“What About the Genome Project?”
Isaiah 49:1-7 – January 19, 2014
On cold mornings like this, there is a great tendency to stay in our comfortable beds and if our
bones are beginning to creak and ache, it’s even more tempting. If you think your bones are old,
the following story may give you a bit of perspective. “Scientists have found the oldest DNA
evidence yet of humans’ biological history. They have retrieved ancient human DNA from a fossil
dating back about 400,000 years. A thigh bone was found in a cave in Spain, called Sima de los
Huesos (the pit of the bones). More than 1600 human fossils have been found there. And scientists
have used new methods to extract the ancient DNA” from this very old bone. (Journal Sentinel, 12/5/13)
A couple weeks after I read that story, along comes another one announcing that “scientists
have extracted the entire genome of a 130,000 year-old Neanderthal from a single toe bone found
in a Siberian cave. The accuracy of the new genome is of similar quality to what scientists would
achieve if they were sequencing the DNA of (any of us.) And while the Spanish thigh bone provided
only faint, tantalizing clues about human evolution, the new Neanderthal genome is more like a
genetic encyclopedia, rich with new insights.” (Journal Sentinel, 12/19/13)
The genome is the entirety of an organism’s hereditary information. “The Human Genome
Project has enabled the medical world to know a lot more about us than ever before. Back in 2003,
just after scientists finished identifying the sequences of the three billion chemical base pairs that
make up human DNA, two of the researchers wrote an article forecasting that by 2020, our
personal medical records will include our individual genome -- a record of our complete genetic
makeup. That will enable doctors to predict our personal susceptibility to specific diseases and our
response to certain drugs and environmental substances. Thus, we can be treated as genetic
individuals, making medical interventions more specific, precise and successful. (Homiletics, 1/14)
Amazing. Think about it, 2003 when this Genome Project came to fruition, was eleven years
ago. And 2020 is only six years down the pike. It’s astonishing what we’ve been able to learn, and
what we believe we may be able to learn in the future and how we can use that knowledge. Yet,
“despite all these advances, science will never know us in the intimate ways that our Creator does.
Many centuries ago, a prophet writing in the voice of an unidentified servant of God acknowledged
being named by God while still in utero. In this passage from Isaiah, the now-grown up individual
declares his (or her) awareness of being born to play a crucial role in God's (plan).” (Homiletics, 1/14)
The text says: “The Lord chose me and gave me a name before I was born….the Lord God chose
me to serve…So the Lord has honored me and made me strong.” (vs. 1, 5)
The writer of these words “doesn’t tire of reminding their audience that God’s plan is not something newly concocted or something constantly fluctuating with the pulsations of human history.
God’s plan is eternal, and all that happens does so in response to divine purpose.” (Paul Hanson)
“Just because the servant can say, ‘For this I was born,’ we should not assume they possessed
this knowledge from the time they were old enough to think. Some people, it seems, do have a
sense from early on, of being created for a particular role in life. They may have, even from childhood, a sense of destiny, something seemingly in their DNA that pushes them in a certain direction.
The full understanding of that may come only gradually, but some assert that they have ‘always
known’ they were called to some kind of service.
More often, though, many of us who become aware of having a special purpose realize this only
gradually, and sometimes, only in retrospect. In the last century at the age of 86, George Herbert
Palmer, who'd been a professor of philosophy at Harvard for all of his career and had also taught in
the divinity school there, published a small autobiography in which he discussed the things he felt
he'd accomplished and the many personal difficulties he'd faced. He ended by talking about the
opportunity he'd had to do useful work over the years in helping more than 15,000 students with
their education. He concluded his book with this statement: ‘As I see these things rising behind me
they do not seem of my doing. Some greater power than I has been using me as its glad
instrument.’" (Homiletics, 1/14)
Perhaps many more of us are still working out what our roles may be in this world—what God
would want us to be about, given our own unique DNA, talents, skills, gifts. In a new book by Mike
Slaughter, Dare to Dream, he writes about discerning God’s purpose for our lives. You may have
heard of the concept of BHAG: Big Hairy Audacious Goal. In the business world, it’s a way of
focusing an organization on a single, organization-wide goal. Well, Mike puts his own spin on the
BHAG, calling it our Big Hairy Audacious God-purpose. Mike believes that “God has created each
one of us with a particular purpose in God’s overall creative plan for the universe, and our task in
life is to discover that purpose and fulfill it. It’s the purpose God uniquely created for you, the piece
you will add to God’s mission on earth. He proposes we will know it’s from God and not from our
own plans and desires, because it will always honor God, bless other people and bring you joy.”
(Dare to Dream)
“Many of us never know God’s power because we embark on no enterprises so much beyond our
(perceived) abilities as to afford God the chance to reveal God’s energy in them.” (Henry Sloane Coffin)
This past week, I was talking to somebody in our congregation about the wonderful results of
our Capital Appeal this past Fall. That was a financial goal which looked huge to many of us, yet
we reached it and went beyond it. As we talked, both of us admitted that there are times we need
stop second guessing God and move out of the way so God’s Spirit can get to work—both collectively
as a church and individually in our own personal lives.
“We may not use the language of being born for some role. We may not speak of being named by
God. We may not even characterize ourselves as being called by God. But if, at some point, it
comes to us that we're in the place that we need to be because we can do some good there, it's
worth considering whether that may indeed be evidence of a call from God. And if that happens,
then we have the choice of whether we will put our energies into this thing for which we were born.
Dag Hammarskjöld was the secretary-general of the United Nations from 1953 until his death in
1961 in a plane crash while en route to negotiate a cease-fire in an African conflict. He had worked
tirelessly in the causes of peace in many troubled spots around the globe. After his death, his
personal diary was eventually published under the title, Markings. One thing he said in that book
was this: "We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.”
(Homiletics, 1/14)
Helen Keller put it another way: “I must not just live my life: I will not just spend my life. I will
invest my life.”
God’s call on our lives is sometimes experienced as Big, Hairy and Audacious. It may lead us
into places we had not planned to go, serving people we’ve never even thought about. Leslie Hawke
is a former editor and publishing executive and mother of actor Ethan Hawke, who left everything
she knew in New York City to join the Peace Corps. She traded a Central Park West apartment and
leisurely Sunday brunches for life in Romania. She said she joined “to give herself time to think
about what she ought to be doing, not really expecting to actually find it in the Peace Corps.” She
was already middle-aged when she arrived in Romania for the first time. She found one of the
poorest countries in Europe, a country still emerging from decades of communist rule. She became
drawn to helping children she saw sitting alone on the sidewalk and begging. Thirteen years later
she is still there, running a non-governmental organization she co-founded, to help impoverished
mothers develop job skills. At the same time they started an education program for the children.
That’s the program that has steadily grown and continues today, to help severely impoverished
children succeed in school. Today, more than 80% of the children in the program attend preschool
daily, and 73% who have come through its program regularly attend primary school. They have
proven that poor Roma parents do care about education, they just need some support. In Romania
“Leslie realized she had found her calling. She came in, spotted a need and was determined to
make a difference.” (The Christian Science Monitor, 1/13/14) Her work not only positively effects the lives of
others, but gives her joy.
Maybe you believe that God has everything planned from the very beginning, about how your life
will go. Or maybe you believe that God has placed in you, a kernel that will develop into the special
person you are meant to be. Or maybe you believe this is all just a random thing—that God creates
us as persons with different talents and gifts, and somehow all of this can more times than not,
work together for the good. I like how Frederick Buechner puts it: “The place God calls you to is the
place where your deep gladness and the world’s hunger meet.”
Whatever you think about all this, I believe it’s wise to consider what God might have in mind
for us. The God who has known us for a very long time and even though we are able to define
ourselves according to our genetic make-up, maybe God knows us better than we know ourselves.
--Sue Burwell