Epiphany 6 February 15, 2009

2 Kings 5:1-14                                                                      

1 Corinthians 9:24-27                                                          

Mark 1:40-45

 

I don’t know how many of you glance at the little biographies of the week’s saints that we run in the bulletins each Sunday. Someone said to me that the saints didn’t “do anything” for him. I guess they “do” a lot for me. They remind me of the struggles that others have faced to live out the Gospel of Jesus Christ, of the fact that you and I stand on the shoulders of generations of giants who have gone before us. As the Letter to the Hebrews says, “we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [that we can] run with endurance the race set before us.”

 

The Book of Common Prayer allows, and even encourages, dioceses and congregations to add their own “local saints” to the official observances. I have a collection of my own, and this week I added two saints to it: Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. How remarkable that these two men were each born 200 years ago last week. Darwin once thought of becoming a priest, but later abandoned any official faith. Lincoln was a deeply religious man, but not in a strict church-going sense. In both cases, I think their souls were too large for the narrow strictures of the religion of their day—something true of many saints.

 

Darwin’s vision was nothing short of astounding. It is said that we can approach nature in either of two ways: as something to be exploited or as a source of wonder. Darwin approached it as a source of wonder. To use religious words that might have surprised him, he contemplated it, meditated on it, prayed with it. He allowed it to commune with his mind and his soul, and out of that communion came his deep and transforming theories of evolution and natural selection. Like the theories of Einstein and relativity, Watson and Crick and DNA, Darwin’s theories are marvelous illuminations of a reality that ultimately transcends all theory: a bit like icons, which open windows for us into the mystery of God’s love.

 

It is terrible—nothing short of terrible—that some of our co-religionists can’t understand that there is nothing inconsistent between evolution and religious faith. Only those who make science or religion too little, too absolute, would reach such a conclusion. It is really blasphemy, a dishonor to nature, to humanity, and ultimately to Creator God. At a time when we face so many scientific challenges—around the environment, around energy, around disease—we need the example of St. Charles Darwin to encourage us to pursue what we might call a “holy science,” one founded on wonder, not exploitation. One that honors the truth that we are part of Creation, its servants, not its masters.

 

Then there is Lincoln. As President Obama has observed, Lincoln’s hour is uncannily like our own. He came to office in the deepest crisis our Nation has ever faced. Where his predecessors had failed to deal with the problems splitting our country, he stepped forward and confronted them boldly. He had the vision and courage—I would say the religious inspiration—to reach forward and take actions that were greater than his own personal positions. He had deep reservations apparently about the inherent equality of blacks and whites, but nevertheless he lifted up the abolitionist cause and freed the slaves. He called a Nation to a greatness beyond what it had known, and had he lived our history would have been very different. At this hour too we need a St. Abraham Lincoln to inspire us to greatness.

 

Why invoke these “saints” on this Sunday, in connection with the lessons be have before us? The Collect of the Day (from the Canadian Prayer Book, which this week as not infrequently has a fresher, more direct take on the readings) asks God to “look with compassion on the anguish of the world, and by [his] power [to] make whole all peoples and nations.” Healing is not simply medical, and certainly not simply individual or personal. It is fundamentally about wholeness, fundamentally about reconciliation with God.

 

There is a common note in the story of Naaman and the account in the gospel. It is humility—though that word is entirely inadequate in the way we usually understand it. Humility has to do with abdicating our own pride, our certainty, our positions and prejudices. It is fundamentally about backing off and making some space in which we can recognize the wonder and possibility of God. For it is in responding to this wonder and possibility that we can made the great leaps of imagination and energy necessary to meet challenges like those we face today.

 

Will we be able to do that, as we seek a way forward with the scientific and political challenges facing us? It will not be easy. Humility sounds like a soft, weak thing; actually it is anything but—think of Jesus on the Cross. But each of us can do our part. We can be part of the healing, not part of the brokenness that needs to be healed. That is our challenge, the race set before us, to invoke the metaphor of St. Paul this morning. Pray that God may give us the strength to run our race, in company with the saints who have gone before.