7:00am Homily by Rev Timothy A Leitzke
(1 John 5:1-6)
Today we
honor Nicolaus Copernicus and Leonard Euler, scientists. The Church has often
found itself at odds with science. Science reveals something new and Christians
pit God against it. This is odd because the God pitted against science is
usually a God invented by a
scientist. The God that gets the most press today is the God of Isaac Newton,
who needed some smoke and mirrors to balance his equations. Without a God his
flawed math wouldn’t work. His God was cold, predictable, and most importantly
of all was the creator of the universe. This is not the God revealed in Christ.
The God in Christ is warm—sometimes hot with passion—decidedly unpredictable,
and most importantly abides with us and promises us new life. Copernicus and
Euler are commendable if for nothing else than for granting us a greater
understanding of the world in which God abides.
A greater
understanding is helpful to us in many ways, one of them being our reading of
scripture. For example, today’s reading from 1 John says, “whoever loves the
parent loves the child.” We could read this and think, Hmm, yes, yes, how wise scripture is! We see the parent in the
child. We see the genetic imprint. We see the gestures and expressions
acquired. We catch the idiosyncrasies. Yes, we see the invisible God in Jesus
the Christ. We experience God through this person.
We’ve done a
lot of looking at 1 John in Weekday Spirituality. We can tell a lot about it by
reading it closely. We can guess with confidence that it was written at a time
of conflict in a localized city congregation where the Gospel of John was read.
There were people saying that they were now free of Sin because of Christ and
that they did not have to love the poor and helpless. The man who wrote 1 John
wrote this desperate short book calling on his brothers in Christ not to follow
this tempting path. For the author, the love of God and the love of neighbor
are equal and interchangeable. The Christian loves God by loving others in
Christ. The author speaks of the faithful as Little Children, ones begotten by
God. The children the author wants his readers to love are their own brothers
and sisters in Christ. The message of 1 John is that we are all siblings, and
as siblings we have responsibility to and for each other. God, the perfect
parent, loves each of us, and for us to love God we should love our brothers
and sisters in Christ. The parent we love is God our father—to love God we love
our fellow Children of God.
Friends of
Christ, we don’t grasp this if we don’t let our minds be engaged by the arts,
the humanities, and the sciences. We don’t grasp this without using the gifts
God has given us. Certainly God redeems everyone and everything with a reckless
sacred love. Not everyone has a head for math—I don’t; not everyone has a head
for literature. The basic message of 1 John—love one another, for God is
love—is easy enough and true for all of us; most of us need more than that. We
have too many questions. Most of us can use more than that. We can be better
disciples by knowing more.
I don’t know
enough about Leonard Euler to do him justice, but I do know a little about Nicolaus
Copernicus. He was incredibly gifted, a student of the Latin and Greek
classics, astronomy, philosophy, and everything else. He trained his eyes on
the heavens and his mind went to work, and he could not help thinking about
what he saw. The movements of the planets made no sense if they were supposed
to be centered on the Earth. They did make sense if they were revolving around
the Sun. Copernicus knew this might upset some people. He wrote, “Perhaps there will be babblers who, although
completely ignorant of mathematics, nevertheless take it upon themselves to
pass judgement on mathematical questions and, badly distorting some passages of
Scripture to their purpose, will dare find fault with my undertaking and
censure it. I disregard them even to the extent as despising their criticism as
unfounded.”
The
Church did just what Copernicus feared, and condemned his writings. Today, we
know that the sun is not the center of the universe, as Copernicus theorized,
but that the planets do indeed revolve around it. The earth is not the center
of the universe. We are not the center of the universe. God’s creation is huge,
far greater than anything the writers of scripture imagined. Science might have
killed an old belief, but it opened up a profound new understanding. God was
not rejected. God’s accomplishments were better appreciated. We are not the
center of the universe, yet God knows every fiber of our being. God is so great
that God knows everything there is to know about everything in this vast,
seemingly infinite universe. Is the
We
are better able to serve God when we can see God at work in the world around
us. Sometimes we need the simple reminder; sometimes, we need something bigger,
something more complex. We need creativity. We need insight. We need
innovation. We need the gifts that God gave us, not for their own sake, but for
the sake of God’s work in the world. Copernicus and Euler and countless others
like them have opened our minds to a greater comprehension of the world around
us, and, for us Christians, hopefully have opened our minds to a greater
humility. So today we remember Nicolaus and Leonard, two of God’s Little
Children, and we thank God for the lives of these saints, and the ways in which
they have enabled us to do God’s work. Amen