Season of Creation 2 – Sunday 10th September 2023 (St Lucia)| The Reverend Bill Crossman
Readings: Exodus 12: 1-14; Psalm 149; Romans 13: 1-10; Matthew 18: 10-20
On this the Second Sunday in the Season of Creation I want to reflect on “sky”. You’ll recall last Sunday there was some context around the Season and a little about “earth”. Next Sunday we’ll put out to sea. But this morning – the sky, or more particularly, the heavens, as opposed to heaven. That’s something for another day.
Some of you may have seen “Compass” on ABC TV last Sunday evening. The programme was titled “The Awe Hunters” and was presented by Julia Baird. It was about those who actively seek out moments of awe. Awe, she wrote in an accompanying article is something not easy to define, but usually involves stopping in your tracks, being amazed by something and, often, feeling small against the full scale of the universe. She quoted a Dascher Keltner, a Professor of Psychology at the University of California who has said “a key to awe is sheer perspective: “When you feel awe around vast trees or under the ocean like you’ve experienced or looking at a night sky or … listening to a choir, whatever it may be, you kind of feel … small and insignificant and humble.” In the programme there were wonderful shots of the night sky in the Blue Mountains, and of the Southern Aurora in Tasmania. She writes “ peach smudge of light, ringed with gold. With the help of a time lapse, we saw it in its full, spectacular contrast and whooped with delight. With blue-lit waves underneath — a double dazzler — what are the chances?”[1]
All of this resonated with me – I can recall an occasion driving back from Dalby to Kingaroy late one night when I was the Area Dean of Bunya. It was winter, the night was clear and cold. I drove over a low rise in the foothills of the Bunya Mountains and suddenly there before me was the moon – it was so stunning I almost stopped the car. It was so bright I actually put the sun visor down for a short distance. I felt so insignificant against the scale of what I was seeing, but it was an incredibly joyful moment. But actually before professors of psychology from California were writing about this sort of experience, theologians were writing about it. One of the standard texts when I was at college was John Macquarrie’s “Principles of Christian Theology”.
In it he quoted the French theologian and philosopher Paul Ricoeur who wrote Anxiety is the sense of the difference between the finite being and the mysterious totality in which he has, so it seems, an insignificant place; hope or joy arises from the sense of belonging to that totality and having some affinity with it.[2]
But before television programmes, professors of psychology, theologians and philosophers, there were - and are – the scriptures and in particular the Psalms. If you put “heavens” and psalms” into your favourite bible browser, you’ll come up with 44 matches! Like “Let the heavens praise your wonders, O Lord,
your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones.”[3] The writer poetically describes the heavens in all their vastness and wonder offering their praises to God. Perhaps the best known is Psalm 19, a Psalm of David written some translations say “for the director of music”.
Essentially Psalm 19 is a profound poetic meditation on the meaning of human life in God’s creation. It is divided into three distinct sections: a meditation on creation, on the Torah or perhaps more accurately the revelation of God in scripture, and on the reality of human life. This morning’s focus is the first.
The Psalm begins with creation, which is an important theological statement in itself. Judeo/Christian theology always begins, like the Bible does in Genesis, with creation. Whenever theology, whether it’s about God’s saving power, or human beings, or God in Christ, or the last things, loses its grounding in creation, it goes astray. Apart from a grounding in creation, Salvation becomes other-worldly, human beings true nature as being in the image and likeness of God is forgotten and they become mere human resources, or worse, playthings for exploitation by others; Christ’s real human nature as the second Adam gets swallowed up in his divine Sonship, and the vision of fulfillment of a new heavens and new earth is truncated. Theology begins and ends with a doctrine of creation.
The Psalmist’s first thoughts on creation declare that it is a revelation of the glory of God. As in Psalm 85, seemingly mute creation sings the praise of its creator. This is a foundational matter of Israel’s faith which Paul also picks up in the new covenant. “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” [4]
The psalm’s assertion of creation’s hymn of praise to God has suffered in the modern scientific era in which we live. A lot of people today might read these opening verses as naive religious nonsense. Looking at the vastness of the universe, and its billions of years-long process of its development, they do not hear a hymn to God’s glory, but the drone of completely natural processes.[5] I think that all the scientific discoveries related to the creation of the universe do not silence creation’s hymn of praise, they amplify it. The difference between the Biblical view that the creation sings of its Creator and the secular denial of God as creator is not that one side looks at it through the naive lens of the Bible, and the other through scientific truth. There are many Christian scientists and theologians who are quite comfortable with the evidence from science and yet are no less confident that God is the Creator. John Polkinghorne was a theoretical physicist, theologian and Anglican priest who publicly championed the reconciliation of science and religion.
An American commentator writes Everything we see throughout the physical creation is the glorious work of an ingenious Creator God. The stars that twinkle, the sun that shines, the clouds that scud through brilliantly blue noonday skies all bear witness to the grandeur of the God who fashioned each and every one of those remarkable things. To those with ears to hear, whole oratorios of praise to God are being sung constantly. The universe is like one giant opera house that features a never-ending production of lyric melodies, achingly beautiful arias, and soaring crescendos of joy to the Creator.[6]
He goes on to say The heavens declare the glory of God in a universal language that needs no translation from German into Dutch, from Farsi into Japanese. It’s a universal tongue whose grammar and vocabulary are intelligible to anyone willing to listen. When you view the universe this way, then you start to trust any God capable of making such wonders. What’s more, you take joy in any God who so obviously wants the rest of us to enjoy the universe the same way he does. He cares for us. He’s invested in our lives.
Of course, there are always those who look through telescopes at distant wonders, who learn how outrageously vast the universe is, who look at our own Milky Way galaxy and its mind-boggling 100 billion stars and they then conclude, “Obviously, we human beings are nothing. We’re a galactic footnote so tiny, so insignificant, even if there is a God out there somewhere, he’d have to strain to see our puny little planet, much less take note of any individual person on this cosmic speck we call the earth!”
The psalmist will have none of that. The wonder of God is that he is at once the Creator of splendors that dwarf us and also the tender God who loves each person and calls each by name.[7]
Which puts me in mind of a hymn we used to sing quite a lot in my Methodist youth. It was written by an American hymn writer, physician, poet and essayist Oliver Wendell Holmes. The first verse of the hymn is:
LORD of all being, throned afar,
Thy glory flames from sun and star;
Centre and soul of every sphere,
Yet to each loving heart how near.
So, in this second week of the Season of Creation, having felt the earth beneath our feet last week, you might like to go on your own search for awe in the night sky, join your praise to God with the praises of the heavens and you too may, to borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis, be surprised by joy and feel God very near.
COLLECT
God of unchangeable power when you fashioned the world the morning stars sang together and the host of heaven shouted for joy; open our eyes to the wonders of creation and teach us to use all things for good, to the honour of your glorious name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
POST COMMUNION PRAYER
Loving God, we give you thanks for restoring us in your image and nourishing us with spiritual food in the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood. Now send us forth a people, forgiven, healed, renewed; that we may proclaim your love to the world and continue in the risen life of Christ our Saviour. Amen
BLESSING
Go forth now to care for God’s world. Use resources wisely. Share your knowledge. Sacrifice where necessary. Live in harmony with all creation. Go out into all the world as prophets of a new way of living and preach the good news to all.
And the blessing of the Creator God, the Risen Son, and the Promised Holy Spirit bless you that you might be a blessing to others today and always. Amen.
[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-03/awe-hunters-stunning-secret-solace-wonder-transformation/102755992
[2] John Macquarrie Principles of Christian Theology SCM Press 1966
[3] Psalm 89:5
[4] Romans 1: 20
[5] https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2018-09-10/psalm-19-3/
[6] https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2022-01-17/psalm-19-9/
[7] ibid