In the year 597 BC, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon was on his way back from a military campaign in Egypt, when he decided to invade the Hebrew southern kingdom of Judah and sack Jerusalem. The destruction of Jerusalem was total, and the Zadokite priesthood, as well as many of the social leaders were carried away to exile in Babylon.

The Hebrews in exile were distraught. Their god had lost in battle and their faith had been shattered. In an attempt to reinvigorate the faith of the people, the priests created a narrative; In the beginning El Shaddai created….for six days and rested on the seventh, the holy day that the priests were eager to uplift. The message was quite simple: no matter the distress you are facing, God cares for you. God loves you, and the love of God is more powerful than the forces of evil.

When the priests created this narrative of comfort, they had on hand another narrative that they wove into their story. This is the creation story as told by the Yahwist, person or group we do not know, originally told perhaps 400 years prior to the exile. The Yahwist account of creation was told to counter the polytheism of Mesopotamia, and the message here is that there is one creator God, who formed humankind (adam in Hebrew) out of dust.

Putting the two stories together, we have a powerful message: There is one God and this God loves you.

One of my favorite pastimes on Hastings Mesa, CO, where my wife and I were camping for two months, is searching for fossils. There we are, at 9300 feet above sea level, finding evidence of little shellfish that lived there under water millions of years ago. Then I look around at the San Juan range of the Rocky Mountains, realizing that these mountains are at least the third incarnation of earth that has been forced up, eroded away, pushed up, etc. Once upon a time (actually, many times), all the planetary land mass was gathered together in one place, the so-called Pangea. That’s why, when it broke up, we find parts of North America on the shores of Great Britain. Tectonic plates move.

Everything changes. Rivers change their flow pattern. Bacteria evolve so they can survive new antibiotics. Stars have a life: the nuclear furnace runs out of hydrogen fuel. Galaxies change: in 2 billion years, we will collide with Andromeda, our nearest galactic neighbor. And we can see in the surrounding mountains that trees also change. Everything changes.

Even people. After being away from Vermont for 5 years, the folks seem a bit older. But not when returning to Colorado, of course.The species changes as well. When I first visited Plymouth Rock where the Pilgrims landed, I was shocked to realize how short they were in stature. I had to bend over to get through the doorway, and the beds seemed suited for children, not full grown adults. MRIs of young texters show brains that are becoming highly developed in the area that controls thumb activity. Perhaps you have heard of CRSPR, a device for splitting and inserting genes into DNA. This is one way to cure disease that is caused by genetic malfunction. It is also a technique that in the future could be used to design babies. I’ll have one that is 6’2”, very athletic, and smart, of course….I’m sure that mothers here would like to insert a gene that says: love your mother! The species changes.

Suppose we go back 600,000 years. The hominin that we find walking the earth is one we call Homo Heidelbergensis, and Heidelbergensis was found all over the earth- Asia, Europe, and Africa. Those in Africa developed in isolation from those in Europe, and in Europe Neanderthal came to be while in Africa, Homo Sapiens came to be. Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens developed separately. Starting about 80,000 years ago and as recently as 30,000 years ago, Homo Sapiens migrated north along the east coast of the Mediterranean. As they migrated, they met the Neanderthals, and they mated. How do we know? There is fossil evidence, but also DNA. We now have the genomes of Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal.

Everyone in this room shares 99% of their DNA with everyone else. And 98.8% with chimps. And 50% with bananas. How can that be? Well, most of our DNA contains instruction on cell reproduction, a process that all living things share. But it’s that 1% that differentiates us- blue eyes and brown, a big nose, a little nose, 5’6” and 6’5”. And 4% of that one per cent is from our Neanderthal cousins. Homo Sapiens who stayed in Africa never met Neanderthal and so have none of that DNA. The rest of us do.

Given these facts, certain questions arise. The first question is: who are we?? What are we??

There is one type of answer to this first question that says basically: the body changes, but something is constant. The Greeks, for example, had the idea of the soul, which is eternal. This was partially adopted by the Christian church in the 2nd century on, but the Apostle’s Creed, first mentioned in 390 AD, speaks not of an eternal soul, but of a resurrection from the dead, which is a different concept. Hindus speak of the atman, a soul that is part of God, the Brahman, so that we are all divine. The Buddha was not a metaphysician, and so did not believe in a soul. The image he used was that of a flame being passed along, one candle to another. Islam believes that Allah plants a soul in each person that comes along.

A second type of answer is that there is nothing constant or eternal about us at all. We are changing protoplasm; that’s it. This perspective is closer to the Hebrew perspective than you might believe. They also did not believe that any part of us was eternal.

There is a second question that arises from the facts we have looked at. The first was: who are we? The second is: Is the universe headed somewhere? Does it have a direction? a purpose? a goal? or is it purely random? absolute chance? headed nowhere.

There are many answers to this question as well. On the one hand: No. The universe is not headed anywhere. It will end, and that’s that.

A second type of answer is that the universe is headed somewhere, and Christians call that the Kingdom of God, a concept that has a great variety of interpretations. Some think the Kingdom comes at the end of time with -you are familiar with the package-, a judgment, a second coming of Jesus, fire and brimstone, all as supposedly predicted in Revelation. Makes very good drama. Some have even predicted the date of the end. The Millerites, for example, thought it was coming way back in 1843.

Quite a different approach is what is called the Social Gospel. Society was advancing so fast in the 1920s and education seemed like a cure all, that many believed the Kingdom would be established on earth. Then, of course, came the Great Depression and the War.

Paul Tillich, one of the great theologians of the 20th century, thought in terms of being with God not at some future date, but right now, in the eternal moment. The Kingdom has a vertical dimension, if you will, rather than a horizontal one. Teihard de Chardin posited an evolution of the spirit that went higher and higher, ultimately reaching what he called the Omega Point. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed something comparable when he said that the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

Is the universe headed somewhere? Yes. No. In history. Beyond history. In me. In us. Who are we? Eternal. Not eternal. What sense are we to make of all this?

First of all, we must realize that every point of view that I have mentioned comes from persons engaged in fides quarens intellectum, as St Anselm put it. Faith seeking understanding. I think that although they had many varying beliefs, they all share the same faith. The same is true for us here today. We represent a variety of belief, but share one faith. As someone put it after church last week, the key is respectful dialogue.

I’ll start the dialogue. I don’t know if we have a soul. I don’t know where we’ll be in 30,000 years, should we survive that long. We will most likely be as different from what we are today as we today are different from Neanderthals. I don’t know if there is life on other planets, but if there is, I’m pretty confident that the Word is there. Imagine a star with a planet of folks. Give them a wave. How exciting! What a happy universe!

But for some matters we do not need to use our imagination. From Genesis 2, 3000 years ago, the message is that there is one God. From Genesis 1, 2500 years ago, the message is that this God cares for you. From the gospels, 2000 years ago, the message is singular: the cross was not the final word, and the resurrection as a new reality means that we all return to God, and that means the whole universe. Now THAT is some kind of good news!

United Church of the San Juans
Ridgway, Colorado

August 20, 2017

Carl E. Krieg, Ph.D.