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+Porter Taylor
Renewal of Vows
According to Holy Women, Holy Men, today is the feast day of Teilhard de Chardin
He was born in 1881 in France.
At 18 he became a Jesuit and was ordained a Roman Catholic priest at 30.
Teilhard had a brain that knew no bounds.
He received a PhD in paleontology
and studied in China where he made the famous discovery of the “Peking Man”-Teilhard sought to marry the sciences—especially evolution---with theology
And because he sought to stand in the middle of these two disciplines,
They both threw rocks at him.
He was censured by the Vatican numerous times –
He was ordered to repudiate his theories
He was forced to resign from certain professorships and forbidden to take others
The Vatican prevented his books being published his books in his lifetime.
As a scientist, he went further than the Church wanted
And as a Christian and mystic he went way further than the academy wanted.
Today as we come here---laypeople, deacons, priests, and bishop---to renew our vows
and Teilhard can teach us how to move forward in this journey of life in faith.
So three tools for the journey from Teilhard de Chardin.
First, trust the ground under your feet to tell you the truth.
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Teilfard said, “Before attempting to probe the secret of life, let us take a good look at it.”
The beginning place for everything is the ground on which we stand.
Teilard studied fossils—he dug deep in the earth to locate himself in the present.
Regardless of the changes around us, all we have is this moment and this place.
If we are to see Jesus, it won’t be in the post Christendom Church ten years from now,
It will be with the people on our streets today with real pain and real joy.
It’s important for us to look at changing patterns in the world and the Church.
But that is not how we start.
We start by digging our feet into the solid earth where we are
So that we are grounded in what is real.
We need to talk about our Church’s future and our world’s future—
But our first calling is the pain and joy right here.
Consoling those who mourn and visiting those who are sick
giving hope to those in despair.
The incarnation means the word is flesh in real people with daily pains and joys.
Our job is to go deeper in the muck and mess of their lives.
It’s not helpful to someone whose child has died to hear that we are in a paradigm shift.
Tielhard de Chardin produced an amazing evolutionary theory but he did so one
observation at a time.
First he got into the data, and then he theorized.
He once said, “The fragments of the world seek each other.”
I think of Sara Miles---this is her story:
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Early one winter morning I walked into St. Gregory's Episcopal Church in San Francisco
I'd never heard a Gospel reading
never said the Lord's Prayer
I was certainly not interested in becoming a Christian--or a religious nut.
[I] went it on impulse.
It crossed my mind that this was ridiculous.
And then we gathered around that table
Someone was putting a piece of fresh crumbly bread in my hands saying
The Body of Christ
and then something outrageous and terrifying happened. Jesus happened to me.
I was in tears and physcially imbalanced. I felt as if I had been...knocked over,
painlessly from behind.
The faith I was finding
wasn't about abstract debates
It was about taste and see--Begin with the data in front of us. This person. This joy. This pain. This bread.
Taste and see.
Second—we need to connect our vision with God’s great vision.
We live in the land of despair—a place that has forgotten how to hope.
And the way our world deals with that is endless distraction.
We are all castaways longing for news from home
But we can’t hear the good news because the cacophony of the trivia is so loud.
Because he was connected to minute data that was accurate and true
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Teilhard proclaimed an outrageous vision
It was like saying, “I saw a new heaven and a new earth”
“I saw the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God”
Teilhard said that all of creation was destined to be untied with God—
This was the trajectory of evolution—this was the divine plan.
His vision was so outrageous that both the Vatican and the Academy screamed
But for millions, it gave them hope and it inspired them to dream
People don’t want to hear that the Church is dying—they know that.
They want to know what is being born.
They want to know how their lives can be bigger.
They want their story to connect to God’s story of salvation.
And they want their leaders to cast a vision and take the first step.
Like Betty Williams who helped bring peace to Northern Ireland by knocking on
her neighbors doors and saying “We have to find a better way to live together.”
Or Millard Fuller who started eliminating homelessness by building houses
instead of talking.
Or in New Bern North Carolina last week—in 90 minutes the program Stop
Hunger Now—bagged 10,000 meals to ship overseas.
People yearn to make a difference, they long to get out of despair
but they need a vision and a road map. And that’s our job.
Begin where you are---caste a vision—and third remember what matters.
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Third--Teilhard lived with the tension of being part of an institution.
He knew he would get hammered by the Vatican and he did.
Hammered in both serious and small ways.
Not allowed to take certain jobs.
Not allowed to return to his homeland, France.
Not allowed to publish his work.
Yet he stayed faithful to the Church and faithful to his truth.
He didn’t form his own denomination.
He didn’t publish a tell all book trashing the Pope.
He didn’t get on talk shows and publicize his victimization.
He continued to his death day to push and pull the Church forward.
He wasn’t a victim---he wasn’t passive aggressive.
But he believed in the core—the mystery of faith—the dying and rising of Jesus
and he let the rest go.
Herb Butterfield wrote--- “Hold to Christ and for the rest be entirely uncommitted”
Our temptation in the Church is to mirror the United States Congress.
But our life is too short for endless arguments about nothing.
There’s a Rabbinic saying “Rake the muck this way, rake the muck that way
It’s still muck. Meanwhile we could be stringing pearls for heaven.”
Teilhard reminds us not to be naïve nor cynical about this Church we represent
But rather Wise as serpents innocent as doves
We don’t have to defend the Church—but we do have to find grace and life in it.
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Even as it is flawed and beaurecratic and more than irritating
It is a blessed sacrament—it is a vehicle for God’s grace—it is the Queen of heaven
We are called to push this Church, the Lord’s Church with integrity
—as Teilhard pushed in his time.
Instead of burning the house down,
do some exploration outside the house and report back.
But most of all, let’s don’t spend all our time fixated on the artifice-Let’s string pearls for heaven.
Let’s change change the Church, but not let our identity get wrapped up in
that.Tielhard kept on with his scientific work, he kept writing, he kept celebrating the
Eucharist, he kept faithful.
At the end of his life, he prayed—“O God, if in my life I have not been wrong,
allow me to die on Easter Sunday.”
Now, this is a scientist. This is a man who studies fossils so he knows about death.
And yet he prays a naïve prayer—a simple prayer—a prayer of total reliance on God.
Tielhard de Chardin dies on April 10, 1955—Easter Sunday.
Dig into where we are.
Caste a wide vision.
Hold onto Christ---and like Tielhard de Chardin---be free and faithful.
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