Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church

Rev. Daniel E. Somers, Deacon

Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church

Sermon

September 9, 2018

Planet Earth – Creation’s Glory

            Welcome.  Let me bring by relating to you what I hope will not be an apocryphal story. There once was a Scottish minister of much renown.  He condescended to accept the invitation of a struggling young priest, an admirer of his, to preach in a modest rural church.  On the appointed day, he proudly ascended the steps to the pulpit and preached for well over an hour – have no fear, my sermons tend to be much shorter.  At the end of his peroration, he noted that half of the congregation had departed, the other half was nearly asleep.

Humbled, he descended the stairs and asked the priest what he had done wrong.  The response: “Had you ascended the way you descended, your descent would have been the way you ascended.” 

We are today embarking on a month-long exploration of the wonder that is creation.  This weekend also coincides with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish celebration of the birth of creation. 

Today’s gospel is taken from the prologue to the Gospel according to John: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  I for one cannot read this passage too often – it contains some of the most exquisite poetry in all of the Bible.

            This is where John’s good news begins – in the beginning.  This is John’s creation story; it is not the figurative six-day marvel of Genesis I.  In this creation story, John takes us back to the origin of everything.

            The impetus for our being and the world we inhabit – our very existence – begins early for John.  Even before creation.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  This verse echoes the first line of Genesis: “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters;” through spoken words, God creates the elements of the world as we know it.

            God moved over the chaos and darkness and said, “Let there be light,” driving the darkness away.  “The light shone in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”  That wind is God’s rauch in Hebrew – the Spirit.  It thus marks the entry of the Spirit into creation.  It is this very Spirit that probes, according to Paul in his epistle to the church in Corinth, the mind of God.

            But the Word is not just a companion of God.  The Word (Logos in Greek) is the life force animating all creation and the source of that light that drove out the darkness.  According to ancient Greek philosophy, Logos was the rational principle of the universe connecting the divine to the world.

            Well, that’s all well and good you say?  Where’s the proof?  After all, we are children of the Enlightenment, aren’t we, beholden to empiricism.  What does science have to say about creation?  Astrophysics and theology both strive to answer the same questions, the hows and the whys.  To my mind they point to the same answer: it is God that is at the center of creation:

Science discovers more clues to the “How?” in each generation.

God alone answers the “Why?” of creation.

Yes, this is the truth, and isn’t it odd?

Not “how” or “when,” but “In the beginning, God.”

            As our immediate past Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori, who holds a doctorate in oceanography, wrote, “Everyday, creation and revelation continue in divine human partnership as God works in the minds of scientists … discovering the wonderful mysteries of creation.”

            In a recent article in Harper’s, an MIT cosmologist posited that most physicists agree on the Big Bang theory, which holds that approximately 14 billion years ago, the entire observable universe was “roughly a million billion billion times smaller than a single atom.”  It has been expanding ever since, to its current size of something like 100 billion galaxies – not stars, galaxies.  In short, as in Genesis and John, there was a beginning.  What was God doing before creating the universe?  Saint Augustine’s answer: “Since God created time when He created the universe, there was no ‘before.’”

            In order to create our world, our mother Earth, too many things had to occur to be the product of mere happenstance.  As one astrophysicist wrote in the current issue of Scientific American, “we are here, because of a long chain of implausible coincidences” – he couldn’t bring himself to credit God.   “Many, many, many things had to go right.”  I have no such compunction.  No amount of random chance would explain this – to believe otherwise requires far more faith than to ascribe it to God.

            The Big Bang threw off only hydrogen and helium.  Many, many stars, let alone entire galaxies, had to come, explode, expire and go to create the metals essential for rocky planets.  Those long-gone stars served as crucibles of our elemental construction material.

            Equally propitious is our location within the Milky Way galaxy.  We are within its habitable zone – not too close to its center so as to be devoured by black holes or obliterated by supernova or too far out to acquire metals.

            In addition to being within this galactic habitable zone, Earth is within the solar system’s habitable zone, with the right temperatures and liquid water.  The system’s planets’ orbits are stable.  Our solid metallic core and rotation create the magnetic field that repels radiation.  Tectonic plates push ores and nutrients to the surface.  The moon prevents Earth from tilting too far on its axis; this apparently happened to Mars, our planetary neighbor.

            Earth is certainly unique within our galaxy; it is too soon to make that claim as to the entire universe.  In an infinite universe, anything is possible, if not probable.  Because this planet is so special, it behooves us to preserve it – there is no Planet B.

            The wonder of creation continues, as we speak, as the universe expands.  God is still at work.  Our place within the process is a miracle, one that too often is lost on us.  When you have occasion to gaze at the stars again on a clear night, be amazed.  Some of those stars sending their beams our way over the many, many light years are not single stars, but rather entire galaxies.  A sense of awe and reverence is necessary; such a sense is all too frequently absent among those whose decisions can have fateful consequences on all.

            There follows in the prologue of John one of the most beautiful lines in the Bible, a line that we could live with for decades to come: “From his fullness, we all have received grace upon grace.”  I for one am aware that my life has been suffused with all that grace God has given to me, grace upon grace upon grace.

            What about you?

            Let me leave you with the following injunction found among Father Townley’s effects in the sacristy:

Dance as though no one is watching you.

Love as though you have never been hurt before.

Sing as though no one can hear you.

Live as though heaven is on Earth. 

            In the name of God the Creator, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

              Amen.