A Sermon preached at St Mary’s, Primrose Hill, by the Reverend Robert Atwell on Second Sunday before Lent: 19 February 2006

Welcome. And congratulations. I am delighted that you could make it. Getting here wasn’t easy, I know. In fact, I suspect it was a little tougher than you realise. To begin with, for you to be here now, trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and curiously obliging manner to create you. It’s an arrangement so specialized and particular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this once. For the next many years (we hope) these tiny particles will uncomplainingly engage in all the billions of deft, co-operative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely agreeable but generally under-appreciated state known as existence.

The bad news is that atoms are fickle and their time of devotion is fleeting – fleeting indeed. Even a long human life adds up to only about 650,000 hours. And when that modest milestone flashes into view, or at some other point thereabouts, for reasons unknown your atoms will close you down, then silently disassemble and go off to be other things.’

This is how Bill Bryson’s book A Short History of Nearly Everything begins. It’s a great read, a typical Bill Bryson romp, taking us through the development of Western science over the past three hundred years. But what I found so helpful and fascinating is to see how the various scientists had to set out on a journey of intellectual discovery, daring to ask radical questions, to think the unthinkable, to be shaken out of all their comfortable assumptions and to come to see that there were deeper truths to be discovered. It was not a task for the fainthearted, the unimaginative or the fearful.

But Bill Bryson – and scientists in general – focus on the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ questions in life. What is the world like? What are the universal laws which govern the universe? How does one change here in the created order affect something else over there? What Bill Bryson, or indeed science, doesn’t help us with is the answer to the ‘why’ questions of life. Why are we are here on earth? Is there any reason why we are here on average for 650,000 hours each? Nor does it tackle the big question that we each face: How should I live my life?

In every culture and in every age people have asked the big ‘why’ questions. Christians believe that there is purpose and meaning, and that it is revealed most clearly in the life, the teaching, the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. As St Paul says in our reading from Colossians: In Christ all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.

Or as St John says in our gospel reading this morning, words that we usually only hear at Midnight Mass at Christmas: What has come into being through him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never overcome it.

Christians believe that we can only answer the ‘why’ questions of life when we set out on a similar journey of intellectual discovery, daring to ask radical questions, to think the unthinkable, to be shaken out of our comfortable assumptions, because we realise that there are deeper truths to be discovered. In this journey of enlightenment we need to allow the light of Christ to dispel the darkness within us. We do so because we recognise in him the fullness of God. It is through Christ that God gives us ’insight’ – inner light.

Few of us, of course, experience a dramatic conversion like that of St Paul on the road to Damascus who was literally blinded by the light. Most of us, me included, just bumble along. That said, I do have a sense of God quietly leading and guiding me, though usually I can only really see this when I look back on things. Perhaps you’re the same.

Some of you may have watched last autumn the Channel 4 series ‘Monastery’. It was Reality-TV at its best, and certainly one-up on Big Brother. Five men from diverse backgrounds were chosen to go and live in a Benedictine Monastery in Sussex for six weeks. In different ways each of them was changed profoundly by the experience. In particular I remember Tony, a former member of the UDA from Belfast, who wasn’t sure he had any faith at the beginning of the series. In the last but one programme he had an extraordinary experience of the love of God embracing him. As we watched, he suddenly fell into a deep silence as God spoke to his heart.

Afterwards he said, ‘Something happened; something touched me; something spoke to me, very deeply, very profoundly’. That experience has since led him to change his job and to go in a new direction. It is part of the answer to the ‘why’ questions of life.

So what of us, why do we come to church, Sunday by Sunday?

Because we too feel that we have been touched by God. The experience will be different for each of us. The experience may be fragile, but as a result we find ourselves drawn back, time and again. We go on searching because paradoxically in the muddle of our lives we feel that God has found us and won’t let us go.

This doesn’t mean that we understand everything there is to know about God. It doesn’t mean we are perfect or better than other people. What it does mean is that we have come to trust in the grace and goodness of God. That’s the key thing. In science when you have a hypothesis you have to test it by experimentation. The same is true with God. We won’t come to know the truth of God in some abstract way. We will only come to the truth of God when we put our trust in God, when we set out on that journey of discovery.

Our duty and our joy is to offer all that we know of ourselves to all that we know of God. In so doing we set out on the greatest journey of all, the journey into God.

So finally, let me return to science and to an article about the human genome project which I read recently. In it the author described various attempts to design a computer programme that could accurately mimic nature’s ability to generate new forms of life. None of the programmes worked because they all lacked that random quality which is in the universe and in which lies its creativity. In the end the scientist had to introduce into his computer programme what he termed a ‘Generator of Diversity’. It amused me that in the article this was referred to by its acronym: G-O-D.

Some people give up on God because they think God is boring. I’m sad about that because God is never boring. The church and religion may be boring, but God is never boring. God is the generator of diversity, the great improviser at the heart of all things. And when we discover that we too come alive.

© Robert Atwell, 2006