A Sermon by Pastor Tom Lacey . . .
Evolution is true?!
Genesis 1, 2, Preached at Congregational
One day, a visitor to the local zoo notices that an orangutan
is reading the Bible and
On the same day Abraham Lincoln was born, Charles Darwin was
also. The “reluctant revolutionary”
as English historian James Moore calls him, was a quiet man and frequently ill.
Modern biology begins with Charles Darwin and his recognition that every living
species evolved from a shared single-cell ancestor.
Now that I’ve give you the lowdown on what Darwinism is, let’s start butting heads, or seemingly so. When two things supposedly can’t be true at the same time and yet we want them to be, this may be a paradox. We have reached a limitation of the human mind to understand because of an apparent—to us—contradiction in terms: Both that God creates, as in Genesis, and that evolution is correct seem like this. Trying to say something that makes sense when we are talking about God is a risk we have often hazarded, and many times done well. But there will always be a point at which our words, human language, does get tongue-tied. God is bigger, more, supremer than we can say or think. I remember in 8th or 9th grade, talking with friends about whether God could do anything. And if God could do anything, then could God create a really big rock, one so big that God couldn’t move it? Right? Nice paradox. Well how about if the answer was this: “Yes, God could create a rock so big that even God couldn’t move it – and then God would move it just to prove you wrong.”
Now what if I told you that the supposed controversy between religion and science over the issue of evolution is really a manufactured one? This is not a paradox at all. We get into mental anguish when we confuse one thing with the other: science with religion and religion with science. These are two truths not in conflict because they are both right, as long as we understand when they are right and when they are not the answer to our question. The secret is to know what question you are really asking, and to whom you should turn for the answer.
"What we mean by evolution is the world as created by God."
Did I say this? No. It was said on Tuesday by Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head
of the
Well now I’m glad that his theories are more than a
hypothesis, but what we heard this morning was straight from the Bible, the very
first words of the Bible, from the first chapter of the Book of Genesis. Those
are to us more than a hypothesis also. Now because we are a people conditioned
and shaped by history we might think that those first words, “in the beginning…”
are in fact the oldest words in the Bible. It’s not true however. Obviously,
this isn’t a first-person account. There are no “eyewitnesses” at the dawn of
creation! In fact, the text is not even close to being the oldest in the Bible;
it’s only about 2500 years old. It’s an exilic test from the sixth century B.C.,
which means it is written after the fall of
So it only makes sense that this account would draw on the creation narratives of Egypt and Mesopotamia—narratives clearly known to the Hebrew children living in Babylon at the time. Genesis 1 is both similar to and different from those other narratives. This isn’t the place to make those comparisons in detail. But we should notice two important differences. First: Israel doesn’t seem interested in answering the question of how the chaos got there in the first place or where God came from. Other stories of the time spent a good bit of energy on that. This creation story is not about creation out of nothing. Rather it about the ordering of chaos: the systematic, almost liturgical, ordering of chaos. Second, it can be distinguished from other near-eastern accounts of creation by its utter simplicity. For our purposes what matters is simply that we should notice how liturgical, poetic, and orderly the text is—all things near and dear to clergy of pretty much every generation!
So against the backdrop of a world gone mad, the priests imagine a six-day creation that is essentially about bringing order out of chaos. The first step in that process it that light shines in the darkness. Don’t worry that the sun hasn’t yet been created or that when it is the moon will be seen also as a kind of night light to go along with it. Theologically what is being said by people living in a scary and darkened world is that God is the lord of creation and light of their lives. Moreover, the creation is good: that is the liturgical response that comes at the end of each day. This is doxology: praise of the Creator who is stronger than the forces of chaos and darkness.
This is not science—at least it is not science in any meaningful sense of what that word means. It’s not Babylonian science from the sixth century and it would be a mistake to teach it as science in the twenty-first century. It’s religion. It’s the why of life. It’s not really how we got here, but why God created us or what was God’s motivation. For us as Christians this is “the word of the Lord,” the one who created us in God’s own image, male and female, on the last day of creation, as the pinnacle, the height and most majestic of all God’s works in those six days, the ones most like the Lord, and with Gods’ own imprint within us.
Look, contradiction and paradox aren’t ever the end of the world. We never hear about the apparent contradiction between Genesis 1 and 2, do we? This is underplayed all the time. In Genesis 1 humans are created last; in Genesis two Adam is created first, animals next, and Eve last. Which one is correct? It’s doesn’t matter, does it? It doesn’t matter because deep down we know the message is what matters, not process. We come last when it means God makes us special. We come first when it means God makes us special. The how doesn’t matter, because the why or the motivation is all that matters. Evolution as process doesn’t matter because we know God and humans have a special relationship. Christians do not choose between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2; neither do we have to choose between Darwin and the Bible.
The Bible has never
been a scientific book. Even its earliest authors and their readers understood
that. How can I say this? Within its copious pages there are instructions about
honoring the land and giving away a tenth of your harvest, but there are no
instructions about agriculture, about how to grow crops and how to fend off crop
blight. There are no instructions about breeding livestock, though the stories
of sheep and shepherds are endless. There are no veterinary stories about
tending to sick animals or saving weak ones; there are no medicinal stories
about curing fevers, or pulling teeth, or easing indigestion after the feasts,
and you know they had to have a lot of lore about these things. There are no
instructions for how to build a house or a plow. The Bible is a book about the
meaning of things, and about the presence of God with people. The creation story
points to the goodness of God and the earth, and how that goodness is fused as
blessing within everything that is, which is easy to believe until things go
wrong, as they do too often. Then
There are several things I want you to take away from all this. First of all, God is big enough for Charles Darwin to be correct. The question is whether our faith is big enough. Look, they used to believe it was necessary for the sun to revolve around the earth. It showed how the earth was the apple of God’s eye, the center of the universe. But we know it doesn’t work this way. Still our faith remains; God loves us. The truth is the truth, whether we want it to be this way or not.
Second, science is extremely important, so important in fact that it is not Christian to deny something in science simply because we would rather not have it be this way. God is the creator, and science is the one of the most important ways by which we understand God’s work in creation. To deny scientific truth is in effect to deny God’s truth.
Finally, perhaps even more important than this is the fact that science is a neutral language. It provides an objective place in which we can talk about our world and lives with others. Unlike in politics and religion, scientists don’t kill others, nor other scientists, because of a differing view. This attention to truth and peace is something our world desperately needs. As Zechariah 8:19 says, “Love the truth and peace.”
May we continue to live seeking the truth, courageously living according to it, and always pursuing peace. This would be a creation God would be proud of.
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