February 18, 2001
Rev. Eugene Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
I
Corinthians 12:12-27; Ephesians 4:4-6
When I read and reflect on these familiar words of the Apostle Paul, what immediately comes to mind is - quite naturally - Startrek: The Next Generation. I'’ sure you were thinking the same thing! I have one particular episode in mind. Captain Picard, onboard the Enterprise (I ask those of you who have never see the show to please tolerate this for a few moments), is visited by his old archeology professor. The professor is on some sort of quest and wants Picard to join him. The nature of this quest is not completely clear but Picard is tempted. He loves archeology and he loves the professor. He finally realizes, however, that his duties as captain of a starship prevent him from accepting the offer. The professor is extremely disappointed and, since he has his own ship decides to continue his search alone.
But soon after he leaves, his ship is inexplicably attacked and destroyed by an alien vessel. Picard is beside himself with grief and guilt. He also cannot understand who would want to kill an archeology professor and why. With some crew members, he begins examining some of the samples left behind by the professor. They make an amazing discovery. In spite of the fact that these samples have been gathered from far points of the galaxy, they contain identical strands of DNA. They shouldn’t, but they do. It seems that the professor was putting together some kind of DNA puzzle, but clearly a few pieces are still missing. Picard decides to take the Enterprise on a mission to find the missing pieces.
Along the way they encounter some other beings who have also been tracking the professor. Klingons, Cardasians, and Romulans (we’ll have a class after church to explain all this!) are equally interested in the professor’s puzzle. Finally there is a climatic scene in which everyone meets on one planet, the plane where the last strand of DNA is thought to be located. Some think the completed puzzle will be a powerful new weapon; others that it will reveal a new energy source. As they are bickering with each other over who has a right to be there, Picard is able to get a sample of organic material and incorporate it with all the others. Immediately, an image is projected of another alien being. The image speaks. She says that she is a member of a race that is billions of years old. When her people developed space travel and went out into the galaxy, they discovered that they were alone. So they decided to take samples of their genetic material and “seed” a number of planets where they saw life developing. She congratulates them for solving the puzzle, then concludes by telling them that they are the result of what her people did. They are all related. In her words, “There is a piece of me in each of you, and there is something of each of you in each other.
Well, I don’t want to get involved in the old discussion about whether aliens really came here a million years ago, and yet I do find it fascinating. . . this sense of connection, of relatedness. Different species, different peoples, maybe on completely different planets and yet somehow sharing some of the same internal “stuff” of life. Is it science fiction or is it science?
Once, when physicists John Wheeler and Richard Feynman were discussing string theory, Wheeler said, “Feynman, I know why all electrons have the same charge and the same mass.”
“Why?” Feynman asked.
“Because,” said Wheeler, “they are all the same electron!”
All people, all species - even on different planets - somehow related. Is it science fiction…or is it religious faith? “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body…Now you are the body of Christ, and individually members of it.” In Paul’s view, we live in covenant with all flesh , indeed with all creation - all members of the same body.
I know basically nothing about the new science. I know precious little about religion. But today and next week, I want to reflect on the interplay between science and religion - those two old antagonists. Because, after years of bitter distrust and recrimination, it seems to me that it is getting harder and harder to discern where science stops and religion begins.
So let’s start with the world of Quantum Physics. I want to spend the remaining minutes reflecting on the theology of sub-atomic particles. I’m indebted to Barbara Brown Taylor and her book, The Luminous Web for the background to these reflections. And you can actually find her book in our church library if you are interested in taking a look at it. It seems to me that the new physics provides us with some fascinating insights into our life together, indeed into our life in God. So ready or not, here we go.
According to quantum theory, a sub-atomic particle that decays into two parts becomes a set of “twins” - a single system with two parts, spinning in opposite directions, always balancing each other. Now imagine those two particles flying apart - one of them heading for the Fireside Room, the other lingering around the communion table. Now imagine that one of these particles runs into the communion table and reverses its spin. The other particle, now near the Fireside Room or perhaps on the dark side of the moon, reverses itself also. The two are in what physicists call “quantum entanglement,” behaving in complementary ways no matter how far apart they are. Once two particles have interacted with each other, they remain related regardless of their physical distance from one another. One changes, the other changes. In some sense they stay in contact through space and time, behaving not as two separate particles but as one.
This is all a part of field theory - fields being invisible, non-material structures that may turn out to be the basic substance of the universe. Barbara Brown Taylor speaks of fields this way: “If you stand under a high power wire and hold a fluorescent light bulb in the air, there is a good chance it will light up, because you are standing in a power field. Well, imagine another kind of field that knits the whole cosmos together, so that a shiver in the Milky Way there gives us a shiver here, faster than the speed of light.”
This is where the science stops, but my imagination and the implications for church and faith are only just beginning. I think of the mother who sits bolt upright in her bed in the middle of the night, knowing that something has happened to her child. Or the extraordinary communication between twins, who may end up making similar choices in their lives even though they have been separated from birth. Could it be because the two are not really two but are in fact one? Each one knows the other, not because they happen to be psychic, but because they belong to the unbroken wholeness of the universe. But let’s not stop there.
“Now you are at the body of Christ and individually members of it.” Is Paul a theologian or a quantum physicist? For he is telling us that as different as we are and as many functions as we serve, we are far more than simply a collection of individual parts. Yes, we may act like unrelated parts from time to time, with the left side pulling against the right and the feet refusing to take a step before the hands have apologized. But at our deepest level of being, all they way down to our sub-atomic level, we really are not a collection of autonomous parts existing separately while still interacting. The deeper revelation of the new science, which is also the revelation of the Biblical word, is one of undivided wholeness. No matter where we are, we are in relationship. We are back to Startrek: “There is a piece of me in each of you and a piece of you in each other.” We insist on conceiving of reality as many when in fact it is truly and deeply one. Timothy Ferris in his book, The Whole Shebang, writes, “All appearances to the contrary, the universe remains as it was in the beginning, when all places were one place, all times one time, and all things the same thing.” And so of course John Wheeler insists that all electrons have the same charge and the same mass because they are essentially the same electron. Taylor writes, “When I am dreaming quantum dreams, what I see is an infinite web of relationship, flung across the vastness of space like a luminous net. Am I alone? How could I ever be alone. I am part of a web that is pure relationship, with energy available to me that has been around since the universe was born.” When we sit around the fire at Family Camp and sing, “One in the Spirit”, we are not just pursuing some unrealistic church dream, but are in fact addressing what is one of the deepest and most abiding truths of the universe.
And one final point, this one coming from the world of chaos theory. Did you know that you can break a rack of pool balls exactly the same way and get a different result very time? They can be racked exactly the same. You can have a machine that regulates your aim and strength, meaning you will strike the cue ball exactly the same time after time, and still you will get a different result time after time. Why? Because, according to chaos theory, even the tiniest changes in the environment at the beginning of your stroke - not only something as close as your partner’s hiccup, but also something as far away as the gravitational pull of an electron at the far edge of the Milky Way - the tiniest change is the difference between a triple bank shot and the cue ball in the pocket for a scratch.
There is far
more to be said about chaos theory, but in this limited time suffice it to say
that it points to the apparent truth that we belong to a web of creation in
which nothing, absolutely nothing, is inconsequential. The hairs on your head, a
baby’s sneeze, the gravitational pull of that far away electron...none of these
things is negligible. Not one of them can be subtracted from creation, or even
rounded off, without changing the whole gorgeous geometry of the universe. In
Taylor’s words, “Cough at the wrong time and you may make someone lose a game of
pool on Mars. You just never know. Every one of us will change the world,
whether we mean to or not.” That’s how closely bound we are to one another. It
would behoove us to decide just what kind of changes we would like to make.
“There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling.” Again, is Paul a theologian or physicist? For both are calling us to new thinking about who we are and who God might be. We think of ourselves as so separate - it’s the old Newtonian world view which continues to have power over us and our thinking. But that world is changing. It’s falling apart, folks. Seemingly each new discovery reveals that we aren’t as separate as we once thought. And it just might be that we are meet the “holy” more powerfully together; that we experience the “holy” more deeply together. What does that mean for worship? I in you and you in me. For where is God in all of this if not “above all and through all and in all?”
When I think about all this, I find myself with a God who is all over the place - up there, down here, inside my skin and out; God as the web, the energy, the space, the light, revealed in the vast net of relationship that animates everything that is.
After her reading of quantum physics, chaos theory, and all the rest, Taylor concludes, “At this point in my thinking it is not enough for me to proclaim that God is responsible for all this unity. Instead, I want to proclaim that God is the unity - the very energy, the very intelligence, the very elegance and passion that make it all go. This is the God who is not somewhere but everywhere, the God who may be prayed to in all directions at once…the only One who ever was, is, or shall be, in whom everything else abides. For the moment we see through a glass darkly. We live in the illusion that we are all separate ‘I ams.’ When the fog finally clears, we shall know there is only One.”
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