It was a service filled with new things - most particularly with new members joining today and with Huda's first sermon being spoken from the pulpit. Especially salient for me was Huda's remark about "leaving the mystery intact" with respect to the question of scientific explanations and their presence or absence to account for the story in which Jesus and then Peter both walk on water. This touched on a fundamental point for me, in fact, precisely the point that brought me back to faith after many years of professed athiesm or at least agnosticism. Huda quoted Descartes for the oft-cited fundamental defining proposition of rationality "I think therefore I am." It was rationalism that led me away from my childhood's faith. For a long time, I had a great deal of difficulty reconciling the rationalist outlook of my secular education, particularly in science and social science: archaeology, anthropology and law, with a faith that could be logically compatible with rationality.
As Huda said this morning, faith is compatible even with doubt. What brought me back from years away from the church was actually Ludwig Wittgenstein, who wrote in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus:
...Even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.Which is to say that, as far as I am concerned, were an archaeologist digging in the Middle East to find a mechanism proving beyond a doubt some sort of scientific explanation or even magical hoax behind Jesus walking on water, that would not explain away the mysteries of who he was, and what he said, what people heard when he was speaking, the power of God, and what that continues to mean for us in this far away land today.
The notions of mystery and journey resonated very strongly for me as our new members joined. They are each on their own journeys, as are we all, as am I. It is for the journey and the companionship on it that I am grateful.
Rebecca
Thank you for sharing, Rebecca, I wasn't at St. Andrew's because I was out of town. But I mentioned to my parents that one of the things I appreciate the most about our church (and maybe Presbyterians in general?) is the acceptance of the grey areas. We don't understand it all, and that's okay.
ReplyDeleteMaureen.