Exploring Creation: Christ, Cosmos, and Our Place in It

Scripture Readings

Our first reading today is from the 28th chapter of Job. Where does wisdom come from and where is the place of understanding? It is hidden from the eyes of all living and concealed from the birds of the air. God understands the way to it and knows its place. For God looks to the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens. When our creator gave to the wind its weight and apportioned out the waters by measure, and made a decree for the rain and a way for the thunderbolt. Then it was seen and declare, God established it and searched it out.

Our next reading is from Psalm 29. Ascribe to the Lord, oh heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Worship the Lord in holy splendor. The voice of the Lord is over the waters. The God of glory thunders over mighty waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful and full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon. The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness. The voice of the Lord causes the oaks to whirl and strips the forest bare, and in God’s temple all say glory. The Lord sits enthroned over the flood, enthroned as sovereign forever. May the Lord give strength to their people and bless them with peace.

Our gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, the reading comes from Luke chapter 8. One day, Jesus got into a boat with his disciples, and he said to them, let us go across to the other side of the lake. So they put out and while they were sailing, he fell asleep. A windstorm swept down on the lake and the boat was filling with water, and they were in danger. They went to Jesus and woke him up shouting, Master, master, we are perishing. And waking up, he rebuked the wind and the raging waves. They ceased and there was a calm. Then he said to them, Where is your faith? They were terrified and amazed and said to one another, who then is this that he commands even the winds and the water and they obey him.

And I have one more reading for you, because I chose my own reading today. For my, for my sermon. So you get one more reading, and this is from Colossians chapter one. No one can see God, but Jesus Christ is exactly like God. He ranks higher than everything that has been made. Through his power all things were made, things in heaven and on earth, things seen and unseen, all powers, authorities, lords and rulers. All things were made through Christ and for Christ. He was there before anything was made, and all things continue because of him. He is the head of the body which is the church. Everything comes from him. He is the first one who was raised from the dead. So in all things Jesus has first place, God was pleased for all of Himself to live in Christ, and through Christ, God has brought all things back to God’s self again, things on earth and things in heaven. God made peace through the blood of Christ’s death on the cross.

Sermon

Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. It’s five-year mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go. What about you guys, where no one has gone before. Oh, look at that. Uh, I will assume that this is not the first time you have heard this. Uh, am I correct? There’s a couple of younger people in the room who maybe have not. Parents, please get busy and make sure your children have watched the series, um, because there’s good news. This particular quote comes from the original series that, uh, started in 1966, ended in 1969, only three seasons, a total of 79 episodes but it failed to acquire the amount of audience uh ratings and so they ended it in in 1969, which is shocking because some of you, us, weren’t actually born during this time period and we all know that beginning like it’s the like the back of our hand.

This show spawned. 11 television series. And 13 feature films. Right Our fantasy, our fantasy of space is obvious. We also don’t want to forget the Star Wars franchise, and I’m not even gonna tell you all of the movies and spawned, you know, shows that have come from that because we love space, uh, in fact, maybe we are just a bunch of space aliens ourselves.

We have watched, read, and been a part of all aspects of anything that has to do with the cosmos with space. We’ve read about all the different ways and the movies that take us into space that take us beyond our own universe. We are always, always looking at the mystery of the unknown lands, beings, and so much more.

In fact, as I mentioned, if if you remember on our first Sunday of our creation season. These things about what we know about ourselves and our creation so far what we know is that there is nowhere else that we can survive, at least in our own solar system. This is it. This is where we are. We have this and yet our desire to know more and to talk about a world of other is unexplainable. We want to know more. We want to see more, we want to be more.

So, if you are like me, then you’ve probably watched a ton of these shows and you’ve probably seen the movies and if you’re lucky enough like me, maybe you’ve visited Roswell, New Mexico before. And you’ve gone to the UFO museum. No, I had that opportunity to go to the UFO museum in Roswell, New Mexico, where I experienced aliens. They’re creepy little green things they’re about this tall, and I said that’s what that’s what we thought we saw. That’s a very funny thing. But people see what people want to see, and space continues to be an unknown entity in the world around us.

Our scripture this morning from Collageians and of course all the other earlier readings and of course Genesis one, which we should know really well without having to even hear it, you know, in the beginning there was nothing and voidless space and then God came and separated earth to the the the heavens from the earth and to the thing, right? We all know Genesis. But it’s here in this, in this space, that God, Christ, and the Spirit are at work together and not alone. In the midst of this formless and vast emptiness, something happens, and the writer says in collagen, through God’s power all things were made, things in heaven and on earth, things seen and unseen. All the powers, authorities, lords, and rulers, all things were made through Christ and for Christ. He was there before anything was made, and all things continue because of him. We continue as a part of Christ, as a part of the vastness of all that has come before us.

The following quote as I was thinking about space and I, I was looking up a lot of different things as I kept thinking, what is it about space that we’re so drawn to? What is it about looking up into the heavens or the skies that cause us to wonder about what there is and what there could be in the world around us. And as I’m reading through this, I’m wondering how much time we spend thinking about the Creator. How much time do we spend thinking about the Creator as we’re looking at this vastness. And so, as I’m reading through this, I found the writings of Alastair Roberts, and he wrote this. Colossians 1:15 through 20 is a stunning articulation of a Christological monotheism. Big words. The one God. The Creator above all creation is known in the sun. SON the sun. The intensity of the Creator’s authority is concentrated in him, and the cosmic scope of the poem corresponds to this. If Christ’s role in the creation is as the poem describes it, there is nothing that falls outside of his authority, nothing.

It’s Christ’s being before creation, and then his death in the world that gives him the power over light and darkness over kingdom of earth and kingdom of heaven, eternal life. In fact, this comes to us through this promise. God made peace through the blood of Christ’s death on the cross. And if this is what we believe, if this is what we believe now as 21st century Christians, 21st century Christians. And as 21st century Christians, we know a lot. Correct? We know a lot. We know more than we knew 50 years ago we know more than we knew 10 years ago. We know more than we knew 50 years ago. We know more than we did 100 years ago. We know more now than 1000 years ago. We have so much more understanding of the creation of which we live in, the creation of which we see as our universe, our solar system. We have so much more knowledge.

And as we think about this, this understanding that we have of God. Do we lose the divine imagery of our creation story? Do we start to doubt and believe in the story of which we have heard since the time we were children, Little little children, we’ve heard the story of creation. Are we still able to smell and hear God in all of the minute details of our planet? About the creative beings that are all around us, if you recall last week when we were talking about the oceans, I had said that there were over 2 million species that lived in the oceans, and we have discovered 240,000 of them. 2,240,000. We have yet to even find, know, and, and experience all that is there for us. Can you still live in a in and among the world when you have this much knowledge of earth and sky, creation, ecology, and evolution? The cellular makeup of all things living and non-living alike.

Does it seem easier to have more knowledge or less knowledge to believe and understand the creation story? Is it become difficult to believe that there is a God who created and participated in the world around us to really evolve into all of this? Is it easier or does it become more difficult? Is this just happenstance? Or is there something more than just accidental accidents?

Louis Pasteur is quoted as having said. Too little science leads away from God. While too much science leads back to God.

As we glance back into the cosmos today. And in this evening, I want you to go out and I want you to count the stars. No, it’ll be fun. If you stay low enough and there’s a little bit of cloud coverage, there won’t be as many to count tonight. But I want you to go and engage yourself into this universe. Look up and into the sky. And what do you see? If you went out right now, what do you see? We see this blueness and the clouds, we see a sun, do not stare into it. Don’t do that. We see the ways the world works and we can watch it to change colors as day goes from day to night and we watch the setting of the sun and the changing from daytime to nighttime, we start to watch as the first stars begin to come out in the glimmering of the stars into the evening sky. Does anyone know what phase the moon is in right now? Anybody? um, I think it’s, I think it’s, yeah, I’m pretty sure we have the harvest moon right now. It looks like a full like it was coming to be a full moon last night, so go outside, go take a look at this gorgeous stunning view, and because the moon is out there’ll be less stars as well because it’s very bright. So that bright sky again less stars. So I just want you to go and start to count them.

There’s an app, if you don’t have it, um, go online and go look up a map, uh, uh, to find the stars, the star maps, and the best thing of all is you just take your phone, you put your little star maps on, and you go like this, and it’ll tell you everything you’re looking at. And then, yes, Colby got me into that. Thank you, Colby. And then you can even do this, which is even funnier. You can go like this. And then you know what people on the other side of the earth are looking at. You might not be seeing it, but other people are looking up at that sky. It’s very cool. So you can just move this move it through and you can learn about which of the different stars, what their names are, and it’s really fun because it’s, it shows in the moment things happening so sometimes they’re shooting stars across the screen that we don’t see, um, so I’m gonna encourage you to go find this, I think it’s called Star Star Trekker app I think is what it was. Does that sound right to you, call me Star Treker? Yeah, cause we just have it on the phone now. Um, but I’m gonna encourage you to go and to find a way to be a part of all that is there.

And to remember that the story of creation is not a simple story, but it is a very creative story. It’s a creative place, a creative universe, one in which all things have come before and will continue on, because we are all made of stardust. Remember that we are all made of stardust. What has been before will come again. And as we say this in our liturgy at a graveside service after someone has passed away, from dust you come and to dust you shall return. For we are all a part of the living universe. Our life is the cosmos. Our world is one great big continuation of an ever evolving life and the complexities within it. We are responsible to watch over, care, and continue to be reminded of what has been built up over millions of years. And it is our responsibility to care. And love This place. And that we remember that we do all things through Christ our helper and redeemer. In this place that we call home. Amen.