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Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Fr. J. D. Ousley
30 November 2008M5.25“Life on the Edge”
In the Name of God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen.
The season of Advent, which begins today, considers Christian beliefs about what are called "the Last Things." The last things include Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell.
The Second Lesson today promises, for example, that "God will strengthen you to the end so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ." These end times will herald the conclusion of the journey mentioned in the Gospel lesson: "the day of Jesus Christ" when the Messiah will reappear in triumph.
And the Gospel also reveals signs of these Last Days, when "the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven ..."
While such speculations are inspired by the religious imagination, it’s interesting to note that this last astronomical prophecy seems to have been confirmed with surprising accuracy by modern science.
We learn from science that the sun is a star. Stars are made up of burning gases that will eventually be exhausted. The stars will burn themselves out. So one day, they will, in a sense, "fall from the sky."
The physical sciences also tell us that the whole universe will one day run out of energy and will likely collapse upon itself. Thus the ancient biblical prophecies were right when they predicted that the world would one day come to an end.
Of course, modern science doesn't describe the Last Things in the same words that our ancestors used; science has its own visionary language of "black holes" and "the law of entropy" and "heat death." But we can agree with the Old and New Testaments that Planet Earth and all the other heavenly bodies will one day cease to exist.
At the time of Jesus, of course, people had a powerful sense of the fragility of the physical world. The average life span then was barely thirty years; for people in those days, death from illness or starvation or political persecution might come at any time.
Those existential threats led to ideas about what would come after death. The early Christians wondered how would they be judged on "the Day of Jesus Christ."
It was only one step further for them to wonder about the end of everything around them. When the sun was darkened and the stars fell from the sky, what would God do for his people?
Thus the faith of the early Christians had an edge. They could never pretend that life would go on blissfully forever. Even seemingly eternal forces of nature like the sun and the moon and the stars would someone disappear.
Today, we possess scientific proof that their ancient fear was valid. The Final Judgment won't come right away, but eventually, in billions of years, the sun will darken, and the moon — which we know now glows with reflected light from the sun — will also darken, and the stars will burn out and "fall from the sky." While this won't happen tomorrow, it will occur at some time in the future.
In this regard, it's interesting that unreligious people today who claim not to be interested in the Last Things that Christians talk about sometimes get very disturbed by the scientific version of the "end of the world." They become anxious because they think that the ultimate disappearance of the physical world means that human existence now is meaningless.
If the universe will one day disintegrate into cold dust, nothing that we human beings do will be preserved. All monuments, all legacies and all writings, even all ideas will one day vanish.
Of course, the ultimate heat death of the universe is millions of human lifetimes away; meanwhile, wars and terror rage across our planet, and the financial markets of Wall Street are in turmoil. So we have more immediate worries!
Yet the worldview of modern science reminds all of us — religious or not — of the nature of the human condition. The universe is always in flux. Even international bankers face a world in which their powers aren't ultimate.
Christians have learned an additional lesson from their prophetic insight that God gives the universe a beginning and an end. We realize that, as the Letter to the Hebrews observed long ago, "We have no continuing city ..." Because the world around us is "passing away," our ultimate hope can only be placed in the eternal God.
But this hope — this understanding that, as the spiritual says, God has "got the whole world in his hands" — this Christian hope has a curious power to soften the edginess of life.
So, in today's First Lesson, we heard these words from the Prophet Isaiah, "We are the clay and you are our potter. We are all the work of your hand."
Isaiah is addressing God, our Creator, who formed us out of clay and dust. But notice what a different worldview this passage reflects.
This worldview is good news of God's world. We are not random collections of atoms, tossed up by a purposeless universe and destined sooner or later to vanish forever. Instead Christians believe that we are creatures evolving from a process that was brought into being by a divine Creator. That process will continue until the purposes of God are realized on earth and the Last Judgment inaugurates the final, eternal transformation of the universe.
The baptisms we will celebrate in a moment will embody in a most vivid way these abstract philosophical beliefs. As Morgan and Ellyana are brought back from the font today with the water of baptism still glistening on their foreheads, their journey in faith will begin. And this first step is at the same time an initiation into the cosmic Last Things.
By virtue of their baptisms, they will receive a spiritual link with the hidden creative process that upholds the universe. In their souls, they will be touched by the generous divine Spirit — the Spirit whom their parents already know and give thanks for.
Ellyana and Morgan will be protected from the uncertainties of life. They will begin their mystical journey into God's future, and they will receive "the gift of joy and wonder in all God's works."
Amen.