Sunday Sermon 11/27/11

Today was the first day of the new Mass and aside from "consubstantial" in the Creed was not very noteworthy. The music seemed particularly bad but that might have been regional. The gospel was another of the "prepare yourself while the master is away" gospels, not the exciting ones that inspired the book series of the vanishing spouses and workmen, "Left Behind," but the gentle reminder without the foolish virgins or unproductive servants. It does, however, have an unsettling line. The returning master is likened to "a man traveling abroad."

This is an extremely upsetting simile and I'll bet anything Christ delivered it with a smile. The notion of a traveling God, visiting the universe where man is not, invokes a shiver. What would he be doing? Sightseeing? Vacationing? Where would God go? Neptune? Alpha Centauri? What about us?

The Enlightenment, the reliance on reason, created tremendous problems for religion. Regardless of the various times and philosophies, religion relies on faith. The unreasonable, the miraculous, the the very essence of the unknowable was anathema to the Enlightenment and eventually this strictness created a reaction with a new reliance on the individual and the value of his own feelings, Romanticism. A quasi-enlightenment bridge for religion in this time was Deism. Deism was the belief in a God who created existence but did not interfere in life. The classic image was the Watchmaker, used by William Paley. (Paley asks himself what would he think if, while walking in a field, he came upon a stone? Not too much. But if he came upon a watch! What would that complexity imply!) God, as the Watchmaker, made this complex world but did not interfere with it. Once created, the watch ran on its own.

One can see this would be a highly satisfying analogy. Not only could a reasonable man look at the complexity of life and see the logic behind this complex Creator, he could rationalize why he need not hold God responsible when things went wrong. This analogy continues to this day in various guises, most recently in the Intelligent Design movement which argues the cellular information-based genetic system is a modern example of the computer oriented Watchmaker. So each age builds it own mirror.

The "traveling" master is anything but. We are his agents. Where we are, He is.