All Saints.06                                                     November 5, 2006

On All Saints Sunday,
       we celebrate humanity.
We celebrate people,
       especially those who have died.
So All Saints Sunday puts us in mind
       of what it means to be human.
It poses the question: just what is a human being anyway?

We may know one when we see one.
But that isn’t really much knowledge.
There are deeper questions like
       what makes people do what they do,
       what are people for,
       and how do we go about being human?

In the Christian tradition,
       we call the essence of being human “soul.”
And we refer to our own personal humanity
       as our soul.
When we ask what it means to be human,
       Christians think – what is a soul?

Many people think of souls as spooky non-physical entities
       that inhabit or possess bodies like the aliens
                in the movie, Invasion of the Body Snatcher.
Some scientists who don’t know much about religion
       think they have disproved the existence of the soul
       when they explain human thinking, feeling, and experiencing
                in terms of neurology or other bio-chemical processes.

But the Jewish sense of soul that Jesus believed in
       was not a diaphanous Body Snatcher.
St. Thomas Aquinas called the soul the form of the body.
       In other words, the body is like the building materials
                that make up the house.
The soul is in some ways like the blue-print.

There is a distinct blue print for humanity,
       and a more precisely distinct blueprint for each person.
In a sense we are our bodies – in another sense, we are not.
The material stuff that makes a body
       is always being cast off and replaced by new stuff.
We trade in and replace part of our bodies every time we breathe,
       and we do a complete change out of our whole bodies
               several times over the course of a life span.
What remains is the blue print, the form that makes us ourselves.
That blueprint is not erased at our death.

You can burn the wood of a house,
        but as long as the blueprint exists,
               someone can rebuild the house with new wood,
                      maybe better.

Our “sure and certain hope of the Resurrection,”
        is based on our faith that God does not forget the blueprint,
        and that God who created the cosmos in the beginning,
        and recreates the cosmos over and over in each moment,
        this God can and will, in love, recreate us.
This is not modern liberal caving-to-science watered-down religion.
It’s St. Thomas Aquinas writing in the 13th Century,
        drawing on Aristotle, writing in the 4th Century B.C.

With that understanding of soul,
        that understanding of humanity,
                 there is no conflict whatsoever
                 between scientific inquiry and faith.
Scientists study as much of the blue print as they can find.

So science is not the enemy of faith,
        even faith that leads to the hope of resurrection.
But faith does have two hindrances,
        scientism and dogmatic religion.

They both hinder faith in the same way
        by claiming to know more than they really know,
        in fact claiming to know more than can be known.
Even a pretty helpful doctrine like Thomas’ Aquinas’s
        blueprint metaphor of the soul
               isn’t a complete and adequate explanation.
It tells us nothing one way or the other about the soul
        between death and the general resurrection.

Besides, we are more than the blueprint of our body.
The blueprint metaphor doesn’t take into account
        the narrative quality of our identity.
We are just a much our story.
And what about memory?
We are also defined by a unique set of memories
I am the same person I was in 1980,
        because I remember what I did in 1980.

In a sense, my memories also make me who I am.
But then what if I forget something?
Not just major memory wipe-outs,
        but am I less myself if I forget a detail of the past?
What is the place of memory in defining the unique person?

And what about my longings, my desires, my aspirations?
In a sense these are my own and they hep define me.
But I may take on values and desires from other people,
        sometimes in rather mysterious ways
                which are just in the past few decades
                beginning to be studied by whole new disciplines of inquiry
                with odd names like systems theory and mimetic theory.
Are these influences then part of me?

My bodily blueprint may not change,
        but will I be the same person whether I live my life
                in an aboriginal tribe in New Zealand
        or in a suburb of San Francisco? Not likely.

There are so many questions.
And the answers just lead to more questions.
Defining the soul or the self is too intricate,
       too complex, we cannot grasp it.
We cannot grasp who we are.

The arrogance of some scientists
       and the arrogance of some preachers
               is the same arrogance

       – the claim to know more than we can possibly know.
And in both cases their arrogance
       is rooted in the same ignorance.

Some of the brightest scientists
       have not read or have not understood
       the most rudimentary philosophy of science

       – the philosophers like Thomas Kuhn and Michael Polanyi.
If they had, they would know that scientific models are systems
       that offer the best explanations we can come up with for now

                – but they are never final answers.

Scientific models are springboards for questions
        leading to further research that will ultimately
                relegate the old model to quaint history.
Scientific theories are just solid enough to stand on
        while we project our imaginations out into the unknown.

Likewise, preachers who are too sure of themselves
        have not read or have not understood
        either the Bible or the great theologians
                 from Augustine to Barth and Rahner,
        who insist that God and humanity are both mysteries.

The spirit of mystery and wonder form the common ground
        on which God and humanity meet.
Religious doctrines are never final answers.
They are the best way we have yet devised
        to express our experience of life at its deepest
                 most beautiful level.

Religious doctrines are the special language
        in which we stammer about things
                 inherently beyond our grasp.

Karl Rahner, the greatest Roman Catholic theologian
        of the 20th Century, reminded us that human beings
                 are never complete.
Our incompleteness is at the heart of our humanity.
If we taste love, we thirst for more and greater love.
If we learn a bit of truth, we are curious to know more truth.
If we glimpse beauty, we hunger for a deeper and deeper
        apprehension of that beauty.
All of this yearning forward leads us deeper and deeper
        into the mystery of God.

There is so much we do not know,
        including how this story called our lives turns out,
        how the larger story called history turns out.
All this remains hidden in God.
Faith is trusting that the mystery is gracious,
        that the poor, the mourners, and the meek
                  will finally be blessed,
        along with the peace makers and the persecuted.

So what is it to be human?
There are many things we can say about it.
But ultimately the answer eludes us in mystery.
And that Cloud of Unknowing is where we encounter
        the all encompassing Reality we call “God.”

How then does one go about being human?
That’s another way to ask the same question a Scribe
        once asked Jesus, “What is the first commandment?”
What is the most important thing for a person to do?

And Jesus answered “Love God with all your heart,
        and love you neighbor as yourself.”
We never fully comprehend either God or each other.
In the face of the Unknown, indeed the Unknowable,
        in heaven and on earth, what shall we do?

Jesus says, “Love them. Love the mystery of God and each other.”
Love begins with noticing them.
Notice God – notice that there is depth and beauty beyond our grasp.
Notice the human being here at hand,
        and notice that this person is also a depth we cannot fathom.

Then take an interest.
Wonder. And watch for something to appreciate, to enjoy.
Look for something in each person that makes you smile or laugh,
        look for something that touches your heart.

Jesus taught us how to practice faith.
Faith is trust that the mystery is not only kind, but delightful.
Such faith is lived out as love
                  which is both kind and delighted.

                                                            Amen.