Telling the Name

       “Galileo is like a Mexican soap opera.  It never ends.” 

       That insight was delivered in September by Monsignor Melchor Sanchez de Toca of the Vatican Council for Culture.  Four hundred years after the Inquisition condemned Galileo Galileli for heresy; the Vatican is currently debating whether it’s appropriate to accept the gift of a statue of the astronomer to place in the Vatican.   

       The whole issue started in 1543 when a Polish clergyman published a book which revolutionized the world --of science.  The church held as an article of Christian faith that the earth is the center of the universe.  But this clergyman knew that the universe does not revolve around the earth at all.  He showed that the earth is one of a number of planets in orbit around the sun.  His name? The Rev. Nicholas Copernicus.   Just two days ago scientists used DNA information from hairs found in a book that belonged to Copernicus to identify his bones.  He was buried in a cathedral in  Poland.

       In 1633, ninety years after Copernicus wrote, Galileo was put on trial by the Roman church for supporting Copernicus.   He eventually plead guilty to “suspicion of heresy’ and was sentenced to a term of imprisonment in a nobleman’s villa in Tuscany.  It could have been worse.  If I ever go to prison, I want to go there.  But it was bad enough.  Galileo was a deeply committed Christian who was wronged by his church.  I say, “Put up the statue.”

       At the trial the inquisitor’s used Psalm 19 verse 6 as evidence against Galileo:  "It (the sun) rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other.”  To them that was proof positive that the sun orbits the earth. 

       Of course that's a misuse of scripture.  Psalm 19 is poetry and poetry is not science -- any more than Carl Sandberg's "The fog drifts in on little cat's feet and sits on silent haunches" has anything to say about meteorology, the science of weather.  The psalm, like the poem, is not concerned with what things are but how things feel.

       The psalmist looks at the cosmos and sees behind it the hand of its creator.  The psalmist sees the sun as a bridegroom traveling to greet his bride in the tent of the sea.  But the psalmist's purpose is to praise the God who set up the tent and who supplies the groom with a bride.  This psalm reflects Paul's words in Romans 1:18: that God's eternal power and deity are "clearly perceived in the things that have been made."    

       Different ages of human history need for different reasons to be reminded of the hand of the creator behind the creation.  Ancient pagans were tempted to worship the creation in place of the creator --"kissing their hand to sun and moon" as Job 31 phrases it.  Some moderns are tempted to way beyond Galileo and explain the created order as simply a fortunate accident.  Or, at the other extreme, to revert like the ancient pagans to astrology and believe themselves ruled by the heavenly spheres and worship mother earth.

       Only the people who know the Lord look at the stars and planets and are moved to wonder and joy at the thought of their maker.

       Elizabeth Barret Browning wrote:
       “Earth's crammed with heaven and every common bush aflame with God;

         But only those who see take off their shoes,

         The rest sit around and pluck blackberries."

       Today is Thanksgiving Sunday.  A little later in the service we will have the opportunity to express our thanks to God and one another.  Some of the things we are thankful for are deeply personal.  Others, like the created world are there for anyone to see who cares to see God’s hand. 

       Share.  As Christians, we have no business missing the wonder in all of life and expressing our thanks.  We need to see our Father's hand in the splendid nighttime sky and in the patient guidance we have seen in our own lives.

       That isn’t easy to do in this culture.  An Indian from the mountains of Mexico had, for some reason, been brought to New York City. He described New York as "the place where people don't see the sky."  It it's not because of the tall buildings.  It's because they don't look up.  They go about their business, avoiding eye contact with strangers, thinking that their sidewalk is the whole world.  Makes you wonder what he'd say about L.A.

       God preserve us from such narrow views of life. The psalmist writes:  "Day to day pours forth speech and night to night declares knowledge."  But no one can hear the voice of the heavens with his ears.  We hear it with the heart and with the eyes.

       Galileo's trial was an early round in the unfortunate and unnecessary war that was to rage between theologians and natural scientists.  We've had skirmishes and pitched battles in our own era between "Bible and science."  The conflict has been worked out in the pulpit, in scientific seminars, often in college classrooms and, increasingly, in the courtroom.

       This split grew -- and in some places still grows - out of two roots.  The first root is the simplistic use of biblical texts to try to answer complex scientific questions.  The second root is the tendency of some scientists and quasi-scientists to embrace the religion of scientism – the belief that science can move from the how of things to the why of life and assume ultimate authority on the nature and purpose of human life.

       There is a marvelous scene in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia where Lucy sees the lion Aslan, the Christ image in the stories.  A period of time has elapsed since their last meeting.

       "Welcome child," he said.

       "Aslan," said Lucy, "you're bigger."

       "That is because you are older, little one," answered he.

       "Not because you are?"

       "I am not.  But every year you grow, you will find me bigger."

       Every year we grow, we will find Jesus bigger.

       There are many ways of growing. Far from discouraging true science, Psalm 19 pushes it on. "The heavens declare the glory of God."  God is seen in what He has made and His hand is there for us to discover.  Science will find nothing that is not there by the hand of God.  No matter how far a Voyager goes and no matter how awesome the pictures the Hubbell telescope sends back, it is God's universe that we see.

       Our science helps us to grow and ought to make Jesus Christ ever bigger in our understanding.  Science is a use of the gifts of curiosity and intellect God has given.  God approves of and even encourages our science.  But we do need to be careful how we interpret what we find.

       A columnist wrote in the London Observer:  "Imagine a family of mice who lived all their lives in a large piano.  To them in their piano-world came the music of the instrument, filling all the dark spaces with sound and harmony.  At first the mice were impressed by it. They drew wonder and comfort from the thought that there was someone who made the music -- though invisible to them -- above, yet very close to them.  They loved to think of the great player whom they could not see.

       "Then one day a daring mouse climbed up part of the piano and returned very thoughtful.  He had found out how the music was made.  Wires were the secret --tightly stretched wires of graduated lengths which trembled and vibrated.  They must revise all their old beliefs.  None but the most conservative could any longer believe in the unseen player.

       "Later, another explorer carried the explanation further.  Hammers were now the secret -- numbers of hammers dancing and leaping on the wires.  This was a more complicated theory, but it all went to show that they lived in a purely mechanical and mathematical world.  The unseen player came to be thought of as a myth.

        But the pianist continued to play."

       Thinking that the universe is only mechanical can lead us in the strangest directions.  Some years ago an Iowa State University mathematics professor named Alexander Abian proposed blowing up the moon with nuclear weapons in order to reduce the earth's tilt and improve the global climate.

       I want you to listen to what Abian said.  It’s classic.  "From the earliest traces of primate fossils some 70 million years ago, no one but no one has ever raised the finger of defiance to the celestial organization.  We have been like blind slaves obediently being rotated without our consent.”

       Who would dare rotate us without our consent?

       Abian's proposal and the arrogance that shapes it is a good example of the true issues between the science attitude of faith -- and there are many, scientists who are deeply committed Christians -- and the science attitude of atheism.  If there is no pianist, we are free to chew through whichever piano wires we choose.  But if there is a pianist, we'd better be careful before we mess with his instrument.  It’s all designed for a purpose. 

       Any competent earth scientist could have told Abian that the large moon makes life possible on earth.  We have been stabilized by the moon and so we have not experienced the polar shifts that doomed the chances of any sustained life on Mars.   Just yesterday NASA announced the discovery of a huge deposit of ice under the surface of Mars – larger than the Great Lakes.  That’s where the surface water went when the pole shifted.

       The problem with people like Abian is not science but scientism -- not what is discovered but the interpretation of the meaning of the discovery -- and therefore our freedom to mess with it.  For the mystery of creation is not only in the how of things.  The greatest mystery is in the why and the Whom.

       Psalm 19 keeps us from thinking that observation is an end in itself -- seeing a closed universe with no room for its Creator – making the universe impersonal.

       The careful observation of nature helps keeps us from thinking that God is only personal -- that the God we serve is somehow like the deities of the Greek legend -- moving and acting according to whim, spite, jealousy, rage, lust and carelessness.

       The universe shows us that God is not a flake.  The cosmos reveals a creator who is complex, balanced, subtle and intelligent -- who moves according to firm laws and purposes -in the universe we discover a god of planning, harmony and order -- vast in his sweep and purposes.

       We have a God who shows us himself in nature.  We have a god who communicates his will for human life through his law – that’s the second half of this psalm.

       Knowing God in these ways -- and especially through His supreme self-disclosure of sacrificial love in Jesus Christ -- what do we do?  Do we say, "Oh, that's nice" and walk away?   Do we just pick blackberries?

       No.  We respond.

       We respond by rejoicing in what God has made.  We respond by living by God's word and trusting His love and goodness towards us.  We live in wonder and with a humble desire to live our lives in obedience to the great God who cares for us so deeply.  We take the time to truly see what God has made and what God has done and applaud.

       Praise is for sharing.

       So let us tell God’s name to one another.   What has God done that you are thankful for this morning?

Open sharing