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Copied on the front of the bulletin were verses from Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem, “Charged with Grandeur.” A globe was placed on a table near the front, emphasizing human’s place in the world. Video footage from NASA accompanied the sermon in order to reinforce how we are called to claim our vocation as stewards of creation. Images of an old car and glimpses of the Earth from space were also used as visuals.

Go outside tonight. Go out and look up into the sky. Go out and see the majesty of God’s creation. Find a place that is dark enough so that you can see what the psalmist saw. Look up into the heavens, and get lost in wonder.

Not long ago, scientists at NASA discovered what paparazzi have been hunting: young adolescent stars. But I’ll give you a clue: Their names were not Justin Bieber or Selena Gomez. The pictures are out of this world, however.

Here’s what they found.

Thanks to the Hubble telescope, elegant galaxies billions and billions of years away from the Earth have popped into view. For the last decade, Hubble has been snapping up photographs of these galaxies like a celebrity-chasing photographer. The views are stunning.

And now they are more colorful than ever. Previously, the deep-space images were only captured in the satellite’s near-infrared capability. But recently scientists added ultraviolet light to the images — creating the most detailed and vibrant space photograph ever.1

This image is not wide, but it is infinitely deep — it stretches back to just a few hundred million years after the big bang. What you see in this image are stars in their early years of formation. These stars were forming five to ten billion years ago. (A slide of the image was projected on a screen.)

Let that stay with you, and hear again Psalm 8:

O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the Earth. You have set your glory above the heavens, out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them?

Look at the sky.

It is indeed a reminder of what Gerard Manley Hopkins once wrote: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”2

NASA also recently released a video of another spectacular space event. This video3 shows the eruption of a massive solar flare. Solar flares — also known as coronal mass ejections — are fairly routine events. What is amazing about this video is that it was the first time a solar satellite had recorded an eruption. The IRIS (Interface Region Imaging Spectograph) satellite captured the event last month. Look at this explosion. (A video of the explosion was shown.)

This eruption moved at about 1.5 million miles per hour, so obviously NASA has slowed it down to reveal the details. It was equal to five Earths in width and seven and a half Earths in height.

God’s galaxies stir our hearts, prompting us to be filled with wonder. Like the psalmist, we may exclaim, “What are human beings that you are mindful of them?” Or, as a character in John Green’s book The Fault in Our Stars4 says, “some infinities are bigger than other infinities.”

Both the creation account in Genesis 1 and Psalm 8 stir our hearts because they remind us first of God’s great love toward human beings. God takes notice of us. According to Genesis, God delights in creation, calling it good, blessing it in love. The psalm reminds us that God is not unattached or removed from creation. God not only cares for creation, God cares for each part of creation. God cares for me. God cares for you.

We bear the image of God in every breath we take. In Jesus Christ, we behold God’s love for us and that is very, very good news.

That is what the psalmist affirms: We are only a little lower than God. One of the joys of ministry is helping people reflect on that idea, but it comes with a hard challenge. Our challenge is to remember that not only is the world charged with the grandeur of God, but also that God gives human beings authority in creation. “You have given them dominion over the works of your hands.” And it seems to me that one of our purposes as a church — one of the things that God has called us to do in Jesus Christ — is to help people reclaim that identity.

In the Jewish tradition, part of that work has become called tikkun olam, or “healing the world.” That is the identity we need to reclaim. We need to reclaim our calling to bring healing to the Earth because we have lost track of what it means to “have dominion.” In terms of the environment, we have spoiled God’s creation by acts of selfishness and unthoughtful ways of caring. We have declared that “having dominion” means being in charge. It has been translated as being owners, not stewards. But the psalmist understood things differently. Dominion was not domination — dominion was participating as God’s agent, to act as God would act.

As the psalmist suggests, when we stare into space, when we see the stars and the infinite gap between humans and our Creator, we realize that our work is to declare, “How majestic is your name in all the Earth!”

God is love. God acts in loving and merciful ways. God looks at creation, at all that exists and proclaims it good. To have dominion means that we remember God’s covenant, and that we act in ways that do not exalt ourselves over other aspects of creation. We remember that we are in relationship with all of creation. It is that important.

So look at creation. See it for the incredible mystery that it is. At that moment, in the face of its beauty, ask yourself, “What does it mean for us to bear the image of God in this world?”

It makes a difference how we answer that question. One way to answer it is to say that by bearing the image of God in the world, we exercise complete control over the Earth. Dominion has been given to us, so let’s dominate! But if we believe we are in complete control of the Earth, then I believe we are going to be greatly mistaken.

At seventeen, I believed that all my problems had been solved as my parents dropped the keys to a 1977 Plymouth Fury into my hands. Do you know how many people you can fit inside a Plymouth Fury? This car was the size of Lake Michigan. Six large adults could sit comfortably inside of it, which translated into about ten teenagers, depending on how friendly they were. And with the keys in my hands, I knew I was in charge.

Where did I go? I loaded the car with my friends and went to Disneyland! I was in charge!

But then the car fell apart, so I decided that the answer was to go to college so I could get a job so I could fix my problems. But after college and seminary, I got married, and then we had a couple of children, and all we could afford was another old car. Then I decided that my problems would be fixed as soon as the kids got older — but then they got older and pretty soon I was the one handing the keys to a clunky old car into the hands of a teenager, praying it wouldn’t fall apart.

The point is, it’s a fallacy to think that because we’re in charge humans can do anything we want, or that God is not concerned with how we care for creation. Did you hear recently that so much trash has accumulated on Mt. Everest that some climbers have called it the world’s highest dump? Or have you heard about the floating islands of plastic that fill our oceans?

And yet God is mindful of us.

Our understanding of being made in the image of God and acting as God’s stewards needs to be reconsidered. If we think we are the owners of creation — if we think that being in charge will solve our problems, then why worry about it? We can always fix it later. But sooner or later we discover that the world is not ours to trample, and that only as we stand in relationship with all creation will we fulfill what God yearns for us. We were created in God’s image — and called to bear that image in the world.

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” so let us bear that image in all we do. Amen.

__________

1. http://www.engadget.com/2014/06/06/hubble-deep-space2014/ accessed 25 June 2014.
2. Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur.”
3. See http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/iris/
4. John Green, The Fault in Our Stars (New York: Dutton Penguin Publishers, 2012), p. 189.

Questions for Reflection

1. Working in pairs, read Psalm 8 together, alternating verses. What new ideas are prompted by hearing the psalm read this way? The psalm is structured so that it guides the readers from the act of praising God toward the exploration of human vocation, and then back to an acclamation of praise.

2. Psalm 8 has been described as a “psalm for stargazers.” It captures the experience of discovering the distance between God’s grandeur and the seeming insignificance of a human being. Does worship provide you with a chance to glance at God’s grandeur?

3. Humans are given a profound vocation. How does your congregation communicate the good news that people matter?

4. Review Deuteronomy 17:14-20 which outlines the limits of royal power. What do these limits suggest about dominion being a sacred responsibility rather than an invitation to exploit as desired?

Take Action

1. Consider planting a community garden. Involve the congregation in the planning and logistics, and recruit assistance from neighbors. Link the garden to the human vocation of caring for each other by growing produce for a local food pantry.

2. Another possible activity is to build a greenhouse using recycled plastic soda bottles. There are numerous websites that provide instructions and illustrations of this activity. If your church lacks space, contact one of your denomination’s camp or retreat centers to see if they would consider allowing you to build a greenhouse.