The Gospel According to Mesons

The Gospel According to Mesons--November 17, 2016

"[Christ] himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconciled to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross." [Colossians 1:17-20]

Inside of every cell of your body--in fact, inside every nucleus of every atom of every molecule that is inside of every cell of your body--there is a profound mystery that is holding you together.  It is holding the world together, too.

Scientists call it the "strong nuclear force," and it is quite amazing.  Everybody remembers, I trust, their basic science education from back in middle school or junior high school, where you learned that positive repels positive and negative repels negative, just like the poles on a magnet repel poles of the same kind, too.  And I'll bet you recall, too, that every atom in the universe is made up of protons (which have a positive charge), neutrons (which are neutral), and electrons (which have a negative charge).  And while electrons go whizzing around in orbit on the outside of an atom like a buzzing, moving shell, the center of every atom is densely populated with protons.

So, in the center of just about every atom in the universe (okay, not hydrogen, which has only one proton to begin with), from the carbon atoms in your eyes as you read these words to the silicon atoms in the microchips within the computer on which I am typing them, there are subatomic particles pushing away from each other.  Inside every nucleus of every atom there are protons that are repelling one another, and if there were not another force at work holding them together, that pushing would rip apart every atom in creation, and there would be nothing but subatomic particles zipping around the chaos of otherwise empty space.  If all you had was the basic description of things from middle school science, you might say, "The universe shouldn't work!  It shouldn't hold together at all!"  If all there were was the meeting of one proton's charge butting up against the force of another, then, to borrow a phrase of Yeats, things would fall apart, and the center would not hold.

And yet... here we are.

There must be a force, a power, that is of a different kind than the you-push-me-I'll-push-you-back repulsion of one proton against another.  There must be another kind of force--somehow even stronger in those close, infinitesimally small distances, that can make all the protons stay with one another.  This is the mystery.  This is what scientists call "the strong nuclear force." And instead of being a pushing kind of force, like positive charges push against and repel other positive charges punch for punch, somehow the strong nuclear force is a "giving" kind of force--it binds protons together by getting them to trade even tinier particles, mesons, back and forth.

We don't need to delve further into the intricacies of subatomic particles to get the point for today: at first glance (a 7th-grade level knowledge of science), it looks like nothing should hold together at all, but there is a deeper power at work that still binds everything even in spite of our assertions of what "can" or "cannot" happen.  Curious, isn't it, that the force of giving thing away back and forth ends up being more powerful that the force of one proton pushing and shoving on another like drunk brawlers in a barfight.

Except, maybe not that curious at all, for people who dare to believe that the Maker of all things leaves fingerprints in the universe--that in some way, creation itself bears the mark of the Creator like the Van Gogh print on the wall across from me has the name "Vincent" painted subtly in letters of yellow ochre at the bottom of the sunflower vase.  And I don't mean that God hides tiny crosses in the structure of molecules, or stamps "John 3:16" onto the far side of planets for us to find, like some theological version of 2001: A Space Odyssey.  I mean that if God's own nature is to bind all things together in the act of self-giving love, then maybe it isn't all that surprising that God has fashioned the universe in the same way--that in the face of our most powerful bouts of anger and pride and pushing and shoving, God reserves the right nevertheless to bind all things together in the power of a force whose strength comes from self-giving, too.

This is exactly the Christian claim: that even though we seem determined to divide ourselves up, we human beings, God insists on binding all things together in love anyhow. We keep angling for ways to to exclude and accuse, to condemn and to hate one another along all sorts of lines, and then to push and shove back and forth at one another because we are afraid of "the other" getting more power than we have... and then God instead says, "No, I am still holding you all together."  And God doesn't do it with coercion, not with guns or laws or imprisonment or threats or angry bluster.  God holds all things together in love, the same self-giving love that gave itself away for us on an ugly imperial death stake that we call the cross.  God's power to gather up, God's power to bind up what is broken and scattered, God's power to embrace, is going to win out in the end, like the strong nuclear force holding together even ornery protons that are still wanting to push and shove each other into chaos.

To be a follower of Jesus is to stake your claim now to be a part of God's work of self-giving love--love that does not back down from speaking out for those who have been stepped on, made to be afraid, or left out, but love also that does not shy away from giving itself away, to bow and to bend and to make room for the other as well.  We are people who dare to believe that, as impossible as it might seem to a rudimentary surface knowledge, God's self-giving love is more powerful than our impulse to hate, to divide, and to dehumanize one another. So we will be about the work of love today, even when it takes the form of courage, and even when it takes the form of suffering.

Lord Jesus, bind all things together within us, and bind us together with all creation in your self-giving love.