Sermon on the Dismount

Rev. Andrew Mackerel

Beloved congregants of Mackerel Plaza — those present in the pews, those spiritually present but physically detained by the Sunday crossword and those who have wandered in under the mistaken impression that this building hosts a pancake breakfast — good morning.

Our text today comes from the Epistle According to Common Sense, Chapter None, Verse Unnumbered: “It is the final proof of God’s omnipotence that He need not exist in order to save us.”

Now before anyone bolts for the exit — especially those who donated generously to the new stained-glass window depicting the Prophet Jonah looking understandably alarmed inside the whale — please allow me to introduce myself.

I’m a man of wealth and taste. I’ve been around for a long, long year. Stole many a man’s soul and faith.

So I can confidently assert that for some millennia now, the world has been engaged in what might politely be called a vigorous discussion regarding the existence of God. Certain earnest people insist that the matter can be demonstrated with arguments so airtight they ought to be sold by the square foot. The three main classical arguments for the existence of God are the cosmological argument (everything has a cause, going all the way back to the beginning), the teleological argument (design implies a designer) and the ontological argument (the very definition of God implies existence). These arguments seek to prove God’s existence through logic, observation and theological thimble-rigging. Other equally earnest people insist that these and other so-called proofs of God’s existence collapse under the weight of reason like a soufflé dropped from a third-storey window.

Meanwhile, the rest of humanity is simply trying to remember where it left the car keys. (Face to face with the Big Questions about Human Existence, most of us are in the same boat as the father of Woody Allen’s character in Hannah and Her Sisters: “How the hell do I know why there were Nazis? I don’t know how the can opener works.”) Now I have long suspected that the Almighty, observing these debates from whatever vantage point He may or may not occupy, must occasionally smile — if the word smile may be used of a Being whose dental arrangements, if any, remain undocumented.

Because the debate itself rests upon a rather touching assumption: namely, that the fate of the universe hinges on our ability to reach a tidy conclusion.

But the universe, as we have observed, is rarely tidy. It contains platypuses, tax forms and dyed-in-the-wool Boston Bruins fans.

One thing is certain. If God exists, He has clearly demonstrated an inordinate fondness for loose ends.

For loose ends and, as British biologist J.B.S. Haldane once observed with respect to more than 400,000 known species of the prolific little critters, beetles.

But back to the way grace actually enters the human story. It does not usually arrive with a brass band. One does not open the door and find a celestial messenger holding a clipboard and saying, “Excuse me, Mr. Peterson, we’re here with your scheduled redemption between the hours of two and four.”

No, grace tends to arrive sideways.

A quarrel cools. A mistake is forgiven. A person decides — quite inexplicably — not to say the cruel thing they were about to say.

As one looks over damp sod in the direction of the sun, a glistening ripple of gossamer webs becomes visible to one’s eyes under the luminary, like the track of moonlight on the sea here on the southern tip of Vancouver Island where I write this.

“Gnats,” as Thomas Hardy once observed, “knowing nothing of their brief glorification,” wander across the air in such pathways, “irradiated as if they bore fire within them,” then pass out of their lines and go “quite extinct.”

Remind you of anyone?

And afterward, when you try to trace the source of this small miracle, you find the trail goes cold somewhere between the human heart and the invisible machinery of the universe.

The skeptics say this proves nothing.

The believers say it proves everything.

And the rest of us say it proves at least that the world is occasionally kinder than it strictly has to be. To gnats and humans alike.

Now here is the curious possibility raised by our text today: What if divine power is so absolute that it does not require the customary evidence?

When we humans exercise power, we leave fingerprints everywhere. A politician erects a statue. A corporation names a building after itself. Even the family cat insists on recognition after knocking a vase off the table.

But suppose the highest form of power is the ability to accomplish one’s purposes without the slightest need for credit. Without a like button or a tiny heart to press at the bottom of a text.

Suppose salvation works the way a good gardener works — quietly rearranging the soil while everyone else is arguing about whether the seeds exist.

Then it would follow that the greatest act of omnipotence might not be appearing dramatically in the sky. It might be the patient orchestration of a universe in which people keep stumbling — quite against their better judgment — into mercy.

Which brings me to a practical matter.

If God can save the world without the inconvenience of existing, then surely we can manage a little kindness without waiting for perfect theological clarity.

You do not need a metaphysical certificate of authenticity to return a lost wallet.

You do not need a completed proof of divine ontology to forgive your neighbour for parking slightly too close to your begonias.

You do not even need to settle the ancient arguments of philosophers to decide — today, this afternoon, perhaps immediately after this sermon — to be the sort of person through whom the world becomes marginally less dreadful.

In fact, if I may be so bold, it is possible that this is precisely how the whole mysterious enterprise operates.

The Almighty, whether present in the conventional sense or exercising His prerogative of strategic absence, may have arranged things so that the machinery of grace runs partly on human participation.

Which means that every time someone chooses patience over irritation, generosity over hoarding or forgiveness over the deeply satisfying hobby of resentment, the universe inches a little closer to redemption.

And if someone asks how such a thing is possible, you may reply with the utmost theological confidence:

“Apparently omnipotence doesn’t require visible management.”

Going, going, going … God!

Now before we conclude, I must address a concern that always arises when one preaches sermons of this sort. A member of the congregation will approach afterward — usually someone with excellent posture and prim eyebrows — and say:

“Reverend Mackerel, are you suggesting that God might not exist?”

To which I reply:

“My dear friend, I am suggesting something far more alarming.”

If the Reverend Andrew Mackerel is correct — and I assure you he often suspects he might be — then the universe may contain a power so vast that it can save us whether we have solved the theological puzzle or not.

Which leaves us with the rather unsettling responsibility of behaving as though grace is real, even when we are not entirely certain how the management is organized.

One often hears well-grounded jeremiads about the unfairness of life. That cheaters prosper and bad things happen to good people. No sane person can gainsay this.

But what if a graver inequity occurs when we die? If the two options are either oblivion (because there is no God) or a beatific vision of some kind of afterlife, then the faithful will never discover that they were wrong and atheists will never discover that they were right. The fix is in.

And now, beloved friends, let us proceed to the benediction.

May the peace that surpasses understanding also surpass our arguments. May the mercy we hope to receive be the mercy we practice.

And may the God whose existence remains the subject of lively discussion continue — quietly, efficiently, and perhaps mischievously — to save us anyway.

Or not. In which case it’s up to us. Actually, either way it’s up to us.

The most astonishing divine achievement might not be the creation of galaxies or the parting of seas, but the quiet integration of a universe in which rescues can happen even when the rescuer never takes the stage.

Whether this is comforting or deeply unsettling comes down to how strongly you feel about stage appearances.

As I believe the Singer says in the Book of Keefclisiastes (the Reverend Andrew Mackerel is running out of time here so he’s going by memory on this one): You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometime you just might find, mm-mm, you get what you need.

Well, I see Jane’s awake in that pew at the back. She sends her regards.

Amen.