Sci-Fi Messiah
Lections: The Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost ( Lectionary 27 ), AD 2025 C Homily: Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great. Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. I read a lot of science fiction, growing up. Shocking, I know. Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel Comics, the old hard sci-fi of Niven and Pournelle. Philip K. Dick had me questioning whether androids could have souls, even souls of silicon. Such was the lens through which I looked at the tales told in Church. How, exactly, I wondered, did God work within the universe? What were the mechanics of our miracles? Science and faith for me were only ever two sides of the same existential coin. Of course, I was still very young, and tended to take things rather literalistically. I hadn’t yet the background in the humanities, let alone theology, that life would later afford me. So when I heard Jesus say things like, “If you had faith the size of a musta...