A Look At Lent Is Not Rocket Science 

     During Lent this year I have been reading the meditations by Bishop W. Nicholas Kinsell, the Episcopal Bishop of Rhode Island. The book, Lent Is Not Rocket Science: An Exploration of God, Creation, and the Cosmos looks at Lent and faith in general through what I consider a unique lens. The bishop's method of exploring faith is informed not only by his understanding of Christianity but also by the training he received as an astronomer, and as a physicist. This interesting combination of faith and science does not hinder the understanding of either discipline but in fact strengthens the contimplation of both.
     Today on Holy Saturday Bishop Kinsell does not delve as deep into scientific theory as he has in other meditations but neither does he ignore it when he writes:
"What happened in the tomb during the night between Saturday and Easter dawn? No one knows. There is very little we can say about the event scientifically. But something happened. No matter how you want to understand it, as a miracle beyond the ken of scientific knowledge or as a physical phenomena that we as yet do not understand, clearly something happened. Any examination of the historical evidence leads us to admit something happened.
     As so many people have noted, there's no way to explain the radical shift that occurs in the followers of Jesus, who abandoned him on the morning of Good Friday, cowered in fear in Jerusalem on Holy Saturday, and had some sort of radical life-changing experience on Easter. Whatever happened, it was profound enough that, according to tradition, every single one of apostles was willing to suffer persecution and death because of it. And the people, as eyewitnesses told about what happened and were willing to follow, not always to their death, but in life-changing ways large and small.
     It would be very lovely thing to be able to explain in detail what happened to Jesus' body, how it was that life returned to it. It would be extraordinary to have firsthand evidence of what the disciples experienced when Jesus met them in the Upper Room or along the road to Emmaus. But we don't have that. And we probably never will. Perhaps that is by God's design.
     But I hope as a result of this journey through Lent you are more willing to be comfortable with not understanding soothing and still accepting its reality. So much of science is in that situation. I've focused on topics of astronomy and physics because that was my early training, but there are mysteries we see but cannot understand in other fields as well. Theology is occasionally described as a discipline that involves faith seeking understanding. The traditional sciences in their own way are disciplines that involve observation seeking understanding. Perhaps the difference between the two is not as great as we often imagine.
     Jesus' bodily resurrection challenges us all to question things we don't understand. That willingness to question has led us to many new insights and understandings. But many people react to the unknown of the resurrection by either trying to explain the resurrection away of by trying to draw a veil around the event and warning people not to enter the sacred precincts. I wonder if, instead of trying to hide the difficulties surrounding the event or trying to resolve them too quickly by denying the reality of the resurrection, we might not better profit by committing ourselves to a journey through the door that the resurrection has opened in our understanding of the world. Perhaps that is the task of the Easter people."
     At the end of the meditation Bishop Kinsell poses this question:
"The mystery of the resurrection is beyond our human understanding, but its power clearly changed Jesus' disciples. How has it changed you?"  

     Bishop Kinsell uses the past tense occasionally in today's meditation and when he does that he is, of course, referring to previous comments he has made in this series of meditations. I have read, and contemplated the juxtaposition of faith and science that the bishop has supplied and I have been able to appreciate the mystery of faith in a new way by hearing his explanations of the mysteries of science and the connection he makes between the two. Tomorrow is Easter and I am tempted to read tomorrow's meditation today; but I will resist that temptation and look forward with expectant anticipation. And, it occurs to me, that that is appropriate because isn't Easter the calumniation of expectant anticipation? Isn't it the Son light after the darkness of the previous week? Haven't we, as Christians knowing and believing what we know and believe, looked forward to Easter morning and our Savior's resurrection?
     There is only that one day left in the good bishop's meditations and I will miss the daily exercise (truthfully I missed a day or two once or twice and had to catch up) of reading them. If you have not been reading them during Lent I would encourage you to get the book and read it either daily as meditation or simply as you might read any other book because I think that you will find the insights contained there both unique and thought provoking. Lent Is Not Rocket Science was available in print form (at one point they had sold out but said more were on the way) or as a E-book in various foremats through the publisher Forward Movement. Their web site is www.forwardmovement.org.
      

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