The Reverend
Seth Ethan Carey
January 14th, 2007
First Congregational Church, Glen Ellyn, Illinois
Firstconge.org
630-469-3096
This
is the story of my chemical failure.
But
perhaps “failure” is too strong a word. I did pass high school
chemistry, after all, though I’m not exactly sure how. It’s all a blur to me
now, fading from memory like dissipating fumes—the ones that I inhaled so
deeply during the troubling hours of that winter that I spent in the lab.
I
had reasoned, in those days, that both Algebra and Chemistry were religious
doctrines and not in fact science at all. It occurred to me that both
disciplines placed a great deal of faith in things unseen, be it in vague mathematical
theory or in sub-atomic particles invisible to all but the most expensive and
high-powered microscopes—which I was of course not allowed to touch.
I
stood to gain from my belief that this so-called science was no more than
religious indoctrination, which is of course forbidden in the public school
system. If I was right, then I wouldn’t have to take Chemistry. But do you
think anyone listened?
And
so it was in the chemistry laboratory that I spent my days, deeply troubled. I
didn’t like my chemistry class. It seemed a cruel punishment to be initiated
against my will into the arcane rituals of this alien faith, forced to cook
sulphurous, foul-smelling potions over the blue fire of rusting Bunsen burners,
desperately struggling to comprehend the mysterious spell book known only as
the Periodic Table of Elements, fearful of an inevitable chemical fire or
explosion.
Honestly,
I’ve never been very good at understanding how things work. Televisions,
computers, combustion engines, you name it.
I’ve always preferred to practice a sort of willful ignorance, and assume
that such machines are populated by sub-atomic gnomes that keep the thing
running via an intricate system of ropes and wheels and good old fashioned
elbow grease. Much in the same way, I imagined the intercourse of chemicals to
be no more than the whims of elemental spirits, dancing beneath my electron microscope,
which was itself powered by the aforementioned sub-atomic gnomes.
That
might sound pretty ridiculous to you, but I assure you: my ability to suspend
my disbelief far outweighs my capacity to comprehend scientific intricacies.
On
some level, I know that the marriage of hydrogen and oxygen will transform
those elements into water. But ask me how it works, and I haven’t got a clue. I
just can’t seem to wrap my head around such complex methods of transformation.
When
I was a kid, one of my favorite TV shows was Transformers. Now, that
was something I could really get behind—a world inhabited by cars and trucks
that, for no apparent reason, could transform into giant talking robots and
fight crime. That’s the kind of world I wanted to live in.
I
guess it still is—a world where transformation is simple.
***
The legendary scripture
that we have before us this morning is a tale of a chemical transformation—but you
don’t need a PHD in Chemistry to understand it. Jesus turns water in to wine. Don’t
bother trying to figure out how he did it. There is no esoteric formula, no
discernable process. There is no calcination of powders or marriage of
chemicals that can produce the desired effect of transforming water into wine
in a matter of mere seconds.
This is a miracle. But
what does it mean?
People often use this
passage as a justification for the consumption of alcohol; or, simply, to point
to another of Jesus’ memorable displays of power. But I don’t think that either
interpretation does this scripture justice. Now, I’m not saying that this
miracle never happened. But I believe that its significance ascends far beyond
its historicity.
This is a story of
transformation, of the shifting from one substance to another. In the chemist’s
world of beakers and test tubes, transformation cannot occur without the aid of
a catalyst, something to make the original substance react and change while
maintaining its own integrity.
The basic elements at play
here are hydrogen and oxygen—in other words, H2O—in other words, water. Water can’t
turn itself into wine. Christ himself is the catalyst, the transformer.
It’s no coincidence that
this miracle takes place at a wedding, which is itself a kind of
transformation. When two people come together in marriage, they are transformed.
It’s not a simple abandoning of maiden names or a change of address. It’s more
fundamental. It’s a change of thoughts, feelings, perceptions, identity.
Any union, after all, supposes
the extinction of an earlier isolated state. As does any separation.
The transubstantiation of water
into wine points towards higher forms of transformation, like marriage. But
there are higher forms still calling, patiently waiting to be achieved.
***
The clues that point to such
transformation can be found in biblical passages such as these, but also in
less likely places; one such place is the alchemical arts. Alchemy is popularly
understood as the fool’s errand of trying to transmute lead into gold—and many
alchemists have indeed tried, giving birth to a good deal of modern chemistry
in the process. It has been rumored that one man, Nicolas Flamel, actually did manage
to turn lead into gold by combining ancient formulas from the Middle East with
medieval European know-how.
Personally, I don’t buy
it.
Still, countless others
insist to this day that alchemy is more rooted in religion than in science, just
as I tried to prove the same of chemistry to my teachers in high school. But I
think the alchemy argument is a little stronger. Essentially, it argues that
alchemy is a metaphor for the soul.
If you’ll be so kind as to
suffer this oversimplification: the soul without God is like lead; heavy, grey,
and lifeless. But with God as our catalyst, it can shine with the golden glow
of a thousand suns. From the right perspective, alchemy is not so much about
the transmutation of metals as it is about the transformation of the soul.
There’s that word again:
transformation.
I’ve noticed that this
word is frequently used on the church scene, but I have to confess that I’m
often confused and intimidated by its ambiguity. Transformation of the soul is,
unfortunately, a lot less obvious than a glass of water that grows up to be a
glass of wine. Or lead that turns into gold, for that matter. The Alchemists
tried to clear up the confusion by referring to what they call the Sevenfold Archetypal Pattern of
Transformation. For those of you
taking notes, that’s all in capital letters. The sevenfold process proceeds
through seven stages: 1) Calcination, 2) Coagulation, 3) Conjunction, 4)
Dissolution, 5) Distillation, 6) Fermentation, and 7) Separation.
Well, I’m glad we got that
all cleared up.
***
I suspect that we’re going
to need something a little less arcane to help us understand the meaning of spiritual
transformation. I think the wedding at Cana is a good metaphor as any—not the
chemical wedding of sulfur and mercury, as alchemists have suggested, but the holy
matrimony of God and the soul.
But, as in any
relationship, things don’t always go as planned. God often seems to get lost
along the road of life, obstructed from view by things that don’t really
matter. Sometimes we get distracted, lost in thought, and we fall behind. In
time, the emptiness creeps in like fog, the pain of separation like knife-wounds
in the dark. And we go running off down that road, looking for evidence of God’s
presence, tracking the divine progress by the clues left behind: sunsets like the
smoldering remains of campfires, small miracles like discarded candy bar
wrappers of the Almighty, comfort in times of distress like footsteps in the
sand.
And in the end, we usually
find that God has been there all along, and that it was we who went astray. But
the steps of the journey, the pain of losing, the fear of trying, the terror of
being lost, the relief of finding and of being found, these are the elements of
transformation. These are the building blocks of life, the DNA of the soul. If Christ
is your catalyst, then these are your chemicals.
I wish I could be more
precise. But as complicated as chemical transformations are—at least they are
to me—spiritual transformation is as inexplicable as a miracle, as irrational
as love.
It’s an experiment that you’ll
have to undertake yourself.
Amen.