Sermon prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church, Auburn
WA
8:30 & 11:00 Morning Promise services – 5-26-02
by Gregory S. Kaurin, associate pastor
texts:
Genesis 1:1 – 2:4 & Psalms 8
Sermon:
Where
Is Charles Darwin Buried?
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When I was in England almost twelve years ago I
discovered something completely by accident.
A few friends and I were walking around the sites in London. I went a ways off by myself when I looked down
and discovered that I was standing directly on the grave of Mr. Charles Darwin
who died on April 19th, 120 years ago. I remember my surprise and saying out loud to his grave marker,
“What are you doing here?” Maybe
you would be surprised, too. Where do
you think that Mr. Charles Robert Darwin, the father of Evolutionary Theory,
the supposed enemy of Creationism, and an assumed atheist is buried? Where is Darwin buried?
Some Christians feel that his first major book, The
Origin of the Species, ranks just slightly above the Satanic Bible. I’ve read The Origin of the Species
and found some parts very interesting and enlightening. Other parts I found to be incredibly
detailed, repetitive and boring to an un-scientific mind like mine.
It is interesting to learn that many of those
studying and writing about the sciences in Darwin’s day were clergy. Clergy were expected to include and
specialize in at least one of the sciences during and after their training into
the priesthood, whether it was geology, biology, chemistry, astronomy, etc. or
any combination thereof. The Church
encouraged this as a way of digging deeper into God’s universe through the
study of creation, nature, philosophy and anthropology. There were already a few clergy who wrote
about something called the “transmutation of the species,” or what we now call
“evolution.”
This was, in fact, how Darwin got his start on his
theory; he was studying for the ministry!
He was far along in becoming an English priest by the time of his famous
sea voyage.
However, in this sermon, I’m not going to make
Charles Darwin into someone he was not.
He did, in fact, give up his Christianity, and struggled the rest of his
life to hold on to the idea of God.
I am both thankful and sad for Charles Darwin. I have a feeling that many of his doubts
deepened through the way that both the church and atheists reacted to and used
his work against each other—just as he feared they would.
It’s a debate that you can still see on the backs of
cars in what some have called the bumper sticker “fish wars.” You’ve seen the symbols, like the ones on
our bulletin cover, and variations of them.
Honestly, those symbols and the ideas they represent are not mutually
exclusive. It should not have been and
should never be “Darwin versus Creation.”
That is a war he neither wanted nor fought.
There are many scientists who can and do find a great
deepening of their faith in God and Christ through their studies, including
scientists who accept evolution as a basic principle, and as a process by which
God created life and us. They find
themselves talking to the God of Creation by exploring the intricate depth of
his universe. Science and Faith are two
things that should always be talking and sharing insights and discoveries, but
they should not be trying to be each other.
What if I could prove God to you…like science? Would that strengthen your faith? I think it would do the opposite. For example, I have “faith” in my wife,
complete confidence in her and our relationship. I know many things about her, but still: what I call “faith” in
her is a result of jumping past all the things I don’t know and cannot
predict, and yet I invest my life and heart in her anyway. That is faith.
If I could know Pauline through and through,
and if there were zero uncertainties for our future, then our relationship
would be taken for granted. Faith would
be replaced by cold knowledge, and as a direct result, there could be no
love. Knowledge and Faith are two very
different things. Knowledge is trivia
and information. Faith is a
relationship that leaps across all the unavoidable and necessary uncertainties
to love.
Darwin experienced faith. Every time he had a difficult decision to make, Darwin would make lists of the pro’s and con’s. When he was debating whether to marry Emma, he made at least two lists that still exist. He gave both lists the same title: “This Is the Question: To Marry or Not to Marry?” It’s kind of funny to read these lists as he went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, trying to list all the good and bad of marriage. Near the end of this long deliberation, he summarized all the limitations of the married life and compared it to the life of a slave. But he finished by writing these words to himself: “Never mind, my boy—Cheer up—One cannot live this solitary life, with groggy old age, friendless and cold and childless, staring [at your own face] already beginning to wrinkle. Nevermind, trust to chance—[Look around] …There is many a happy slave—“
Did you hear that?
“Trust to chance!” That’s
faith! After all his logic and lists
showed him nothing but limitations and uncertainties, he made the jump
anyway—into marriage—and hurdled the gap of uncertainty to love by faith. He did it because he saw that the
alternative was lonely, cold and ultimately as unattractive as death. Charles Darwin chose Relationship.
And this brings us to Creation. One of the most beautiful ideas that Charles
Darwin gave us—the one that thrilled him the most through his studies—was the
deep relationship of the universe. What
he saw in evolution was not just a cold process, but a discovery of an ancient
connection between himself and all other creatures, between life and the
land. There were times that Darwin
found this relationship so “ennobling” and beautiful that he would write with
spiritual feeling and admitted that he could almost imagine the hand of a
Supreme Being.
If we are this closely related to Creation, then our
relationship to Creation cannot be about superiority, but about
connection. It’s about relationship,
not power. Our English Bible translations
are misleading when we hear the voice of God telling us to “rule over” and
“subdue” all the land and creatures.
The context of scripture and the original language is about being
stewards, serving God’s Creation in his place, as though it were ours to care
for on God’s behalf. It is not power;
it is relationship. We are creatures of
God together with the rest of Creation.
It is with that in mind that I will suggest to you that God’s plan of
salvation may be bigger and more gracious than we’d ever thought possible.
In Genesis and in the rest of the Bible, there is a
Word and Truth more alive and real than the words on the page that describe
Him. That Word and Truth is God, a
loving God who wants love based on faith.
He wants a love of hope and risk, not knowledge. And that is the God to whom the Bible
points. The Bible was meant to point to
God, and not the other way around. The
Bible points to a God who was and is willing to risk everything, to a God who
was willing to die for love, for our love, for our faith. For our relationship.
In the end, Charles Robert Darwin lacked faith in
God. But he did have loving friends,
priests and a wife who prayed very often for him. After his death his friends petitioned and begged and convinced
the family—so that now his grave can be found in a church in London called
Westminster Abbey. In a way, his
friends and family tore the roof off of a small building, and lowered their
friend down in front of Jesus Christ. I
will add my own prayer for him. I pray
for enough grace and compassion that God might say, “Rise, my son, your sins
are forgiven. The faith of your
brothers and sisters has healed you.”
It seems a horrible thing, to me, to die without
faith. And that is why I am eternally
grateful for the faithfulness of God.
Amen.
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