The Caffine Molecule

08Nov
One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”

But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence?

We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”

Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

-Luke 23:38-43


As a sophomore in college I majored in Biology -- until I was informed I had to take Organic Chemistry. Then I became a Fine Arts Major. It was just two years after Drs. Watson and Crick had been awarded the Nobel Prize for decoding the construct of genes, chromosomes, and the double-helix of DNA. 


In Dr. Yeatman’s classroom I began to understand that God’s long game knew it would take eons of evolution before I could sit before you to write meditations. There had to be 3.8 billion years of natural selection, including the trek from Primordial ooze in a methane atmosphere to God’s invention of the caffeine molecule, and then quickly thereafter, the emergence of humankind.


In 1976, in his book, The Naked Ape, the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins proposed the idea that genomes, practicing natural selection in their culture over generations could imbed cultural memory into the gene-set of a species. In a conflation of “genes” and “memory”, Dawkins gave us the term, “meme.” Fact: It had nothing to do with viral AI politicians in sombreros singing La Cucaracha on the internet.


My personal optimism tells me that over 40,000 years of humankind’s yarning for God’s attention, we have developed a God-gene. We are hardwired, I believe, to revere, and to seek connection with a God we cannot see. We have hidden it under a basket of fear, shame, and inadequacy.


When Jesus tells the leper his faith has healed him; it is not a receipt for a transaction: now that you believe, I heal you. Jesus is telling us that by liberating the function of our God-gene, we can recognize ourselves as we were made, whole. We see; we walk; we always could. Jesus is telling the insurrectionist on the cross beside him, “I know your story; I always knew it, you are loved, you are forgiven; because that is how the Father made you.” “Be with me. Now.” 


Musical Reflection - Jesus, Remember Me - Taizé


Eternal Creator, before you we kneel in gratitude for your long view of our story; for all we have been, for all we are becoming. Help us to look left and look right and see only perfect , forgiven, fellow pilgrims; and join hands. And thank you for the caffeine molecule. Amen.

Thankfulness

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