Deep Mysteries

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Were you any good at math in school? It’s a joke around our house that one of the old Barbie dolls used to say, “Math is hard.” I found math hard, it was never one of my best subjects. So, what I know about math is mostly from books that very kindly explain things to me in pictures and examples rather than equations. And what they have found is amazing. 

Here's an image of a tree in winter. 

The entire tree uses a system of trunks and branches, from the roots to what we see above ground. 

Nature uses this trunk and branches system in all sorts of systems. Here’s a picture of the arteries that supply blood to our heads – same trunk and branches.

This system is found all through our bodies.

Here’s an aerial view of a river delta in Egypt, the dark parts are the water. Trunks and branches, leading to twigs.

And this system doesn’t just work on Earth, it can be found on other planets. This is an aerial view of a valley system in Mars, carved out by ancient rivers.

 Nature appears to be using the same shape at all scales to get things done: to deliver blood, make trees, to make rivers and valleys. 

Mathematicians have discovered that all of these shapes are governed by equations known as fractals. This kind of equation can explain the shapes of all sorts of things on Earth, and in space.^[1] In fact, ask a mathematician, and they will tell you pretty much everything in the physical universe can be explained by mathematical equations. The universe is built in an orderly way that can be understood through math at all scales. There are equations that explain how atomic particles behave at the quantum level; there’s math to explain how space and time are shaped so that galaxies clump together to form great walls. 

Mathematicians have discovered that the physical universe is orderly, but it is also deeply, deeply weird. Sub-atomic particle pairs pop in and out of existence. Atoms and even molecules behave in ghostly ways, better described by math than common sense. Even time is weird. The math tells us that the rate at which time passes is different all over the universe, because time depends on the speed you are travelling at.^[2] A star system spinning around a Black hole will have a slower rate of time than what we experience here. If a minister is giving a sermon there that lasts twenty minutes, by the time she finishes, several centuries may have passed by here. 

I don’t pretend to understand any of this math, but one thing is clear. The universe is weird, really, really weird. It is hard to understand, and the math that governs it is hard to understand and to discover. It doesn’t look like the kind of universe humans would dream up. We’d have a universe where the sun really did circle around the Earth. In a human universe, time would be the same everywhere. But the truth is way, way stranger than that. 

Mathematicians have yet to discover clear proof of God in their equations, and it’s possible they never will. What they have found is a deep order in the universe, one that shouldn’t be there if it was all just random chance. The laws of physics appear to be the same everywhere in the universe, no matter how far away we look. To Christians, that suggests a creator, who we call God. God is comfortable with all this strange math, and math we haven’t even discovered yet. That suggests that if the universe is really strange, so is God. God’s mind is deeply mysterious. God is the author of mysteries of the universe, and capable of dreaming up universes that are strange even before they exist. 

That strangeness of God is something we Christians don’t talk much about. We prefer to talk about God as kind and knowable. But in today’s scripture reading, we are reminded that God is also strange and unknowable. The story is simple: early on in Christ’s ministry, one of the temple officials pays Jesus a visit, in secret. 

Nicodemus has heard about the miracles Christ has been working. He suspects Jesus has been sent by God. He must be a new prophet. Nicodemus comes at night.

In John’s gospel, darkness is symbolic of evil and ignorance. Jesus has come in a dark age when people need light. So, John makes a point of telling us Nicodemus visits Jesus at night.

Nicodemus is a smart man, and he may expect Jesus to say something like, “yes, I am a prophet,” or perhaps even more exciting, “Yes, I am the Messiah you have been waiting for.” But instead, Jesus speaks in riddles. Instead of giving a straight answer, he says that if Nicodemus wants to understand what is going on, he will need to be born again. That flesh gives birth to flesh, but only the Holy Spirit can give birth to an awakened human spirit. 

And, strangest of all, Jesus says that God is unknowable. Only the Son has been with God and knows God. And now, he tells Nicodemus, the son is with you. 

Nicodemus is royally confused by all of this. But part of it he should get. The Jews knew very well that God was immortal, invisible, and deeply mysterious. That part they understood. No one, not even Moses, was allowed to see the face of God, for to do so would kill any human. The God who creates universes, and dreams them up before they exist, that mysterious God’s name could not even be spoken among Jews. They recognized the mysterious, unknowable aspect of God.

What Christ is telling Nicodemus is that God has chosen to do something new. God has chosen to take human form, as a Son of Man, in the person of Jesus. Only Jesus, the man sitting with Nicodemus, has been with the mysterious mind of God, and has come from it, and is one with it. And now that God is here, in human form, God’s strangeness is on Earth, blowing this way and that like a wind, unpredictable to humans, but fully intelligible to God. 

This confusing encounter with Nicodemus is an example of the Gospel writers struggling to communicate what we now know as the Trinity. That God is three persons in one – an invisible, mystery; a more knowable God who becomes human as Jesus; and the Holy Spirit, who is constantly moving, taking up residence in people who give her room, to do God’s work. Because the Trinity takes us closer to how God is, it is harder to understand than other ideas about God. How can God be three in one? We are not worshipping three gods, but three persons who together are one. 

This is mysterious because God wasn’t created by human beings. God is not a projection of our imagination. If God was just one of our projections, God would be easy to understand. But instead, when we get closer to who God really is, it all sounds like riddles. Just like the math that underlies the universe is hard to understand, too.

This story was written by the Apostle John, who also wrote three letters which are in the New Testament. In his first letter, John tells us what he has learnt by spending time with Jesus. 

⁷ Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸ Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. ( 1 John 4:7-8)

In modern terms, we can say that God loves this universe, and brings it into being through love. A love of stars, of nebulae, of galaxies, and of life. Where love is, God is present. Not all of God, but God is present everywhere we find love. That means that when people love each other, including loving our enemies, God is present. That is God in action. The natural world is also made through love. The oak tree in the fall will produce 10,000 acorns, not just a few to insure its own survival. There is an extraordinary abundance in the way nature works, always producing more than is needed for just itself. That is how love works. 

But love is more than just admiring something else for its beauty, an appreciation of it for its generosity. That kind of love can be selfish – I love you because you give me pleasure or because you help me. Love, deep love, is also about caring for another so much that you are willing to make sacrifices to insure their well-being. Parents do this all the time. We spend money on children we could have spent on ourselves. We put our lives on hold so they can grow, go to lessons, go to a good school. This city is full of people who have left homes half a world away because they want their kids to have a better chance here. Deep love can mean setting aside your own interests for the welfare of another. 

And so, when Jesus talks to Nicodemus about God, he also speaks of sacrifice. He reminds him of a story about Moses. The Israelites were in the desert, after being rescued from Egypt. One day, poisonous snakes start biting and killing them. Moses goes to God for help. 

God tells Moses to make a bronze snake and put it on a pole and raise it high. Anyone who looks at the snake on a pole will be cured. (Numbers 21: 4-9)  This is a story Nicodemus knows well.

Jesus reminds Nicodemus of this story to explain what Jesus will do. God has become Jesus out of love for humanity. Humanity has been bitten by the poison of bitterness, hatred, ignorance, and sin. God has become flesh, a person, to show the world that love, not hatred is the answer. Out of love for humanity, God will make the ultimate sacrifice a human can make, and give Their life, on a cross, to show that God’s love for us is total and absolute. It is not a fairweather love, which disappears when things get hard. No, this is a love for us that lasts even when the world turns against us. When everyone hates us, God still loves us. In becoming Jesus, God has felt what it is like to be hated, to be doubted, to be rejected. Anyone who looks on that man on the cross has proof that God loves us, even to death. When we understand that, just a little, we can be cured of the darkness and poison that infected us before. We can be reborn into a life where we see that the universe is created by God’s love. We can live a life where we are asked only to feel that love and share it with others, with the spirit’s help. 

We don’t have to understand the universe, to puzzle through its complicated equations. We just need to understand this one thing: God is love, and that love is deep, mysterious, and eternal. It is more than we will ever know or understand. But some of that love has been formed in us, small enough to fit inside these fragile bodies. When we can say yes to that love, that love that animates the universe, then our lives change, and we can change the world. We have been blessed by a love that created this universe and all others, a love that will never die. A love given to us by a mysterious God, who became human, and is with us still as the holy spirit, a God who is three in one, and who wants what is best for us. 

Amen. 

[1] https://simply.science/index.php/fractals-in-nature

[2] Carlo Rivelli, The Order of Time, p.44.