Quantum Christianity Revisited: Authority to Forgive
Sermon preached Sunday, May 29, 2005
by Rev. Patricia Pearce
Well the people of Tab know that I did a sermon series between Easter and Pentecost called Quantum Christianity and I thought that was done at Pentecost. But there was this other thing that wanted to be looked at that is related to all of that, and it was pretty insistent so I thought okay, alright, alright, we will have another, one more installment. And this story, I hear resonances here of what we talked about a few weeks back when I talked about Yeshua as preferring the title the "Human One" and that he took on a generic and global identity. He identified himself with all of humanity. He did not refer to himself as the Christ but rather as the Son of Man or the Human One -- the Human Being. He became The Human Being freed of his own ego needs. And there is an interesting thing in this story where this paralytic is brought down on a mat and he says, "Your sins are forgiven". Now it is an interesting thing because this person has not, I presume, sinned against him. This person, if this person was carrying so much guilt that it was paralyzing him, he had presumably sinned against someone, and yet Yeshua says, "Your sins are forgiven". He claims his identity as all of humanity, he associates himself with the one who has been sinned against and releases this man from his guilt. That is one thing about this story.
Another thing about this story that I want us to keep in mind is that there is often this tendency, not only in the scriptures but even in our day, to somehow blame the victim for their own illness. In this story, okay he's sick because he did something wrong. It is evidence that he had sinned. But in other scripture passages Yeshua makes it clear that no there is not necessarily a correlation between illness and wrongdoing. There are other passages where the disciples ask him, like about the blind man, "Why is this man blind? Did he sin or did his parents?" And he says, "Neither one." It's not about sin. Okay. So that is another thing to keep in mind.
In this story, I would like us to think of these two characters in this scene, Yeshua and the paralytic, as emblematic of different states of human consciousness, different possibilities of human interaction and being. One, Yeshua, the Human One is the one who understands his oneness with all of humanity and understands his oneness with the divine. There is in his psyche, in his makeup -- where he has arrived as a spiritual human being -- there no longer exist those dichotomies within him: him and another, him and God. He understands the essential oneness of all things and all beings. Then there is the man who is paralyzed on the mat. Paralyzed in this scenario apparently by something that has happened in the past, some ruptured relationship. Something in this man's history has gone terribly and painfully wrong to the extent that he has become immobilized by that history. And in this encounter of Yeshua, the Human One, with this Paralyzed one, Yeshua cuts the cords of the past, frees this man from his captivity to what has been and enables him to move into his future as a restored being. What I would like to suggests is that humankind typically is very much like that paralyzed man on the mat, that we very often allow what has happened before to immobilize us, to paralyze us, to restrict us in our options for the future. We become immobilized by what has come before.
Now ,okay, so what is the quantum piece in all of that? You might be asking. Well, here it comes. I have talked before about how at the quantum level of things, of reality, physicists and scientists are not able to determine with any determination what is going to happen. They can only speak in probabilities, and all possibilities and all probabilities exist until there is an observation that is made. Let me talk about the electrons, for example, they have probabilities, they (physicists) can talk about the probabilities of where the electron might be, where any electron might be, but you can never know for sure. But then an observation cuts through and -- boom -- the electron appears in a specific place. Now the probabilities are called the wave function and when the wave function is intact it means that all the probabilities and possibilities are still sort of floating, they're all present, they're all there. When the observer or the scientist makes an observation then the electron… they say the wave function collapses… whoosh... and the electron is in a place and they can say "There it is." But until that observation is made, all those probabilities and possibilities are sort of held in suspension. All of them in a way are true, all of them are present until the wave function collapses and a specific manifestation comes forth.
Don't worry too much if that doesn't make too much sense.
What I want to suggest is that what we need to be about is restoring the wave function. Reinstating the possibilities. And there are times, there are historical moments when we -- I am going to speak for myself but I have a hunch that a lot of people are going to resonate with this -- there are historical moments that seem like threshold moments where just about anything is possible, where just about anything could happen. And we sort of dwell in that experience of anticipation and uncertainty. We all sort of hang there for awhile. This is Memorial Day weekend. I want us to hold that because for me September 11th opened one of those liminal moments in history. One of those moments that was pregnant with all sort of possibilities. Any thing, just about anything could have happened. Did you all, did others sense that? Did others sense that? It's like WOAH! And there is this moment of "What might we do with this?" Anything was possible, and that is true. Anything was possible. But then a particular decision is made and the wave function collapses. The bombers take off and they head for Afghanistan or later they head for Iraq -- for other reasons. The wave function collapses. All those possibilities are suppressed and one particular future -- or present which becomes history -- becomes the course of events.
What is the correlation between wave function and this scripture text? In my mind it is forgiveness. In my mind forgiveness is the thing that restores the wave function. Forgiveness is the thing that opens up the possibilities once again. They say that history repeats itself. History only repeats itself in the absence of forgiveness. Once forgiveness enters the picture anything becomes possible. Think about South Africa. Logic and history would dictate that South Africa would have descended into civil war, would have descended into racial warfare. But what happened? A Truth and Reconciliation Commission happened. They opened up the possibilities and they decided that the past was not going to dictate the future. And that is what forgiveness does. That is the power that forgiveness has. It has the power to release us from the bondage of the past, from the dictates of the past.
In this story the spectators were offended that Yeshua forgave this person's sins because in their minds that was something, that was a power that was reserved only for God. Only God has the power to release anyone from their wrongdoings. That power is reserved for God alone. But in this story Yeshua does an amazing thing. He says No, the Human Being has the authority to forgive sins. In other words, we are not powerless, we are not left to the mercy of whether God will or will not forgive our sins. We have the power to release ourselves from the consequences of what has been done to us and what we have done. We have enormous power. We have the power to liberate the future and to liberate our future from those things that have occurred before.
We talked during this series about the power of prayer and the power of intention and I believe that forgiveness is every bit as powerful as any of those other things. People often make the mistake of thinking of forgiveness as an act of weakness, as an act of saying "Oh, it's okay what you did." It's not saying that it's okay. It's saying that what you did is not going to dictate what I do. Are you with me on that? It is in fact an act of great, great strength.
Just imagine if we had a Secretary of Forgiveness in the cabinet. Talk about restoring the wave function and opening up the possibilities. If we has a Secretary of Forgiveness, if we had a God Box in the Pentagon (reference to children's time), just imagine that. What free people we would be, how many resources we would have to devote to live-giving things. If we were bold enough to free ourselves from our own captivity to the wrongs that others do.
Forgiveness, let it also be said, is something that we not only do for others, forgiving others and in so doing releasing ourselves, liberating ourselves. But it is also something that we practice on ourselves because we also know that there are things that we have done that we are not proud of. There are shames that we carry as a result of things that we have done or said or even thought, and that shame and that guilt will continue to have its hold on us until we are able to practice forgiveness with ourselves as well.
Memorial Day. I think the task is to remember and not glorify war. To remember lives that have been lost, without seeking revenge. And this ability that we have to forgive is one of the greatest powers that we have. May we discover it and use it. Amen.
© 2005 by Patricia Pearce. All rights reserved. Please consult the author at tabernacle@tabunited.org if you wish to use the text of this sermon, in whole or in part.
