The Witness Of Being
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series I, Cycle A
Things are. The world is. The universe, whatever that is, is. I am. You are. That didn't just happen. Some people believe that is the result of an awesome succession of accidents but I just can't believe that. All of this didn't just happen. It must have been the result of some kind of a miracle. And if there was a miracle, there must be some miracle worker. Nothing that Darwin or anyone else has discovered can deny that. As a matter of fact, for those who are perceptive, the discoveries of modern science only affirm the miracle and lead us to gaze in reverent awe into the wonders of the world around us and to be very aware that some greater reality, one too great to be contained within our little thoughts and doctrines, must have made it all happen.
That really is the message of the first chapter of the Bible. God created. And the creation witnesses to the reality of the creator.
That is a message that we need to hear when we are feeling lost and alone in a world that seems flat and indifferent. Then we may have a deep yearning to get in touch with some greater reality that can give it all meaning. Our skeptical culture tells us that the only things that are real are things that can be seen or touched. But the very existence of the things we can see and touch points to the existence of some other reality, an invisible reality, that brought all of this into being and keeps it working. That in itself is not all that we need to bring us into a life--fulfilling relationship with God. But it is a starting place. At least it helps us to see, when we are inclined to doubt, that there is something - or someone - out there, someone with whom we must have some kind of a relationship.
The apparent conflicts between science and religion continue to torment many people. Scientific method demands that scientists require empirical evidence, proof based on things you can see and touch, before they can claim scientific proof of any finding. That scientific method has served scientists and society well. Religious people, on the other hand, learn a lot from experience and from revelation. Those sources of knowledge have served religious people and society well. Some scientists and some religionists are so imprisoned within their own ways of thinking that they cannot appreciate the other's way of thinking. They are bound to come into conflict. But there are lots of competent scientists who practice the scientific method in their work but who are spiritual persons in their lives as a whole. They are open to the leading of experience and revelation. These people often find in the discoveries of science ever expanding demonstrations of the reality of God. It moves many of them to great reverence.
A certain sophisticated geophysicist, who was a committed Christian, was talking one day to his sister who was also a committed Christian, but of a different theological persuasion. He made mention of the movement of the tectonic plates that gave shape to the land masses of the earth. His sister retorted that she didn't believe in that because it didn't fit into her understanding of how the world was created. The geophysicist remembered that his sister had only recently talked at length about her belief in miracles of healing. He asked, "Why is it that you can believe in the little miracles but not in the big ones?" That was how he felt about it.
David Wilkerson is a clergyman in the English Methodist Church. He is also an accomplished scientist who has won recognition for his work in the field of astronomy. He was asked to address an assembly of church leaders from around the world. He responded with a multimedia presentation using a videotape prepared for the purpose.
The tape started with a picture of a young family enjoying a picnic in a park. Then it was as if the camera withdrew into space showing increasingly broad perspectives on the surroundings of the family in the park. The viewers were shown the rest of the city, and the countryside, and the various eco--systems that were surrounding the family. The camera continued to withdraw until it showed the earth spinning in its delicate balance of motion and gravity with all of the other planets. It continued to withdraw until it showed the other galaxies that surround our solar system and finally the pictures most recently sent back by the Hubble telescope of the most distant galaxies just this side of the unknown infinity beyond.
Then the camera seemed to return by stages to the family in the park. But it didn't stop. Its journey was not over. It seemed to move into the bodies of the family members, exploring the intricate systems that worked to keep them alive, and finally exploring the cell structure of their bodies, the DNA that transmitted genetic characteristics, and finally the atomic structure of the matter of which everything was made.
By the time the camera returned the viewers to the family in the park, everyone was well aware that they had been on a tour of something miraculous and were caught up in awe of the creation and of the witness that the creation makes.1
It is true that a person with too small a concept of God might be forced by the findings of science to stretch his understanding. An astronomer gazing into his telescope might well remember the words of the psalmist, "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, mortals that you care for them?" (Psalm 8:3--4). Then he might think, that psalmist didn't know the half of it, and his reverence would deepen, not diminish.
The creation bears a witness to the existence of the creator. That can change the way we think about a lot of things. For instance, one who has grown accustomed to living just in terms of what can be seen and touched may find it hard to believe that there is anything more for us after death. But one who sees the tangible world as a witness to the creator is more likely to think, "If God created all of this and gave us life in this world, then God can certainly do whatever God chooses to do with us beyond this life."
The most important thing that we can learn from the witness of the creation is that there is more than just what we can see and touch. There is someone who is invisible, who is even more real than the things we can see and touch because that someone gave being to the things we can see and touch. That is a place to start in our relationship with God.
No, it is not a place to stop. It is not enough. If we are going to move into a relationship with God that will meet the deep spiritual needs of our lives, we will need more. We will need to find ourselves in relationship with that great invisible other. We will need to discover that our own interactions with life are, in one way or another, interactions with God. The people whose stories are told in the Hebrew Scriptures learned to experience God through their experiences with life.
We need even more. We need some revelation to show us what God is like and how God relates to us and how we ought to respond to God. The French existentialist writer, Albert Camus, learned to think of God as one who relates to us through our interactions with life. But, during his service in the French underground during the Second World War, he saw so much destruction and suffering that he came to believe that God must be a murderer. He responded by living in cynicism and rebellion. Is that the truth about God? If that is not what God is like, then what should we think of God? We need some revelation to help us know the great other who created all things and who meets us in the experiences of our lives.
Christians believe that God responded to that need by intentionally sending Jesus Christ to help us to know God. Jesus has shown us that God is one who loves us and is continually reaching out to us to save us. Jesus has shown us that the right way to live in response to God's love is to trust God's love and to live in a loving relationship with everything in life. There is reason to believe that, late in his life, Albert Camus came under the influence of a Christian witness and came to see God in a different way. That must have been a wonderful experience.
But even that is not enough. Remembering that a revelation was made at some time in the past may not meet our present needs. We need to find our ways into a personal relationship with the living God so that we can experience all of our interactions with life as interactions with one who loves us. Does God reach out to us in some special way to help us find our way into that personal relationship with God?
On the church calendar, this is called Trinity Sunday. That is the Sunday on which we remember that God can be known as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That is a puzzling teaching for lots of people. That is because we keep trying to make it more complicated than it needs to be. The doctrine of the Trinity simply means that God keeps reaching out to us to lead us into the kind of relationship with God that we need. God makes God's self known to us as the Father, one who gives being and lives in constant relationship with us. It is to this aspect of God's being that the creation makes its witness. Because of the witness of the creation, we can know that we are dealing with a reality. God also makes God's self known to us through the Son, Jesus, one like ourselves, whom God sent to show us that God is one who loves us. Finally God comes to be with us in a real way every day as the Holy Spirit. God does that so that we can know that the one who created and the one who loves is also one who is with us every moment of every day, living in a relationship with us that can shape our lives if we will let it.
We all need that kind of a complete relationship with God. Most of us are still trying to find our ways into it. Sometimes we feel closer to God and sometimes we feel that we are far away. But if, during those times when we feel far from God, we begin to wonder whether the whole thing is just the product of someone's imagination, then we always have the witness of the created world to fall back on. The creation witnesses to the existence of the creator. Our very being tells us that there must be someone out there - and that is a place to start.
If we learn to appreciate the wonder and beauty of being, the witness becomes even more profound. A pastor was called to a hospital late one afternoon to visit an elderly church member who had just been taken into the emergency room. It was Miss Blanche, a little lady in her late nineties who was always in church - and always fell asleep before the service was over. Everyone loved her. She considered it her personal mission to take the altar flowers after morning worship and rearrange them and deliver them to the shut--ins. She kept that mission up until the police convinced her that she should stop driving. It was sometimes too easy to forget that this person had once been a competent registered nurse, a foreign missionary, and someone's wife. She had lived a long and well--spent life.
When the pastor went into the room where Miss Blanche was, he asked, "How are you doing?" She answered, almost matter of factly, "I am dying." And, she was. She knew. The pastor took her seriously. He stayed a while, talking to her about her life and about the Christian hope that she knew better than he did. Then he prayed with her a prayer that was appropriate for the ending of life, and he left. He knew that he had probably had his last meaningful visit with Miss Blanche.
He walked out of the cold, sterile environment of the emergency room into the gentle warmth of a summer afternoon. He was suddenly intensely aware of everything that was around him. A gentle breeze cooled the warm summer day. The late afternoon sun was deepening the colors of trees and grass and flowers and buildings. He could see people moving around, a family with young children were walking to a car in the parking lot. The rush of the day was past and everything seemed to be in slow motion. There was an exceptional quietness and the pastor could hear the voices of people talking some distance away and somewhere a bird was chirping and somewhere a church bell was ringing. Every sensory perception of everything around him seemed to be intensified. He thought, "This is what it means to be alive - and it is not to be taken for granted - it is wonderful."
Things are. I am. You are. That didn't just happen. Being itself witnesses to its creator. Let us give thanks.
____________
1. David Wilkerson presentation at the Eighteenth World Methodist Conference, Brighton, England, 2001.
That really is the message of the first chapter of the Bible. God created. And the creation witnesses to the reality of the creator.
That is a message that we need to hear when we are feeling lost and alone in a world that seems flat and indifferent. Then we may have a deep yearning to get in touch with some greater reality that can give it all meaning. Our skeptical culture tells us that the only things that are real are things that can be seen or touched. But the very existence of the things we can see and touch points to the existence of some other reality, an invisible reality, that brought all of this into being and keeps it working. That in itself is not all that we need to bring us into a life--fulfilling relationship with God. But it is a starting place. At least it helps us to see, when we are inclined to doubt, that there is something - or someone - out there, someone with whom we must have some kind of a relationship.
The apparent conflicts between science and religion continue to torment many people. Scientific method demands that scientists require empirical evidence, proof based on things you can see and touch, before they can claim scientific proof of any finding. That scientific method has served scientists and society well. Religious people, on the other hand, learn a lot from experience and from revelation. Those sources of knowledge have served religious people and society well. Some scientists and some religionists are so imprisoned within their own ways of thinking that they cannot appreciate the other's way of thinking. They are bound to come into conflict. But there are lots of competent scientists who practice the scientific method in their work but who are spiritual persons in their lives as a whole. They are open to the leading of experience and revelation. These people often find in the discoveries of science ever expanding demonstrations of the reality of God. It moves many of them to great reverence.
A certain sophisticated geophysicist, who was a committed Christian, was talking one day to his sister who was also a committed Christian, but of a different theological persuasion. He made mention of the movement of the tectonic plates that gave shape to the land masses of the earth. His sister retorted that she didn't believe in that because it didn't fit into her understanding of how the world was created. The geophysicist remembered that his sister had only recently talked at length about her belief in miracles of healing. He asked, "Why is it that you can believe in the little miracles but not in the big ones?" That was how he felt about it.
David Wilkerson is a clergyman in the English Methodist Church. He is also an accomplished scientist who has won recognition for his work in the field of astronomy. He was asked to address an assembly of church leaders from around the world. He responded with a multimedia presentation using a videotape prepared for the purpose.
The tape started with a picture of a young family enjoying a picnic in a park. Then it was as if the camera withdrew into space showing increasingly broad perspectives on the surroundings of the family in the park. The viewers were shown the rest of the city, and the countryside, and the various eco--systems that were surrounding the family. The camera continued to withdraw until it showed the earth spinning in its delicate balance of motion and gravity with all of the other planets. It continued to withdraw until it showed the other galaxies that surround our solar system and finally the pictures most recently sent back by the Hubble telescope of the most distant galaxies just this side of the unknown infinity beyond.
Then the camera seemed to return by stages to the family in the park. But it didn't stop. Its journey was not over. It seemed to move into the bodies of the family members, exploring the intricate systems that worked to keep them alive, and finally exploring the cell structure of their bodies, the DNA that transmitted genetic characteristics, and finally the atomic structure of the matter of which everything was made.
By the time the camera returned the viewers to the family in the park, everyone was well aware that they had been on a tour of something miraculous and were caught up in awe of the creation and of the witness that the creation makes.1
It is true that a person with too small a concept of God might be forced by the findings of science to stretch his understanding. An astronomer gazing into his telescope might well remember the words of the psalmist, "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, mortals that you care for them?" (Psalm 8:3--4). Then he might think, that psalmist didn't know the half of it, and his reverence would deepen, not diminish.
The creation bears a witness to the existence of the creator. That can change the way we think about a lot of things. For instance, one who has grown accustomed to living just in terms of what can be seen and touched may find it hard to believe that there is anything more for us after death. But one who sees the tangible world as a witness to the creator is more likely to think, "If God created all of this and gave us life in this world, then God can certainly do whatever God chooses to do with us beyond this life."
The most important thing that we can learn from the witness of the creation is that there is more than just what we can see and touch. There is someone who is invisible, who is even more real than the things we can see and touch because that someone gave being to the things we can see and touch. That is a place to start in our relationship with God.
No, it is not a place to stop. It is not enough. If we are going to move into a relationship with God that will meet the deep spiritual needs of our lives, we will need more. We will need to find ourselves in relationship with that great invisible other. We will need to discover that our own interactions with life are, in one way or another, interactions with God. The people whose stories are told in the Hebrew Scriptures learned to experience God through their experiences with life.
We need even more. We need some revelation to show us what God is like and how God relates to us and how we ought to respond to God. The French existentialist writer, Albert Camus, learned to think of God as one who relates to us through our interactions with life. But, during his service in the French underground during the Second World War, he saw so much destruction and suffering that he came to believe that God must be a murderer. He responded by living in cynicism and rebellion. Is that the truth about God? If that is not what God is like, then what should we think of God? We need some revelation to help us know the great other who created all things and who meets us in the experiences of our lives.
Christians believe that God responded to that need by intentionally sending Jesus Christ to help us to know God. Jesus has shown us that God is one who loves us and is continually reaching out to us to save us. Jesus has shown us that the right way to live in response to God's love is to trust God's love and to live in a loving relationship with everything in life. There is reason to believe that, late in his life, Albert Camus came under the influence of a Christian witness and came to see God in a different way. That must have been a wonderful experience.
But even that is not enough. Remembering that a revelation was made at some time in the past may not meet our present needs. We need to find our ways into a personal relationship with the living God so that we can experience all of our interactions with life as interactions with one who loves us. Does God reach out to us in some special way to help us find our way into that personal relationship with God?
On the church calendar, this is called Trinity Sunday. That is the Sunday on which we remember that God can be known as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That is a puzzling teaching for lots of people. That is because we keep trying to make it more complicated than it needs to be. The doctrine of the Trinity simply means that God keeps reaching out to us to lead us into the kind of relationship with God that we need. God makes God's self known to us as the Father, one who gives being and lives in constant relationship with us. It is to this aspect of God's being that the creation makes its witness. Because of the witness of the creation, we can know that we are dealing with a reality. God also makes God's self known to us through the Son, Jesus, one like ourselves, whom God sent to show us that God is one who loves us. Finally God comes to be with us in a real way every day as the Holy Spirit. God does that so that we can know that the one who created and the one who loves is also one who is with us every moment of every day, living in a relationship with us that can shape our lives if we will let it.
We all need that kind of a complete relationship with God. Most of us are still trying to find our ways into it. Sometimes we feel closer to God and sometimes we feel that we are far away. But if, during those times when we feel far from God, we begin to wonder whether the whole thing is just the product of someone's imagination, then we always have the witness of the created world to fall back on. The creation witnesses to the existence of the creator. Our very being tells us that there must be someone out there - and that is a place to start.
If we learn to appreciate the wonder and beauty of being, the witness becomes even more profound. A pastor was called to a hospital late one afternoon to visit an elderly church member who had just been taken into the emergency room. It was Miss Blanche, a little lady in her late nineties who was always in church - and always fell asleep before the service was over. Everyone loved her. She considered it her personal mission to take the altar flowers after morning worship and rearrange them and deliver them to the shut--ins. She kept that mission up until the police convinced her that she should stop driving. It was sometimes too easy to forget that this person had once been a competent registered nurse, a foreign missionary, and someone's wife. She had lived a long and well--spent life.
When the pastor went into the room where Miss Blanche was, he asked, "How are you doing?" She answered, almost matter of factly, "I am dying." And, she was. She knew. The pastor took her seriously. He stayed a while, talking to her about her life and about the Christian hope that she knew better than he did. Then he prayed with her a prayer that was appropriate for the ending of life, and he left. He knew that he had probably had his last meaningful visit with Miss Blanche.
He walked out of the cold, sterile environment of the emergency room into the gentle warmth of a summer afternoon. He was suddenly intensely aware of everything that was around him. A gentle breeze cooled the warm summer day. The late afternoon sun was deepening the colors of trees and grass and flowers and buildings. He could see people moving around, a family with young children were walking to a car in the parking lot. The rush of the day was past and everything seemed to be in slow motion. There was an exceptional quietness and the pastor could hear the voices of people talking some distance away and somewhere a bird was chirping and somewhere a church bell was ringing. Every sensory perception of everything around him seemed to be intensified. He thought, "This is what it means to be alive - and it is not to be taken for granted - it is wonderful."
Things are. I am. You are. That didn't just happen. Being itself witnesses to its creator. Let us give thanks.
____________
1. David Wilkerson presentation at the Eighteenth World Methodist Conference, Brighton, England, 2001.
