forever. Polkinghorne puts us in our place – not just our scientific, evolutionary place, but in our rightful theological place as well. In our present, carbon-based, biological form – we are transient indeed, formed of the dust until unto dust we shall return. God alone is immortal – beyond time and forever.

This Sunday is the beginning of Advent, and with Advent comes the beginning of a new church year. Advent points us toward two future events – to Christmas, when we celebrate the first coming of Jesus in his nativity, and to Christ’s second coming as ruler and as judge at the end of time. I imagine that most of us here this morning are a lot more focused on that first coming than on the second, mainly because we know exactly what we have to do to get ready for Christmas – we know that the next three weeks will be filled with shopping, cooking, cleaning and wrapping – all the things that our carbon-based selves have decided need to be part of big celebrations.

But what about that second coming? How do we prepare for an event that ushers in the end of time as we know it, that starkly reminds us that we are transient – and not only our puny, carbon-based selves, but the whole universe itself? How do we prepare for our own annihilation?

The end of human life has been on my mind lately, not just because of Gerry’s illness, but because my ministry has let me to the end of human life this week, and because one of my parents’ oldest friends, who practiced medicine with my father for forty years, died. I thought Charlie would live forever and it’s hard to acknowledge that my parents are in their 80s, that mortality and age affect even the healthiest and most vigorous people.

We all know that our culture shrinks from contemplating mortality – that we would like to think that we can live forever, and that by denying death we can somehow defy it. Have you heard about calorie restricted diets? This is the latest fad pursed by those in search of longer lives.. Based on some research done in mice, some people are following meticulous food plans that keep them in a state of semi-starvation, believing that their obsession with calories will significantly slow down the aging process in their bodies. The people interviewed in the article didn’t seem to care that they looked like inmates at a concentration camp – they were determined to extend their lives as long as possible.

We are a transient episode in the history of the cosmos. That’s true no matter how long any individual manages to hang on to human life.

But for some people – that’s where the truth ends. There’s nothing more to be said. We are dust, we return to the dust – case closed. Authors like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris have sold a lot of books in the last couple of years saying exactly that. Science is destiny. The material world is the only reality. God is nothing but a human construct and religious faith is a delusion. There is no one to pray to, and nothing to pray for. There is no hope or expectation of anything beyond our own lives.

That’s one way to journey through our transient time on earth. Don’t look for any ultimate purpose or meaning; don’t look for divine intervention or direction. What you see is all there is – there is no redemption, no future beyond the grave. We are just a transient, carbon-based life form.

John Polkinghorne, whose scientific work took him deep into the mysterious heart of the atom, thinks that Dawkins and Harris not only lack faith and hope, they also lack imagination. Polkinghorne believes that the atheistic, mechanistic view they espouse doesn’t do justice to the complexity of the universe. As a physicist, Polkinghorne explored the strange, shifting boundary between matter and energy. As a theologian, he suggests that what we call mind, soul and body are really just different ways of apprehending one deeper, fundamental reality. Maybe what you see, isn’t really all you get.

“Stand up, and raise your head, because your redemption is drawing near.”

Advent takes us to that boundary between the seen and the unseen, between what is and what might be, between what we know and what we hope for. It takes us to the boundary between our transient, carbon-based bodies and the immortality of our souls.

You don’t need a sermon to point out that the world is a mess. We know that there is distress among the nations, that catastrophe, chaos and disaster are the bitter reality for millions around the world, that poverty, disease, starvation and misery stalk the vulnerable in our own community. Advent tells us to lift up our heads, because it is precisely then – precisely when God seems to be most absent, that our redemption begins to draw near.

Advent proclaims we are more than transient, carbon-based life forms. Advent proclaims that we are also created in the image of God, created not just for random evolutionary mutations, but created for purpose, for covenant, for relationship, for salvation. We are more than our biology. Advent proclaims that God is so committed to this creation, that God chooses to become part of it – to take on a transient, carbon-based body and experience all its glory, its weakness and its pain – all the way to death itself. And by that incarnation, God shows us that our transient, carbon-based selves are precious, and holy and worthy of redemption.

Our redemption is drawing near. Those are powerful words to proclaim in a world that says only death and disaster are drawing near. We know that we each have a mortal end, we know that our nation will end, that our planet will end, that the sun itself will end, that even the universe will someday – end. We are most assuredly a transient episode in the history of the cosmos.

But that is not all we are. Richard Dawkins complains that Christians are all obsessed with “sin sin sin sin sin sin sin”. I would say that he’s been hanging around the wrong Christians. As I read Scripture, and follow the example of those who have gone before me in faith, I find that Christians are infused instead with “hope hope hope hope hope hope hope”. We lift up our heads, looking toward the East, toward the coming dawn of our redemption, toward that reality that lies beyond what we can see and comprehend in our present mortal bodies.

We look for Christ to come again at the end of time – but not to just keep things going on as usual forever. We are not like those obsessive reduced calorie dieters – we are not hoping to extend our earthly lives into infinity. We look instead for Christ to establish something new, to establish a Kingdom of shalom – of righteousness and beauty, of truth, of mercy and of justice. That is how we contemplate our annihilation, by asserting that our mortal, transient selves are intended for something glorious and eternal, by celebrating our hope that we are meant to be part of God’s splendid redemption of the world.

“Give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light.” Cast away cynicism, despair, nihilism, selfishness, greed, fear and anxiety. Put on instead the armor of hope, of faith, generosity, gentleness, humility, forbearance and mercy. We are destined for more than our biological end – not because there will be some conjuring trick when we die – but because we can, even now, begin to live within the redemptive reality of Christ.

We are invited to live in the light and hope of Advent. Lift up your heads – your redemption is drawing near.