Good Morning, faithful, praying servants! 

 

There are so many things happening in our community and the wider world that at times it takes one’s breath away. We jointly pray that your week is moving smoothly and all the rough edges smoothed. Thank God The Christ is constant, consistent, and in love with us. As we pray for our church and churches worldwide, let’s also pray for a refreshed attitude toward the One who is near but unknowable. This week the word is “natural” (I know, I know…and here we go). There are so many different meanings to this seven-letter word. What comes to mind when you say that word to yourself out loud? Does it make you relax or tense up? Isn’t it interesting that it might stir things that we don’t even know are there until we slow down and reflect on our responses?

 

Secularly, the word refers to “nature,” right; the physical promenade that God gave us to enjoy and protect? Does that include us? Are we part of the “natural world?”  And of course, you say, “Yes!” But do we accept that truly? Not long ago I had an older Black student in one of my classes who insisted that she was not an animal. I mentioned that we share 95% of our DNA with apes, and she was resolute that she was not an animal and that she was not related to monkeys. I completely understood and sympathized with her. Many of our experiences in this country derived from the European redefinition of Africans as subhuman in their colonization of the continent. Nonetheless, I persisted and offered it as a perspective, albeit scientific truth, for her to consider as a Christian. But the bottom line is that scientifically we are human animals. We have been gifted with the spark of divine consciousness that differentiates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. How have we used that spark toward God’s real estate, each other, and in return, The Creator? 

 

In most cases, when we think of something being natural, it suggests a flow, a rhythm, an ease, as it were. For African-Americans we go to the physical pretty quickly, as in a hairstyle, the “Afro.” With the resurgence of the look of locks, dreads, and unprocessed hair, the ‘fro has a new stylish gleam and has gained wide popularity across all ages and demographics. Does it represent an ease within the skull of the adorned? Is it deeper than skin-deep? But for others at its heart, the word suggests a rhythm that is inherent in something or someone and sometimes it is juxtaposed with the metaphysical, the unseen. And there begins the split: Physicality versus the divine; uncontrolled versus disciplined; mysterious versus known; wild versus still; dark versus light that ultimately morphs into good versus evil. That’s quite a leap from rhythm-and-ease to good-and-evil, but humankind has done it and simplistically imbued everything in this final context. How has it served us, this leap from Godly unity to human split? We are not going to resolve it today, but maybe there’s something in it for us as we look beyond the fragile walls of every church.

The Judeo-Christian creation story highlights this split from the very beginning with The Fall. Whether you are a literalist in your Bible study or appreciate the power of allegory and belief, creation stories have this dualism, as scholars have called this device. For example we in the United States tend to think of Europe as a monolith of belief but that is far from the truth. Eastern Europe has a diverse cultural history and any cursory review of pre-WWI European history reveals that. In particular Slavic creation stories before the ninth century CE (Common Era or A.D.) focused on a god who competed with an opposing source, sometimes the devil or anti-god character, a bird or “Earth Diver.” 

 

This dualistic narrative of the creation through the rivalry of God and Satan appears to have been very popular in the East Slavic folklore tradition. An impressive study of these narratives by Vera Kuznetsova (1998) surveys more than 300 texts, of which about 104 versions include the motif of diving for earth. 

 

After the establishment of Christianity in the region and has happens when cultures meet, a merger occurs. This attempt at explaining the beginning of humankind as they know it has at its core a deviation from a whole, a deviation from a powerful something that pre-existed humanity.

 

Another form of the Earth Diver myth in East Slavic tradition can be found in a small number of Christmas carols recorded in Galicia (Western Ukraine). Ivan Senkiv reports that similar carols circulated in the Hutsul region, around Zhab’e (1981, 99). While the prose narrative has been recorded often, there are few recordings of the carol; the present writer is aware of ten published versions. 1. The first of these carols was published in 1842 (oafaqík 1955, 153; Dei 1965, 43). It was collected by I. Vahylevych in the 1830s in Kal’nytsia village, Galicia (Dei 1965, 719). 

 

 “When in the beginning there was no world 

Then there was neither heaven nor earth, 

There was only a blue sea, 

And in the midst of the sea a green sycamore 

On the sycamore three doves 

Three doves advise each other,

Advise each other on how to make the world: 

‘Let us go down to the bottom of the sea,

We will get fine sand,

We will scatter the fine sand,

It will become black earth.

We will get golden stones,

We will scatter the golden stones,

They will become the clear sky,

The clear sky, a bright sun,

A bright sun, a clear moon,

A clear moon, a clear evening star,

A clear evening star and all the little stars.’”

   John Andreas (2005, pg. 260)

 

The Earth Diver animal is usually a bird and as seen above, a dove. The symbolic dove in Judeo-Christian traditions represents hope (the story of Noah’s Ark). Jesus in our Christian tradition is the “heavenly dove,” bringing peace to the earth. As a poor person’s sacrifice or offering, this dove or pigeon was the acceptable proxy for human transgression in the Hebrew tradition, Jesus’ tradition.

 

If your offering to the LORD is a burnt offering of birds, you shall choose your offering from turtledoves or pigeons. Leviticus 1:14 (NRSV)

 

But if you cannot afford a sheep, you shall bring to the LORD, as your penalty for the sin that you have committed, two turtledoves or two pigeons, one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering.         Leviticus 5:7 (NRSV)

 

 

Across the world in Polynesia we once again see a different version of creation, one that once again highlights a distinction of some sort that leads to humankind.

 

Despite variations, all renditions shared a common plot that cast the emergence of humanity as a process of progressive differentiation from an initial state of unity (Wagner 1978). This story begins with the death and burning of a first ancestor, whose charred skeleton is placed in a stream or a pool. Through the regenerative and procreative power of water, the ancestral bones are transformed into a multitude of human beings. Thereafter, the new humans are divided into groups by a male or female culture hero and given an ancestral language, name, territory, ornaments and customs. While certain versions of the creation myth view the primordial differentiation of humankind as an “apolitical” process, others present a different picture, where the emergence of humans is linked to evaluative differences among groups.

 

These examples from two very separate cultures highlight an apparent need we have to explain difference, differences between each other, and the difference between humanity and the unseen power that created us. Apparently, we mostly agree that we didn’t create ourselves and Jesus provokes us to this deeper consideration, even today, hinting at a complexity that we still struggle to comprehend.

 

As the Pharisees were regrouping, Jesus caught them off balance with his own test question: "What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?" They said, "David's son." Jesus replied, "Well, if the Christ is David's son, how do you explain that David, under inspiration, named Christ his 'Master'? God said to my Master, "Sit here at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. Now if David calls him 'Master,' how can he at the same time be his son?" That stumped them, literalists that they were. Unwilling to risk losing face again in one of these public verbal exchanges, they quit asking questions for good.

Mathew 22:41-46 (TMB)

 

This concept of the dualistic nature of Jesus as God and/or divine is still debated 2000 years after Jesus posed the question: Son of God and Son of Man? Pastor Emeritus J. Alfred Smith, Sr. offered this quotation in the May 20, 2015 “Politics and Justice” (spiritualprogressives.org) teleconference: “God has made us in God’s image and we have returned the compliment.” The Greeks called it hubris and it always led to a downfall.

 

Greek hybris, in ancient Athens, the intentional use of violence to humiliate or degrade. The word’s connotation changed over time, and hubris came to be defined as over-weening presumption that leads a person to disregard the divinely fixed limits on human action in an ordered cosmos.    www.brittanica.com/hubris

 

Look at frequency of the use of this word in books over the past two centuries.

 

Use over time for: hubris

 

                Googlesearch: hubris

 

 

Notice that its usage begins to significantly rise around the time of the development and use of the atomic bomb in WWII, creating what we now call a “doomsday scenario” or “global catastrophic event.” Hubris assumed a spot in American culture after WWII because it became plausible for humankind to self-extinguish on a global scale, the power of destruction without the power of creation. We cannot be the creator and the created simultaneously. That singular ability belongs to an unknowable source, right? However, many believe that mankind is His/Her own greatest creation; that we can create and re-create ourselves. A consideration of this drive to test this hypothesis brings us back to the question of “what is natural?” Does our cerebral cortex possess the self-awareness to self-create? We certainly know how to self-destruct. Does it follow that we are driven to compete with God? Does the supposed complexity of the human cerebral cortex suggest we can create and destroy? But dolphins have comparable cerebral cortexes. A 2010 news article from The London Sunday Times titled “Hello, we’re the humans of the sea” shares cognitive-behavioral research that makes this more than curious. 

 

DOLPHINS have been declared the world's second most intelligent creatures after humans, with scientists suggesting they are so bright that they should be treated as "non-human persons". Studies into dolphin behaviour have highlighted how similar their communications are to those of humans and that they are brighter than chimpanzees. These have been backed up by anatomical research showing that dolphin brains have many key features associated with high intelligence. The researchers argue that their work shows it is morally unacceptable to keep such intelligent animals in amusement parks or to kill them for food or by accident when fishing. Some 300,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises die in this way each year. "Many dolphin brains are larger than our own and second in mass only to the human brain when corrected for body size," said Lori Marino, a zoologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, who has used magnetic resonance imaging scans to map the brains of dolphin species and compare them with those of primates. "The neuroanatomy suggests sychological continuity between humans and dolphins and has profound implications for the ethics of human-dolphin interactions," she added. Dolphins have long been recognised as among the most intelligent of animals but many researchers had placed them below chimps, which some studies have found can reach the intelligence levels of three-year-old children. Recently, however, a series of behavioural studies has suggested that dolphins, especially species such as the bottlenose, could be the brighter of the two. The studies show how dolphins have distinct personalities, a strong sense of self and can think about the future. It has also become clear that they are "cultural" animals, meaning that new types of behaviour can quickly be picked up by one dolphin from another.

 

If dolphins are self-aware, do dolphins know God? It seems that human beings are prone to seek comparison to God The Creator rather than acknowledging that we are NOT The Creator. It does not follow that possessing the power to destroy means that we will ever have the power to create. 

 

Then he went over the same ground again. "I'm leaving and you are going to look for me, but you're missing God in this and are headed for a dead end. There is no way you can come with me." The Jews said, "So, is he going to kill himself?  Is that what he means by 'You can't come with me'?" Jesus said, "You're tied down to the mundane; I'm in touch with what is beyond your horizons.  You live in terms of what you see and touch. I'm living on other terms. 

What is it about human beings that make us think that what we see is all that exists? Since we realized that we had the power to annihilate ourselves and most other living things on earth, it seems that we believe it is just a matter of time before we can create ourselves because we have discovered the ability to destroy ourselves, i.e., the rise in the word “hubris” in books since WWII. Wouldn’t it be more logical that if we had created ourselves, we would be able to create other living things? And that our awareness of our ability to create ourselves would supersede our ability to destroy ourselves? 

 

Like a ship in the empty ocean, astronomers on Earth can turn their telescopes to peer 13.8 billion light-years in every direction, which puts Earth inside of an observable sphere with a radius of 13.8 billion light-years. The word "observable" is key; the sphere limits what scientists can see but not what is there. But though the sphere appears almost 28 billion light-years in diameter, it is far larger.

 

 

Called the eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, the photo was assembled by combining 10 years of NASA Hubble Space Telescope photographs taken of a patch of sky at the center of the original Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The XDF is a small fraction of the angular diameter of the full Moon. Image released September 25, 2012.

 

If the creation myths have a common thread, it is the thread of differentiation from oneness: The Fall in Christianity, the Earth Diver in Eastern European myths, and the Papua New Guinea human descended from unity. 

 

The idea of something being “natural” takes on a different hue when seen through the eyes of unity as opposed to inevitable and greater differentiation or distinction. In other words, it is more “natural” to acknowledge that we will never be able to create ourselves and unity seems to be both the beginning and end game for us. As an aside, let’s not confuse cloning ourselves with creation: A human clone is a replica of an extant human. A created human being is a distinctly unique genetic organism; even identical twins are different.

 

While the two babies share the same DNA code, there is more to our genetics than just that. During development in the womb and after birth, our surroundings, exposures, and nutrition influence how our genes are expressed and how our bodies and minds develop. 

 

Jesus offers this Oneness in a fairly straightforward manner: “I and the Father are one heart and mind" John 10:30 (TMB). It doesn’t get any plainer than that. And he left us some things to think about, deep things to think about, now.

 

He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.”

If we could undo the dualistic drive in our thinking, that there is the Other that is separate from ourselves, rather than as beloved creations of that Other, what might naturally flow from this? If this were a primary assumption rather than a constant challenge, what might naturally flow from this? Would we be less likely to go to war? Would we less likely to be impatient with each other and ourselves? Would we experience peace without price? However we think this differentiation or separateness occurred, we must consider that this might not have been inevitable nor does it doom us. How can we possibly know this? There is a simple explanation for some of us: Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, Mary’s Baby, the Bright Morning Star, the Lily of the Valley, the Alpha and Omega, the One. 

 

Lord God, we thank You for reconciling us to You, however we came to be separated. We come thanking You for splitting off a part of Yourself and installing Yourself on Your planet for a short 33 years. We come thanking You for patiently waiting while we fruitlessly fiddle around with notions of immortality. We come thanking You for placing signs, symbols, and clues everywhere on Your planet. We come acknowledging that we aren’t meant to live forever and as precious as this life is, we understand the weariness in the eyes of those who have traveled long and rough roads with You. We come thanking You for the young you’ve given us and beg your mercy and forgiveness as they slaughter each other because we’ve failed them. We come crawling and pleading with You to spare them as You spared us. We come begging You to renew us as we seek Your face, never to be fully seen until we cross the chilly Jordan, holding the Hand of The Christ, our Jesus. For this we are grateful and for this we are determined to get up and try again and again and again until You say, “Enough; you have done enough and all you can. Come on Home to Me.”

 

And then we shall run; we shall run to You!

 

Amen.