Presented on August 7, 2022 at Bethany Presbyterian Church
“In the beginning, God created the heavens…” and in relation to our sermon, I can end the reading here. But then – where would that put US?
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Now flash forward a few years to the late 1990s, on a Bethany Men’s Backpacking trip, with the Rev. Lew Rooker, Peter Baird, Cory Wolfersberger, and Bijan Tabaie, Donna Tabaie’s husband, to the Eastern Sierra Nevada. It was a perfect night sky – the kind of sky where a bright meteor actually cast a shadow on the ground. We were able to identify many of the constellations – Cassiopeia, the Big and Little Dipper, and Calliope the Snake. Okay, I made that last one up by tracing an arbitrary series of stars, but you get the idea.
God put those stars in the sky. You can call them suns. You can call them giant gas balls. I’ll thank you not to make them a comparison to me. And we can discuss the science of Carl Sagan’s 100 billion galaxies and 10 billion trillion stars. But somehow, someone started it – what Philosophers call “The Prime Mover.”
We can define “The Prime Mover” as our Creator God, but there is no getting around that something started it all. Isaac Newton tells us that “Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.”
The Prime Mover is a concept advanced by Aristotle around 350 BC as the primary cause or “mover” of all the motion in the universe. Everything started with the Prime Mover – the wooden pews we sit in came from a craftsman who made them from a tree which was harvested by a lumberjack. The tree grew from a seed in the ground that had been put there by nature or a farmer and watered by rain on the planet earth and… well, you get the idea. If we go far enough back, someone had to start the whole thing.
As is implicit in the name, the unmoved mover moves other things, but is not itself moved by any prior action. You may need a moment, as I do, to wrap your head around that concept and I say again – something somewhere started it all. Succinctly put, you can believe The Big Bang Theory. But who made it bang?
Science Fiction has given us many wonderful insights – albeit emphasis on “Fiction” – thus far as to what the galaxies hold. It would be a great vanity to think that among the incomprehensible number of planets that must exist, we are the only ones of our kind. But it is equally incomprehensible to imagine a Creator who can place 10 billion trillion stars in the sky. But have you met my God? The same Creator God that can put those stars in the sky one day, and in a metaphorical blink of an eye – or what scientists think is 15 billion years – can also bring you this flower, by way of the florist on my way to church today, for us to enjoy.
But let’s bring our Heavenly Creations a little more down to earth. In Genesis 9, God tells Noah, “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you. Never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth. This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”
So apparently rainbows didn’t exist until after the flood. Before then, sunlight (which God created) wasn’t reflected on a rain droplet (which God also created). And the electromagnetic spectrum, which is made of light with many different wavelengths and reflected at a different angle separating the light to make a rainbow, didn’t exist. So there is that. And if you are still with me – and please note that I am barely with me – this is all science. And I’ll tell you “yes.”
To quote the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, “science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals.”
We do not not need to choose. That is to say, we do not need to choose between science and religion. But within the realm of religion, we do need to choose. We are most likely here today because we chose Christ. And in choosing Christ, we choose the Trinity – Creator God, Holy Spirit, and Jesus the Messiah.
And in choosing Jesus, we choose the lessons he taught us and the path through which he leads us.
Looking at the stars again, In the film Encanto, we are told that stars do not shine – they burn. So too must we burn. We must burn with the desire to be more Christ-like. Burn with the energy of the Holy Spirit. We must burn with the calling of justice and peace for all humanity and all God’s creations. Burn with the righteousness of knowing the blessings given to us from Creator God. And burn with love. Love for God. Love for all Creation. Love for our life. And love for the one who gives us the ultimate love – Jesus the Christ.
BE a shining star! MAKE a new constellation – here on earth – a constellation which will shine as a bright reminder of the love our triune God has for you.
Amen