The Impossible and the Laughable
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It was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women who told the disciples [of the resurrection], but these words appeared to the disciples as nonsense, and they would not believe them. —Luke 24:10-11
As a brand-new Unitarian Universalist, I was an atheist with a chip on my shoulder. Later, I would make peace with the Christian tradition in which I was reared — in fact, today I’m affectionately grateful for the Methodist church and the Roman Catholic schools that raised me. But in my early UU days, I felt uncomfortable coming to church on Easter because I didn’t want to hear about Jesus. There might be similar thoughts going through your mind as we approach Easter: Why, as rational realists, do we have to reflect at all on the resurrection? Can’t we just talk about daffodils?
Well, this sermon does mention Jesus and his resurrection. There also will be mention of Pharaoh, Moses, and the parting of the Red Sea. I will speak of miracles and I will also invoke the supernatural — things so mysterious so as to be inexplicable. But bear with me, because my starting point is something theologically neutral: particle physics.
I’m no physicist, but I love mystery. The inexplicable gives me goose bumps. I get a thrill from entertaining bizarre explanations for the unexplainable. That’s why I paid close attention to reports that the Large Hadron Collider, a gigantic scientific instrument near Geneva, Switzerland, had finally succeeded in accelerating and colliding particles.
This particle accelerator is used by physicists to study the smallest known particles — the fundamental building blocks of all things. The Large Hadron Collider is a 17- mile underground ring designed to smash atoms together at high energies. It was created, in part, to find proof of a hypothetical subatomic particle called the Higgs boson — sometimes called “the God particle.”
I wasn’t interested in any of this until I read that in 2009 the Collider had to be shut down because it had been damaged by a piece of baguette… baguette, as in bread. How would a piece of bread make it past such intense security measures and scrupulous standards of sterility? None of the resident physicists could explain it; eventually, scientists and spokespersons concluded that the baguette piece was dropped there by a bird.
Here’s what snapped me to attention: two well-respected and experienced physicists weren’t willing to write off the baguette piece as a freak accident. (After all, how would a bird get to an underground atom-smasher?) These bold physicists pointed out that the Collider had encountered many strange and random setbacks, and suggested in a series of formal papers that setbacks to the Large Hadron Collider were occurring because of “reverse chronological causation” — which is to say, sabotage from the future.
What if, the scientists asked, the Higgs boson — the “God particle” — is “abhorrent to nature”? What if, in some dim layer of the future, the Collider creates the Higgs boson and sends a message backwards in time to botch its own creation? Every time scientists are on the verge of capturing the Higgs, the theory holds, the future intercedes.
If you were a widely-known and well-respected physicist, imagine what it would take for you to publicly suggest that the world’s largest scientific experiment had been stopped by a time-traveling bird. Wouldn’t you suspect that just a few of your colleagues — and not a few other people around the world — would find your hypothesis impossible, and even laughable?
We’re approaching the culmination of holy days held by two different religious traditions: the Christian holy day of Easter and the Jewish celebration of Passover. So here’s a quiz: Which of the following statements seems impossible to you? Which of the following statements is so preposterous that it’s laughable?
A. A time-traveling bird sabotaged the field of particle physics by shutting down a collider with a piece of baguette because every time scientists are on the verge of capturing the “God particle,” the future intercedes.
B. An outspoken prophet of justice and radical inclusivity lived among his followers days after the Roman regime brutally killed him by nailing him to a cross.
C. An entire people who had been enslaved in Egypt were freed from captivity through a series of ten plagues—blood, boils, the whole lot—and the Red Sea parted to give them escape from soldiers in pursuit.
In For the Time Being, Annie Dillard asserts that “the presenting face of any religion is its mass of popular superstitions” — like seeing the face of Jesus in a tortilla, or Mother Teresa in a cinnamon bun, or the name of Allah appearing in a halved eggplant — all of which have happened, to the delight of the faithful and the press who document these happenings. The fact that some people interpret these appearances literally, as articles of faith, reveals just how deeply we hunger to craft hope and sense out of mystery.
“Suddenly,” writes Trappist monk Thomas Merton, “there is a point when religion becomes laughable. Then you decide that you are nevertheless religious.” To me, Merton’s words suggest that deciding to be religious hasn’t so much to do with the content of our beliefs — or subscribing to the impossibility of other people’s beliefs — as it has to do with the suspension of disbelief… which is just another way of saying the willingness to entertain mystery.
This isn’t the same thing as suspending reason altogether, or accepting any sufficiently wondrous explanation for mystery. Being religious doesn’t mean that you must examine the tortilla wrapped around your burrito before eating it. It does mean, depending on how you orient your heart, that you might see the face of God or the name of Allah in the most laughable places.
Being religious despite the impossible and the laughable means shifting how we think about belief; it’s less an intellectual exercise than it is an inviting of our imaginations and our hope to dance together. Being religious means holding the modest position that the universe will not be fully explained or understood within our lifetime.
All too often, we Unitarian Universalists define ourselves by what we don’t believe. Even when we do talk about our beliefs, we’ve come to view this as an intellectual exercise, and end up explaining too much and too often. Lauren Winner, a Christian writer and historian, remembers a friend reading out loud to her from an obscure British novel. In one scene, a believer and a cynic are debating God. Of course I know you believe in it, the cynic says. What I want to know is do you believe in it the way you believe in Australia?
For my part, I don’t believe in God the way I believe in Australia. In some ways, I believe in God more, or at least differently, than I believe in Australia. I’ve never been to Australia, but I have experienced God. Don’t let the name distract you, because I’ll call it just about anything to have you focus on this part: I have been awakened, healed, transformed, called to my fullest self, comforted, and guided by some force larger than my human self. So I believe in the Source of Life. But I’ve never seen Australia.
I don’t believe in the resurrection of Jesus the way I believe in God or Australia — I don’t believe that Jesus’ body was restored to life. But if you ask enough Christians you’ll find a good number who don’t believe that either.
I don’t believe that when Moses stood at the edge of the Red Sea he looked anything like Charlton Heston, and I don’t believe that the aforementioned Source of Life split the surface of the waves to create an escape route for the Jewish people. But if you ask enough Jews, you’ll find plenty who don’t believe that either.
I do believe that the stories themselves, and their very improbability, speak to something deep inside of us… call it the “God particle.” I believe that we are religious when we allow ourselves to be constantly surprised and awed by the world’s complexities.
“People flock to religion not in spite of the fact that it’s laughable, but precisely because of it,” says UU minister Rob Hardies. “The reason people come to church on Easter is to look for hope…. The church is the repository of human hope…. The church is the place where we stash away those stories of hope for when we and the world need them most.”
The richly-textured fabric of our Unitarian Universalist community holds countless stories of hope. Those stories give us reason to trust that the impossible can happen. What impossible things does your heart yearn for? What hopes, if you named them out loud, would seem laughable?
Is the “impossible,” for you, the hope that you might emerge on the other side of some harrowing inner struggle?
Is it laughable to think that whatever’s burdening your heart right now might grow lighter, until one day it’s gone?
Does “peace” seem impossible to you? Is it laughable to think that we human beings could live in peace in the Middle East? Between the gang zones in your own city? In our own families?
Or perhaps what seems impossible is that our culture will one day reflect the inherent worth and dignity of every person.
Is it so laughable to believe that you’re nothing less than beautiful, nothing less than whole?
These are all religious matters, every one of them. Do they seem laughable? Do they seem impossible?
Let us decide, nevertheless, to be religious.
- Secret-Keeping - January 1, 2016
- The End Is Not Near - April 1, 2014
- The Impossible and the Laughable - April 1, 2011
