The reading from John’s Gospel in Sunday’s Lectionary starts at the very beginning, “In the beginning was the Word…”. I am accustomed to hearing this read at night in dimly-lit churches, and the air of mystery is beautiful. But “in the beginning” is radical nothingness, something beyond either the beauty or the menace of a dark night. Darkness itself is a thing, but what is it when there is no-thing? The big-bang theory is something I find troubling – I cannot understand what it means to have limits to the realm where there is time and space and eventually people to observe these things. What is beyond these limits? Nothing. Not even the thing called ‘nothing’, but no-thing. I’ve heard of the explanation ‘finite but unbounded’ – just as the surface of a sphere is finite-but-unbounded. I’m sure it works geometrically, but I still can’t get my head round it. I’ve heard of the block universe and many such things but it is still weird to me.
In any case, I wouldn’t want my faith to depend too closely on a particular bit of science, which always risks being overwritten by a new understanding.
So maybe here’s somewhere my head just can’t go. I trust. I trust that in the darkness, and in the nothingness; God is. And the ‘word’ of God, that which was expressed in the loving life of Jesus; is.