Rev. Kit Bunker

Maxwell is a bit of a hero of mine. He said his prayers, you know: he was always a churchgoer, and in 1853 experienced what he called a ‘conversion.’ He said his prayers, and he derived the fundamental equations of electromagnetism. These are the rules made by God at the moment that He created light, at the same time creating X-rays and radio waves and all the spectrum of waves that arise because of these few rules. Maxwell’s equations appeared in their final, polished, form in 1873.

Heinrich Hertz is also a bit of a hero of mine. He looked at Maxwell’s equations and
decided that it might be possible to make electromagnetic waves by switching electric currents on and off very rapidly indeed. Up until then, no one had thought that you might be able to make these waves by any other way than making something very hot. Hertz used a spark transmitter, and showed that he could make waves that traveled in straight lines, cast shadows, could be reflected, were polarized: were in fact just like light, except of longer wavelength. Hertz did not think his discovery would ever be useful, though he had made and used the first ever VHF transmitter and receiver. He did all that in 1886. Oh, and he said his prayers, he was a good Christian Gent.

Now the interesting thing, apart from their brilliance as scientists, (which probably grew out of their Christian faith: they expected God to devise mathematically elegant, comprehensive and comprehendible rules for running his universe) was that they said their prayers. They both thought it entirely reasonable that thoughts walking around in the mind, not even uttered, should in some way communicate with God. They indeed expected that God would communicate with them; in the mind, but not only in the mind, in the world, and not just now, but in the past and in the future too.

These two guys were not fools: Maxwell was probably the finest theoretical physicist since Newton, and Hertz one of the finest experimental physicists of all time. They said their prayers, and they knew Jesus.

For both of them, as for many, many of the scientists around the world, their science grew out of their faith, they said their prayers before and after and during their scientific work. That man and God communicated through prayer was simply a part of the way the world is; Christian gents: they said their prayers.

How did prayer work? They didn’t know, any more than we know. Understanding how prayer works needs us to understand the fabric of the universe to a vastly greater depth than that plumbed by Maxwell and Hertz.

Some things to do with prayer undoubtedly alter the nature of the mind that is doing the praying. When I was young, I was taught that you grow your brain to its best as a teenager, and that it is downhill from then on. Every glass of whisky killed its 10,000 neurons, and hastened the day you became a dribbling wreck. We now know that that is a load of old cobblers: you grow the mind you need to do what you do. Want to grow millions of new interconnections in the language part of your mind? Learn French. Learn how to analyse odds without really trying, want to grow the kind of brain that can do that? Take up Bridge. Want to grow the kind of mind that can begin to be like the mind of Jesus? Say your prayers. No one knows how it works; people are only just beginning to understand that it does work, but what you think changes the mind that you do the thinking with. Saying your prayers gets you the kind of mind that can say prayers, saying prayers gets you the kind of mind that controls your body so that you do kind and generous and gentle things. And sometimes rough and tough and demanding things: And
sometimes the ‘right thing’ which perhaps you’d otherwise have been unable to do.

I’ve no idea what Maxwell and Hertz thought was the ‘speed of prayer’, a concept that only makes sense if your think of yourself as ‘here’ and God as ‘there’. That is not what the New Testament says; it says that you are ‘here’ and so is God. Paul says that the great Christian mystery is that Christ is in you, and you in Christ. If that is so, he shares your mind with you, you share His mind as a part of yours.

When you pray, you not only re-organise the connections of your own neurons, you do so with the connivance of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. They are there, because you invited them in, when you became a Christian. Yes, becoming a Christian is an active thing, it is something you do; and when you do it, Jesus becomes a part of you, and you a part of Him. How do we know that? Partly because that is what the Church teaches (and so it is not a surprise to us) and partly by experiment: we try becoming a Christian, not knowing for sure that that is what will happen, but hoping. We try the experiment, and we KNOW, Christ is in us, and we in Christ. It is not a scientific experiment, but it is an experiment, our own experiment, and we know.

Maxwell and Hertz knew that; they were Christian gents, and they knew. They knew it made sense to pray about the science you were doing, and it made sense to pray about the life you were leading, and it made sense to believe.

It made sense to believe that God who made the rules might occasionally suspend the rules to make a point about just who He is. Can you name an individual for whom the rules were suspended? Naaman. It made sense to believe that dying is not the end of everything, as the Psalmist says, it made sense to run the race as it is set before us, it made sense for Jesus to do with the leper what the Jewish God had done for Naaman.

It all hangs together, the New Testament, the Old testament, Church History, your
history, your faith, my faith… so simple that it can be summarized in the few words of the Creed, so complex that after a lifetime we are only just beginning to understand it.

Even those ghastly bush fires are a part of the picture: God did not choose to burn people to death, any more than He had it in for the people upon whom the tower at Siloam fell, and about whom Jesus spoke.

Just three more housekeeping things. If you want to know more, in a systematic and organized way, then go to an Alpha course, what you might call Christianity 101. If you want to know more through worship, just keep turning up here. If you want to talk more now, well, I’m here for a bit before I go off to Wellington Point to take a service there.