GOD IS AWESOME
A sermon offered by the Rev. Earl William Greene, Jr., for the First Sunday After Epiphany, based on Genesis 1.
Liz Cook used to have a bumper sticker on the rear window of her car. It reads "God is Awesome." Just how awesome is God, anyway?
The Hubble Space Telescope answers back, "AWESOME!" Our whole view of the universe has been turned upside down recently. In October 1995 Swiss astronomers, searching outside our solar system found a new planet. A couple of months later two Americans found yet another planet, and then another! In less than 90 days the number of known planets had increased by one-third.
Some here may remember the discovery of Pluto sixty-five years ago! My father would never accept that there was a planet such as "Pluto." The Pluto he knew was in the comic strips. It was more change than he could accept. So, I guess he was in what we call today "denial." Now, the discovery of Pluto is nothing compared to what the future may hold.
Just one year ago the Hubble Space Telescope focused on an area near the handle of the big dipper, and took 300 pictures of that area. What they found were 1500 galaxies, each containing a billion stars. Comprehend that!
If, in our very own Milky Way we've discovered three more planets, there are bound to be many more - thousands, perhaps tens of thousands. And this is just within our own galaxy, maybe just one of millions of other galaxies.. There's no way for me to truly comprehend that. Yet, being "in denial" doesn't change the facts, does it?
So, what does all this say about our ideas about God? What does this say about how we view the Bible as a record of creation? What does this say about our notion that we humans on earth are the "crowning point of God's creation?"
There was a time when people thought of God like the great "clock-maker." The l6th century universe was one where people thought of God as a mechanic who created a big machine, and then created the laws that made the machine work. God started the clock ticking and then sat back, for the most part staying out of things, because the machine was perfect. People were convinced it never missed a "tick" or a "tock." For four hundred years that's how people in the church and the world thought about God - having done it all perfectly, God retired.
But 16th century views of God and creation have been turned upside down by startling new discoveries. Somehow the church only gradually and suspiciously begin to catch on. The church was the last to "catch on." Somehow, new discoveries threaten old beliefs.
In the last 100 years thanks to the theories of evolution, relativity and quantum physics we no longer think of the universe (or the universes) as some perfect, unchanging machine that keeps on going exactly as it always has.
Now, we are beginning to understand that the universe is more like a living organism than an old machine. The universe is predictable in some ways, yet it also acts as though it has a kind of a erratic will of its own, as though it's changing parts of itself all the time. And all the pieces of the universe are not separate clogs independent pieces doing their own thing in the big machine-like clock. Instead, we are discovering that each part forms a complex web of interconnections. None function without the others - that each part has multiple functions - functions wepreviously overlooked.
Rather than for us to think of a God who built the big machine, a better image is to think of God as the Spirit who breathes life into creation. And then, instead of retiring to the heavens somewhere while the clock runs on its own, God's breathing keeps on, and everything that God has started is "in process," - it has a life of its own, changing, adapting, some of it growing fast, and some of it waiting a while until it is impacted by something not even created yet, waiting for the breath to come and move it along, too.
People who make a study of fossils report that living creatures start off very simply, but they steadily become more and more complex with the passage of time. -that each stage of development supports the next stage, but in time it is always replaced by something even more complex, as though creation itself responds to some "call," pulling it beyond one stage of development to an increasingly more complex stage with even more interconnections, then on to yet another stage.
Now, most of us were taught that Genesis chapter 1 was one grand event that took - 6 days. When it was finished, it was finished! "The Word of God Amen!" But Genesis, chapter 1 is not "Science" at all; it wasn't meant to be! It is a statement of faith about God breathing life into creation. It is more "poetry" than it is a description of what happened, or about what is still happening.
The ancient writers of the Bible wrote about their faith, and it was colored by the way they understood the world. We ought to do the same in our own day! - to take all the added knowledge that we have gained, or ever will gain and integrate it into our own experiences of God.
Now, changing our way of thinking is a real test of faith. There's a part of us that doesn't want to know about the expanding universe because it makes us think. There's something about us that wants everything absolutely the same and dependable. Everything else may change, but not the church, please! Not God! There was a time, and some people think it still exists when we could always count on everything about faith being the same through eternity.
For that matter, we used to think that God was unchanging, too. Some of the old songs reinforce the idea: "yesterday, today, forever," "world without end. Amen." Is God exactly the same as God always was? Is truth forever the same? Is the universe a place where everything is fixed?
I think that what this is all telling us is that we would do well to think of God in far more dynamic terms than we have traditionally - to think of God as continually creating! running out ahead of us, saying "catch up. I could use your help on this one coming up."
God not controlling everything! But instead, breathing life into it, and then setting it loose? This idea seems compatible with the way Jesus looked at things. Remember, that Jesus' view of the "kingdom of God" was like a piece of yeast which a woman hid in her dough. The yeast got lost in the mass, but the loaf began growing, changing, a bubble here, a change of texture over there, and what happens to each little piece is so powerful that it changes every other piece. The kingdom of God is moving and changing. The universe is moving.and changing, too. God moves, too. Talk about AWESOME!
And, what about us? Well, we're probably not alone in "these universes." We're probably not the only "crown of God's creation." We may not even be a crown yet. It's likely that we're becoming something far more complex, and what we turn out to be maybe God doesn't even choose to know.
The creating spirit of God is like breath or the wind., The ancient Hebrews understood that idea perfectly: the breath moves, it impacts something else, and that impact changes the way things started, and on, and on.
What about us? I know that we are just a piece of it all, sometimes we seem insignificant. But I think that's an illusion, for I believe with all my heart that we are called to be co-creators with God. That's why our part in the environmental process is so important: the creatures of this earth are dependent on how we contribute to life and their own changing..
That's why it's important for people of faith not to fear new discoveries as being Satanic. Instead, people of faith should joyously enter into what's happening, bringing our faith and our ethical sensibilities into the new age, and stop wringing our hands on the sidelines in fear that "God has been lost in all this." God hasn't been lost, but if we don't "get it," we may come to the place where we can't expect to find God anymore, limited to the same old places as God was when we were children, ‘cause God is on the move, unleashing forces that we won't see for maybe another millennium.
Now, you say., "I don't even know how to spell "quantum." I admit I had to check the dictionary, too. But we don't have to be able to spell "quantum" to believe with all our hearts that even with such enormous change going on in the universe that God still knows our name and hasn't missed a thing, that even though God's agenda is bigger than we feel comfortable with, even so, we are not alone, for the Spirit that breathes life into the universe wants us to live fully, too.
Is God awesome? You bet God is awesome, and we don't even "know the half of it." There's much more to come! Hang on, we're on a "super collosal ride," and we're going to be just fine. Different, but just fine. Amen.
Resources: Biblical Preaching Journal, Winter, 1997
The New Interpreters Bible on "Genesis"
Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki's book God - Christ - Church