The first three minutes of the existence of our universe went something like this:
In the beginning, there was an infinitely small, infinitely dense point of light. There was nothing, and then the nothing began to grow, quantum fluctuations resulted in forces, and infinitesimal particles.
These particles danced around each other, growing colder and closer to one another until they merged, holding on to one another in the darkness of the universe. These particulate clusters grew and cooled,
and grew and cooled.
Until *poof* a light in the darkness.
The first star. From there, the physical laws of the universe pushed into motion an endless dance of elements and forces, particles and energy which grew more and more complicated until life began. And now, you and I spend our time trying to understand what on earth all of this business is about.
William Penn, the Quaker wrote in 1693, long before we understood the cosmological origins of the universe that
“They that love beyond the World, cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill what never dies. Nor can Spirits ever be divided that love and live in the same Divine Principle… Death is but crossing the World, as Friends do the Seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present that love and live in that which is Omnipresent.”
(William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude, 1693)
There’s a type of theology that I studied when I was training for ordination called Process theology that suggests that every part of the universe, every person, every event, every emotion and decision is gathered in God’s memory and affects the way that the universe proceeds. What I gather from that is both that those that we love who have died are with us in the heart and memory of God, but also that they still affect our lives, and the lives of everyone they loved. They are still fundamentally part of the universe, but even more, they are now living within the creator of that universe.
I don’t know about you, but I’m sometimes left cold by traditional Christian interpretations of Heaven. I can’t get my head around the idea that we will all meet up again in some far-off heavenly realm.
But, here and now? That’s more comprehensible to me – perhaps I can’t imagine those that I’ve loved and lost away somewhere hanging out with Jesus – but I can feel that they are still with us in some sense.
Carl Sagan, the famous science communicator and astrophysicist once said “We are star stuff” and that is, literally the case. Everything that you are, everything that I am was present at the moment of the Big Bang.
We have changed from energy to matter, from particle to galaxy, from dead to alive -without ever losing a single piece of energy from that initial point of light. We are quite literally, the Big Bang trying to understand itself, we are a part of God’s plan for the universe – and that doesn’t cease to be the case even after death.
And so, when we are faced with the intolerability of grief. The brokenness of our mortal lives and every sadness, every bereavement and every dreadfully missed loved one in this room – we can take some comfort in the knowledge that, scientifically and theologically nothing is ever lost from the universe.
Amen
• Revd Lizzie Campbell