Thoughts on Vacation Bible School
9 o’clock service
Since the kids will be performing their Vacation Bible school play during the 10 o’clock homily today, I’m just going to say a few words about this past week in lieu of a full homily.
The week’s theme was the creation story in the book of Genesis, and when it started out, I was nervous about the kids thinking that these Bible stories were somehow in conflict with what they’re learning in their science class about the way the world came into being.
As you probably know, Episcopalians are especially open-minded about the relationship between science and religion. That’s largely because our theology doesn’t start with revelation from above that then shapes how we understand the world, but rather with the world itself and what we observe in it, which then shapes our theology – a more bottoms-up sort of approach that makes us particularly open to new scientific discoveries. It’s not surprising that a lot of scientists, past and present, have also been Episcopalians.
I didn’t bring all that up with the kids, of course, but it was important to me that I somehow bring that spirit of our tradition into our lessons.
So, when we talked about God creating the light on the first day, we talked about the Big Bang, and the sudden explosion of light and matter that scientists think started off our universe. When we talked about the separation of the dry land from the waters on the second day, we talked about Pangaea – the theory that our continents used to be one big continent that then split apart in what scientists called the continental drift. When we talked about God creating the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day, we looked at some pictures from the Hubble telescope of stars just coming into being.
I knew the kids were really getting the drift of it when I brought in a picture by the 16th century artist Heironmous Bosch of the dome that God placed over the earth on day two, and the kids started to talk about the big hole in the ozone layer and how people were ruining the atmosphere.
Basically, the kids didn’t miss a beat, and perhaps the takeaway for me was that the fear of science and religion seeming in conflict with each other was more an adult worry that kids, with their larger imaginations and curiosity, don’t share.
To be sure, there are a lot of things that kids need to grow out of, which were on full display this week – their narcissism, their short fuses, their occasional cruelty to each other. But their ability to integrate these two stories – the Bible and science – and to find that both can be true at the same time but in different ways, was one thing I hope they don’t lose as they get older.
In a few minutes we’re going to say Eucharistic Prayer C, as we’ve been doing all month. Prayer C is the only prayer to be written since the scientific discoveries of the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and most of the 20th century, and - especially fitting for today - it does such a great job of integrating science and the Bible. A kid could have written it – or at least an adult that remembered what it was like to see the world like a kid. And it’s a great testament to the Episcopal Church’s longstanding belief that science doesn’t threaten, but only enhances, faith.
