This year's Nobel Prize for Physics went to David J. Gross, H. David Politzer, and Frank Wilczek for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of strong interaction. Some thirty years ago, these three men found that quarks, the smallest elements of an atom behaved differently than would be expected. The closer quarks are too each other, the weaker their attraction…but separate them and the force becomes stronger as the distance between them increases. It is similar to the force seen in a rubber band. The more the rubber band is stretched the stronger the force.
The Nobel Prize for Chemistry went to Aaron Ciechanover, Avram Hershko, and Irwin Rose for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation. It seems that our cells operate efficiently to prevent the build up of waste. When molecules are no longer functioning they are tagged with a substance called ubiquitin. Once tagged with this substance molecule is marked for disposal.
As a college biology major, I am often struck by the theology of science. The Nobel prizes for chemistry and physics are relevant to our relationship with God, and weave through our texts from Jeremiah and Luke this morning. Jeremiah continues to preach from the perspective of exile. His words to the captives continue to challenge and disturb them. The people were surrounded by misleading predictions that their captivity would soon end. Jeremiah counters this by urging them to make the best of their current situation. Perhaps the forerunner of our saying, "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade." The last thing the people of Israel wanted was contact with the place of their exile. Yet they hear from Jeremiah: "Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf." Image the offense that these words would have brought to the Israelite people who would much rather sit and mourn their current situation. Every bone in their body yearned for their former homes and yet now they are being told to go on with their lives as best they can. And worse, they are told to pray for those who had brought them to this place.
Luke's story is one of those familiar stories that risks losing its meaning because we know it too well. We often use it as a text for thanksgiving, or we focus on figuring out why the nine lepers didn't return. Our tendency is to judge the nine, to find their lack of returning thanks as being in the very least poor manners. We tend to condemn them because the implication in the story is that these were the nine who should have known better. Luke often contrasts those who should have known better with a foreigner who shows more faith.
Now, back to ubiquitin and quarks. The nine lepers and the captives huddled in Babylon share this in common: both are in danger of forgetting they are God's children. They have been cut off from home and family for so long they have forgotten what such things are all about. Not too long ago I heard the terrible story of a husband and wife who had Hanson's disease, which is the medical term for leprosy in the 1960's. They were offered free treatment, but that treatment came at the price of their freedom. To receive treatment meant becoming a virtual prisoner of the government. They were secluded in a facility in Louisiana where they would be cut off from friends and family. Imagine the pain of the woman telling of giving birth to two children she was not even allowed to see or hold, who were whisked away from her at the moment of their birth. How does one function in such an environment, let alone be thankful and seek the welfare of their city. While maybe not in such dramatic fashions, we've been in those kinds of places. We've had to face new schools when our parents' jobs changed….and heard from our parents to make the best of it. We've moved from home to strange places. We've known losses that have us yearning to go home, even when we aren't sure anymore where home is. The tendency in those times is to sit back and do nothing, waiting for a more settled and easy time.
Like the people in our story our danger is in forgetting. What happens when we forget we are God's children….when we forget why we have gathered as the church. On a molecular level there is ubiquitin…tagging cells that have forgotten their purpose. In exile the Israelites chafed at Jeremiah's words telling them to keep on with their lives, to flourish even in Babylon. It was Jeremiah's way of warning them not to forget they were still God's people. There are other Biblical equivalents seen in the stories of separating the sheep from the goats, and the harsh words Jesus often directed at those who should have known better. It is difficult to hear those warnings…that we risk being tagged with the spiritual equivalent of ubiquitin, marked for destruction because we have forgotten. Yet there is a place where we do need to come face to face with the issues of judgment. Jesus reserved the harshest judgment for the scribes and Pharisees because they should have known better, yet were constantly shown to be hoarding access to God. When we who are God's people, the body of Christ, the church forget why we gather, forget our calling, then we need to hear the warnings. We need to reminded to return thanks in response to what God has worked in our lives, and even in times of exile to remember whose we are. On a personal level we are called to let go of the things that keep us from God…again, tagging such with spiritual ubiquitin so that it might be destroyed.
Countering the harshness of all that, is the bottom line of God's relationship with us. The quarks come in here. Quarks are the smallest elements of atoms. Their relationship with one another is a bit counter-intuitive. When we think of the laws of attraction we think of the degree of force getting stronger when objects get closer together. Magnetic force works that way. But quarks behave in just the opposite manner. The farther apart they get, the stronger the force of attraction. Scientists theorize this is the force that keeps the universe from flying apart. For me it explains God's love for us. I like to think that while we are busy flying around with our lives, getting so caught up in the stuff that we've involved in, forgetting God is getting caught up figuring how to more strongly attract us back. In exile the people were kept by that love. One leper returned by the end of our text, and perhaps as the others scattered far afield, they could only go so far before the attraction to return was too overwhelming. The Psalmist describes it this way: Where can I escape from Your spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I descend to Sheol, You are there too. If I take wing with the dawn to come to rest on the western horizon, even there Your hand will be guiding me, Your right hand will be holding me fast. Francis Thompson writes of his attempt to flee God in the poem "The Hound of Heaven." I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter. In the end Thompson realizes he can't get far enough away to flee God:
"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me."
It is that reality that keeps us as God's people. It is God's strong attractive love that gives us the courage to remember, even in the midst of exile times that there is hope. It is that which enables us to be judged, knowing there is always forgiving love extended to us. And so we go as God's people to the world….giving thanks as we remember who and whose we are….bringing to the world God's strange unfathomable love that fights for us, finds us, and brings us home.