The Intimate Infinite
Job 38:1-11
Sermon delivered Sunday, June 21, 2009
by Rev. Patricia Pearce
Our reading this morning from the Hebrew Scriptures is taken - as we've already heard - from the book of Job. This, as we all are probably aware, is an account of a struggle. The fancy word is "theodicy." It's: Why do bad things happen to good people? Job is a good person. And through this book of course he's wrestling with this question. His friends come and wrestle with him, and they're not very much help. And here is, finally, towards the end of the book of Job, the response, when God finally comes out of silence to address Job in his struggles.
I'll be reading from the 38th chapter, beginning with verse one:
"Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: 'Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man; I will question you, and you shall declare to me. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know. Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb? When I made the cloud its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed bounds for it and bars and set doors and said thus far shall you come and no farther. And here shall your proud waves be stopped. Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place?'"
{prayer}
I think many of us have probably struggled with Job's question, at some point in our lives, when things are happening that don't seem fair. And we struggle to understand how this could be. How can God allow these things to happen? We wrestle with these questions and I think the more we wrestle with those questions, the smaller sometimes our world-view becomes, the more focused we become on our own individual story, trying to make sense of it, trying to sort it out. We find ourselves sort of in this tension between what we experience in our own lives, and what we perceive ought to be. There is this experience in the life of faith, where we go through these encounters, and every now and then - and I think Job was blessed by one of these moments - every now and then we get a little glimmer of this magnificence that we are part of. This incredible unfolding of life. This amazing unfolding of a universe that we are part of. And in those moments when we get those little glimmers, suddenly things shift. We find ourselves no longer focused on our own stories, our own struggles, our own need to understand. And we find that we are, in fact, overwhelmed by something that will always be beyond the powers of our comprehension.
I invite all of us to just take a minute. Maybe close your eyes. And take yourself to some moment in your own life, when you sensed the incredible mystery, and miracle, and power of the Ultimate.
In this book of Job, we see the writer attempting to convey the grandeur of God, using of course the cosmology of their day - their understanding of the way the world was. In our day, the thing that comes to my mind are those incredible images we have from the Hubble telescope. Just let your mind take in - now, we probably don't remember the details but I'm sure we've all seen those amazing images of nebulae. These incredible clouds of color. Immense. Out in the far reaches of the galaxy. And imagine if we were writing Job today, how we would express the poetry of that. Of this amazing universe.
We have often, as human beings, wanted to believe that we are at the center of the universe. And of course, that was what got Copernicus and Galileo in trouble, when they insisted that in fact the earth revolves around the sun rather than the other way around. Shook the church up. We want to be in the center of the universe. And yet, when we are in the presence of those moments of mystery, we know that we are so small.
In the Mark passage, when we see Jesus interacting with the storm, we see another part of this spectrum. There's this enormous, magnificent, overwhelming grandeur of God. But then there is this intimate encounter of human with the powers of nature. They in fact are not separate. Jesus is in relationship with the forces of nature. And I believe that is the paradox that we live within. There is this mystery that we can never comprehend, that is always beyond us, and yet, it is a mystery that is in intimate relationship with us. And that, in fact, is what we celebrate when we celebrate the sacrament of baptism. That this amazing power, this amazing force, that is behind these swirling galaxies and nebulae, is in intimate relationship with us. We think so dualistically. Either God is big and vast, and doesn't care for us, or else somehow the God that we understand isn't the God of the galaxies.
I want to share with you - this is a little scientific factoid that I recently learned, that I find interesting. We are aware, of course, of the enormity of the universe. But I discovered that there is a way in which we are at the center of the universe. So we can still hang on to that! And this is how: Human beings (I recently read this) -- in our size scale -- we are at the center of the size spectrum of the known universe. In other words, the expansiveness of the universe beyond us is equivalent to the expansive of sub-atomic dimensions within us. In other words, the distance that we can measure of the known universe is just as expansive that way as the distance that we can measure to the smallest - what is called the Planck distance, the sub-atomic, the smallest measurable distance. So, this writer that I was reading said, "We are giants." We are giants.
I had a little inkling of that when I was walking to work one day this past week, walking on the sidewalk, and I saw a little ant. And I thought, my gosh, imagine: these poor ants! With us roaming around on this planet. I mean, my foot is the size of a shopping mall to that ant. And here we are: Boom! Boom! These enormous creatures!
God cares for the ant. God is in intimate relationship with the quark. Because all that we perceive and all that we are and all that we experience is God. It is not possible for God to withdraw from us. It is not possible. Because we are in God. We are part of this Divine whole.
And so, as we celebrate this amazing paradox of this universe and this reality that is beyond our understanding, let us also celebrate the fact that we are in this intimate relationship with this mystery that is always, always beyond our ability to comprehend.
© 2009 by Patricia Pearce
