Christ in Judgement – John De Rosen at Saint John’s Memphis, TN
December 29, 2013
I want to begin with the Mural behind you on the tower wall. On the left you see an angel with a book held above his head. You might think this is the book of life, but, in fact it is the Book of Knowledge. Inscribed on the Book of Knowledge is Albert Einstein’s last equation. Over sixty years ago when John De Rosen painted this mural this equation marked the edge of human speculation on the nature of reality. It turns out that this equation is incorrect. Yes, our Book of Knowledge is in error. That seems appropriate, somehow.
I WILL BEGIN WITH the language of Quantum Physics and move to the Readings for Today. I believe that Quantum Physics and John’s Poetic Prologue speak to the same reality!!!
Thomas Young
Albert Einstein
Quantum Mechanics
- In the late 19th century, Thomas Young found that light is a wave.
- In 1905 Einstein discovered that light is also a particle.
This was a terrible dilemma. What do you do with contradictory evidence? There were two options:
If this had the church we would have formed rival groups, the Particularians and the Waveites, accused each other of heresy and carefully decided who was in and who was out. They could accept one set of evidence and reject the other. What they did do was hold on to the evidence and look for a way to explain the paradox. [A statement that seems contradictory, unbelievable, or absurd but that may actually be true in fact.] It took 25 years to sort out but Quantum theory now tells us that light is not particle or wave but rather, BOTH particle AND wave. Reality is actually richer than we had imagined.
Please forgive me for stating the obvious but the whole thing begins in Genesis 1:1-2.
I’m reading from the Schocken Bible a translation by Everett Fox, “At the beginning of God’s creating of the heavens and the earth, when the earth was wild and waste, darkness over the face of Ocean, rushing-spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters – God said: Let there be light! And there was light.” Fox’s translates Hebrew to English retaining the rhythm of the Hebrew language.
Let us then consider God as Noun and Verb, Particle and Wave.
Notice the verb in relation to the Incarnation. In the collect: ALMIGHY GOD, you have poured upon the NEW light of your incarnate WORD. In Isaiah, “You shall be called by a New Name (noun) that the God will give. God restores things that are fallen and have grown old. God does new things! As a way of speaking about this creative and playful aspect of God, someone has said that God’s favorite practical joke was old women getting pregnant!
- Old Women getting pregnant! Sarah, Rebecca, Samuel’s momma & Sampson’s.
- Behold, I am doing a new thing. A Virgin shall conceive and bear a son!
- Note the annunciation mural, Here Mary sits amid dry and arid stone, yet as Gabriel speaks to her the word of God the ground around her bursts into flower.
The energy of New Light of thing incarnate – The wave of New Light becomes an incarnate particle. Isaiah For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden cause what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations. … You shall be given a new name. Do you hear the train a’coming!
The energy of the uncreated light is the same energy that makes the desert bloom and the virgin conceive! Here we see the train a’coming. In John’s Prologue, WORD is better translated: CREATIVE ENERGY. Read aloud with me. … For the creative entergy was with God and the Creative Energy was with God and the Creative Energy was God The light Incarnate is wave and particle!
The Church is also Wave and Particle, noun and verb!
We do know that the nature of matter is not object or wave it is both!. Embracing this paradox is what Richard Rohr “non-dual” thinking – moving beyond a either/or to a yes/and
Church is both noun and verb – particle and wave
Note how the “Body of Christ” functions. We are the gathered people of God in a particular place, at a certain time, to worship God (because God is worthy) and to encounter the Risen Jesus in the breaking bread, through the Power of the Holy Spirit and then having been fed with bread we move from noun to verb, go out into the world to be bread for those who are starving for what we just become.
If we have been fed be bread!
Do you see beloved? The Renewal Works is simply a way of thinking for us as we open our hearts and minds to the light of God’s grace and love. This process is to help us get clear about our place in the economy of heaven, the physics of grace! If we have been fed then let us be bread!
Beyond Contradiction 
lovely. just lovely.
reminds me of one of the fiction authors I adore- Robert Jordan. He actually studied to be a quantum physicist and he identified as Episcopalian.
“At one time I really did want to get a doctorate in quantum optics but that was a long time ago, so I have not kept up with the literature at all (though I do like the whole notion of the particles, powers, and forces). Occasionally I’ve been stuck on a panel with physicists—I don’t know why they do this to me, since I’m 30 years out of date! Most of the time I’m wondering what the hell they’re talking about, but I’ve discovered a way that I can hold my own: I don’t think about discussing physics; I discuss theology, and they think I’m discussing physics!”
One of my favorite of his personal stories 🙂
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