Unpacking Sunday's Sermon: Thomas

During the children's story I read from a 'Ripley's Believe It or Not!' cartoon which claimed that some scientist's had discovered a way to 'unboil' an egg. When I asked the congregation if they believed this was possible they responded with a choir of 'no's. But the congregation was wrong. It is possible to 'unboil an egg. An article in Popular Science describes it here. It is quite amazing that as science developes, things we once believed impossible are realizable.

Of course it is one thing to reverse the process of cooking. It would be quite another thing to turn that hardboiled egg into a living breathing chick. That is closer to the order of change we are talking about in resurrection. But even that comparion is inadequate. In resurrection we are not simply talking about something that is dead not only coming back to life (something that we describe as resuscitation). No, in resurrection we are talking about something dead entering a new order of life. If those same scientists were able to 'unboil' a hen's egg which then produced an ostrich we would be inching a little closer to describing resurrection.

While scientists can 'unboil' egg they cannot reproduce a resurrection. And it's a stretch of the imagination to believe that even future advances is chemistry and physics will make this possible. So how can people of faith reasonably believe something that by all accounts is impossible?

In my mind it has to do with our broader understanding of the world. While we may normally trust in the rules that govern the university, if we believe that this was all created by a being not subject to these rules, it is no great stretch believeing that the same being could intervene in this world, bend those rules, and accomplish things that would not normally occur. (It is possible that the world itself contains a greater complexity that we ever imagined and that resurrection is part of the deeper code of the universe rather than an aberation from it, but that's another discussion). Those who accept this thesis may find themselves noticing occurences in their own lives which further supports this view of a flexible universe.

It would be unfair to suggest that believers have a broader imagination than non-believers. But it is maybe fair to say that people of faith have both reason and evidence to believe that the world is not as fixed and certain as some imagine. This leaves room for strange happenings which contradict current expectations and confound modern science: even resurrection.