God After... IX: God After Doudna

Kenilworth Union Church

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God After... IX: God After Doudna

God After...

July 21, 2024 • Katie Snipes Lancaster • Genesis 2:7

This one asks us to think about what it means, at the most fundamental level, to be human, and how we might choose, in some instances, to change some of the inmost parts of ourselves, our DNA.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, Jewish philosopher and theologian offers this prayer, which seems apt:

“Some asked for success.

I asked for wonder.

And You gave it to me.”[1]

We must hold this all with wonder. It ultimately takes us back to the beginning when God took the soil, the fertile earth and breathed life into it. And there we were. Living creatures. Marked by the spirit of God, every breath a reminder that we are never far from the Spirit, we are never removed from the Holy One.

Now we hold, with wonder the story of Jennifer Doudna. There are three critical histories that intersect with Jennifer Doudna, all of which deserve at least an hour long lecture as we consider who God is in her wake.

(1) The history of women in science

(2) the history of genetic engineering and

(3) the history of pandemics[2]

We’d also need a looking glass into the future, because Jennifer Doudna is still alive and her impact on our understanding of the self, the other, and God is therefore yet unfolding.

[1] Heschel, Abraham Joshua. I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology. Edited by Samuel H. Dresner. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1983.

[2] see my appendix for the multiple intersecting histories.

IV: That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade by Brad Aaron Modlin

August 25, 2024 • Christine V. Hides • Mark 10:13–16

In the time and place Jesus lived, children had no power or status. #_ftn1So it isn’t surprising that the disciples turned them away, they had important adult work to do. What is surprising is that Jesus pays attention to the children. Jesus paid attention to all kinds of people who society deemed unimportant or unworthy. Jesus puts children right in the middle of the story of God’s unfolding kingdom. Not someday when they get older or pass a test. Present tense: “Children are at the center.” The disciples learn an important lesson about how followers of Jesus are meant to include those on the margins. The children then and those who hear this story 2,000 years later learn that in a world where children are hushed and left out and overlooked, they matter to Jesus. As we begin the school year, adults who care for children are mindful of the stressors in our community. Sometimes it feels as though there is never enough time to do what feels required for our children’s success. It is easy to overfill our days with practice, test prep, enrichments, and carpool. #_ftnref1 See “The Least and the Greatest: Children in the New Testament” by Judith M Gundry-Volf in The Child in Christian Thought edited by Marcia Bunge.

III: About Standing (in Kinship) by Kimberly Blaeser

August 18, 2024 • Katie Snipes Lancaster • John 13:12–15

And then across the chasm of centuries, there is Jesus. Stooping to wash his disciples feet. His great gift… his own labor of love under the “forgotten architecture of friendship…” wherein he discloses what it means to follow him. Like this. Stoop. Bend low. “find healing in the leaning, the closeness.” One scholar puts it this way “It’s always easier to follow Jesus in our heads than it is to follow him with our feet on the Via Dolorosa.”#_ftn1 The Via Dolorosa, the way of sorrow. The Via Dolorosa, sacrifice. The Via Dolorosa, the servant’s path. And Jesus replies to his disciples, “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done to you.” This is the “forgotten architecture of friendship.” This is how to follow Jesus on the Via Dolorosa. Like this. Stoop. Bend low. “find healing in the leaning, the closeness.” #_ftnref1 Herhold, Robert H. "Foot Washing and Last Things (John 13:1–20)." The Christian Century, March 9, 1983, 205.

II: Small Kindness by Danusha Laméris

August 11, 2024 • Katie Snipes Lancaster • Matthew 5:39–43

And what about that moment at the library, when I filled my arms with so many books they fell like lemons, spilling across the aisle, and a man 30 years my elder, stooped to help? And stooped again when I dropped two more? Jesus says “remember? The world is arranged by an-eye-for-an-eye, and a-tooth-for-a-tooth”…but it doesn’t have to be that way…try it another way…try it like this. We’d written the injunction “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” in the millennia before Jesus as a stop gap against escalation: so that when someone punches your lights out, you don’t retaliate by burning down their village. Keep it simple: an eye for an eye. Violence need not surge. Brutality need not mushroom. So Jesus takes this ancient ethic and moves us further toward his vision for human thriving: “try it this way…turning the other cheek… try it…walking the second mile…try it…”