April 12, 2026

“The Mouse in the Piano”

I was recently reminded of a story that apparently first appeared in the London Observer some time ago: It seems there was “a family of mice who lived all their lives in a large piano.  To them in their piano-world came the music of the instrument, filling all the dark spaces with sound and harmony.  At first the mice were impressed by it.  They drew comfort and wonder from the thought that there was Someone who made the music – though invisible to them – above, yet close to them.  They loved to think of the Great Player whom they could not see.

“Then one day a daring mouse climbed up part of the piano and returned very thoughtful.  He had found out how the music was made.  Wires were the secret; tightly stretched wires of graduated lengths which trembled and vibrated.  They must revise all their old beliefs; none but the most conservative could any longer believe in the Unseen Player.

“Later, another explorer carried the explanation further.  Hammers were now the secret, numbers of hammers dancing and leaping on the wires.  This was a more complicated theory, but it all went to show that they lived in a purely mechanical and mathematical world.  The Unseen Player came to be thought of as a myth.

“But the pianist continued to play.”

That’s a true story.  It may not be strictly fact.  But it’s truth, if ever truth were told.

Many years ago, a debate about creation and evolution raged in this country.  I’m sure most of you have seen Spencer Tracey in the Hollywood version of the Scopes “Monkey Trial” that threw Darwin’s theory of evolution into a court of law.  And there are, to this day, a number of “creationists,” as they’re called, out there still waving the flag and sounding the charge whenever evolutionary theory is revised to meet the evidence of archeological finds.  But for the most part, the great debate between evolutionary theory and creationism is considered a relic of the past.  The majority of us who still believe in the “Unseen Player” are not flustered by the discovery of vibrating wires and hammers.  We concluded long ago that there can still be a Creator even if the ancient imagery of molding human beings out of clay is removed from the history books and assigned to the realm of poetry.

But before the human race brushes the dust off its hands from this debate and moves on, I’d like to offer a word.  I’m not entirely convinced that we’ve put the trauma of the Scopes Monkey Trial behind us.  In fact, I fear that those of us who still hold fast to an ancient biblical faith while nonetheless clinging to a modern scientific world-view may have lost something precious along the way.

This morning’s Old Testament lesson is the second of the two creation stories in Genesis, the dry, barren wasteland story (as opposed to the watery chaos story of Genesis 1).  This is the account in which God formed human beings out of the dust of the earth.  The picture of God on whatever hands and knees God was supposed to have making a clay doll that would be the prototype of the human race is very old and ingrained in my mind.  It goes all the way back to my Sunday School days in Ottumwa, Iowa.  And in the light of decades of archeological evidence, and hours of magnificent film footage about the dawn of humanity, it leaves me a little anxious to offer disclaimers.  Such as, “Of course, I really don’t believe that God got down on hands and knees to make people out of mud, you understand.”  The problem is not in the disclaimer itself.  Most of us would probably agree about that.  The problem lies in the anxiousness, the eagerness to explain, frankly, the embarrassment.  In his letter to the Romans, Paul refers to it as “being ashamed of the good news.”

There’s good news in this story.  It is the news that, no matter how many vibrating wires and dancing hammers we may discover, there is indeed a Great Pianist at the keyboard.  And in a world that so often seems entirely too cold and hard and alone, that’s good news indeed.  It’s time we stopped being embarrassed about it.

All of which brings me around to this familiar story from the Gospel of John in which Thomas doubts what his fellow disciples say about seeing the risen Christ, until that is, he sees and touches him himself.  Rereading it this time I was struck by the final words of our scripture selection: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.  But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

That final phrase, “. . . that through believing you may have life in his name” struck me as never before.  “Having life” is a very familiar biblical construct.  It’s on the lips of Jesus several times, perhaps most notably when he says that he “came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”  And John uses this concept throughout his gospel.  Starting with the opening words, “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people,” to Jesus’s words, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” and then these we heard this morning at the end of the gospel, John makes it clear that the point of Jesus’s ministry and the reason for writing his gospel in the first place is that people may “have life.”  And you may be surprised to hear that after over fifty years of theological education and pastoral ministry I found myself asking: What in the world does that really mean?  I’m alive; my heart beats and I’m breathing and walking around.  Clearly there must be something deeper being suggested.

That deeper meaning has, I believe, everything to do with our story of creation and those dancing hammers and wires.  John is telling us that God (whatever, whomever it is that we call “God”) is life – a special kind of life.  And that life can dwell within us.  John says that we can have that life by “believing.”  And considering what is meant by “believing” takes us back to the story of doubting Thomas.  He was one of those mice in the piano who scoffed at the notion of a great Unseen Player.  He was not about to accept anything that he could not verify with his five senses.  But somehow in a miraculous moment he was able to find an absolute connection between his faith and his senses.  Wouldn’t you love to be able to do that?  I believe you can.  I said as much to someone once.

It happened when I went to a therapist for a while for a pain in my shoulder.  The therapist and I regularly got into philosophical/theological discussions.  One week, he was moving my arm around and asking me how I would respond to someone who says that the source of my faith is not, as I assert, an experience of being connected to something greater that lies at the Heart of Being, but simply the work of electrical signals between neurons in my brain originating from inner desires and hopes.  I said that my response would be: “What’s the difference?”

And here’s my point: I have not climbed out of the piano and been able to behold the Unseen Player with my own eyes; nor have I touched the hand and side of the risen Lord.  But I have found a kind of “believing” that lies deeper than “believing in” something (whether that is God, or Jesus, or miracles, or the Bible).  It is a believing that wells up from one’s core, lives in one’s atoms and molecules, and simply sits there as an awareness.  It is a special kind of life, an abundant life that finds wonder in every atom of Being, every second of participation in this great expanse of Reality.  It is life experienced as divine.

This world is so lonely.  It is so hurt and broken.  It is adrift in a sea of indifference and callousness.  You and I have some very good news to tell, and it is this: the universe is indeed filled with music, divine music that can lift your spirits, music that can mend broken hearts, the music of an Artist so wondrous and mighty that it can change the world.

Do not be deceived.  The battle about creation and evolution is not over.  It has merely gone underground.  It has worked its way into the collective subconscious and taken up residence in our souls where it eats away at the underpinnings of our faith.  The contest is not about whether God fashioned people out of clay.  It is about whether those of us who pursue the truth will have hearts of clay.  It is about the prospect of holding an ancient biblical faith and a modern scientific world view in more than apologetic tension.  It is about freely, and boldly, and happily proclaiming to a bruised and confused world that there is an Artist, after all, at the keyboard, not “out there” somewhere, but pervading all the universe, dwelling in the neurons and sinews of our very being.  And we know it because it lives within us and we have touched its hands and side, if you will; we hear its music in every breeze as if from a great piano.  It’s about saying to those on the brink, “Don’t give up!  There is life to be had – life in abundance!”