New Life - From The Laboratory Or The Font?
Children's sermon
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Preaching
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Dear Fellow Preachers,
Human cloning is in the news again, with a claim that the first human cloned baby - "Eve" - has been born. Whether that claim turns out to be true or not, it's probably only a matter of time before a human cloned individual will arrive. The technology exists, but the ethical and moral issues are significant.
So for this edition of The Immediate Word, we've asked team member George Murphy, who is a pastor and a scientist, to consider those issues, using the lectionary texts as the basis.
Also included are team comments, related illustrations, worship resources, and a children's sermon.
New Life - From the Laboratory or the Font?
By George L. Murphy
Genesis 1:1-5
Mark 1:4-11
What is the ultimate hope for humanity? Is it the possibility of staving off death and extending our lives indefinitely through developments in biology and medical technology? Or is it the possibility of eternal life in spite of death? Recent claims about cloning and the scripture readings for the First Sunday after the Epiphany (January 12) bring these two ideas together in a way that can be fruitful for preaching.
A few days ago there was an announcement of the birth of the first human clone, a baby girl named "Eve." This was met with a great deal of skepticism from scientists. The doubts are hardly surprising since the announcement was made by the Raelians, a group whose leader claims to have had a close encounter with extraterrestrials and who believes the human race to be a result of the use of cloning technologies by aliens. At the time I'm writing this, none of the genetic proofs that would be needed in order to prove that "Eve" actually is a clone of an adult woman have been made public.
(The Raelians have now announced the birth of a second clone. However, the journalist who was supposed to have been shown the genetic proof that Eve was a clone is temporarily suspending his efforts to get information. The whole affair seems more and more implausible.)
But this claim, whether genuine or not, has returned public attention to an issue that has been in the news off and on since the successful cloning that produced the sheep Dolly in 1997. Since then clones of other mammals - but not humans - have been born. The basic concept of "somatic cell nuclear transfer" is fairly simple.1 The nucleus of an egg is replaced with a nucleus that has been removed from a body cell of the adult organism that is to be cloned. The resulting ovum is then "tricked" into returning to the state of a just-fertilized egg and beginning to develop, and then is implanted into a female's womb. Of course the actual technique is much more difficult than this brief sketch indicates. If the egg develops properly, an infant of the species in question will be born. It will have the same genes in the nuclei of its cells as did the adult organism from which it was cloned.2
We immediately wonder about the possibility of cloning a human in this way. Two different paths might be taken. On the first, that of reproductive cloning, we would try to bring a human clone to birth, as was done with Dolly. The second possibility would be to allow the clone to develop only to a very early embryonic stage in order to harvest embryonic stem cells that have the potential to develop into any cell of the body. These cells might be used to repair the ravages of Parkinson's disease or spinal cord injuries, or even to grow new organs that could be transplanted into the original adult without problems of rejection by the immune system.
There has been considerable debate about research on embryonic stem cells (which can come from "ordinary" embryos as well as clones).3 The Raelian claim, however, has brought the possibility of reproductive cloning to the forefront, and I will focus on that topic here.
There does not seem to be any compelling, drop-dead theological argument to rule out reproductive human cloning under all circumstances. On the other hand, it is hard to think of any legitimate reason for doing such a thing.
Why would you clone yourself? Could this provide a replica of yourself, a kind of alter ego who would continue on beyond your death? It might seem that a kind of immortality could be achieved by this process. This is merely an exaggerated version of the hopes that many people have in various biomedical technologies (including therapies with embryonic stem cells). The belief is that science and technology should always be able to increase the length and quality of our lives.
Some parents who have lost a child have expressed their desire to have that dead child cloned so that they could have him or her back again. (In principle this could be done from any small bit of tissue.) Once more there is the belief that science can defeat death.
When I hear that type of faith expressed I think back to my hospital chaplaincy and the time that I stood in the Intensive Care Unit with the father of a young man who was brain dead after a motorcycle accident. As we waited for the machines to be unplugged, the father said angrily, "In 20 years we'll be able to fix this kind of thing." Is there a pastoral way to speak to such a Promethean claim at a time like that? Perhaps we need to do a better job of addressing it at other times, when grief and anger won't get in the way of some sober theological judgment.
There are serious technical problems with the idea that a person can be replicated by reproductive cloning. In the first place, all attempts at mammalian cloning have had a very low success/failure ratio. (There were 276 failures before Dolly was produced.) And there have been high rates of birth defects among clones that have been born. Moreover, a clone will result only in a kind of delayed identical twin, without any of the experiences or memories of the original. However we may understand the human soul, there is no more reason to think that a clone and the original person would have the same soul (or be the same person) than there is for identical twins.
But the basic theological question to be asked is, "Where does our hope lie?" Is it in being "reborn" through technology or in being "reborn" in another sense?
The lessons for this coming Sunday remind us of the promise of new life that God gives. The theme for this Sunday is the baptism of Christ, with the gospel being Mark 1:4-11. Without entering into the old question of the precise relationship of John's baptism to Christian baptism in the name of the Trinity, we can note important parallels between what John the Baptist did and the Christian sacrament. John's was "a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" (Luke 3:3), while Christians are invited to "be baptized, and have your sins washed away" (Acts 22:16).
One important theme connected with Christian baptism is the idea of being "born again" (John 3:3-8; Titus 3:5) or "born from above" (the alternate translation of gennethe anothen in John 3:3). Since the time of the Reformation, Christians have unfortunately been divided between those who understand baptism in a "realistic" way and those who think of it as "symbolic" (though not necessarily with the idea that it is a bare sign). But the bottom line is that new birth is God's work. (Babies, after all, don't get born by themselves.) If we have a realistic view of baptism, it is God's action. If it is symbolic, it is a symbol that points to God's action. As both Aquinas and Luther put it, God is really the minister of baptism.
Baptism then means new life - turning from sin and receiving God's gift in Christ. (The renunciation of Satan and all the forces of evil is part of traditional baptismal liturgies.) Even more strongly, Paul says in Romans 6:3-11 that baptism means dying to sin and rising to new life by being joined to the death and resurrection of Christ. And because of that, he says, we are to live new lives as disciples of Christ. (Baptism is not a fire insurance policy to be stored in our religious safe deposit boxes.)
Paul's statement of the meaning of baptism in Romans 6 points us to our final hope - that because we have been made participants in the death of Christ, we also have the promise of sharing in his resurrection. It is not a hope that we will avoid death, but that we will have life in spite of death. This hope is paradoxical - the promise of life by following the way of the cross and sharing in death. It is a hope given by the God who "justifies the ungodly ... gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist" (Romans 4:5, 17).
Which is to say that the kind of hope spoken of here can be given only by the Creator of the universe. Thus it's appropriate that the First Lesson for this Sunday is Genesis 1:1-5, the beginning of the first creation story of Genesis. It will go on to speak of the creation of life from the waters and the earth and the creation of humanity with a commission to be God's representatives in creation. But already in the first verses that are to be read, we can be reminded of the descent of the Spirit on Jesus at his baptism, which echoes the Spirit of God moving over the face of the deep. And it is the Holy Spirit who is (as the Nicene Creed says) "the Lord and giver of life."
What then can we say about cloning or other biomedical technologies in light of these biblical themes of the creation of life and the gift of new life in Christ? These theological considerations don't give us precise rules about the use of reproductive technologies. What they do is to relegate any hopes given by reproductive cloning, stem cell research, or any other technological work to, at most, penultimate status. Against any belief that as individuals or a species we can finally cheat death by such means, they speak a prophetic "No." The road to eternal life goes through the cross, not around it.
But this is not simply a condemnation of cloning or other work in biology. It is clear that medical research has brought about tremendous benefits in recent years, and we now think of things like heart transplants, which were science fiction a few decades ago, as routine therapies. No scientific knowledge of the world and no technology is good or evil in itself. Everything depends on our purpose for using it and how it is applied. Zyklon B, which was used to murder millions of people at Auschwitz, was originally developed as a disinfectant. Even nuclear weapons, terrible as their effects might be if used in warfare, would probably provide the best way of protecting the earth from the kind of asteroid impact that destroyed the dinosaurs.
The question for us is how, as people joined to the death and resurrection of Christ, we are to use the biotechnologies that are proliferating today. What do we have to say to a society which is anxious about disease, disability, and death, which is accustomed to the idea that technology can solve its problems, and which in some ways has become rather casual about the life of the unborn?
We should recognize that, whether this is wise or not, eventually a human clone will be born - if not this year then perhaps in this decade. It is important for our society to say, even before this happens, that a human clone is a full-fledged human being with all the rights and responsibilities of other humans. We should not offer any opportunity for clones to be treated as second-class people, to be replacements for others, sources of spare parts, or anything of the kind. The church should make it clear that a human clone would be baptized if presented for the sacrament.
Christians should continue to ask tough questions about the uses of biomedical technologies. Is the desire of a couple to have "their own" children, rather than adopting, so strong that it should trump every other consideration about the status of the embryo? What do you hope to accomplish by bringing to birth your identical twin who is 50 years younger than you? Who is to decide what kind of genetic modification of prospective offspring is an "improvement"? What is your final hope in life and in death?4
But we should not be seen as bio-Luddites, resisting all reproductive technologies simply because they are technologies. In particular, we should resist the temptation to argue against them on the grounds that we should not "play God." Theologian Ted Peters has given critical attention to this slogan and concludes that it has little theological content.
It will be my position that the phrase "playing God?" has very little cognitive value when looked at from the perspective of a theologian. Its primary role is that of a warning, such as the word "stop." In common parlance it has come to mean just that: stop. Within the gene myth it means that we should stop trying to engineer DNA. Theologically, however, there is at best only minimum warrant for using this phrase in such a conservative and categorical way.5
There is even a sense in which we should "play God" - though that is not very good wording. We are to be God's representatives in creation, created in the image of the God who loves his creation even to the extent of dying for it.
How can we preach about these matters? Detailed theological treatment of cloning or other biomedical technologies can perhaps best be dealt with in an educational setting rather than from the pulpit. But there are certainly homiletic possibilities.
The preacher might take the tack I suggested here, contrasting the hopes that some people have for defeating death with the hope that we are given in Christ. But this should not be a matter of condemning "them," the outsiders with their foolish hopes. When the chips are down, Christians like others may find themselves putting their most profound trust in some medical treatment. When we speak about excessive reliance on technology, we need to be able to say "Thou art the man, or woman" to Christians as well as to unbelievers.
The possibilities for human cloning still are to a great extent science fiction, and one might try to develop a story sermon of this genre in order to speak to some of the issues. The 1997 film Gattaca is one fictional attempt to deal with the idea of developing superior humans through genetic engineering. Not of Woman Born (ROC, 1999), edited by Constance Ash, is an anthology of science fiction stories making use of various types of reproductive technologies. Unfortunately, bizarre beliefs like those of the Raelians are all too prevalent, so it's important for people to realize that a science fiction story sermon is a story!6
And in an important sense the themes of the lessons for this Sunday - creation, baptism, new life, and discipleship - are basic material for all sermons. Our challenge is to bring cloning, or any other concern, into contact with them.
Notes
1 Papers on the science, theology, and ethics of cloning from a consultation held in October 2000 by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America can be found in Roger E. Willer (ed.), Human Cloning: Papers from a Church Consultation at http://www.elca.org/dcs/humancloning.html.
2 The clone will not, however, be precisely the same genetically as the adult because the DNA of the clone's mitochondria, outside the nucleus of its cells, will be that of the original ovum.
3 See, e.g., Suzanne Holland, Karen Lebacqz, and Laurie Zoloth (eds.), The Human Embryonic Stem Cell Debate (The MIT Press, 2001).
4 An opinion piece entitled "Biology's Chernobyl" by Matt Ridley in the December 31, 2002 Wall Street Journal is critical of the Raelians and of the idea of reproductive human cloning. But Ridley then goes on to endorse stem cell research without qualification and says that it "promises miraculous help to those who suffer from terrible afflictions." There is an unfortunate tendency on the part of proponents of such work to pose the issue as "Are you in favor of embryonic stem cell research or do you want people to suffer from Parkinson's disease?"
5 Ted Peters, Playing God? Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom (Routledge, 1997), p. 2.
6 A story sermon of mine titled "Improving the Species," based loosely on Genesis 6:1-4, was given at the ELCA cloning consultation and is included in the resource referred to in endnote 1.
Team Comments
Chuck Cammarata responds: I see this issue - cloning and the related technologies - as one involving moral and Christian imperatives to do good rather than evil, and that one aspect of this imperative is thinking about the limits God has placed on humanity. These limits grow out of the fact that we are creatures, not the creator. Genesis 2 makes this point when it introduces the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The final few chapters of the book of Job reinforce the point, as do the words of Isaiah 55:9 where God speaks to the people saying, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."
In terms of illustrations for how good intentions can come to dreadfully bad ends when we fail to honor the limits God has placed on us - the musical Jekyll and Hyde, based on the classic book but with a twist - tells the story of Dr. Jekyll, who sets out to discover a chemical potion that will neutralize the human bent toward sin and evil, but discovers, when he tries the formula on himself, that it leads to insanity and homicidal behavior.
The advent of the atomic bomb - developed in order to protect the world from a Nazi regime that had the bomb - has the same quality to it. One could even argue that its use on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ultimately saved lives, but the specter of the use of weapons of mass destruction has haunted us ever since. And though they have not been used again, we must always follow that statement with the proviso "yet" - they have not been used yet. When they are used, by a terrorist or a rogue leader like Saddam Hussein, humanity will rue the day we developed them.
Obviously this is an issue with all tools and technologies humans have ever developed - from hammers to bows and arrows to guns to nuclear technology. These tools and technologies are, in and of themselves, largely neutral; the morality of such things comes into play in how we use them. We can use a hammer to build a house or to bludgeon someone to death. The difference in the 21st century is that our current tools have destructive power like never before. We could not, until the last generation, blow ourselves out of the sky. We could not, until the last century, create and unleash an organism on ourselves that might just kill every last one of us. These technologies demand a different sort of scrutiny. Maybe - we must face the fact - some technologies have such potential for destruction, and humanity is so radically fallen (being a Presbyterian I would raise Calvin's doctrine of the total depravity of humanity), that there are some technologies we ought to simply not pursue.
When I was a child my family lived on a reasonably busy street. As a 4-year-old, my mother would not allow me to play in the front yard because it had no fence, and she knew I hadn't enough sense yet to stay out of the street. Allowing me to play in the front yard would, at the very least, have made me vulnerable to grave danger. In fact it may well have been a death sentence.
Humanity must face the reality that our moral sensibilities have been marred by the fall from grace and ask ourselves, "Is it safe for us to play in the front yard where weapons of mass destruction and genetic technologies are racing by?"
Carlos Wilton responds: The philosophical and theological question that comes to mind for me, as I contemplate the possibility of the cloning of a viable human being, is "What is consciousness?" or perhaps, "What is the soul?" If, in a thought-experiment, we imagine a person who has had herself cloned holding in her arms an infant genetically identical to herself, what then would that new person be like? And what implications would this new biotechnology have for our theological understanding of the human person?
It's easy to imagine such a child growing up to become physically identical to her mother/twin; we already see something like that in the case of identical twins (although these "twins" would be a generation apart in age). But what about personality? Would this child grow to demonstrate anger, fear, or desire in similar circumstances? Would she be more, or less, patient in times of frustration? Would she prefer the same flavor of ice cream?
The child would grow up having different life-experiences than her mother/twin. That alone would create some differences between the two of them, to be sure. This raises the perennial question: How much of the human personality, how much of the human sense of self, is attributable to nature, and how much to nurture? If nothing else, a successful human cloning would help us understand more about that.
"Twin studies" have already offered some provocative insights into human nature. These are the research projects in which psychologists carefully examine the lives of two adult twins who were separated at birth, and who grew up never knowing each other. It's remarkable, I'm told, how many of these individuals have ended up choosing similar life-paths - even similar spouses and jobs - when each has had an entirely different upbringing in his or her own adoptive family. The inevitable conclusion is that our personalities are perhaps more physically and genetically determined than eager proponents of Cartesian mind/body dualism would care to admit.
I remember a conversation I had some years ago with the late George Hall, professor of theology at the University of St. Andrews, in connection with postgraduate work I was doing on Calvin's theology. George made the comment that, the more psychology discovers about the importance of nature as compared to nurture in human development, the more it seemed to him that Calvin was right in his views on predestination. Perhaps some aspect of predestination manifests itself physically in the twisted helixes of our DNA.
And what of the soul? If two individuals are equipped with identical strings of DNA, then are they two persons in God's eyes, or one? Does "soul" reside in some microscopic, as-yet-hidden part of our physical being ... or is it something altogether different, something "spiritual," that has no physical marker capable of detection in even the most sophisticated laboratory?
This calls to mind the differing biblical views of the human person, and of life after death. There is, on the one hand, the more holistic, earthy, and physical Hebrew view, in which resurrection is seen as renewal and re-animation of the body, in a perfected form. On the other hand, there is the dualistic and immaterial Greek view, which holds that flesh and spirit are two separate essences. These essences exist parallel to one another in life and are separated from one another at death, as the temporary shell of the body falls away and the spirit lives on. Resurrection, in this view, is more of a spiritual than a physical reality.
A biblical basis can be found for both these views - although in the New Testament there does seem to be a historical progression from the Hebrew concept to the Greek, as Hellenistic ideas increasingly come to predominate. If we ever do see human cloning come to pass (and most scientists seem to think we inevitably will, even if - as seems likely - the Raelian claims are a hoax), will its results lead us to a more Hebrew view of human personhood? Time will tell...
You quite rightly make the point that there are few circumstances in which human cloning would be necessary - or even ethically justifiable from the standpoint of stewardship - apart from the cultivation of stem cells from cloned embryonic tissue, which could certainly save lives. Some Christian ethicists, of course, see problems even with that use of cloning technology. For those taking a conservative Augustinian position on the question of when human life begins, the prospect of stem-cell cultivation raises nearly as many ethical questions as abortion.
I don't take that radical, life-begins-at-the-moment-of-conception position myself, but I do see a possible ethical concern that cloning could be an act of interference in the process of natural selection that is evidently part of God's design for creation. If God the creator has arranged the universe in such a way that generation after generation merges different strains of DNA to produce offspring (resulting, from time to time, in mutations that lead to improvement of the human species), then what would be the impact of a person reproducing without recourse to a partner's DNA? Would that not preclude the possibility of genetic mutations - most of which are disastrous, but a very few of which lead to evolutionary advances? (It would take a very large number of clonings indeed to make a dent in the mathematically vast process of natural selection, but it's still a question worth posing.)
I agree with you that it's a mistake to view this particular biotechnology as a fountain of youth. Cloning would inevitably fall short of that dream. A terminally ill mother who sought to live on through the life of her cloned daughter would do so only in a metaphorical sense. She would not transfer her consciousness from one physical body to another, just the chemical code of her DNA. Christian proclamation must still speak what you call "a prophetic 'No'" to any inclination to try to use cloning to cheat death, for, as you eloquently say, "the road to eternal life goes through the cross, not around it."
Preachers would do well, I agree, not to condemn reproductive cloning technology out of hand. It certainly raises serious theological and ethical questions (which, as you rightly point out, the church should seek to address before such technology is practically manifested), but none of these questions are showstoppers in and of themselves.
The development of this technology may, in fact, have some historical parallel to the development of vaccines: a technology which some theologians of an earlier day condemned as sinful interference in God's plan for humanity, but which no contemporary thinker would question. (As incredible as it may sound, some Christian ethicists of generations past also condemned the use of the newly discovered surgical anesthetic, ether, on the grounds that it interferes with pain, which they considered to be God's wrath unleashed upon sinful humanity.) Cloning is new, to be sure, but it does not seem to me to be inherently sinful.
Carter Shelley responds: George, some of the questions your material raises for me concern sermon emphasis, while others are scientific questions. For example, I wasn't sure if you believe "science and technology should always be able to increase the length and quality of life," or if that is a statement you make as an assumption about the convictions of 21st century humans on science and technology. It's scary to hear scientists as well as other folk state their belief that science can solve all problems. It comes from our own Tower of Babel-like arrogance (or naivite?) that we are in control of our own lives, which is a direct contradiction of Christian belief that declares we must give up control of our lives to God in Jesus Christ in order to fully live.
Furthermore, what does the desire to live forever say about Christians' trust in God? Why do we cling so tenaciously to what we know? I certainly understand parents' heartache at the loss of a child to leukemia and the keen grief of a woman widowed at the age of 54 who looked forward to future retirement years with her husband. But how long is long enough?
What dismays me most about the cloning prospect is the human arrogance that we might be able to create physically and intellectually "perfect" humans. For starters, our definition of what a "perfect" human being would be and God's definition probably wouldn't match. After all, God created us to be unique and individual. Thus God must love variety.
The marketing of "good genes" also makes me nervous. There was a claim that the eggs of models were on sale online to those who wanted "beautiful" children. That has now been shown to be a hoax, but the idea behind it is scary. You can read about the hoax in this Salon.com article: http://archive.salon.com/health/feature/2000/08/25/egg_donation/. Hoax or not, the web site did attract some significant bids from potential customers - which shows that our society has some considerable problems to work out when it comes to bioethics.
In a book titled The Body Project, Cornell historian Joan Brumberg compares 19th-century adolescent girls to 20th-century ones by a study of diaries kept by both populations. The 19th-century girls aspired to be good, useful, caring, positive contributors to society; that was their goal and aim as people. The 20th-century girls aspire to be skinny, pretty, well dressed, and popular. We've lost something major in that shift.
Obviously, the biblical texts do not explicitly address these concerns. The authors did not live in a time when cloning was a possibility. As already well stated, Bible does address what it means to be God's creation and made perfect only by God's intervention, and even then it's touch and go as we live on earth.
Moreover, the idea of creating perfect human beings with the possibility of extending their lives up to 150 years of age leads me to ask, "Why?" Why would we want to do that? What is so fearful about death and the future that one would rather be really, really old in an overpopulated world? I realize that also might mean we are healthier and capable for longer, but in our own country many things already argue against an infinite life span - folks being considered virtually redundant in some professions by 55, for example.
Larry Hard responds: George offers good resources for preparing a sermon on the very timely subject of cloning. I would suggest the preacher begin the sermon with the second paragraph by quoting from an article or editorial in a local newspaper about the recent news story of "Eve." Though the story is probably a hoax, it captures the attention of ethicists and theologians reflecting in advance of making a human clone. I would also suggest using the news story, giving responses from religious leaders in Roman Catholic, Muslim, and Jewish faiths. I believe it was an AP article.
The scientific information about cloning is important for the preacher to know, but I am not certain all the parishioners have the background or the interest to absorb it all. Perhaps using the parts that are most readily understood would be sufficient.
The question of "Why would you clone yourself?" is one of several questions about the motivation for cloning. Those in the pew may be thinking about the benefits of cloning an Einstein and other great minds to help humanity in the future.
The sermon should make a clear transition from understanding cloning to the biblical texts. What is the relationship between the baptism of Jesus in Mark and our baptism with the possibilities/problems of cloning in addition to living new lives in Christ?
The preacher needs to do what George does very well in balancing the cautions religion gives with the acknowledgment that carefully regulated cloning research may bring enormous benefits that are now unknown to us.
Related Illustrations
Early in the 1997 film The Apostle starring Robert Duvall, there is a scene in which Duvall's character, Eulis "Sonny" Dewey, baptizes himself.
Sonny, an old-fashioned Southern "sawdust trail" evangelist, is on the run from the law. He has just brutally murdered his church's associate pastor with a baseball bat, having discovered an adulterous relationship between his wife and his colleague.
Horrified at what he has done, Sonny wades into a river and baptizes himself. He then announces to God and no one else that he is ordaining himself as an apostle. He takes a new name, "the Apostle E.F.," and settles in a small Louisiana town. Eventually he attracts a flock of Christians around him, renovating and re-opening an abandoned Pentecostal church, before his deeds finally catch up with him and he is arrested.
Duvall's performance as Sonny/the Apostle E.F. is complex. The viewer never really knows if Sonny's repentance is genuine, or if he's just going through the old, familiar motions. He's definitely a fallen character, and continues to be so throughout the film. Duvall portrays, with great poignancy, the mixture of good and evil in all of us - and also shows how even those who have committed terrible wrongs may yet do some good.
Yet in the matter of his self-baptism there is a kind of arrogance. Not even Jesus baptized himself (he rebuffed John the Baptist's offer to defer to him, and submitted to John's baptism).
The brave new world of cloning technology offers great promise, but also great peril. The peril is that we human beings may do something like Sonny does in baptizing himself in the river.
Should human cloning ever become routine, the lives brought into the world by that procedure will still need to be blessed by a power beyond themselves, who is God.
(from Carlos Wilton)
I think "the apostle" repents - but how profound that repentance is is open to question. He doesn't turn himself in, but on the other hand, he doesn't resist arrest. Like Buechner's "Godri," he is an excellent illustration of Luther's description of the Christian as simul justus et peccator.
(from George Murphy)
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How we use technology makes all the difference. High-quality color photocopiers, which have proven disturbingly useful to counterfeiters, were designed to aid legitimate business. The visionary scientists who first conceived the internet as a means of linking massive research computers could hardly have conceived how it would also be used as a worldwide pornography distribution system.
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During his 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan was fond of quoting Thomas Paine's words, "we have it within our grasp the ability to start the world all over again."
As significant in world history as the American revolution was and is, I submit to you that Thomas Paine was perhaps a little overzealous when he said that, as well as Ronald Reagan.
The only person who has the power to start the world all over again is God, and I submit to you that this baptism of Jesus is that time. One commentator refers to the opening of the heavens at his baptism as a symbol for the launching of a new age.
(Dr. J. Richard Short, Covenant Presbyterian Church, Augusta, Georgia; in a sermon, January 7, 2001.)
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Consider this actual advertisement for a fertility clinic quoted by Elizabeth Bartholet in Family Bonds:
"There is no other perfume like it, the smell of a newborn: a milk scent, warm-scent, cuddle essence. Her skin, a kind of new velvet. Toes more wrinkled than cabbage, yet roselike. Tender, soft, totally trusting; a blessing all your own."
I find this so profoundly offensive, I hardly know where to begin. No child is a "blessing all your own," and likening an infant to a flower to be plucked or a doll to be cuddled more than borders on the demonic. No baby could meet such ridiculous expectations. They instead make interminable demands on our reserves of unconditional love and test our ability simply to remain present. They are not extensions of our own deluded desires, and they make that known very early on in life. With genetic technology, we will be ever more capable of molding our children so that they require the least possible interruption and recalibration of our lives. And our lives as parents will be increasingly impoverished.
As parents, or simply as adults who believe that love, with all its dangers and discomforts, is the real goal of humanity, we cannot allow our society to march bravely forward, pursuing our shallow dreams and avoiding contact with inefficiency, unsightliness, and pain. It is time for us to call for a halt.
(Amy Laura Hall, "With Neither Fear Nor Trembling," in the Winter 2000 issue of Re:Generation Magazine. To see the full text of this article, go to http://www.regenerator.com/6.4/fear.html)
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Here's a joke that's been circulating on the internet:
A group of scientists, meeting together, decides the human race has come such a long way that we no longer need God. So they pick one of their number to go break the news to God.
"We can clone humans now," the scientist declares proudly, "so we no longer need you."
God listens with great kindness and infinite patience, then suggests, "Since you scientists have come so far in your research, why don't we have a contest to see who can make the best human?"
The scientist takes the challenge back to his colleagues and they agree. On the appointed day, the group of scientists invite God to join them in the laboratory.
God appears, but lays down one stipulation: "We're going to do this just like I did back in the old days, when I created Adam and Eve."
The scientists confer among themselves, and agree this plan will be acceptable. One of them steps outside the lab and picks up a handful of dirt.
"Oh no," says God, "that's not fair. You go get your own dirt!"
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There was a "cloning" set-up in the recent Star Trek movie Nemesis. The character Data, who is a very advanced android, did a download of his consciousness into an earlier version of his type of android (who looked just like Data and who was named "B4" as he was "before" Data). Near the end of the movie, Data is blown up during an act of heroism, but as the movie closes, Captain Picard talks to B4 about who Data was. If they make another Star Trek movie (which probably they shouldn't - this one wasn't that great), I suspect B4 will be the new Data.
(from Stan Purdum)
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Here's an example of a positive way to look at life and death:
"I read a story in high school that I have never forgotten. Its plot went like this: A little boy cuts school and he and his 80-ish grandfather sneak off together for a day at the fair. They have a glorious time. They eat cotton candy and ride the ferris wheel, and eat caramel apples and throw darts at targets. In short, they spend an exhilarating and exhausting day doing all those things to excess. It's not until they arrive home and the grandfather becomes gravely ill that the little boy is confronted with the possible consequences of his day.
"His mother's initial anger that the boy has allowed his grandfather to do things beyond his capacity quickly changes to terror when her father's illness looks as though it will be his last. The little boy sits in the shadows and weeps, certain he has killed his grandfather. For the first time the boy realizes that the joy of life and the sorrows of life are intertwined, and he is seriously grieved.
"But the grandfather recognizes what the boy does not. He calls the little boy to his bedside and says to him, 'Live while you live, and then die and be done with it. I had a wonderful time at the fair. No one can take that from me.'
"Life is precious. It's God's gift to us to enjoy, but life's not perfect. A day at the fair can do an old man in. The kingdom of God is in our midst, but it's still in the process of coming. But like the little boy and the grandfather, we can be thankful that cancer and war and volcanoes and famine are not the final word."
(from sermon by Carter Shelley on Matthew 13:44-52, titled "And We Can Be Thankful")
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As the recipient 12 years ago of a kidney transplant and as one aware of how many dialyzed patients never have access to kidneys, I am very keen for stem cell research to proceed. From the information from the National Institute of Health (www.nih.gov/news/stemcell/primer.htm), it seems to me one can proceed with stem cell research and future medical usage without damaging human embryos conceived and nurtured in the womb of the mother. See also www.newscientist.com/hottopics/cloning
(from Carter Shelley)
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As a Presbyterian I am steeped in sacramental language of "sign and seal" of God's covenant. The easiest way to explain this concept and faith stance to children and some adults is through identification of that which signs point towards. For the children's time, I would have construction cut-outs of golden arches, a Christmas tree, a stop sign, a pumpkin, then a loaf of bread, a cup of wine, and finally walk with them over to the baptismal font to see its water. Children know at a very young age that golden arches = McDonald's, etc.
(from Carter Shelley)
Worship Resources
By Chuck Cammarata
Call to Worship
LEADER: We may rearrange the building blocks,
PEOPLE: BUT ONLY GOD CREATES.
LEADER: We may manipulate DNA,
PEOPLE: BUT ONLY GOD CREATES.
LEADER: We may splice genes,
PEOPLE: BUT ONLY GOD CREATES.
LEADER: We may hold power over life and death on this earth,
PEOPLE: BUT ONLY GOD HOLDS THE ETERNAL POWER OF BEING.
LEADER: So let us exult the One and only God,
PEOPLE: CREATOR OF ALL THINGS,
LEADER: Through whom was everything made that was made.
PEOPLE: WITHOUT WHOM, NOTHING COULD BE.
LEADER: Praise God!
PEOPLE: WHO WAS,
LEADER: And is,
PEOPLE: AND IS TO COME.
LEADER: Amen!
PEOPLE: AMEN!
Prayer of Confession
LEADER: The problem is that all the good that is in us is tainted by sin.
PEOPLE: THE IMAGE OF GOD MARRED.
LEADER: The desire to do right compromised by self. The drive to ennoble others, sullied by the drive to power and control.
PEOPLE: O GOD WHO MADE US
LEADER: As we increase knowledge,
PEOPLE: DEVELOP MORE AMAZING TECHNOLOGIES,
LEADER: Gain more and more power,
PEOPLE: PROTECT US FROM OURSELVES.
LEADER: Keep us ever humble before you;
PEOPLE: REMEMBERING THAT BLESSEDNESS
LEADER: Comes to the poor in spirit,
PEOPLE: THE MEEK,
LEADER: The merciful,
PEOPLE: THE PURE IN HEART,
LEADER: The peacemakers,
PEOPLE: THOSE WHO HUNGER,
LEADER: Not for power or prowess,
PEOPLE: BUT FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS.
LEADER: And forgive us when we seek to be creator rather than creation.
PEOPLE: IN THE NAME OF JESUS THE CHRIST.
LEADER: Amen.
Assurance of Pardon
LEADER: Even for the arrogance of striving to usurp the place of God
PEOPLE: THERE IS FORGIVENESS,
LEADER: If there is repentance.
PEOPLE: ALMIGHTY GOD, WHEN HUBRIS REARS ITS HEAD
LEADER: Drive us to repentance
PEOPLE: THAT WE MIGHT EXPERIENCE FORGIVENESS
LEADER: And be put right with You.
PEOPLE: GLORY BE TO THE GOD OF FORGIVENESS.
A Visual Aid
An alternative to a prayer of confession might be used to illustrate our moral and even knowledge limitations in relation to God. I recently used this one. This may also be used as a call to worship or a sermon illustration.
As members of the congregation gathered one Sunday morning they noticed a large banner I had strung across the front of the sanctuary. I used several large white linen sheets strung together. The larger the banner, the better. Across the front of the sheet I had painted in red the word "GOD." At the time in the service when I chose to make my point - for me it was during the sermon - I went to the banner, took out my pen, and wrote one word in very small print, down in one corner of the banner. It was deliberately too small for members to see what I had written. I asked for a volunteer to come read it. It was so small the volunteer could not make it out with the naked eye. I then provided her with a magnifying glass that allowed her to read the word. The word was "humanity."
The point is not to make humanity seem insignificant, but to illustrate the immensity of God. God's knowledge, wisdom, power, creativity, etc. are so much greater than ours that our knowledge, power, etc. become microscopic. This is important to keep in mind when we are talking about such potentially dangerous technologies as cloning. In every human endeavor we must honor the limits God has placed on us as creatures.
Pastoral Prayer
A pastoral prayer in a service focusing on the possibilities and the dangers of technology might stress what Reinhold Niebuhr said 50 years ago in one of his books. He pointed out, at the dawn of the atomic age, that our technological capabilities may well have outstripped our moral capacities. What we can do and what we ought to do are two different things. A prayer may call on God to aid us in limiting ourselves to good uses of technologies that could be put to use in massively destructive ways. The following prayer takes this approach. (The Niebuhr quote might also be part of the development of a sermon on this topic.)
Creator God, you have endowed us with awesome abilities that we have used to develop awful technologies. Guide us in the use of these technologies. Keep them out of the hands of those who would use them to threaten the very existence of our planet - even to the point of destroying our technological towers of Babel if they threaten to take us places we should not go. Teach us to put all things - our minds, our hands, our technologies - in your service, now and always. Amen.
Hymns
"All Creatures of Our God and King"
"He's Got the Whole World in His Hands"
"How Great Thou Art"
Songs
"Our God Is an Awesome God" - by Rich Mullins (can be found in most contemporary worship song books)
"God of Wonders" - from the CD "City on a Hill"
"Humble Thyself in the Sight of the Lord" - in the public domain
Children's Sermon
By Wesley Runk
Mark 1:4-14
Text: "In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan." (v. 9)
Object: water in a very special pitcher
Good morning, boys and girls. Today we are going to talk about one of the very special days of the year. Today we celebrate the day that Jesus was baptized in the River Jordan. Does anyone know where the River Jordan is? let them answer) Is it in Ohio? (let them answer) Is it in California?(let them answer) Is it in Mexico? (let them answer)
No, the River Jordan is in the same country where Jesus was born. Today we call it Israel, just like the people did in the time of Jesus. Jesus used to walk along the River Jordan with his disciples, but that was later on in the ministry. Today, we are talking about the time when Jesus was just beginning his ministry. Not too many people knew him. As a matter of fact, if you lived when Jesus lived and you were walking around one of the villages and Jesus was there, you might not even recognize him.
Most of the time Jesus was in a small town called Nazareth, and he was working in the carpenter shop. He would make tables and doors and things like that. His mother still lived in Nazareth, and she would go places with him. Every Sabbath day Jesus would worship in the synagogue with his neighbors and friends. He loved to read the scriptures and he would gather with his friends after work and talk about things that happened in their village.
But then one day Jesus decided to do something different. He must have felt a calling from his Father in heaven. He left the village and walked toward a place where he knew his cousin John was preaching. He had heard him speak a few times before at the river and he remembered what John looked like. John was a pretty big man. He didn't comb his hair often and he lived out in the desert where you had to have clothes that were tough and could take a beating. John chose camel's hair for his clothes and he wore a big leather belt around his waist. His food was different also. He ate food that he could find in the desert, like locusts and honey. But most of all Jesus remembered the voice, a big booming voice that sounded almost like thunder when he spoke.
Jesus was coming near the spot in the river where John was preaching. You know what is in a river don't you? (let them answer) That's right, water. What do you do with water? (let them answer) You drink water, you bathe with it, you use it to make your plants grow, you use it to cook, you swim in it, you make ice out of it, you make steam out of it, and you even raise fish in it. Water is used in almost everything you do. But the most important thing that ever happened in water happened that day.
The place was packed with people who had traveled a long way to hear John speak. All of a sudden John stopped what he was saying and cried out, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."
Everyone turned around and began to look for someone more powerful than John. That was hard to believe, because John was a very powerful person. But just then, Jesus met John and asked him to baptize him in the river. John didn't want to, for he knew Jesus was holy, but Jesus insisted, and John took Jesus into the water and lowered him beneath the surface of the water. For a moment you could not see Jesus, but then Jesus came up through the water and everything began to happen. It seemed like the heavens were ripped apart and in the tear between the heavens came a dove flying straight down toward Jesus. Just as the dove was about to land on Jesus there was a voice from heaven that said, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."
Wow, everyone was speechless. John the Baptist could not even speak. It was not your normal afternoon. It was the day Jesus was baptized.
Now you understand what an important thing water is, for it not only is used for everything on earth that is important, it was also used the day Jesus was baptized.
The Immediate Word, January 12, 2003, issue.
Copyright 2003 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
Human cloning is in the news again, with a claim that the first human cloned baby - "Eve" - has been born. Whether that claim turns out to be true or not, it's probably only a matter of time before a human cloned individual will arrive. The technology exists, but the ethical and moral issues are significant.
So for this edition of The Immediate Word, we've asked team member George Murphy, who is a pastor and a scientist, to consider those issues, using the lectionary texts as the basis.
Also included are team comments, related illustrations, worship resources, and a children's sermon.
New Life - From the Laboratory or the Font?
By George L. Murphy
Genesis 1:1-5
Mark 1:4-11
What is the ultimate hope for humanity? Is it the possibility of staving off death and extending our lives indefinitely through developments in biology and medical technology? Or is it the possibility of eternal life in spite of death? Recent claims about cloning and the scripture readings for the First Sunday after the Epiphany (January 12) bring these two ideas together in a way that can be fruitful for preaching.
A few days ago there was an announcement of the birth of the first human clone, a baby girl named "Eve." This was met with a great deal of skepticism from scientists. The doubts are hardly surprising since the announcement was made by the Raelians, a group whose leader claims to have had a close encounter with extraterrestrials and who believes the human race to be a result of the use of cloning technologies by aliens. At the time I'm writing this, none of the genetic proofs that would be needed in order to prove that "Eve" actually is a clone of an adult woman have been made public.
(The Raelians have now announced the birth of a second clone. However, the journalist who was supposed to have been shown the genetic proof that Eve was a clone is temporarily suspending his efforts to get information. The whole affair seems more and more implausible.)
But this claim, whether genuine or not, has returned public attention to an issue that has been in the news off and on since the successful cloning that produced the sheep Dolly in 1997. Since then clones of other mammals - but not humans - have been born. The basic concept of "somatic cell nuclear transfer" is fairly simple.1 The nucleus of an egg is replaced with a nucleus that has been removed from a body cell of the adult organism that is to be cloned. The resulting ovum is then "tricked" into returning to the state of a just-fertilized egg and beginning to develop, and then is implanted into a female's womb. Of course the actual technique is much more difficult than this brief sketch indicates. If the egg develops properly, an infant of the species in question will be born. It will have the same genes in the nuclei of its cells as did the adult organism from which it was cloned.2
We immediately wonder about the possibility of cloning a human in this way. Two different paths might be taken. On the first, that of reproductive cloning, we would try to bring a human clone to birth, as was done with Dolly. The second possibility would be to allow the clone to develop only to a very early embryonic stage in order to harvest embryonic stem cells that have the potential to develop into any cell of the body. These cells might be used to repair the ravages of Parkinson's disease or spinal cord injuries, or even to grow new organs that could be transplanted into the original adult without problems of rejection by the immune system.
There has been considerable debate about research on embryonic stem cells (which can come from "ordinary" embryos as well as clones).3 The Raelian claim, however, has brought the possibility of reproductive cloning to the forefront, and I will focus on that topic here.
There does not seem to be any compelling, drop-dead theological argument to rule out reproductive human cloning under all circumstances. On the other hand, it is hard to think of any legitimate reason for doing such a thing.
Why would you clone yourself? Could this provide a replica of yourself, a kind of alter ego who would continue on beyond your death? It might seem that a kind of immortality could be achieved by this process. This is merely an exaggerated version of the hopes that many people have in various biomedical technologies (including therapies with embryonic stem cells). The belief is that science and technology should always be able to increase the length and quality of our lives.
Some parents who have lost a child have expressed their desire to have that dead child cloned so that they could have him or her back again. (In principle this could be done from any small bit of tissue.) Once more there is the belief that science can defeat death.
When I hear that type of faith expressed I think back to my hospital chaplaincy and the time that I stood in the Intensive Care Unit with the father of a young man who was brain dead after a motorcycle accident. As we waited for the machines to be unplugged, the father said angrily, "In 20 years we'll be able to fix this kind of thing." Is there a pastoral way to speak to such a Promethean claim at a time like that? Perhaps we need to do a better job of addressing it at other times, when grief and anger won't get in the way of some sober theological judgment.
There are serious technical problems with the idea that a person can be replicated by reproductive cloning. In the first place, all attempts at mammalian cloning have had a very low success/failure ratio. (There were 276 failures before Dolly was produced.) And there have been high rates of birth defects among clones that have been born. Moreover, a clone will result only in a kind of delayed identical twin, without any of the experiences or memories of the original. However we may understand the human soul, there is no more reason to think that a clone and the original person would have the same soul (or be the same person) than there is for identical twins.
But the basic theological question to be asked is, "Where does our hope lie?" Is it in being "reborn" through technology or in being "reborn" in another sense?
The lessons for this coming Sunday remind us of the promise of new life that God gives. The theme for this Sunday is the baptism of Christ, with the gospel being Mark 1:4-11. Without entering into the old question of the precise relationship of John's baptism to Christian baptism in the name of the Trinity, we can note important parallels between what John the Baptist did and the Christian sacrament. John's was "a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" (Luke 3:3), while Christians are invited to "be baptized, and have your sins washed away" (Acts 22:16).
One important theme connected with Christian baptism is the idea of being "born again" (John 3:3-8; Titus 3:5) or "born from above" (the alternate translation of gennethe anothen in John 3:3). Since the time of the Reformation, Christians have unfortunately been divided between those who understand baptism in a "realistic" way and those who think of it as "symbolic" (though not necessarily with the idea that it is a bare sign). But the bottom line is that new birth is God's work. (Babies, after all, don't get born by themselves.) If we have a realistic view of baptism, it is God's action. If it is symbolic, it is a symbol that points to God's action. As both Aquinas and Luther put it, God is really the minister of baptism.
Baptism then means new life - turning from sin and receiving God's gift in Christ. (The renunciation of Satan and all the forces of evil is part of traditional baptismal liturgies.) Even more strongly, Paul says in Romans 6:3-11 that baptism means dying to sin and rising to new life by being joined to the death and resurrection of Christ. And because of that, he says, we are to live new lives as disciples of Christ. (Baptism is not a fire insurance policy to be stored in our religious safe deposit boxes.)
Paul's statement of the meaning of baptism in Romans 6 points us to our final hope - that because we have been made participants in the death of Christ, we also have the promise of sharing in his resurrection. It is not a hope that we will avoid death, but that we will have life in spite of death. This hope is paradoxical - the promise of life by following the way of the cross and sharing in death. It is a hope given by the God who "justifies the ungodly ... gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist" (Romans 4:5, 17).
Which is to say that the kind of hope spoken of here can be given only by the Creator of the universe. Thus it's appropriate that the First Lesson for this Sunday is Genesis 1:1-5, the beginning of the first creation story of Genesis. It will go on to speak of the creation of life from the waters and the earth and the creation of humanity with a commission to be God's representatives in creation. But already in the first verses that are to be read, we can be reminded of the descent of the Spirit on Jesus at his baptism, which echoes the Spirit of God moving over the face of the deep. And it is the Holy Spirit who is (as the Nicene Creed says) "the Lord and giver of life."
What then can we say about cloning or other biomedical technologies in light of these biblical themes of the creation of life and the gift of new life in Christ? These theological considerations don't give us precise rules about the use of reproductive technologies. What they do is to relegate any hopes given by reproductive cloning, stem cell research, or any other technological work to, at most, penultimate status. Against any belief that as individuals or a species we can finally cheat death by such means, they speak a prophetic "No." The road to eternal life goes through the cross, not around it.
But this is not simply a condemnation of cloning or other work in biology. It is clear that medical research has brought about tremendous benefits in recent years, and we now think of things like heart transplants, which were science fiction a few decades ago, as routine therapies. No scientific knowledge of the world and no technology is good or evil in itself. Everything depends on our purpose for using it and how it is applied. Zyklon B, which was used to murder millions of people at Auschwitz, was originally developed as a disinfectant. Even nuclear weapons, terrible as their effects might be if used in warfare, would probably provide the best way of protecting the earth from the kind of asteroid impact that destroyed the dinosaurs.
The question for us is how, as people joined to the death and resurrection of Christ, we are to use the biotechnologies that are proliferating today. What do we have to say to a society which is anxious about disease, disability, and death, which is accustomed to the idea that technology can solve its problems, and which in some ways has become rather casual about the life of the unborn?
We should recognize that, whether this is wise or not, eventually a human clone will be born - if not this year then perhaps in this decade. It is important for our society to say, even before this happens, that a human clone is a full-fledged human being with all the rights and responsibilities of other humans. We should not offer any opportunity for clones to be treated as second-class people, to be replacements for others, sources of spare parts, or anything of the kind. The church should make it clear that a human clone would be baptized if presented for the sacrament.
Christians should continue to ask tough questions about the uses of biomedical technologies. Is the desire of a couple to have "their own" children, rather than adopting, so strong that it should trump every other consideration about the status of the embryo? What do you hope to accomplish by bringing to birth your identical twin who is 50 years younger than you? Who is to decide what kind of genetic modification of prospective offspring is an "improvement"? What is your final hope in life and in death?4
But we should not be seen as bio-Luddites, resisting all reproductive technologies simply because they are technologies. In particular, we should resist the temptation to argue against them on the grounds that we should not "play God." Theologian Ted Peters has given critical attention to this slogan and concludes that it has little theological content.
It will be my position that the phrase "playing God?" has very little cognitive value when looked at from the perspective of a theologian. Its primary role is that of a warning, such as the word "stop." In common parlance it has come to mean just that: stop. Within the gene myth it means that we should stop trying to engineer DNA. Theologically, however, there is at best only minimum warrant for using this phrase in such a conservative and categorical way.5
There is even a sense in which we should "play God" - though that is not very good wording. We are to be God's representatives in creation, created in the image of the God who loves his creation even to the extent of dying for it.
How can we preach about these matters? Detailed theological treatment of cloning or other biomedical technologies can perhaps best be dealt with in an educational setting rather than from the pulpit. But there are certainly homiletic possibilities.
The preacher might take the tack I suggested here, contrasting the hopes that some people have for defeating death with the hope that we are given in Christ. But this should not be a matter of condemning "them," the outsiders with their foolish hopes. When the chips are down, Christians like others may find themselves putting their most profound trust in some medical treatment. When we speak about excessive reliance on technology, we need to be able to say "Thou art the man, or woman" to Christians as well as to unbelievers.
The possibilities for human cloning still are to a great extent science fiction, and one might try to develop a story sermon of this genre in order to speak to some of the issues. The 1997 film Gattaca is one fictional attempt to deal with the idea of developing superior humans through genetic engineering. Not of Woman Born (ROC, 1999), edited by Constance Ash, is an anthology of science fiction stories making use of various types of reproductive technologies. Unfortunately, bizarre beliefs like those of the Raelians are all too prevalent, so it's important for people to realize that a science fiction story sermon is a story!6
And in an important sense the themes of the lessons for this Sunday - creation, baptism, new life, and discipleship - are basic material for all sermons. Our challenge is to bring cloning, or any other concern, into contact with them.
Notes
1 Papers on the science, theology, and ethics of cloning from a consultation held in October 2000 by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America can be found in Roger E. Willer (ed.), Human Cloning: Papers from a Church Consultation at http://www.elca.org/dcs/humancloning.html.
2 The clone will not, however, be precisely the same genetically as the adult because the DNA of the clone's mitochondria, outside the nucleus of its cells, will be that of the original ovum.
3 See, e.g., Suzanne Holland, Karen Lebacqz, and Laurie Zoloth (eds.), The Human Embryonic Stem Cell Debate (The MIT Press, 2001).
4 An opinion piece entitled "Biology's Chernobyl" by Matt Ridley in the December 31, 2002 Wall Street Journal is critical of the Raelians and of the idea of reproductive human cloning. But Ridley then goes on to endorse stem cell research without qualification and says that it "promises miraculous help to those who suffer from terrible afflictions." There is an unfortunate tendency on the part of proponents of such work to pose the issue as "Are you in favor of embryonic stem cell research or do you want people to suffer from Parkinson's disease?"
5 Ted Peters, Playing God? Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom (Routledge, 1997), p. 2.
6 A story sermon of mine titled "Improving the Species," based loosely on Genesis 6:1-4, was given at the ELCA cloning consultation and is included in the resource referred to in endnote 1.
Team Comments
Chuck Cammarata responds: I see this issue - cloning and the related technologies - as one involving moral and Christian imperatives to do good rather than evil, and that one aspect of this imperative is thinking about the limits God has placed on humanity. These limits grow out of the fact that we are creatures, not the creator. Genesis 2 makes this point when it introduces the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The final few chapters of the book of Job reinforce the point, as do the words of Isaiah 55:9 where God speaks to the people saying, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."
In terms of illustrations for how good intentions can come to dreadfully bad ends when we fail to honor the limits God has placed on us - the musical Jekyll and Hyde, based on the classic book but with a twist - tells the story of Dr. Jekyll, who sets out to discover a chemical potion that will neutralize the human bent toward sin and evil, but discovers, when he tries the formula on himself, that it leads to insanity and homicidal behavior.
The advent of the atomic bomb - developed in order to protect the world from a Nazi regime that had the bomb - has the same quality to it. One could even argue that its use on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ultimately saved lives, but the specter of the use of weapons of mass destruction has haunted us ever since. And though they have not been used again, we must always follow that statement with the proviso "yet" - they have not been used yet. When they are used, by a terrorist or a rogue leader like Saddam Hussein, humanity will rue the day we developed them.
Obviously this is an issue with all tools and technologies humans have ever developed - from hammers to bows and arrows to guns to nuclear technology. These tools and technologies are, in and of themselves, largely neutral; the morality of such things comes into play in how we use them. We can use a hammer to build a house or to bludgeon someone to death. The difference in the 21st century is that our current tools have destructive power like never before. We could not, until the last generation, blow ourselves out of the sky. We could not, until the last century, create and unleash an organism on ourselves that might just kill every last one of us. These technologies demand a different sort of scrutiny. Maybe - we must face the fact - some technologies have such potential for destruction, and humanity is so radically fallen (being a Presbyterian I would raise Calvin's doctrine of the total depravity of humanity), that there are some technologies we ought to simply not pursue.
When I was a child my family lived on a reasonably busy street. As a 4-year-old, my mother would not allow me to play in the front yard because it had no fence, and she knew I hadn't enough sense yet to stay out of the street. Allowing me to play in the front yard would, at the very least, have made me vulnerable to grave danger. In fact it may well have been a death sentence.
Humanity must face the reality that our moral sensibilities have been marred by the fall from grace and ask ourselves, "Is it safe for us to play in the front yard where weapons of mass destruction and genetic technologies are racing by?"
Carlos Wilton responds: The philosophical and theological question that comes to mind for me, as I contemplate the possibility of the cloning of a viable human being, is "What is consciousness?" or perhaps, "What is the soul?" If, in a thought-experiment, we imagine a person who has had herself cloned holding in her arms an infant genetically identical to herself, what then would that new person be like? And what implications would this new biotechnology have for our theological understanding of the human person?
It's easy to imagine such a child growing up to become physically identical to her mother/twin; we already see something like that in the case of identical twins (although these "twins" would be a generation apart in age). But what about personality? Would this child grow to demonstrate anger, fear, or desire in similar circumstances? Would she be more, or less, patient in times of frustration? Would she prefer the same flavor of ice cream?
The child would grow up having different life-experiences than her mother/twin. That alone would create some differences between the two of them, to be sure. This raises the perennial question: How much of the human personality, how much of the human sense of self, is attributable to nature, and how much to nurture? If nothing else, a successful human cloning would help us understand more about that.
"Twin studies" have already offered some provocative insights into human nature. These are the research projects in which psychologists carefully examine the lives of two adult twins who were separated at birth, and who grew up never knowing each other. It's remarkable, I'm told, how many of these individuals have ended up choosing similar life-paths - even similar spouses and jobs - when each has had an entirely different upbringing in his or her own adoptive family. The inevitable conclusion is that our personalities are perhaps more physically and genetically determined than eager proponents of Cartesian mind/body dualism would care to admit.
I remember a conversation I had some years ago with the late George Hall, professor of theology at the University of St. Andrews, in connection with postgraduate work I was doing on Calvin's theology. George made the comment that, the more psychology discovers about the importance of nature as compared to nurture in human development, the more it seemed to him that Calvin was right in his views on predestination. Perhaps some aspect of predestination manifests itself physically in the twisted helixes of our DNA.
And what of the soul? If two individuals are equipped with identical strings of DNA, then are they two persons in God's eyes, or one? Does "soul" reside in some microscopic, as-yet-hidden part of our physical being ... or is it something altogether different, something "spiritual," that has no physical marker capable of detection in even the most sophisticated laboratory?
This calls to mind the differing biblical views of the human person, and of life after death. There is, on the one hand, the more holistic, earthy, and physical Hebrew view, in which resurrection is seen as renewal and re-animation of the body, in a perfected form. On the other hand, there is the dualistic and immaterial Greek view, which holds that flesh and spirit are two separate essences. These essences exist parallel to one another in life and are separated from one another at death, as the temporary shell of the body falls away and the spirit lives on. Resurrection, in this view, is more of a spiritual than a physical reality.
A biblical basis can be found for both these views - although in the New Testament there does seem to be a historical progression from the Hebrew concept to the Greek, as Hellenistic ideas increasingly come to predominate. If we ever do see human cloning come to pass (and most scientists seem to think we inevitably will, even if - as seems likely - the Raelian claims are a hoax), will its results lead us to a more Hebrew view of human personhood? Time will tell...
You quite rightly make the point that there are few circumstances in which human cloning would be necessary - or even ethically justifiable from the standpoint of stewardship - apart from the cultivation of stem cells from cloned embryonic tissue, which could certainly save lives. Some Christian ethicists, of course, see problems even with that use of cloning technology. For those taking a conservative Augustinian position on the question of when human life begins, the prospect of stem-cell cultivation raises nearly as many ethical questions as abortion.
I don't take that radical, life-begins-at-the-moment-of-conception position myself, but I do see a possible ethical concern that cloning could be an act of interference in the process of natural selection that is evidently part of God's design for creation. If God the creator has arranged the universe in such a way that generation after generation merges different strains of DNA to produce offspring (resulting, from time to time, in mutations that lead to improvement of the human species), then what would be the impact of a person reproducing without recourse to a partner's DNA? Would that not preclude the possibility of genetic mutations - most of which are disastrous, but a very few of which lead to evolutionary advances? (It would take a very large number of clonings indeed to make a dent in the mathematically vast process of natural selection, but it's still a question worth posing.)
I agree with you that it's a mistake to view this particular biotechnology as a fountain of youth. Cloning would inevitably fall short of that dream. A terminally ill mother who sought to live on through the life of her cloned daughter would do so only in a metaphorical sense. She would not transfer her consciousness from one physical body to another, just the chemical code of her DNA. Christian proclamation must still speak what you call "a prophetic 'No'" to any inclination to try to use cloning to cheat death, for, as you eloquently say, "the road to eternal life goes through the cross, not around it."
Preachers would do well, I agree, not to condemn reproductive cloning technology out of hand. It certainly raises serious theological and ethical questions (which, as you rightly point out, the church should seek to address before such technology is practically manifested), but none of these questions are showstoppers in and of themselves.
The development of this technology may, in fact, have some historical parallel to the development of vaccines: a technology which some theologians of an earlier day condemned as sinful interference in God's plan for humanity, but which no contemporary thinker would question. (As incredible as it may sound, some Christian ethicists of generations past also condemned the use of the newly discovered surgical anesthetic, ether, on the grounds that it interferes with pain, which they considered to be God's wrath unleashed upon sinful humanity.) Cloning is new, to be sure, but it does not seem to me to be inherently sinful.
Carter Shelley responds: George, some of the questions your material raises for me concern sermon emphasis, while others are scientific questions. For example, I wasn't sure if you believe "science and technology should always be able to increase the length and quality of life," or if that is a statement you make as an assumption about the convictions of 21st century humans on science and technology. It's scary to hear scientists as well as other folk state their belief that science can solve all problems. It comes from our own Tower of Babel-like arrogance (or naivite?) that we are in control of our own lives, which is a direct contradiction of Christian belief that declares we must give up control of our lives to God in Jesus Christ in order to fully live.
Furthermore, what does the desire to live forever say about Christians' trust in God? Why do we cling so tenaciously to what we know? I certainly understand parents' heartache at the loss of a child to leukemia and the keen grief of a woman widowed at the age of 54 who looked forward to future retirement years with her husband. But how long is long enough?
What dismays me most about the cloning prospect is the human arrogance that we might be able to create physically and intellectually "perfect" humans. For starters, our definition of what a "perfect" human being would be and God's definition probably wouldn't match. After all, God created us to be unique and individual. Thus God must love variety.
The marketing of "good genes" also makes me nervous. There was a claim that the eggs of models were on sale online to those who wanted "beautiful" children. That has now been shown to be a hoax, but the idea behind it is scary. You can read about the hoax in this Salon.com article: http://archive.salon.com/health/feature/2000/08/25/egg_donation/. Hoax or not, the web site did attract some significant bids from potential customers - which shows that our society has some considerable problems to work out when it comes to bioethics.
In a book titled The Body Project, Cornell historian Joan Brumberg compares 19th-century adolescent girls to 20th-century ones by a study of diaries kept by both populations. The 19th-century girls aspired to be good, useful, caring, positive contributors to society; that was their goal and aim as people. The 20th-century girls aspire to be skinny, pretty, well dressed, and popular. We've lost something major in that shift.
Obviously, the biblical texts do not explicitly address these concerns. The authors did not live in a time when cloning was a possibility. As already well stated, Bible does address what it means to be God's creation and made perfect only by God's intervention, and even then it's touch and go as we live on earth.
Moreover, the idea of creating perfect human beings with the possibility of extending their lives up to 150 years of age leads me to ask, "Why?" Why would we want to do that? What is so fearful about death and the future that one would rather be really, really old in an overpopulated world? I realize that also might mean we are healthier and capable for longer, but in our own country many things already argue against an infinite life span - folks being considered virtually redundant in some professions by 55, for example.
Larry Hard responds: George offers good resources for preparing a sermon on the very timely subject of cloning. I would suggest the preacher begin the sermon with the second paragraph by quoting from an article or editorial in a local newspaper about the recent news story of "Eve." Though the story is probably a hoax, it captures the attention of ethicists and theologians reflecting in advance of making a human clone. I would also suggest using the news story, giving responses from religious leaders in Roman Catholic, Muslim, and Jewish faiths. I believe it was an AP article.
The scientific information about cloning is important for the preacher to know, but I am not certain all the parishioners have the background or the interest to absorb it all. Perhaps using the parts that are most readily understood would be sufficient.
The question of "Why would you clone yourself?" is one of several questions about the motivation for cloning. Those in the pew may be thinking about the benefits of cloning an Einstein and other great minds to help humanity in the future.
The sermon should make a clear transition from understanding cloning to the biblical texts. What is the relationship between the baptism of Jesus in Mark and our baptism with the possibilities/problems of cloning in addition to living new lives in Christ?
The preacher needs to do what George does very well in balancing the cautions religion gives with the acknowledgment that carefully regulated cloning research may bring enormous benefits that are now unknown to us.
Related Illustrations
Early in the 1997 film The Apostle starring Robert Duvall, there is a scene in which Duvall's character, Eulis "Sonny" Dewey, baptizes himself.
Sonny, an old-fashioned Southern "sawdust trail" evangelist, is on the run from the law. He has just brutally murdered his church's associate pastor with a baseball bat, having discovered an adulterous relationship between his wife and his colleague.
Horrified at what he has done, Sonny wades into a river and baptizes himself. He then announces to God and no one else that he is ordaining himself as an apostle. He takes a new name, "the Apostle E.F.," and settles in a small Louisiana town. Eventually he attracts a flock of Christians around him, renovating and re-opening an abandoned Pentecostal church, before his deeds finally catch up with him and he is arrested.
Duvall's performance as Sonny/the Apostle E.F. is complex. The viewer never really knows if Sonny's repentance is genuine, or if he's just going through the old, familiar motions. He's definitely a fallen character, and continues to be so throughout the film. Duvall portrays, with great poignancy, the mixture of good and evil in all of us - and also shows how even those who have committed terrible wrongs may yet do some good.
Yet in the matter of his self-baptism there is a kind of arrogance. Not even Jesus baptized himself (he rebuffed John the Baptist's offer to defer to him, and submitted to John's baptism).
The brave new world of cloning technology offers great promise, but also great peril. The peril is that we human beings may do something like Sonny does in baptizing himself in the river.
Should human cloning ever become routine, the lives brought into the world by that procedure will still need to be blessed by a power beyond themselves, who is God.
(from Carlos Wilton)
I think "the apostle" repents - but how profound that repentance is is open to question. He doesn't turn himself in, but on the other hand, he doesn't resist arrest. Like Buechner's "Godri," he is an excellent illustration of Luther's description of the Christian as simul justus et peccator.
(from George Murphy)
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How we use technology makes all the difference. High-quality color photocopiers, which have proven disturbingly useful to counterfeiters, were designed to aid legitimate business. The visionary scientists who first conceived the internet as a means of linking massive research computers could hardly have conceived how it would also be used as a worldwide pornography distribution system.
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During his 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan was fond of quoting Thomas Paine's words, "we have it within our grasp the ability to start the world all over again."
As significant in world history as the American revolution was and is, I submit to you that Thomas Paine was perhaps a little overzealous when he said that, as well as Ronald Reagan.
The only person who has the power to start the world all over again is God, and I submit to you that this baptism of Jesus is that time. One commentator refers to the opening of the heavens at his baptism as a symbol for the launching of a new age.
(Dr. J. Richard Short, Covenant Presbyterian Church, Augusta, Georgia; in a sermon, January 7, 2001.)
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Consider this actual advertisement for a fertility clinic quoted by Elizabeth Bartholet in Family Bonds:
"There is no other perfume like it, the smell of a newborn: a milk scent, warm-scent, cuddle essence. Her skin, a kind of new velvet. Toes more wrinkled than cabbage, yet roselike. Tender, soft, totally trusting; a blessing all your own."
I find this so profoundly offensive, I hardly know where to begin. No child is a "blessing all your own," and likening an infant to a flower to be plucked or a doll to be cuddled more than borders on the demonic. No baby could meet such ridiculous expectations. They instead make interminable demands on our reserves of unconditional love and test our ability simply to remain present. They are not extensions of our own deluded desires, and they make that known very early on in life. With genetic technology, we will be ever more capable of molding our children so that they require the least possible interruption and recalibration of our lives. And our lives as parents will be increasingly impoverished.
As parents, or simply as adults who believe that love, with all its dangers and discomforts, is the real goal of humanity, we cannot allow our society to march bravely forward, pursuing our shallow dreams and avoiding contact with inefficiency, unsightliness, and pain. It is time for us to call for a halt.
(Amy Laura Hall, "With Neither Fear Nor Trembling," in the Winter 2000 issue of Re:Generation Magazine. To see the full text of this article, go to http://www.regenerator.com/6.4/fear.html)
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Here's a joke that's been circulating on the internet:
A group of scientists, meeting together, decides the human race has come such a long way that we no longer need God. So they pick one of their number to go break the news to God.
"We can clone humans now," the scientist declares proudly, "so we no longer need you."
God listens with great kindness and infinite patience, then suggests, "Since you scientists have come so far in your research, why don't we have a contest to see who can make the best human?"
The scientist takes the challenge back to his colleagues and they agree. On the appointed day, the group of scientists invite God to join them in the laboratory.
God appears, but lays down one stipulation: "We're going to do this just like I did back in the old days, when I created Adam and Eve."
The scientists confer among themselves, and agree this plan will be acceptable. One of them steps outside the lab and picks up a handful of dirt.
"Oh no," says God, "that's not fair. You go get your own dirt!"
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There was a "cloning" set-up in the recent Star Trek movie Nemesis. The character Data, who is a very advanced android, did a download of his consciousness into an earlier version of his type of android (who looked just like Data and who was named "B4" as he was "before" Data). Near the end of the movie, Data is blown up during an act of heroism, but as the movie closes, Captain Picard talks to B4 about who Data was. If they make another Star Trek movie (which probably they shouldn't - this one wasn't that great), I suspect B4 will be the new Data.
(from Stan Purdum)
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Here's an example of a positive way to look at life and death:
"I read a story in high school that I have never forgotten. Its plot went like this: A little boy cuts school and he and his 80-ish grandfather sneak off together for a day at the fair. They have a glorious time. They eat cotton candy and ride the ferris wheel, and eat caramel apples and throw darts at targets. In short, they spend an exhilarating and exhausting day doing all those things to excess. It's not until they arrive home and the grandfather becomes gravely ill that the little boy is confronted with the possible consequences of his day.
"His mother's initial anger that the boy has allowed his grandfather to do things beyond his capacity quickly changes to terror when her father's illness looks as though it will be his last. The little boy sits in the shadows and weeps, certain he has killed his grandfather. For the first time the boy realizes that the joy of life and the sorrows of life are intertwined, and he is seriously grieved.
"But the grandfather recognizes what the boy does not. He calls the little boy to his bedside and says to him, 'Live while you live, and then die and be done with it. I had a wonderful time at the fair. No one can take that from me.'
"Life is precious. It's God's gift to us to enjoy, but life's not perfect. A day at the fair can do an old man in. The kingdom of God is in our midst, but it's still in the process of coming. But like the little boy and the grandfather, we can be thankful that cancer and war and volcanoes and famine are not the final word."
(from sermon by Carter Shelley on Matthew 13:44-52, titled "And We Can Be Thankful")
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As the recipient 12 years ago of a kidney transplant and as one aware of how many dialyzed patients never have access to kidneys, I am very keen for stem cell research to proceed. From the information from the National Institute of Health (www.nih.gov/news/stemcell/primer.htm), it seems to me one can proceed with stem cell research and future medical usage without damaging human embryos conceived and nurtured in the womb of the mother. See also www.newscientist.com/hottopics/cloning
(from Carter Shelley)
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As a Presbyterian I am steeped in sacramental language of "sign and seal" of God's covenant. The easiest way to explain this concept and faith stance to children and some adults is through identification of that which signs point towards. For the children's time, I would have construction cut-outs of golden arches, a Christmas tree, a stop sign, a pumpkin, then a loaf of bread, a cup of wine, and finally walk with them over to the baptismal font to see its water. Children know at a very young age that golden arches = McDonald's, etc.
(from Carter Shelley)
Worship Resources
By Chuck Cammarata
Call to Worship
LEADER: We may rearrange the building blocks,
PEOPLE: BUT ONLY GOD CREATES.
LEADER: We may manipulate DNA,
PEOPLE: BUT ONLY GOD CREATES.
LEADER: We may splice genes,
PEOPLE: BUT ONLY GOD CREATES.
LEADER: We may hold power over life and death on this earth,
PEOPLE: BUT ONLY GOD HOLDS THE ETERNAL POWER OF BEING.
LEADER: So let us exult the One and only God,
PEOPLE: CREATOR OF ALL THINGS,
LEADER: Through whom was everything made that was made.
PEOPLE: WITHOUT WHOM, NOTHING COULD BE.
LEADER: Praise God!
PEOPLE: WHO WAS,
LEADER: And is,
PEOPLE: AND IS TO COME.
LEADER: Amen!
PEOPLE: AMEN!
Prayer of Confession
LEADER: The problem is that all the good that is in us is tainted by sin.
PEOPLE: THE IMAGE OF GOD MARRED.
LEADER: The desire to do right compromised by self. The drive to ennoble others, sullied by the drive to power and control.
PEOPLE: O GOD WHO MADE US
LEADER: As we increase knowledge,
PEOPLE: DEVELOP MORE AMAZING TECHNOLOGIES,
LEADER: Gain more and more power,
PEOPLE: PROTECT US FROM OURSELVES.
LEADER: Keep us ever humble before you;
PEOPLE: REMEMBERING THAT BLESSEDNESS
LEADER: Comes to the poor in spirit,
PEOPLE: THE MEEK,
LEADER: The merciful,
PEOPLE: THE PURE IN HEART,
LEADER: The peacemakers,
PEOPLE: THOSE WHO HUNGER,
LEADER: Not for power or prowess,
PEOPLE: BUT FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS.
LEADER: And forgive us when we seek to be creator rather than creation.
PEOPLE: IN THE NAME OF JESUS THE CHRIST.
LEADER: Amen.
Assurance of Pardon
LEADER: Even for the arrogance of striving to usurp the place of God
PEOPLE: THERE IS FORGIVENESS,
LEADER: If there is repentance.
PEOPLE: ALMIGHTY GOD, WHEN HUBRIS REARS ITS HEAD
LEADER: Drive us to repentance
PEOPLE: THAT WE MIGHT EXPERIENCE FORGIVENESS
LEADER: And be put right with You.
PEOPLE: GLORY BE TO THE GOD OF FORGIVENESS.
A Visual Aid
An alternative to a prayer of confession might be used to illustrate our moral and even knowledge limitations in relation to God. I recently used this one. This may also be used as a call to worship or a sermon illustration.
As members of the congregation gathered one Sunday morning they noticed a large banner I had strung across the front of the sanctuary. I used several large white linen sheets strung together. The larger the banner, the better. Across the front of the sheet I had painted in red the word "GOD." At the time in the service when I chose to make my point - for me it was during the sermon - I went to the banner, took out my pen, and wrote one word in very small print, down in one corner of the banner. It was deliberately too small for members to see what I had written. I asked for a volunteer to come read it. It was so small the volunteer could not make it out with the naked eye. I then provided her with a magnifying glass that allowed her to read the word. The word was "humanity."
The point is not to make humanity seem insignificant, but to illustrate the immensity of God. God's knowledge, wisdom, power, creativity, etc. are so much greater than ours that our knowledge, power, etc. become microscopic. This is important to keep in mind when we are talking about such potentially dangerous technologies as cloning. In every human endeavor we must honor the limits God has placed on us as creatures.
Pastoral Prayer
A pastoral prayer in a service focusing on the possibilities and the dangers of technology might stress what Reinhold Niebuhr said 50 years ago in one of his books. He pointed out, at the dawn of the atomic age, that our technological capabilities may well have outstripped our moral capacities. What we can do and what we ought to do are two different things. A prayer may call on God to aid us in limiting ourselves to good uses of technologies that could be put to use in massively destructive ways. The following prayer takes this approach. (The Niebuhr quote might also be part of the development of a sermon on this topic.)
Creator God, you have endowed us with awesome abilities that we have used to develop awful technologies. Guide us in the use of these technologies. Keep them out of the hands of those who would use them to threaten the very existence of our planet - even to the point of destroying our technological towers of Babel if they threaten to take us places we should not go. Teach us to put all things - our minds, our hands, our technologies - in your service, now and always. Amen.
Hymns
"All Creatures of Our God and King"
"He's Got the Whole World in His Hands"
"How Great Thou Art"
Songs
"Our God Is an Awesome God" - by Rich Mullins (can be found in most contemporary worship song books)
"God of Wonders" - from the CD "City on a Hill"
"Humble Thyself in the Sight of the Lord" - in the public domain
Children's Sermon
By Wesley Runk
Mark 1:4-14
Text: "In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan." (v. 9)
Object: water in a very special pitcher
Good morning, boys and girls. Today we are going to talk about one of the very special days of the year. Today we celebrate the day that Jesus was baptized in the River Jordan. Does anyone know where the River Jordan is? let them answer) Is it in Ohio? (let them answer) Is it in California?(let them answer) Is it in Mexico? (let them answer)
No, the River Jordan is in the same country where Jesus was born. Today we call it Israel, just like the people did in the time of Jesus. Jesus used to walk along the River Jordan with his disciples, but that was later on in the ministry. Today, we are talking about the time when Jesus was just beginning his ministry. Not too many people knew him. As a matter of fact, if you lived when Jesus lived and you were walking around one of the villages and Jesus was there, you might not even recognize him.
Most of the time Jesus was in a small town called Nazareth, and he was working in the carpenter shop. He would make tables and doors and things like that. His mother still lived in Nazareth, and she would go places with him. Every Sabbath day Jesus would worship in the synagogue with his neighbors and friends. He loved to read the scriptures and he would gather with his friends after work and talk about things that happened in their village.
But then one day Jesus decided to do something different. He must have felt a calling from his Father in heaven. He left the village and walked toward a place where he knew his cousin John was preaching. He had heard him speak a few times before at the river and he remembered what John looked like. John was a pretty big man. He didn't comb his hair often and he lived out in the desert where you had to have clothes that were tough and could take a beating. John chose camel's hair for his clothes and he wore a big leather belt around his waist. His food was different also. He ate food that he could find in the desert, like locusts and honey. But most of all Jesus remembered the voice, a big booming voice that sounded almost like thunder when he spoke.
Jesus was coming near the spot in the river where John was preaching. You know what is in a river don't you? (let them answer) That's right, water. What do you do with water? (let them answer) You drink water, you bathe with it, you use it to make your plants grow, you use it to cook, you swim in it, you make ice out of it, you make steam out of it, and you even raise fish in it. Water is used in almost everything you do. But the most important thing that ever happened in water happened that day.
The place was packed with people who had traveled a long way to hear John speak. All of a sudden John stopped what he was saying and cried out, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."
Everyone turned around and began to look for someone more powerful than John. That was hard to believe, because John was a very powerful person. But just then, Jesus met John and asked him to baptize him in the river. John didn't want to, for he knew Jesus was holy, but Jesus insisted, and John took Jesus into the water and lowered him beneath the surface of the water. For a moment you could not see Jesus, but then Jesus came up through the water and everything began to happen. It seemed like the heavens were ripped apart and in the tear between the heavens came a dove flying straight down toward Jesus. Just as the dove was about to land on Jesus there was a voice from heaven that said, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."
Wow, everyone was speechless. John the Baptist could not even speak. It was not your normal afternoon. It was the day Jesus was baptized.
Now you understand what an important thing water is, for it not only is used for everything on earth that is important, it was also used the day Jesus was baptized.
The Immediate Word, January 12, 2003, issue.
Copyright 2003 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
