God's Assistants

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Genesis 1:1-5; Mark 5:21-34

January 13, 2013 • Portage First UMC

VIDEO INTRO

One of the oldest and most popular shows currently on the Discovery Channel is “MythBusters.” Every week, the hosts use elements of the scientific method to test the validity of rumors, myths, movie scenes, adages, Internet videos, and news stories. Some of them are proven to be myths, and others are found to be true, but the show reminds us that not everything you hear or read is true. Some things are “myths.” Usually, when we hear that word “myth,” perhaps we think of those ancient Greek or Roman stories we had to read in high school. Homer, The Iliad, The Odyssey, or the stories of Mount Olympus. But “myths,” as the show reminds us, are actually all around us—especially in this “information age.” Just because we read it online doesn’t mean it’s true. Larger than stories about gods and goddesses, myths are anything we believe without proof. They’re the things we’ve “heard,” the things we post on Facebook without checking the facts. And though they may be rooted in some small grain of truth, the one thing all myths have in common is that they are, ultimately, false.

Today, we live in an time where there are a lot of things believed about the Christian faith that are myths. They’re untrue. They’re things people have heard about Christians, have believed but have never bothered to “check out.” Things like: Christianity is all about rules. Christianity is insensitive to other beliefs. Christianity is sexist or racist or homophobic. And, realize, those beliefs exist today because there have been people who claim the name of Jesus who do act like that. Often they get lots of attention, like the so-called church in Kansas that protests military funerals around the country. But just because they get attention doesn’t mean they are right, so what we want to do in the next four weeks is take a look at these myths and compare them to the Bible, to what the Scripture actually says, and to how Jesus called us to live our lives. Maybe there are Christians who live or act like that. But is the Christian faith, at its core, meant to be that way? Remember, in all of these things, the standard is never the way our brothers and sisters or even the way we act and live. The standard is always Jesus, and his call on our lives. So those myths I mentioned—we’re going to look at those in the coming weeks, but this morning I want to start with one that maybe we hear more often than others, and that’s the belief that Christianity is unscientific—that to be a Christian, you can’t accept the principles of scientific discovery and that you have to, basically, check your brains at the door. Some people believe that science and Christian faith are in two different and incompatible camps. That, my friends, is a myth.

This belief usually goes something like this: if you embrace science, you have to give up any sort of belief in the supernatural, and that naturally excludes two things primarily. You have to embrace evolution over creation, and you have to refuse to believe in miracles. Thomas Jefferson was famous for rejecting any form of the supernatural. In fact, he edited the Bible to reflect his view, excluding all of the miracles of Jesus and any claim that Jesus was the Son of God, including the resurrection. He was left with a set of moral teachings that he called “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth,” reducing Jesus to simply a great teacher. Others today reject the Bible in whole and the Christian faith largely because they have trouble reconciling science with a God who creates and works miracles. So, let’s look at those two issues this morning, and we begin where the Bible begins: in Genesis 1, with the startling declaration: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (1:1).

Here’s the first place we go wrong when we pit science against faith, and that’s the assumption that this verse alone precludes any sort of evolution. It does preclude humanistic evolution, but Genesis 1 is really not all that interested in telling us how God created. All Genesis is interested in is affirming that God created. Creation, everything you see, came from God. Genesis 1 is poetry, not prose. It’s designed almost as a song to celebrate God as creator. When we’re told God “spoke and it was so,” that’s a poetic description to remind us of God’s power, to remind us that what God says goes. God says, “Let there be light,” and there is light. But Genesis never intended us to go through, as some have, adding up the chronology and trying to determine how old the earth is, or when exactly creation took place. Genesis is making one primary affirmation: God created. The book does not intend to tell us how, but who (cf. Hamilton, When Christians Get It Wrong, pg. 28).

Actually, the standard Jewish translation of this first verse is, “When God began to create the heavens and the earth…” (cf. Goldingay, Genesis for Everyone, Part One, pg. 5), reminding us that God continues to create and re-create all the time because that is his nature. God is creator. In the Old Testament, in fact, only God creates. Only God brings something out of nothing (Goldingay 6) and what God creates is always perfect, new and fresh (Ross, “Genesis,” Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, Vol. 1, pg. 33). But, again, Genesis never says how God creates nor where God comes from. In fact, St. Augustine, when asked about this, passed on the comment he had once heard, that before creation God was preparing hell for those who ask too many questions (cf. Goldingay 5). Augustine himself said, “I do not know what I do not know.” And that’s where science comes in. Science attempts to help us understand what the psalmist calls “God’s handiwork” (cf. Psalm 19:1). Science probes into the “what” and “how” of creation while faith and theology probe into the “why” and the “for what purpose.” In its original setting, Genesis was meant as a counter to other creation “myths.” The cultures around Israel told of the world coming into being out of conflict and wars between gods. The world, in their stories, had a bloody and ugly beginning. They told of gods who were represented in the sky, the sun, the plants and so on. In contrast, Genesis says, “There is one creator. He made all those things you worship, and more than that, he did it in an orderly way because he wanted to. It was planned, and it came to be just the way he wanted it to be” (cf. Goldingay 7). Creation faith affirms God as the creator.

One of today’s leading scientists and the director of the National Institutes of Health is Francis Collins. Collins grew up in a nominally Christian home, but was admittedly an agnostic in his early life. He was a scientist, after all, and had the same sorts of struggles with faith I’ve been describing. And then he encountered a book by C. S. Lewis, one that’s been instrumental in the conversion of many people. That book was Mere Christianity, and as Collins read Lewis’ tightly woven arguments for God’s existence and God’s creation of the world, Collins found himself challenged on a level he did not expect. As he describes in his book, The Language of God (which Mike King reminded me of this week), Collins stood on the edge for faith for some time. Finally, seeing no escape, he took the leap (pg. 31). Collins went on to become director of the Human Genome Project, the group that eventually decoded our DNA, the “map” of human existence. He stood with President Bill Clinton in the East Room of the White House as Clinton announced the completion of the project. “Today,” Clinton announced, “we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, and the wonder of God’s most divine and sacred gift.” Collins, a few moments later, echoed Clinton’s words when he said, “It’s a happy day for the world. It is humbling for me, and awe-inspiring, to realize that we have caught the first glimpse of our own instruction book, previously known only to God” (Collins 2-3). Even as scientists were discovering more about what makes us human, there was still the realization among politicians and scientists alike that there is still mystery here. Science, as Collins says, does not remove God as creator. Science must recognize its limits and leave room to see God as creator—a creator who is an artist.

That’s how Genesis pictures God. Using poetic language, Genesis shows us a God who creates beauty out of chaos, who creates for the sheer joy of it, who takes a “formless and empty” world, and brings order out of chaos, light out of darkness. I thought of that two and a half years ago, as Christopher and I had the privilege to be in Florence, Italy. There, we got to see Michelangelo’s masterpiece David. The story is that Michelangelo started with a huge chunk of marble, and when asked how he was going to go about carving the statue out of it, Michelangelo is reported to have said, “I simply carve away everything that isn’t David.” That’s the way Genesis pictures God working, as an artist, bringing beauty from chaos. Genesis affirms God creates, and God is not threatened or somehow made less of a creator by science and scientific discoveries, because what we call discoveries are already known by him.

So, out of that primary belief, Genesis then goes on to affirm three things. First, creation is good, because God made it. Over and over again in the first chapter, we hear this poetic refrain: “God saw that [what he had made] was good” (1:4). The world is good; creation is good, and when scientists tries to help us understand more about this good creation, it’s because they’re functioning as God’s assistants, whether or not they believe. What’s amazing to me is that, despite thousands of years of history and human observation and inquiry, there is still so much we don’t understand about creation, about the world and the way it works. It’s not scientific inquiry into the world that is a problem; it’s when we, as human beings, claim to know more than God or to put ourselves in the place of God. We have technology that can almost allow us to do that, and that’s what frightens me, that we try to tinker with creation when we understand so little about it. Genesis says creation is good.

But Genesis also affirms that creation is fallen—or, another way to say that is creation is broken. In Genesis 3, we’re told the story of the first sin, of our rebellion against the creator and the creation. No matter how literally you may take that story, the evidence is clear all around us: creation is broken. The world is not as it should be. Shootings at schools, cancer that ravages bodies, death that comes much too early, corruption in politics and business and churches—the world is broken, the world is fallen. But the story of the rest of the Bible is the story of God the creator, desperately in love with his creation, seeking to put it back together. The final affirmation of Genesis is this: creation will be redeemed. It can be made right and one day will be. That’s the “why” and “for what purpose” of creation that faith puts in, that science can’t begin to touch. Even if science can explain every last piece of the world and how it works, it will never explain why the world exists or for what purpose you and I live. You see, in terms of creation, science and faith are not enemies; they are companions on a much larger journey. Now, I can say that all day, but I’d like you to hear from a member of our congregation who works among the sciences, the natural sciences, and has a degree in geology. Listen as Leigh Neace-Coffey shares her journey with faith and science.

VIDEO: Leigh Neace-Coffey

So, whether you believe God created in a literal seven days, or if he took longer and set in motion a process of divinely-guided evolution, whether you believe he literally spoke it into existence or whether it was designed and grew, the point is this: God is the creator. Some think of it a bit like the creation of the automobile. Henry Ford designed the automobile assembly line. He approved the designs of the cars. And he set in motion a process by which cars were built. His name was on every one of them, and even though he did not personally build every one of them, his fingerprints were all over the process. You can legitimately call Henry Ford the creator of the automobile industry (Hamilton 26). And Genesis, in the same way, calls God creator of all that is. That’s what the Bible intends to affirm and that’s what people of faith are called to celebrate.

But, as I said, creation is broken and the story of the Bible is the story, ultimately, of God seeking to set it right, to redeem or restore creation. And perhaps nowhere, then or now, is the brokenness of creation seen as when we encounter disease and death. When Jesus came among us, he encountered many situations that broke his heart, and very often he healed the persons who were experiencing that particular kind of brokenness. We’ve read one story this morning; there are many similar stories you could read in the Gospels. But I’ve chosen this story from the Gospel of Mark because of the way Mark tells it. Mark was probably the earliest Gospel written and largely contains Peter’s understanding of Jesus. Mark was one of Peter’s followers. And so he tells this story in the midst of another story. Jesus is actually on his way to answer a request from a very important official. We don’t know Jairus’ exact title, but if he was an official with the synagogue of Capernaum, as many suspect, he may also have been someone Jesus knew, certainly someone Peter knew, as Peter’s house wasn’t far from the synagogue in that town. But, for whatever reason, Jesus responds to that request and as he goes, he is surrounded by a large crowd. People are pressing against him, folks are being jostled around; it’s like shopping on the day after Christmas, right there on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

And in that crowd, Mark says, there was a woman who had some sort of bleeding disease. She had been wrestling with this disease for twelve years. Twelve years! Can you imagine how much this disease defined who she was? For one thing, the bleeding made her ceremonially unclean, which means she could not participate in the life of the community. She couldn’t go to worship. She couldn’t be in fellowship with other people because if she were to touch someone else, it would make them unclean. For twelve years, she’s been cut off, isolated, on her own (Card, Mark: The Gospel of Passion, pg. 77). Mark says she had spent all of her money trying to get better and had “suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors” (5:26), but she only got worse. It’s interesting, as a side note, that when Luke tells this same story, he leaves that detail out. Luke, who many believe was a doctor, and who copies 41% of Mark word for word, changes the story here, to say simply that “no one could heal her” (Luke 8:43). Dr. Luke apparently didn’t like Mark’s assessment of the state of the medical profession in Jesus’ day, but you can understand why the woman would feel she was suffering when you think about how they provided healing in those days. One common cure for bleeding diseases was to “fish an oak grain out of cattle dung and force the patient to swallow it” (Card 77). I couldn’t make this stuff up! No wonder this woman was desperate enough to risk going into a crowd and trying to touch Jesus. She believed if she could just touch his clothing, she would be healed. She did, and she was. Instantly.

Now, there’s a lot that could be said about this story, but I want to stay with our struggle to believe in supernatural healing. Remember, especially to first century readers, and even somewhat to us still today, the brokenness of the world is best represented by disease and death. It’s where we most vividly experience and painfully feel the fallenness of creation. Jesus is the fullest expression of what God is trying to do throughout the whole Bible; that is to say, it is the Christian’s belief that Jesus came to redeem and restore creation. In fact, we could even say Jesus came to heal creation, because the word Mark uses in this passage means healing, salvation, wholeness, and rescue (cf. Wright, Mark for Everyone, pg. 60). We often think of “salvation” as a personal thing, Jesus and me, saved for heaven and eternity. And there is that, but God has a much bigger plan in mind. God is out to redeem, to save, to rescue the whole creation. Healing is only a small part of that; in fact, Jesus didn’t heal everyone who was sick on the earth when he was here. Those we know about, he healed so as to remove any sort of obstacle to hearing the good news. Healing was a sign of the kingdom, a pointer toward faith. Healing was not the end in itself. Our faith is not to be put in healing, or in any supernatural act, but in Jesus, the one who can heal.

Let me say this as clearly as I can: it is not an act of faith to ignore science when it comes to this issue. It is not an act of faith to simply pray for healing and not avail ourselves of natural healing processes and medical knowledge that God has given to people who have studied and researched and invested themselves in it. Some of you know my story, but I want to share it again this morning because I’ve experienced both sides of this issue. When I was in college, I was in my dorm room one afternoon when I had a sudden pain in my chest. Thinking it was a muscle spasm or something like that, I laid down for a while and when it wouldn’t go away, I headed across campus to the Health Center—or, as it was affectionately known to Ball State students, the Death Center. They sent me for an x-ray and did some tests and discovered that I had a collapsed lung, and they set me up to spend the night in a hospital bed. I called home, and folks at my home church began to pray. Folks on campus began to pray. And the next morning, I woke up and knew I had been healed. Don’t ask me how I knew; I just knew. I went to the doctor later that week, to follow up, and was told that the lung, which should have taken about two weeks or so to heal and reinflate, had in fact done so fairly quickly. I believe that when God’s people pray, God responds.

But God doesn’t always respond with physical healing. When I was in high school, preparing to go to Ball State, I was getting my physical for the application and my doctor discovered an abnormality in my heart. He told me to come back in two weeks, and we’d see if it was still there, and we’d discuss what to do from there. We took the concern to our church, and one of the godliest women I’ve ever known, Esther Beard, my high school Sunday School teacher, pulled me aside, laid her hands on me and prayed for healing. If God was going to listen to anyone, it would have been Esther. She was closer to God than probably anyone I’ve ever known. And so Esther prayed, and she asked for healing, and when I went back to the doctor, I was sure I was healed. It had to be. God wouldn’t refuse Esther! And yet, it wasn’t healed. I had a heart murmur—a hole in my heart—and I was to begin seeing a cardiologist regularly. Now, I had people praying throughout the years for me to be healed. And yet, every year, when I went back to the doctor, it was still there. I ended up in the hospital with some complications one January while I was in seminary, and people prayed. Future pastors prayed! And still the murmur remained. It wasn’t until January 12, 1999, when I put myself under the hands of a skilled surgeon, that the murmur was repaired.

So why healing one time and not the other? I don’t know. Why is one person healed and the other person dies from the same illness? Why do millions die of cancer every year? Why do children die of preventable diseases in undeveloped nations every day? Why doesn’t God do something? Why doesn’t God heal everyone? If God is such a powerful creator, why? Why? Why? We may not be brave enough to ask such questions aloud, but I’m willing to bet we’ve thought some of them or some like them from time to time. And the answer is: I don’t know. I know this: the world is broken, and God’s heart is broken by that brokenness. It is not what God intended when he created the world. But God will not force his will upon us. Instead, the story of the Bible is that God calls us to be his assistants in redeeming and restoring the world. And so we use every means at our disposal: science, philosophy, the arts, media, whatever we can use to bring healing, hope and redemption—rescue—to this broken and dark world. Mother Teresa once said she only wanted to be and do something beautiful for God. When we do something beautiful, we participate in creation with God. We bring light to darkness, healing to brokenness, and we too become God’s assistants. And so, your pastors, when we come to visit in the hospital, always will pray for healing. And we’ll encourage you to take advantage of the best this world has to offer to find healing. And we’ll entrust your care and your life, ultimately, to God, the creator and healer. I know sometimes God heals and sometimes he doesn’t, but that doesn’t mean we stop asking for healing. We ask in faith. We trust and we hope and we believe in a God who is above it all and who is in the rescue business, even if we don’t see it or experience it the way we want it.

So what does all this mean? What does it mean to be God’s assistants in this world? Well, I once had someone who was in the music industry tell me he wished he could make Christian music, and I very quickly responded that it was better if he would stay where he was. We need Christians who are in the midst of that industry, seeking to shine a light in the midst of the darkness. We need Christians who are scientists, who seek to understand the world God created. We need Christians who are in the medical arts, who understand that healing is more than just a matter of medicine and surgeries but that healing is about wholeness. Healing is more than finding a cure. We need Christians who are teachers, and lawyers, and bus drivers. We need Christians who are politicians and housekeepers and child care workers (whether in the home or not). You see, we have this false distinction between “those in ministry” and “the rest of us,” when in fact we’re all in ministry because we’re all called to be God’s assistants. We need Christians who are engaged in every aspect of life, seeking to redeem the creation, because, as Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper once said, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’” It all came from him and it all belongs to him.

Let me ask a question that was posed many years ago by theologian J. B. Phillips: how big is your God? Actually, Phillips phrased it this way: “Your God is too small.” Whenever we think things like science are a threat to Christian faith, our God is too small. When we believe science and faith are incompatible, our God is too small. Do we believe in a God who can create light out of darkness? We just proclaimed in the Christmas season that we do believe that, that Jesus came as the light piercing the darkness. Do we believe that the rest of the year? Do we believe in a God who can bring healing, who can bring resurrection as the ultimate healing? How big is your God? Or more to the point: is your God worthy of worship? You see, science is not a threat to the Christian faith, and faith should never be antagonistic toward science or any other realm of human existence. All truth is God’s truth. And if we believe, as we do, that God is ultimately redeeming all of creation, then we need not fear that some new discovery or novel idea will derail that redemption, that rescue. If creation is God’s handiwork, then the discoveries of science, rather than threaten our faith, ought to move us more and more to worship, to praise the God who created it all (cf. Hamilton 24). How big is your God? And are you willing to work alongside him for the redemption—the re-creation—of all the world?

Let’s pray.