header image

June 19, 2011

A Beloved Speck in the Universe

June 19, 2011

Kathy and I went phone shopping yesterday.  Our cell phones were getting to the end of their usable lives (which is much less than phones used to have) and we found ourselves in a position to move to SmartPhones, the latest generation of communications technology.  We spent much of yesterday afternoon figuring them out, trying to find ‘apps’ for what we want to do with them, as they are really a handy little computer even more than they are a phone.  I got a couple of apps right off the bat.  The first was Gas Buddy, an app that locates where you are and finds gas stations with their prices that are near you.  The second app I kind of stumbled across:  it’s a ‘sky viewer’ – when I call it up, I can hold it up above me and have it draw for me all the constellations, point out the planets, all kinds of things like that.  I know a few of the constellations in the sky;  now, I’m going to be able to find out what they are with just a lift of my arm rather than trying to match them to a book in my hand!

This leads me to the image on the bulletin covers that we have this morning.  It’s a version of this picture, taken by the Voyager 1 space probe in 1990, ten years after it had given us the first “close-up’ explorations of both Jupiter and Saturn before zipping off into the blackness on its way to interstellar space.  So, as I say, this picture was taken from ten years beyond the orbit of Saturn (and it had taken three years to get to Saturn).  At the current moment, Voyager 1 is both the fastest and the most distant man-made object in the universe, gliding along at an astonishing 17km/s, or just over 62,000km/h!  Given some 40,000 years, it will come ‘close’ to another star, but barring wormhole or Klingons or aliens who will actually listen to the golden record that was sent with it to tell them about us, it will most likely drift along forever.

But this picture, as I say, from 1990, shows, in minute resolution, the Earth, in a view that astronomer Carl Sagan coined as a ‘pale blue dot’ in space.  The planet is simply hanging there, barely visible, and you get a real sense of how infinitesimally small this planet is when compared to the grand scale of the universe.  From this distance, you can’t see wars.  You can’t see pollution.  You can’t see riots for the sake of riots or the joy of millions for the victory of their team.  Truth be told, you can’t see much of anything, except a spot of colour in an otherwise empty blackness.

And then, if you were to turn around and try to see the Universe on its truly vast scale, you would see something like this.  You don’t need to really see this image very closely, especially after I tell you that every dot on it is not a planet, not a star, but indeed nothing less than an entire galaxy.  Cosmologists, those who study and try to theorize about the Universe as a whole, suggest that, thanks to gravity, almost galaxies will actually end up arraying themselves in small groups called ‘clusters,’ which then clump into bigger groups called ‘superclusters,’ and even bigger groups can form out of them.  The Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which is based in New Mexico and started the most detailed survey of the sky in 2000, has mapped out a so-called ‘Great Wall’ of galaxies that is approximately a billion light-years in length!  This apparently is not considered a full ‘structure,’ however, as gravity may not link all of the galaxies together and they may just appear to be linked up based on our line-of-sight.  Current cosmological theory, though, is that we can see a universe that is fourteen billion light-years in diameter – if there’s anything farther away, the light hasn’t gotten to us yet.  And oh by the way, however big the Universe is, the earth is probably not at the centre of it!

 

But we have these words:  “In the beginning, God created…”

To say that we’re ‘beloved of God’ – you know, it’s a pretty arrogant assertion!  To say that we, on this itty-bitty speck, are beloved by the Creator of the Universe;  that is pretty arrogant.  God has an awful lot of ‘stuff’ to worry about, an awful lot of Universe to be moving in.  And yet, we say and believe that He spoke, and all that is came into being;  that He reached down with His hand, and all that exists was formed;  that He breathed, and life was, and is, and will yet be.

To say that we are ‘beloved of God’ is pretty arrogant in the face of our unloveliness.  I mean, we know what apparently happened to Adam, and while we may wish that it had stopped there, it didn’t.  Consider:

  • The Americans have had yet another instance of a politician thinking that he could do, shall we say, ‘incorrect things’ and not be discovered;  and while I agree that Anthony Weiner is probably not the best representative for his district any longer, what he did is nothing compared to what so many others do on a daily basis without concern for what others think at all!  It’s actually pretty funny that Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler, has actually offered Weiner a job.  I wish I was making that up.
  • Vancouver was rocked by riots in the wake of the Canucks’ loss in the Stanley Cup Finals, though it was quickly discovered that the riots had been planned to occur no matter the outcome.  At least one person was caught with a backpack-full of Molotov cocktails (which have no place in a hockey celebration one way or another) and at least one of the cars that burned is suspected to have been driven downtown specifically to be burned!  Millions of dollars’-worth of damage and looting was done, based on twisting emotions and making things happen for no good reason at all.  If more people had taken this couple’s approach to things, I think the situation would have been a lot better off.
  • Canada’s military forces are dropping bombs in Libya, even as we’re trying to pull our troops out of Afghanistan, both places in which we have gone to war in order to help others (which is a mind-twisting conundrum in many ways).
  • Child pornography, human slavery and drug trafficking are still very real crimes in our world, as well as the willingness to commit murder to avoid prosecution.

We are, in many ways, an ‘unlovely’ race, and lest you think that because you’ve committed none of the heinous crimes that I’ve listed, let me remind you that that doesn’t excuse you.  God puts no ‘scale’ on sin – there is what is, and there is what is not, and all of us have sinned and have fallen short of God’s pure glory.  Impure thoughts, arrogant judgement, greed, dishonest dealings, even the little white lies that we make up so that we can feel better – they are still ‘sin’ and they still stain us and make us unable to enter God’s pure and holy presence.

And yet, the story of the Bible is that God does love us, that God does care for us, that God does want us to spend eternity with Him, and that God did send Jesus to pave the way for that to happen.

 

I read an interesting book this week, and you’re going to hear more about it in the future;  the book is called The Day Metallica Came to Church and it’s some reflections and musings by the Rev. John van Sloten, pastor of the New Hope Church in Calgary.  His preaching is a little less traditional than mine, in that he tries to merge the Bible and modern culture in theme preaching, and specifically to themes that are present in the world ‘out there.’  Where I only do so occasionally, he is always preaching about pulling God-based themes out of such things as movies, TV shows, music, architecture, and yes, even heavy metal.  He did do a series of five sermons based on songs by the heavy metal band Metallica, and I may talk about his observations on that topic at some point in the future.

What got me for today was when he was talking about a series he did on fashion a couple of years ago.  Through his connections, he actually got a high-level designer to do his first show with his new line in New Hope Church! They set up the catwalk in the church’s gymnasium and had everyone sit facing it as the models came down the runway to the accompaniment of music and lights;  aside from the normal congregation, other designers and fashion reporters had also come out in droves and, at the end of the half-hour show, everyone turned their chairs ninety degrees to face the stage – Pastor John said that that in itself was a powerful moment, as ‘the world’ became ‘church’ with the turn of a chair, and everyone stayed for his message, which took the form of an ‘interview’ with the designer.  The designer talked about what had inspired him, and called out one model in particular to talk about the weaving process that had gone into the fabric that made up what she was wearing.  He hadn’t woven it himself, mind you, but he had approved the process and knew exactly what had gone into each stitch and each layer, and as he held it up, Pastor John could see the emotions that were filling him as he talked about it – love, delight, the sense that what he had caused to be made had come out as good or better than he might have hoped it would.  And so, Pastor John found himself remembering the words of the author of Psalm 139, who said in verse 14, “I will praise thee;  for I am fearfully and wonderfully made:  marvellous are they works, and that my soul knoweth right well.”  This attitude towards something as simple-seeming as this fabric, he went on to say to his congregation, is similar to the love that God has for us, because God made us;  we are His.  And when we remember that, we all come together that much better in the eyes of our Lord.

 

I don’t have much more to say today – it’s warm, the closing delights of Turkey Fest await, but before that we have a wonderful barbecue lunch that will be waiting for us downstairs.  What I want to leave you with today is a sense of awe and wonder at the very thought that the God who put all that in place…

…loves and cares for you.

The body that you have been given is God’s creation, hand-crafted, one-of-a-kind, and I heard it expressed very well in the words of poet Joy Cowley, who wrote this:

Incarnation
Medicine has said, “The body is a machine,
Cells organised by genes and nutrition.
It often needs repair.”
The Church has said, “The body is a sin,
Frail, a burden to the spiritual life.
It must be subjugated.”
Philosophers have said, “The body
Is a servant of mental processes.
We think therefore we are.”
The market place has said, “The body
Is big business, to be measured in dollars.
We sell it beauty and youth.”
The body says, “Listen to me!
I am the supreme gift of the divine.
I am the miracle of love made by love.
I am celebration!  I am dance!
I am the pleasure of God!

Joy Cowley, Psalms for the Road
(Wellington, NZ, Catholic Supplies [NZ] Ltd., 2002) p.99

Amen.