CC Picture from Lightmash on Flickr

The BBC reports that ‘the most coveted prize in particle physics – the Higgs boson – may have been glimpsed’.  In the media, this elusive particle has been nicknamed ‘the God particle’ – despite the fact that the physicists involved in the research intensely dislike the term (‘it has nothing to do with God’, one said).

Whilst some people would like to draw up some kind of clash between God and the Higgs boson, I actually think the long and expensive search for this immensely important and potentially valuable discovery is more like the sort of thing Jesus would use as material for one of his parables.

In his parables, Jesus draws on events and situations around him, things his audience would know about – just like the hunt for the Higgs boson is for many of us now.  And it’s a story of people searching for something precious, something hard to find, something that could change everything – just like several of Jesus’ parables.

Have a look at, say, the parable of the pearl of great value (Matthew 13.44-46), or the lost coin (Luke 15.8-10).  If Jesus had been born in 21st century Britain, rather than 1st century Palestine, don’t you think we might have had a ‘parable of the hunt for the Higgs boson’?

 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”