I love science. When I read books, magazines or watch TV and have to make a choice between entertainment and scientific documentaries, I always choose the latter. In my humble opinion we live in a sort of scientific Golden Age, with our collective knowledge expanding at a mind-blowing rate, accompanied by incredible technological development in virtually every aspect and area of life. Science has given us credible insight into the origins of ourselves, our planet and our universe. It has given us understanding of processes both in us and around us. Generally speaking, science has made our lives better; it has made us healthier and enabled us to live longer, and it has made the world we live in a slightly less scary place.
So the words of Jesus in today’s gospel seem to be in praise of ignorance and derisive of knowledge: ‘I bless you, Father […] for hiding these things from the learned and the clever, and revealing them to mere children.’ Unfortunately, too many times I’ve heard too many sermons taking a similar approach, presenting science and faith as two totally opposite, irreconcilable visions. Religious preachers tend to scorn science and to favour faith, while secular ones do exactly the opposite. In fact, both sides represent essentially the same woeful attitude deplored by Jesus. The juxtaposition used by him is not about knowledge or ignorance, but about the attitude.
We can understand Jesus’ words better when we put the learned and the clever in inverted commas. Then we can see it’s a rather derogatory description of those who consider themselves enlightened, clever and knowledgeable, but who are in fact narrow-minded, proud and boastful, looking down with contempt upon those they regard as lesser and inferior. In today’s gospel Jesus’ words refer to such people, mainly the leaders of Israel, who were reluctant or unwilling to recognise and acknowledge either John the Baptist or Jesus himself. Unlike those shut up in their ‘ivory towers of knowledge’, many of the simple folk took to their hearts the calls of John, and many followed and listened carefully to Jesus. Their response was possible because they knew about their own limitations, deficiencies and imperfections. They didn’t know all the answers to questions they were troubled by, but they kept asking those questions and kept seeking the answers. Somehow they were like children persistently asking ‘why?’
Today’s gospel is an invitation from Jesus: ‘Come to me […], take my yoke upon you, learn from me […] and you will find rest.’ But this invitation is not for everyone; it’s addressed to a specific group of people: ‘you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens.’ Jesus offers something that science and technology, despite their greatness, cannot provide – making sense of the senseless, the tangled and the incomprehensible. Science can explain physics, chemistry or biology; technology can make great use of that; but both science and technology stop short of finding the ultimate purpose of human existence and of all the happenings in our lives. These and many other questions reach beyond mathematical equations and scientific theories. I’m not reckless enough to claim that Christianity provides the answer to all existential questions; but surely it provides room for seeking them, and gives the opportunity to find them. Life can be lived out in its fullness when we bring together skilfully our knowledge of this world and turn it into technology, and use it wisely and selflessly for reasons and purposes reaching far beyond it. God created us from dust and gave us an immortal soul. The only sensible way of living is when we don’t reduce ourselves exclusively to dust in the name of science, or to soul in the name of religion.