“Were
the Whole Realm of Nature Mine”
2.
Lesson at the Hornets’ Nest
Deuteronomy
6:1-9
First
Presbyterian
The
Reverend Thomas A. Sweet
July
4, 2010
The sun was at just the right angle to
reveal a hornets’ nest, uh, nestled as nests are, into some branches of a
dogwood tree in the courtyard behind my house.
The nest was pretty big and I was surprised I had not noticed it before.
So I simply stood there in its presence and looked at it, admiring the
workmanship, a bit chagrined at its location.
I meant the nest no harm; I had no intention of whacking it or removing
it; I only was eyeing it…until after thirty seconds or so, the whole horde of
hornets residing therein shot out of the hole in the side of the cone and
beelined toward me with unanimity of purpose:
Attack! Tom!
Rediscovering suddenly the quickness I thought I long had lost, I
scurried out and away from there but the hornets were not to be denied.
As I batted them away from my head, they stung me on my hand.
It hurt. Then it swelled.
Then it hurt some more. And
then it itched…for the rest of the week!
I still am taken aback by their
unprovoked assault. How did they
even know I was there? I just was
looking at the nest. But quantum
physics tells us that, by the very act of watching, the observer affects what is
being observed. Physicists, for
instance, have demonstrated that even the behavior of atomic particles is
changed when they are being observed. So
it also is with hornets! I think it
must be true – observer effect – for the whole realm of nature, human and
otherwise.
For example:
All parents have had the experience,
haven’t we, of being sound asleep when one of our children wanders into our
bedroom in the middle of the night wanting its mommy or daddy but hesitant to
wake us up. So the child stands
there looking at us and, like magic, we wake up.
Being watched worked its effect on us.
Observer effect.
Is Alan Alda always funny or does
something turn on in him when he is being watched by five thousand people in an
amphitheater? Observer effect.
(Note to web readers: Alan Alda
appeared at Chautauqua this past week.)
That ant you see in your yard marching
resolutely toward its destination until suddenly and inexplicably he careens to
the right? Your fault.
He was going straight home until the power of your watchful gaze made him
veer off course. Observer effect.
The moon “watching over” the seas
below exerts its tidal push and pull on them.
Observer effect.
An old aphorism has it that character
“is who we are when no one is looking” implying, of course, that some of us
might inflate our personas a bit for public consumption.
Observer effect.
How many of you remember a curmudgeonly
teacher who suddenly morphed into Miss Congeniality on the day she was being
observed by the principal? Or a
lethargic professor who suddenly found his pulse when the department head made a
watchful visit? Observer effect.
There is a reason that Jesus told his
followers to “pray in secret.” He
knew that we are prone to make a show of it when we are being seen and heard by
others. Observer effect.
Sometimes there are young people who
are greatly gifted but it is not until someone “sees” those gifts and
potential within them that they begin to rise and shine.
Observer effect.
In science, observer effect points to
the reality that the act of observation has a direct consequence on that which
is being observed, meaning that true
objectivity is impossible. For
instance, when looking at something under a microscope (which requires the use
of light), the object being observed will be affected by the light radiation,
even if on a sub-atomic level. Science
says that nothing observed escapes the effect of observation.
Extrapolating the observer effect into
human life, we can conclude that we cannot exist in the world without somehow
and continuously affecting and being affected by it.
So, theologically speaking, what can we
learn from my experience at the hornets’ nest?
What does the observer effect have to say to us?
The first thing, of course, as my
examples of observer effect have shown, is that all of life is interconnected.
John Donne was right when he said that “no man is an island” for that
is not how life is made. Energetically,
physically, spiritually, all parts of creation influence other parts of creation
in ways both apparent and hidden.
That should be no surprise since, as
our scripture says, God is one. God
is one. If, as we said last
week, we, all of us, the whole creation, lives and moves and has its being in
God, then we would expect all the various parts of this vast, luminous web of
life to have the capacity to affect other parts.
We forget that to our peril.
Second, the observer effect makes it
clear that religious fundamentalism, especially as it is practiced via biblical
literalism, is a practical impossibility. Why?
Because what any of us read in the Bible cannot be fully and finally
objective. We cannot draw from the
Bible objective principles because of what
we bring to it, because of the observer’s effect, if you will. The reading and study
of the Bible is a subjective process
with the reader bringing to his or her study and interpretation his or her own
criteria and lenses by which an interpretation is made.
Suitable for the Fourth of July because
this is a very freeing concept, we come to realize that we cannot understand
scripture without us first affecting it by our own experience we bring to it and
that helps to explain why the same words can be construed so differently by
different people and why interpretation is always more complex than we first
suppose.
I read a story this week purported to
be true that helps to illustrate this point.
Three Scottish Presbyterians were sent as emissaries by the British
Council of Churches to assist the
In part because of what each of those
men brought to their reading of scripture by which their Christian witness was
formed, they made different responses to the priest’s hospitality.
The first two thought that a Christian testimony forbad indulgence in
certain things like tobacco and alcohol while the third believed that it
required a liberality of spirit.
Our task, then, is to realize that we
cannot escape observer effect in our understanding of scripture and so we have a
responsibility to engage in conversation about it with the Spirit of God and
with each other to decide how best and most faithfully to manifest and incarnate
God’s word to us in our lives. For
me, this is where Jesus becomes vitally important for us as Christians for we
are able to see in him the iconic image of God by whom we measure and shape our
lives.
Finally, if observation induces
response and change in that which is observed, then Christians and the church
have a charge to “see” those parts of life that might be inconvenient,
unjust, or in need of transformation. “Let those,” Jesus said, “with
eyes to see, see.” He
was saying something similar when he told the disciples that when they were
young, they did pretty much what they wanted to do.
But now as they mature and grow more fully into the image of God and
allow fidelity to the gospel to form their lives, they will find themselves
being led into places and situations they had not imagined themselves going or
in which they never had pictured themselves becoming involved or giving
themselves in ways they never would have suspected.
That is because they no longer avert
their eyes from the unpleasantries or challenges of life but with greater
compassion and deepening love broaden their view even knowing, as they do, that
more may be asked of them, of us.
Shining the light of observation into the dark places of life – and our
own lives – is the first step toward their and our redemption and
resurrection.
That is something of what I learned at
the hornets’ nest this week.
Amen.