Sermon: Night Sky

Sermon Text: Night Sky

I still remember the weirdest phone call I ever got.

We lived out near Chicago and I was in seminary. The phone rang, and I picked it up. A voice said, “Is this Mark Giroux?” I said yes. The voice said, “This is Mark Giroux.”

That felt weird! Turns out the other Mark Giroux was a grad student in astronomy at Northwestern University. I was getting some of his mail by mistake.
 
Well, science was never my best subject...music was. I never would have ended up as an astronomer. That other Mark Giroux did...I’ve seen him on the internet. However, like that other Mark Giroux, I am fascinated by the night sky.
 
All my life I have loved being outdoors in the winter on cold, clear nights with a moon. The light of moon and stars on the snow is magical. It’s like walking around inside a dream. It cast a spell on me.
 
And I’ve done a little reading about astronomy, cosmology and the universe. Turns out that I’m made of stardust. Literally. And so are you. It has been proven that the elements of which our bodies are formed were forged in the stars of our galaxy. So you and I and everyone we meet is made of stardust. Scientific fact. Makes me want to treat people with more respect.
 
And then there is the size of the whole thing. Picture our entire planet, all 8000 miles of diameter, as a microscopic dot. On that scale, the sun would be the size of a little dust mote floating in a beam of light. On that scale, the solar system would be the size of a saucer. The solar system would be a set of microscopic motes circling the sun mote in this little disk you could hold in your hand.

And on that scale, the nearest star would be another dust mote floating one or two city blocks away. There would be no dust motes in between. Every one or two blocks, we would encounter another tiny grain of dust. And these dust grains would be the stars of our night sky.
 
Now, on that scale, if we back off far enough, we would see over a hundred billion glowing dust motes in a vast disk. That vast disk of glowing specks would be the size of North America. And that system of stars is called a galaxy. So if we imagine our solar system as the size of a tea saucer, our galaxy would be the size of North America. And the universe is full of billions of galaxies for as far as we can see with our telescopes.
 
And if you’re like me, by now your head is spinning. It’s just all too big to hold in our heads. I am no astronomer, like that other Mark Giroux is, but all this casts a spell on me.
 
Have you ever looked up at a night sky and had your breath taken away? I said music was more my subject than science. Well, the Book of Psalms is a collection of song lyrics. The Book of Psalms is the Bible’s song book. And one musician looked at the majesty of the night sky and wrote words for us to use:
 
“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars you have set in their courses,
what is man that you should be mindful of him?
the son of man that you should seek him out?”
 
It’s all so huge, and we are so small. Reminds me of the old fisherman’s prayer:  “O God, be good to me...your sea is so great and my boat is so small.”
 
In the 19th century, a Scottish historian named Thomas Carlyle wrote, “Wonder is the basis of worship.” Joseph Campbell, the great teacher of mythology, wrote, “The first service of a mythology is that of opening the mind and heart to the utter wonder of all being.” And from our own tradition, the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, who served as archbishop during the Second World War. He wrote, “unless the rising of the sun reveals God, the rising of the Son of Man from the dead cannot reveal God.”
 
So the universe is unimaginably huge. The universe is stunningly beautiful. And we are very small. And we are sometimes frail and broken. But the Creed we say together week by week tells us that the One who made it all made us, too. We, too, are the work of those fingers. And we have been made a part of it all by the Love which holds everything in being.
 
We certainly do not have all the answers. But Psalm 8 says that we have a special place in all of it:  “You have made us but little lower than the angels; you adorn us with glory and honor.” You and I have been honored by the gifts of intelligence and awareness and love. It seems to me that we should use these gifts with care. Our track record of caring for creation is not very good. We can make it better.
 
Unlike that other Mark Giroux, I am not an expert on stars and galaxies and nebulae. I don’t really know how radio telescopes work. I’m still not sure I understand how parallax works in calculating cosmic size and distance. I am not an astronomer.
 
But I do think it is my duty as a person of faith to look up. I should sometimes go outside on cold clear nights and look up. And then I will be moved to worship more deeply and more profoundly. The sky calls to us. Heaven speaks to us. The least we can do is listen, and look.
 
“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars you have set in their courses,
who are we that you should keep us in mind?
mortal flesh that you should seek us out?
You have made us but little lower than the angels;
you adorn us with glory and honor.”
 
Amen, and Amen.