June 1, 2014 – Easter 7A
© 2014 Evan D. Garner
The story of Galileo
Galilei has always bothered me a little bit, but this week it’s become
especially troublesome. You might remember him as the one who looked up into
the heavens and discovered that the only way to make sense of the movement of
the planets was to place the sun at the center of the solar system. Actually,
that was Copernicus’ gift to the scientific world, but Galileo was the one who tenaciously
defended that position in the face of considerable political and religious
opposition.
The Church had always maintained
that the earth must be the center of the universe. Just look at the scriptures.
The Psalms make it clear that the earth has been fixed in its place by God and
cannot be moved (93:1; 96:10). Ecclesiastes asserts that the sun rises and sets
and returns to its place while the earth holds still (1:5). And, of course,
that makes sense. We humans are the crown of creation. We are the pinnacle of
God’s handiwork. How could it be possible that the earth moves around the sun?
How could it be possible that anything but us is the center of the universe?
In 1616, Galileo’s
writings were officially banned by the Church, and he was ordered to deny his heretical
claims. In the succeeding years, he busied himself with other work, but, when a
new pope was elected in 1623, he was encouraged that perhaps his scientific
work on heliocentrism would receive a more positive reception. In short, it did
not. He attacked the religious community head-on, even portraying the Pope as a
character in his book named “Simpleton.” He was tried by the Roman Inquisition
and found guilty of vehement suspicion of heresy. Placed under house arrest,
Galileo spent the remainder of his life unable to pursue his life’s work. All
of his writings—past and future—were banned. He died in disgrace, thus unable
to be buried next to his ancestors.
It took a century for
things to change. At first, in 1718 redacted copies of some of his works were
allowed to be printed and circulated. After another century—in 1835—his works
were finally removed from the banned books list. Then, in 1939, the Pope for
the first time praised Galileo for his work and courage. Finally, in 1992, 350
years after Galileo’s death, Pope John Paul II acknowledged that the Church had
made a mistake in condemning the brave scientist’s work and apologized to the
world for its shortsightedness.
Can you imagine being so
convinced that you are right that you would let three and a half centuries pass
before admitting you had made a mistake? I can, and that’s what makes me so
nervous.
There is a verse in
today’s gospel lesson that I cannot get out of my head: “And this is eternal
life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have
sent.” It’s the knowing that bothers me. Jesus said, “This is eternal
life—knowing God and Jesus Christ.” It’s not a conditional statement. He
doesn’t say that in order to get eternal life you must know God and Jesus. He
says that eternal life is knowing God
and Jesus. That means that if we want eternal life—and I’m pretty sure that all
of us do—we’d better figure out what it means to know God and to know Jesus
Christ, whom he sent. And, for my whole life, I’ve been pretty sure that I know
who God is and who Jesus is, but what if I’m wrong? What if the Church is wrong?
There are a lot of Christians out there who talk about a God and a Jesus whom I
barely recognize. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? We can’t afford for it to take us 350
years to figure it out.
For starters, I think the
Church has been misrepresenting what eternal life really is for as long as
anyone can remember. What does the word eternal even mean? A long time ago, I
used to stand in my parents’ front yard, pointing a flashlight up into the
night sky and imagining that the light beam might go on forever. I would flash
it on and off and on and off in some make-believe Morse code that an alien life
in a faraway solar system might be able to see. Maybe there was a little green
kid on a distant planet that could see my blinking light and know that someone
else was out there, too.
How far is infinity? How
long is eternal? As far as my little flashlight can shine and then some? To
this little kid, eternal life meant life with no end. Like my light, it starts here
and keeps on going. One day becomes two days becomes two thousand days becomes two
million days becomes more days than anyone could ever count. It just keeps
going. But is that really what we’re hoping for?
The other day as we were
riding back from the store, our middle child announced that he was going to try
to live to be “a hundred.” “That’s a long time,” I replied, not willing to talk
about the challenges I have seen hundred-year-old men and women face. Math is
an expanding reality for our four-year-old, who, upon second thought, declared
that we was going to try to live to be “twenty-hundred.” “Two-thousand is
pretty old,” I replied. “Do you really think you would want to live that long?”
And then it hit me. Eternal life? Life with no end? More of this day after day after day with no
hope for a destination? Is that really what we’re after?
It turns out that the
word that is so often translated as “eternal” literally means “age-long.” In
other words, Jesus is promising us an “age-long” life. But the word “age-long”
doesn’t really mean anything unless you think about its opposite. Like the word
“wellness,” which is defined as the state of not being sick, “age-long” really means
“not fleeting” or “not cut-short.” Maybe a more effective way to talk about eternal
life, therefore, is to discuss a life that is “complete” or “well-rounded” or
“finished.” Yes, it has no end, but I don’t think time really has anything to
do with it. Jesus isn’t offering us an interminable, never-ending existence but
a full, complete, and perfect life that will never be cut short. That sounds
like something worth hoping for, but it doesn’t sound a lot like the “eternal
life” I so often hear Christians talking about.
But maybe that’s the
point Jesus is trying to make. Yes, he came to give his followers eternal life,
but eternal life isn’t a ticket to heaven. Jesus isn’t talking about spending
forever with him in paradise. I bet if Jesus heard the way we talk about the
goal of the Christian life as leaving this world behind so that we might spend
eternity in the clouds he would scratch his head and say, “Wait, what do you
think this is all about?” That’s because for Jesus eternal life—that life which
is full and complete—is knowing who God really is, and we learn who God really
is by knowing the one whom he sent, his son Jesus Christ.
So, for a minute, forget
everything you think you know about what it means to be a Christian. And set
aside everything you’ve always imagined heaven to be like. And start with this:
God sent his son into the world so that you might know that you are loved
without limit. That’s what it means to know the one true God. If you look at
the story of Jesus, you discover what it really means to know God—not what
you’re supposed to do or who you’re supposed to be in order to get into heaven
but simply that God loves you. That is eternal life, and, besides that, nothing
else matters.
If you’ve ever thought
that God wants you to say a special prayer so that you can go to heaven, think
again. If you’ve ever believed that God is watching you to judge whether you’re
a good person or a bad person, please, leave that behind. If you’ve ever thought
that what it means to be a Christian and what it takes to go to heaven is living
a life that would make your saintly grandmother proud, I hate to disappoint
you, but that’s not it at all. Eternal life is knowing who God is through the
lens of love that is Jesus Christ. And that is all you need to know in order to
make your life complete. Amen.
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