Day 140 - All Things New

A sermon presented at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy-Daisy, TN. April 28, 2013.John 13:1, 31-35;  Rev. 21:1-8

If you read your New Testament then you may remember Paul writing about persecution and recognition of our personal weaknesses in Romans 8:35-38. I paraphrase, “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Paul is telling us we are more than conquerors and here John in Revelation is telling us Jesus Christ expects us to be conquerors? What is going on?

Both Paul and John of Patmos are affirming and uplifting Christians. Paul focus is on faith, “If God is on our side, who can mount any effective threat to us?” Paul is assuring us that our opponents cannot defeat our faith through physical conquest nor can our faith physically conquer anyone. The Gospel of John  and Revelation have the same assurance but their focus is more concerned with Christ’s expectations of our behavior as spiritual conquerors.

It is much easier to understand Revelation if we keep in mind the letter was written as both affirmation and reprimand to seven predominately Jewish Christian congregations of believers (Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea) who faced current or impending persecution as a challenge to their faith. The connection to Jewish Biblical heritage in Revelation is impressive and it underlays the whole letter.

These eight verses are impressive. They recall the entire Genesis creation story, the nature of sin, the despair and loss of hope in captivity, the desire for salvation and the duty and fate of the church. I remind you also this is a letter to congregations that we are first and foremost a fellowship of individual believers, not only a building.

Let’s explore the eight verses to explain being conquerors.  John stakes a dramatic claim upon Christ’s return in the first two verses. “¹Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.” God is not a creating of all new things, God is renewing, re-creating the glory of God’s first creation of humanity.

In these two verses John assures us there will be a New Jerusalem. Remember to the Jewish mind Jerusalem, which means the city of peace, has a special significance. It is where the temple stood. David and Solomon intended the temple to be the place where the Holy of Holies where God resided when he is among them. In Judah the only temple was in Jerusalem until Babylon and Rome destroyed it.  That is why I used the psalm of lament for our responsive reading. 

Jerusalem is on a hill and the tradition of Jews coming from the countryside to worship was to pray the Psalms 120-134, called the Psalms of Ascent, as they climbed the road and stairs to the temple.  In a stunning reversal this New Jerusalem is comes to us, we do not ascend to it.

There most powerful part of John’s image of New Jerusalem is not just that New Jerusalem our home… it is where God shall live. God has come to us to live with us.  Do you remember your Old Testament, Deuteronomy 34:10 – only Moses knew the Lord face to face, and even Moses never looked directly upon the Lord’s face.  Again in another reversal, God has comes to dwell not only with the Hebrews but with people of all nations.

“The sea is no more (v1).” For the Hebrews The sea is the ultimate chaos of evil. It is the formless void from which God created the universe. It is the place where Leviathan, the deadly sea monster in Job dwells, the great fish that swallowed Jonah. Not only has God cast evil from the heavens, God will expunge evil from all creation.

John proclaims for all nations the end of grief. There will be no more tears, no more suffering. Mourning and pain cease. It is the end of spiritual thirst because God proclaims the end of death and will live with us forever. John uses the power and intimacy of bridal imagery to describe God and New Jerusalem as the loving parents of God’s children. We all shall be children of God in the city of God.

The upshot of all this when you read it carefully, is there is no Church in New Jerusalem because there is no longer evil on earth and no one thirsts. God is with us in the one great city of God, the city of peace, New Jerusalem.  In this city there is only spiritual joy and worship by innocent children.  The victory over evil is completed.

It is such a beautiful passage it deserves to be re-read. When I read it the Beatitudes come to mind:

¹Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. ²And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. ³And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; ⁴he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” ⁵And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” ⁶Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. ⁷Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children….those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children (!)

Finally we get to “conquer.” What does John mean by “those who conquer will inherit these blessings?” Back in Chapter 5 we find John uses “conquer” in a context to mean, “hold true to belief and testify to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.” Like the Promised Land of long ago described in Exodus, God has given us a future blessing of all things being made new again, but God has left a sharp edge to it. It seems for every blessing God always recalls a vice and a curse, he must know something about us.  Verse  8: ⁸But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

This vice list defines being a conqueror by telling us what it is not - a vanquished person who is a cowardly liar, faithless, vile and criminal(murderer), and indulges in false Roman and Greek religion by fornication, sorcery, worshipping idols. The bookends of these vices are cowards and liars. John writes in a time where Christians faced persecution. In the dace of persecution and death, it is natural to be fearful and be tempted to refuse to testify to belief or to lie about one’s faith. John had the lowest regard for Christians that dishonor the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  He says have no fear of the second death. It has been defeated and has no sting. He explains the duty of a spiritual conqueror is in his words to the seven congregations in Chapter 2 and 3. He uplifts, warns and assures the faithful (my edited version of NRSV):

To Ephesus: “I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance…I know you cannot tolerate evildoers for the sake of my name …but I know you have abandoned the love you had a first and the works that came from it. To everyone who conquers (that loss), …will give permission to eat from the tree of life.”

To Smyrna: “I know your affliction and your poverty… Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Beware! The devil is about to throw some of you into prison so that you may be tested... Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life. Whoever conquers (that fear) will not be harmed by the second death.

To Pergamum: “I know … you are living where Satan’s throne is. Yet you are holding fast to my name, and you did not deny your faith in me but some of you are worshipping idols. To everyone who conquers (idolatry) I will give some of the hidden manna,”

To Thyatira: I know your works—your love, faith, service, and patient endurance. I know that your last works are greater than the first but you tolerate those who practice fornication as worship and eat food of the idols… To the one who conquers (idolatrous worship)I will also give the morning star,

To Sardis: You are dead, wake up and Remember then what you received and heard; obey it, and repent. If you do not wake up, I will come like a thief at night… there are a few among you who are clothed in white, if you conquer (your sinfulness), you will be clothed in white

To Philadelphia: I know your works, you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. I will make the sinners learn that I have loved you because you have kept my word of patient endurance. Hold fast to what you have.  If you conquer (by continuing to live your faith), I will make you a pillar in the temple of my God;

In our relatively well-to-do lives we need a reality test. It is hard to appreciate what John is asking his congregations to do, to die for faith. We live in a country where there is no serious physical threat for professing Christian faith. We do face the challenge of the some of the vices on the list. Sometimes we may hesitate to live by according to our faith and lie about our faith in Christ in embarrassment. All of us in one way or another want to embrace the worship of the world’s gods, things like consumerism, greed, anger, envy, jealousy, the go-along-with-the-crowd attitude and forget about all that beautiful promise of the New Jerusalem and facing God every day.

Faced with all the evil in the world, what are we, the church, the congregations of believers to do? How can we conquer using the good grace of Christ? Can we do it by condemning of our fellow travelers? No. By forcing them to be “good Christians”? No.  By violence? No. By warfare? …Well, yes, by spiritual warfare that responds to Christ’s call that I read to you from the gospel of John 13:34-35. Jesus said:  ³⁴I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

We aren’t to the Promised Land, New Jerusalem yet. We must appreciate that John did not condemn those seven congregations for their sins, he praised their faith where it was strong and warned them to repent of their errors so they may conquer through their testimony as living Christians. John talks of the end of time, the Alpha and Omega when the battle is over and we are made anew as more than conquerors. We only have our congregation of believers to strengthen us to be spiritual conquerors. We are now Easter People as I told the children. Although we often stumble, the way we live should be our testimony against evil. Wet conquer sin by being a light to the God’s people.

We are God’s children now and will be then. For now, we have the obligation to be conquerors walking in Jesus’ footsteps. We owe it to our own and all God’s children to live in a way that reflects a continuing worthy worship of our Lord as we await the New Jerusalem.  Amen.

Day 136 - A New Creation

This is a short study on the lectionary text for April 28 (expanded 2 verses.) Discussion is developed using these two commentaries: Revelation, A commentary by Brian K. Blount in The New Testament Library;  Revelation, Interpretation, A commentary for teaching and preaching, Eugene Boring.

Rev21: 1-6(8) ¹Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. ²And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. ³And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; ⁴he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”

⁵And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” ⁶Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. ⁷Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children. ⁸But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

The passage speaks about the fate of the church, conquerors, both universal and selective salvation, vices and faith and our final relationship with God.  It may help to the passage breaks into 2 or possibly 3 parts, John’s observations and the words he heard.

Options

Option 1	Option 2	Option 3
Verses 1-2: John sees a New Heaven and New Earth and others things.	Verses 1-2: John sees a New Heaven and New Earth and others things.	Verses 1-4: an anonymous voice from the throne proclaims the home of his and those who are his.
Verses  3-8: The person seated on the throne speaks (explains) what is seen.	Verses 3-4: an anonymous voice from the throne proclaims the home of God is earth and those who are his.	Verses 5-8 The One Seated on the Throne reveals who he is and who are his.
	Verses 5-8: The One Seated on the Throne reveals who he is and who are his.

I favor option 2. Sr. Blount   favors option 3.

When you get home, read John 13:(1-30),31-35. Do you see any common themes?

 Verses 1-2

       1.  What does John see? What do you think a new heaven and new earth means?

       2. What particularly is not in the new earth  

       3. Who is “the one seated on the throne?”

       4.   Does God comes to earth? What is his nature, deity or person?

      5.   How complete is this new creation - Note the marriage symbolism.

Verses 3-5

      6. What is the nature of living in this new heaven and earth? 

      7. What is the significance of “peoples” (plural) in v3?

      8. Is this a new world or is it a empowered old world? That is, is God making all new things, or is God making all things new?

       9. Where does faith fit into this new world? (v5)

Verses 6

      10.     Is Alpha and Omega hearkening back to the first Creation as the sign that the last creation is the fulfillment or recovery of the first one? What do you think this means?

Verses 7-8

    11.Who are the thirsty?

    12. Who are the one’s who conquer? See5:5. A faithful witness conquers by testimony to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

    13.  What will it be like for the conquerors?

    14.  Verse 8 is a “vice list.”*  Verse 8 is a good example of why one should read ALL of Revelation at one time. Recall the letters to the seven churches take the congregations to task for these vices. Also we need to remember the book is also a critique of Rome. Murder, fornication, sorcery and idols all probably refer to the Emperor Cult and their temple activities, or other “pagan”** temple activities. The first and last vice can be considered “bookends” for the cultic vices of Rome. ” Why do you think the cowardly and liars are the bookends for vices? First and last vice/Alpha and Omega?

    15.What does the one seated on the throne say will happen to those who fall to the vices.

Trick questions/”Author’s message:”  

    16.   Where is the church in the new Heaven and New Earth?   

    17.  How is the New City different from the old city (and congregation)?

*From: http://catholic-resources.org/Bible/Epistles-VirtuesVices.htm . Vice and virtues lists are  common in Paul’s epistles and in Greek literature, but only mentioned in OT in Proverbs and ten commandments.  Christian virtues ten to be distilled into 3: faith, hope, love. See Micah 6:8, Beatitudes, Romans 12:9-21; 13:8-14; 1 Cor. 13:4-8a, 13, Philippians 2:1-4(16)

7 deadly sins: pride, greed, envy, anger, lust, gluttony, sloth

7 virtues: humility, generosity, kindness, patience, chastity, moderation, diligence.

** pagan actually means “a rural person”

Day 133 - The Rest of the Week

A sermon given at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy-Daisy, TN, April 21, 2013

scriptural references: John 10:22-42 and Acts 9:36-43.

I spent the first few days of last week in Richmond at Union Presbyterian Seminary in a discussion group talking about science and theology and thinking about today’s sermon. Late in the day Monday we heard about the bombing in Boston and later discovered one of our participants is connected to the family of the 8 year old boy that was killed at the marathon finish line. As the week evolved the bombing was continually in the news and we all saw how it came to an end Friday night with one dead older brother and the younger one wounded and captured.

I can imagine the fear, uncertainty and anger in Boston as all the swirling questions were asked, was it a terrorist attack, some homegrown act of violence like that of Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City, or the act of a rogue individual like Eric Randolph in Atlanta?  I have run several marathons and many shorter races, so I can appreciate how this act shatters the sense of camaraderie of shared exhaustion and of lost innocence the next time one approaches a finish line.

Wanton violence makes you wonder exactly what is going on. Is there more evil in the world today, or do we just have such modern communication that we know about more of it and sooner?  Maybe there is so little social restraint today we hear and see more things people do that once were private and unvoiced?  The American wild west of the 19^th century was pretty brutal. Some accounts suggest it resembled the time of the Judges, where everyone did what they thought was right in their own eyes.  I grew up in a segregated society where many wouldn’t hesitate to cause a problem if African-American child went into the movie theater.

Are times as bad as they were in the Roman era? Roman emperors would go into a town of 30,000 or 100,000 that supported the wrong politics and literally slaughter every man, woman and child, burn down all the buildings and then sow salt in the earth so the land was worthless even if there were people left alive, or some were to come back.

Some of you may disagree but I tend to think there is not more evil in the world than when I grew up or even when Christianity began but people are more imaginative about how to do evil, and a lot less restrained in their enjoyment of it.  The tragedy of “creative evil” is that it lures young people to decide it is ok. “Creative evil” puts more and more responsibility on those of us who have or teach children to protect the space they need to grow and learn about the good life. Since even the childless teach by their actions we have quite a shared burden.

This is the lesson within the exchange John describes as the Pharisees try to trap Jesus into saying exactly who he was. They ask, “How long will you keep us in suspense? Tell us plainly who you are.” Jesus answers by turning the tables on them.

Jesus said, “My works testify to me. My sheep hear my voice and they follow me. I give them eternal life. No one will snatch them out of my hand…If I am not doing the works of my Father then do not believe me.”

“My works testify to me…and my sheep follow me.”  Those are powerful words. Remember Jesus spoke three times to Peter at the end of John, “Do you love me? The feed my sheep.”

The story of the resurrection of Tabitha or Dorcas (Greek) in Acts picks up this theme. What do we know about Tabitha? Her name in Greek means “Gazelle.” Since names in Scripture with special meanings usually carry some significance maybe it means she was particularly beautiful or graceful? 

Luke tells us she is a disciple and her ministry is with widows. In the time of this writing, identifying a woman as a widow gives all the information necessary to know the situation. Tabitha is probably wealthy and is working with destitute widows. Do you remember Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law? She said to call her Mara, or bitter because of her destitution.  When a husband died, everything went to the sons or other male relatives. The widow’s benefit rested solely on the compassion of the husband’s family and the willingness of a male kin to marry her. There were a lot of people with little compassion so there were a lot of poor widows.

The scene is not a lot different from what we might encounter today at a funeral. The widows are at the sitting, weeping over Tabitha and showing Peter the clothes Tabitha had made while working with them. Peter with the power of the Holy Spirit resurrects Tabitha. The scripture says, “… she opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up. ... This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord.”

Luke does not record what Tabitha did that caused many to believe, but we can guess from her previous work that she continued as a disciple ministering to the widows because Luke says she became known throughout the land. It sounds like she seized the opportunity of a second chance at life to glorify God.

Tabitha is one of the “Easter people.”  Her resurrection was the first day of her new life. At every resurrection and healing by Jesus there is an expectation to be a witness in words such as, “go and sin no more,” or “your faith has healed you.”

Beyond this mess in Boston, I also had the positive experience of witnessing the play by our youth at church last Wednesday called “It’s all because of Jesus – the real story of Easter and why it matters.” If you missed it, you really missed a wonderful experience of this congregation at work. The children’s enthusiasm was palpable and our three dear members, Jan, Katie and Linda, did a wonderful job motivating and directing them. We are blessed by all of them.

Two things really stand out about their performance. The children were absorbed and seemed to understand the real story of Easter even though it has some fairly complex, “adult” ideas in it.  They may not understand all the complications and brutality of a crucifixion, and all the theological niceties we attach to ideas like the Trinity, but they understand the part about  “Jesus loves me,” about redemption and the importance of following Jesus.

Second, I’m struck by their innocence. They may not have gained the intellectual maturity to understand those theological complications or fully appreciate what we mean when we tell them Jesus will always be with them as a comfort, but they do hear it. It is sad to know eventually they will most likely be emotionally or physically hurt, but is a joy to know they feel the presence of the blessing of Christ’s comforting promise and God’s love when it happens. It makes the difference between despair and hope.

That is why preserving their innocence is so important - to have a time in life to play and hear the stories of faith when life hasn’t yet taken many nasty turns.  We can only pray that all children have the blessing of innocence, not having to experience and observe the sinful side of life for a little while.

In my work with young adult men at St. Matthew’s Shelter in the VIP program I see a lot of innocence lost far too early in childhood. The intense 4-week program to get them clean of drugs or alcohol, or both has a lot of young adults.  I call them adults though some are 19 or 20, maybe 21 years old, barely old enough merit the label, The tragedy of a childhood robbed of innocence by drugs and watching someone struggle with withdrawal from a drug like methamphetamine and/or alcohol isn’t very pretty to see. They bear the physical and emotional torment not only over the heavy emptiness of not having the drugs in their system, but also the cold reality and guilt not blurred by the fog of drugs and parties that distract.

Scientific and medical thought hasn’t clarified whether addiction arises from a genetic predisposition or a conscious action. Like child abuse and spousal abuse, there is a higher prevalence of alcoholism in families where a parent or parents are alcoholics.  And so I think the seeds of addiction are planted in childhood.

There is an older man who regularly attends our homeless circle group that suggests that. He is a long-term recovering alcoholic, has serious health problems teeters between life and death and comes from a Pentecostal background. Most of the men who come through the program who are focused on recovery find and lean on him. 

One day we were talking about the love of Christ for humankind and Christ’s expectation of us to apply the same love to our fellow travelers. This fellow said when he was growing up he never heard anything about a loving God, it was all about an angry, punishing God who was always just around the corner waiting to punish him. He said it has made a great difference to him finally to realize God loves him. So here he is, broken and near death but still a witness.  Could he have brought greater gifts to the world if he heard constantly from his parents in childhood not only “I love you,” but also “God loves you?” I suspect a lot of his trouble came early listening to his parents preaching the distorted idea of an angry, threatening God waiting to punish him for a mistake.

We learn so much about the world in our youthful innocence before we become jaded by the world’s treachery. Many youth begin drugs when they are barely teenagers. A serious drug habit does bad things to a young, plastic mind. It robs your mind like a lobotomy. Addiction in childhood is a millstone placed around their neck. For many, it will drag them back down into old ways.

You see the magnitude of the problem when you hear their talk about the issues of their life. They may be 22 years old but they think and talk the way they did at the age they began serious drug or alcohol abuse. It is like the drugs turned a switch off inside their heads so they grow an adult body with barely a teenage mind.

It is a difficult challenge to find the strength to stop drug use and at the same time begin to learn for the first time in their life exactly what adult behavior is. That is something a “normal” child takes 8 to 10 years or longer to learn between 10 to 25 years old.

That is why tour children’s play last Wednesday is so important. Their experience of performance, preparation, the parents in the audience, the church members applauding it all means so much to those eight children just like a youth group, bible study, it all adds up. We may be surprised that letting the children entertain us is part of our job of teaching them. Children learn through play about God’s love and scripture, they learn about responsible living by continually watching us live our lives as Christians. It is our gift and blessing to them and theirs to us.

We are never too old to have a happy childhood but it can be hard work when you are older.  Jesus says we are all children of God and we are like sheep, we need a good shepherd.

We must carefully to nurture our children, to teach them well more by our own behavior than our words. It is part of the baptism vows, you know.

I keep thinking about that 19 year old boy and his brother who did that heinous bombing that killed four including the eight year old child. From what little we read, it sounds like his older brother was a dominating influence. It isn’t Islam, I know Muslims who are horrified by this act. What would have happened had this 19 year old understood in his early years that God has a love so wide that we have a new birth and new life that will always provide the comfort of knowing there is a home?

We are Easter people, our baptism is our resurrection to a new life. Tabitha’s story is for us. We need to live to protect the innocence of children, if for only one child somewhere, sometime; so the child learns the promise of  a Christian life. Alice Walker who wrote “The Color Purple” captured the significance of Tabitha’s story and the first day of our own new life.  She said, "Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.” Amen.

Day 126 - Worthy Worship

A sermon delivered April 14, 2013 at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy-Daisy, TN

texts: Joel 2:23-29 and Rev. 5:1-14.

What is “Worthy Worship” of a God who is greater than anything imaginable? 

The fancy word for God is transcendent, a God that exceeds all characterization and therefore defies objective description.  We can only do it symbolically and metaphorically.

Fundamentally, worthy Christian worship ascribes all praise and honor, glory and power to our creator, incarnate in Jesus Christ and is present with us as the Holy Spirit. Such worship is both a thanksgiving for life, resurrection and redemption and our testimony to the world of it.

The PC(USA) Book of Order says succinctly, “God cannot be reduced to anything in the created order.” So how can we speak meaningfully of a God who exceeds all that can be defined? Even the carefully crafted Reformed creeds only say what we believe and make no effort to explain the reality of belief. We are still left with the same problem of description. 

Have you ever had an experience that you just have to say was “indescribable” so you had to describe it something like this, “ I just do not know how I can explain it to you, it was like….” That is what we are left with to convey our experience of God to our friends, “It is kind of like this…” That is what worship is about.

We call that experience, revelation. When you read the Revelation of Jesus Christ to John of Patmos, you read his struggle to convey his experience of God  in a worthy manner. He used hymn, symbol and metaphor to describe a transcendent God and the magnitude of God’s redeeming act, to describe his mental image of Jesus Christ and the nature of the experiential relationship between created order and God Incarnate. He thought it important enough to understand and to have it read aloud, most likely as the message of a worship service.

The universe and The Sense of a Transcendent God. Cosmos literally means the entire created order, not the infinite universe, but if you define everything that is, then perforce, you define all that is not definable(!).  God created the entire cosmos, the order of the universe, every atom of it. If so, then God must exist “outside” the order of the universe and not be reducible to meaningful, logical words and mathematical formulas. To know the cosmos is to know God. The last 50 years of scientific observation give us the flavor of this revelation.

When I was a young boy in a small north Georgia town there was not much city light at night.  In my backyard on a clear night about midnight in the late summer when the moon was new, I could look up into the sky and see the Milky Way, literally looking edge-on into the heart of our dish-shaped galaxy. It looked like milk poured across the sky. What a shame it is so hard to see now with city light pollution for many children and adults.

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, contains millions of stars. As astronomers gaze further into the night sky with powerful telescopes more little stars appear. More powerful telescopes reveal they are not little stars but galaxies, each filled with millions of stars. Further and further, deeper into the sky in every direction telescopes reveal more and more galaxies into the millions and all contain millions and millions of stars.

The other important thing is that the further in distance we look into the sky, the further we look back into time. For example, the sun is 92 million miles away. When we see something like a solar flare, it actually happened 8 1/4 minutes into the past. That is how long it takes light to reach us form the sun. Science discovered methods to allow us to figure out how far away an object is and knowing the speed of light allows us to know when in time the star light we observe actually happened. The deeper into the sky we look the further into history we look.  When we look as far as we can see today, we discover a pervasive blinding light, like a camera flash. We can’t see beyond it because it is so bright. Scientists realized this flash happened about 18.8 billion years ago about a trillion, billion miles away. (The distance covered by light traveling 186,000 miles per second for 18.7 billion years.) That is as far as we can see in distance and time. That flash is our veil of the temple. 

 The trillion or so billion miles of our universe is unimaginably large and contains every star, planet and invisible matter and it came into being. That bright flash (and our mathematical equations) also tells us that before that flash, all that “stuff of the universe” existed as a single point of energy billions and trillions of times smaller and hotter than anything that has ever been, an unimaginably boiling inferno of energy smaller than a pin point. Then it exploded in a “Big Bang.”

No scientist can pierce the veil of time before the universe came into being to explain why it happened. Equations and math are useless to describe the why but remarkably, clearly and cleanly describe the how of its happening. That flash of light humbled science. Only the most obstinate scientists fearing the uncertainty of the unknown seek alternative explanations.

What all this means to you and me is this transcendental God is larger than that that universe and its Big Bang. That first flash signifies what cannot be seen or described except by the evidence left behind, the “Holy of Holies.”  Psalm 8 captures this idea of God and his handiwork, Here is my paraphrase:

All Good Gifts Are The Glory of The Lord

Copyright H. Paris 10/15/05

God of Heaven, you grace the earth.

The cry of the baby is praise of your work.

Our being is your unfettered glory,

your defender against tyranny.

We pale in the expanse of an un-measurable Heaven,

Illumined by stars and moons until time’s end.

How comes such benevolence to us,

The Grace of a parent’s tenderness?

How have we justified the Son of Man?

Can we be only a little less than the God  

Who made us by simple command,

Who crowned us in the cloak of purple

    to rule birds, fish, animals, and fertile flora?

Even though graced with such power,

We are motes blown upon the wind

    humbled by your majesty forever.

Praise the Glory of The Lord, God,
Our Defender!

Can we have a worthy worship without describing the indescribable? To describe the indescribable is an oxymoron.  Yet it is the only way. To put it circularly, we must have an experience with God that conveys the meaning to describe it.  We can’t do it. We can't get to that transcendent God, God has to come to us.  This is to say we understand God by God’s self-revelation to us.

For a simple example try to describe “Love.” You can’t do it objectively.
          Our human nature always resorts to feelings and symbols when objective effort fail us. Joel did it as he described with the imagery the recovery of Judah and Rule of God after a plague that had swept the land (vv28-29), “Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves in those days, I will pour out my spirit.”
          John of Patmos did it with fantastic images in Revelation that were powerfully meaningful to the time of his congregation to communicate the imperative to worship the life-giving, transcendent God and the power of the Holy Spirit.  

John’s ancient revelation captures the essence of worthy worship.  John painted a verbal image of the infinite power of a Divine Redeemer of all created order, as a mercilessly slaughtered lamb, sitting on a throne surrounded by terrifying creatures with the Book of Life before him sealed closed with John weeping bitterly because no one could open the great book (vv11-14).  “Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and the elders; they numbered myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, singing with full voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was mercilessly slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” Then… I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing, “To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” And the elders fell down and worshiped.”

          John feels the very pillars of Heaven, its floors and doorposts trembling under the roar of praise of this cosmic choir. Centuries later George Handel read this passage and he created one of the most powerful choruses in the Messiah, “Worthy is The Lamb.” It begins with a deafening crescendo, “Worth is the Lamb that was slain and has delivered us to God by his blood.”

How do we worship in a worthy way today?  The point of the Book of Order, Psalm 8 and John of Patmos, and Handel is:  joyfully ascribes all praise and honor, glory and power to the triune God. At its core, worship is a self-giving, symbolic, celebratory experience of the power of God acknowledging everything we have is a gift from God, on loan. To understand demands a humility that transforms us. 

Worthy worship is collaborative public prayer and song wherein we all strive to communicate and balance our own particular experience of God (revelation) with each other, and in this way we create a space for others to receive the Holy Spirit. Everything about worship is God revealing who is God and how God relates to the world by the created order - the vista of beauty, flowers in the field, lovers walking hand in hand in the park; stars in the sky; murals and beautiful cathedrals and musical cantatas like The Messiah; through the history of God’s covenant with humanity described and reveals in the Scriptures such as the passage in Joel; and ultimately through Jesus Christ by whom the whole of God became one with the world in one person and redeemed the world.  The Holy Spirit reveals that our faith in God’s trustworthiness in these three things is justified.

If we leave worship and do not carry with us the sense that we have experienced the indescribably divine during worship, then not only have we failed to achieve true (worthy) worship of God, we have failed our brothers and sisters, visitors and members.

It is a solemn responsibility to enter worship with our friends in a quiet room in prayer, or with a loudly sung song, even a rap song, honoring God, listening to the scriptures read to us and to its proclamation in preaching, and in the symbolic participation with God in the sacraments we partake. We are listening for God’s voice.   If we say afterwards, “ I just do not know how I can explain to you how I feel about it, it was like….” Then we have had a fruitful worship experience that captures the immensity of God.

I am not sure how else one can capture the essence of an all-powerful God transcending all existence than as a little lamb coming to us and being mercilessly slaughtered by our sin to redeem all of creation – the unimaginable becoming imaginable as outrageous and ultimate love.

Scripture tells us God has redeemed us to life eternal.  Like the “Big Bang,” redemption is completed, signed, sealed and delivered. God’s claim to victory is a present reality… all that is left worthy to do for every living thing in Heaven, on Earth, in the sea and under the Earth is to worship and proclaim, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to deliver us to God. He is risen. Peace be with you, The Lord is with you.”  May your life be worship of God. AMEN.