December 24, 2009 Sermon
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Christmas Eve - 2009
Emmanuel San Angelo
December 24, 2009 Allan Conkling
It all begins on a level invisible to the naked eye, this process of new life. After conception, a tiny ball of cells called a blastocyst forms and attaches to the wall of the uterus in the belly of the mother where it will be carefully guarded and continue growing until the day she delivers her baby. At 5 days from conception it is round about the size of a pinhead. Inside each of the hundreds of new cells being formed there are the 23 pairs of chromosomes, the genome. Each genome carries about 3 billion pairs of DNA, all the genetic information to make a baby a baby, and to direct that baby’s development from the moment of her birth to the moment of her death. The DNA molecule is so fine that it is only possible to see it under high powerful electron microscope. A typical DNA chain is only about 2˝ nanometers (20 angstrom units) in width. Yet if stretched out, it would form a thread about 6 feet long. "Unravel your DNA set it end to end, and it would stretch from here to the moon". Go figure.
We don't often stop to ponder the mysteries of life. The Discovery Channel and sometimes the history channel explore "the mysteries of life" but these don't delve too deep--unless you are wanting to learn the secrets of the Mayan Calendar. Real pondering. Real reflection. Really thinking deep thoughts is something we don't do much of. Perhaps because of what we might find.
English physicist John Polkinghorne writes that unfortunately the long term prognosis for this planet is not encouraging. Two possible scenarios are currently postulated: the first is that the universe will continue to expand endlessly, getting progressively colder and more decayed as it does so. The other is that the universe will one day collapse in on it self into a state of extreme heat and density: So, as Polkinghorne says,
"It is either freeze or fry as far as the universes future is concerned. The cosmos will die just as surely as you and I will die, though it will take a great deal longer to do so, after many tens of billions of years, rather than the tens of years that are our allotted span." (p.52)
Steven Weinburg, another physicist and Nobel Prize winner once observed that the more he understood the universe the more it seemed pointless to him. Maybe that is what keeps us from really pondering, from real reflection, from thinking deep thoughts in silence. Perhaps we are afraid of what we might find.
We, who have lived through the first 12 months of the Great Recession, might in many ways be inclined to agree with him. Granted, we are a little better off than we were a year ago: Unemployment has slowed, and there wasn't a wholesale economic collapse in the Concho Valley as elsewhere, but we still have a long way to go before we can say the worst is behind us.
The year 2009 also added different layers of struggle and challenge to every family here. Each has their own story to tell, in my case of the loss of a loved one; for others separation; failures at work and school, the ongoing and unwinnable war in the Middle East, and on and on. All this can leave us fatigued, weary at best, angry and cynical at worst. So what brings you here on this Christmas Eve?
Barbara Crafton writes about a friend of hers, a skeptic, says, "You just believe in all this stuff because you want it to be true!" Crafton goes on to say that sometimes folks speak those words with an air of triumph, as if they'd just discovered the fatal flaw that will bring down the whole religious enterprise. She writes:
"But of course we want it to be true. That's why we’re here. If we didn't want it to be true we'd believe in something else."
This night we re-discover that darkness is only state of mind. Darkness in fact may indeed be fruitful: darkness of soil where the hidden seed sleeps; the darkness of the womb where new life is created. God speaks to us in the dark places of our soul. God speaks to us through mystery, through apparent randomness and chaos. God infuses the quarks and atoms and molecules, and miles and miles of DNA, through blood and lymph and bone. Through every human race and culture. In Jesus, God knows intimately what it is to be a toddler, to have a stomachache, to feel the rain and wind.
God's light shines in the smile and touch of a loved one. It shines as we kneel in prayer in this holy place. It shines when you extend your hands for bread and wine. It shines when you extend your hand to help another Year after year, no matter what our age or stage in life we find ourselves drawn back to this place, and to these stories we hold so dear. They are life changing. They calm our fears and fill us with hope.
This is a story for everyone. It matters not who you are or where you are from; whether you are rich or poor, sad or happy weak or strong. There are no strangers on Christmas Eve. In the words of Rudyard Kipling:
"Call a truce, then, to our labours--let us feast with friends and neighbours."
Thank you for being here tonight. May God bless you and your loved ones and may you have a most joyous Christmas season.
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