Sermon for Sunday 14th July 2024. Our cosmological God transcending the infinity of the universe

Our cosmological God transcending the infinity of the universe

Today’s Gospel could easily be retold as crime bosses being accused by a local preacher of infidelity, then meeting his end in a bizarre fashion with a dramatic cinematic reveal at the end. While full of drama, which could easily be reflected in the news today, the death of John occurs as a warning and as a sign of what is likely happen to any prophet like John who dares to challenge the authorities of the time.

I’m not going to dwell on that too much though, because while I was away last week, I read an article[1] about science and faith which resonated much more and told of a God more vast and unknowable than we or those who encountered God in Jesus time could have imagined.

As a precurser, when I was a child, I took a keen interest in space and remember watching the first space shuttle launch when at primary school, after asking the teacher if we could have the TV in the classroom to see it. I’d watch the sky at night with my dad where Patrick Moore would wax lyrical about it all, at a time not long after the moon landings when it seemed like space really was something we would all be exploring soon.

Psalm 24 simply tells us, “The earth is the Lord's, and all it contains, the world, and those who dwell in it.”

While simple, these words tell us that all creation is kept by the love of God.

There is nothing outside God's love.

In the cosmology of the psalmist, Divine Love encompasses all time, all space, all things, and all people. Psalm 89:11 adds, "the heavens are yours, the earth also, the world and all it contains." And Psalm 19 proclaims, “the heavens are telling the glory of God.

Despite the differences between science and Christianity, both agree that space and time had a Beginning, and that there will be an End. As ever, the fine print can make a difference, faith and science offer different stories about the meaning of our Beginning and End, but science like faith seeks answers to big questions.

For scientists and most believers, the Beginning started with the Big Bang about 15 billion years ago. As for the End, about 5 billion years from now, the sun will expand into a red giant 10,000,000 times its present volume and incinerate the earth. "It is as sure as can be," writes particle physicist and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne, "that humanity, and all forms of carbon-based life, will prove a transient episode in the history of the cosmos."

But the End of our home planet is immaterial compared to the End of the universe. Physicists are divided about how the end will come. Whether by expansion of the Big Bang propelling everything outward, galaxies flying apart forever, some collapsing into black holes.

Or if the forces of gravity prevail, the universe will eventually reverse its expansion and collapse into a Big Crunch. Either way, a final The End is evitable.

Pillars of Creation by the James Webb Telescope click for a high resolution version

Some people ask if the answers provided by science are adequate or satisfying, but one could argue the same of answers provided by faith, often one answer just leads to another question.

The Caltech physicist Richard Feynman in answer to this once recommended learning calculus, arguing that "it's the language God talks.” To him, the way these numbers interacted underpinned all he knew about the universe,

Feynman also said, "it doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvellous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil — which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama."

The stage is big certainly, and our knowledge of the universe has expanded beyond anything the Psalmist could have imagined, and we may not all know calculus, but has the last 15 billion years really been such a "vastly drawn-out complex purposeless nonsense?" or is it at best, about the struggle between good and evil?

I’d suggest that most scientists have wondered at some point if there is a higher power or purpose to the universe, especially when they talk about the God particle, to explain something science can’t, or try to explain forces at play in the cosmos by calling it dark matter.

Art, human joy and sorrow, the mystery of human consciousness, the beauty and terror we experience in creation, all these hints don’t really prove anything, not in the same way science seeks a proof to a problem, but they suggest that our human drama does indeed have an overall Plot and Author.

There is also the miracle that our vast cosmos is comprehensible and becomes more so as science advances.

However overwhelming the cosmos can feel, humanity has shown it’s depths of potential in understanding, as Blaise Pascal said, “Through space the universe grasps me and swallows me up like a speck; through thought I grasp it.”[2]

What is implicit in Psalm 24 becomes explicit in Ephesians for this week. Paul stretches and strains the limits of language to affirm the exceeding greatness of God's power that is equalled only by the breadth and depth of his love for all creation.

In Ephesians Paul connects creation and redemption.

Where the gospel of John and the book of Genesis both start with "in the beginning," Paul steps back further saying, "God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love” before the creation of the world (1:4). This could sound like something from HG Wells, but it’s a truth to hold onto.

Okay, so the universe is about 15 billion years old, and even though that's an unimaginably large number, it's still a finite number.

And what came "before" the beginning of space and time? Divine love did. And when in the distant but certain future the universe flies apart from a continued expansion of the Big Bang, or collapses into a Big Crunch from the forces of gravity, what comes "after" the end? Divine love does. 

How big is God now?

Paul says that the chronological march of clocks and calendars is going somewhere rather than nowhere. He says that time itself is progressing toward a "fulfilment." He tells the Ephesians that the "mystery of God's will," hidden in eternity past, is revealed in the first century Jesus.

All creation will receive its redemption when God "brings all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ." Out of his own fullness God will both fill and fulfil "everything in every way."

This future redemption of the entire cosmos is so central to Paul's thought that he repeats these ideas almost verbatim in four additional epistles besides Ephesians. It's like he did a cut-and-paste of his thoughts to five different churches. The article quotes verses from Romans, Colossians, Philippians and Corinthians

The ultimate destiny of all creation is liberation and freedom, adoption and redemption. The scale and scope of this future hope encompasses "the whole creation"[3]

For Paul's redemption is the destiny of each person, every nation, all creation, and the whole cosmos — not only on earth, but "under the earth and in heaven."

God was in Christ, says Paul, "reconciling the cosmos to himself" [4]

The creation of Genesis will meet its redemption in Jesus, which is an affirmation of faith and not an assertion of scientific fact. Many scientists would admit that scientific facts alone do not always make for a completely satisfying story.

Psalm 24 and Ephesians 1:3–14 unify Jesus and God, science and faith. Neither side is good or evil, but ever since the first person looked at the stars and wondered about the meaning of it all, who am I? What am I here for? We have sought answers.

Answers which teach us how to live together as a society, about how the heavens tell the glory of God, and about how, one day, two thousand years ago, God sent his son, a baby, the word made flesh to redeem us to him, to show us the face of God, and to show us that in Him, there is eternal life, whether it is every atom which will continue forever, or through the saving grace of Jesus, who showed us the way, the truth and the life through the overwhelming divine love of our cosmological father in heaven.

Amen.

Preached at St Cyr's Church. Stinchcombe.

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[1] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/3724-everything-in-every-way

[2] Blaise Pascal, Human Happiness (Page 21) www.goodreads.com - human-happiness

[3] Romans 8:12–25; cf. 1 John 2:2). God "created all things in heaven and on earth" (Colossians 1:16). He seeks the worship of all "things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth" (Philippians 2:9–11). He will "reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven" (Colossians 1:20). God will sum up or bring together "all things in heaven and on earth" (Ephesians 1:10). He delights in bestowing his fatherly favour on "the whole human family in heaven and on earth" (Ephesians 3:15).

[4] (2 Corinthians 5:19)

Readings for Sunday, 14 July 2024        The Seventh Sunday after Trinity

Psalm 24

1  The earth is the Lord’s and all that fills it, ♦︎
   the compass of the world and all who dwell therein.

2  For he has founded it upon the seas ♦︎
   and set it firm upon the rivers of the deep.

3  ‘Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord, ♦
   or who can rise up in his holy place?’

4  ‘Those who have clean hands and a pure heart, ♦︎
   who have not lifted up their soul to an idol,
      nor sworn an oath to a lie;

5  ‘They shall receive a blessing from the Lord, ♦︎
   a just reward from the God of their salvation.’

6  Such is the company of those who seek him, ♦︎
   of those who seek your face, O God of Jacob.

7  Lift up your heads, O gates;
      be lifted up, you everlasting doors; ♦︎
   and the King of glory shall come in.

8  ‘Who is the King of glory?’ ♦︎
   ‘The Lord, strong and mighty,
      the Lord who is mighty in battle.’

9  Lift up your heads, O gates;
      be lifted up, you everlasting doors; ♦︎
   and the King of glory shall come in.

10  ‘Who is this King of glory?’ ♦︎
   ‘The Lord of hosts,
      he is the King of glory.’

 

Ephesians 1.3–14

    3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, ⁴just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. ⁵He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, ⁶to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

⁷In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace ⁸that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight ⁹he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, ¹⁰as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

¹¹In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, ¹²so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. ¹³In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; ¹⁴this is the pledge of our inheritance towards redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.

 Mark 6.14–29

14 King Herod heard of it, for Jesus’ name had become known. Some were saying, ‘John the baptizer has been raised from the dead; and for this reason these powers are at work in him.’ ¹⁵But others said, ‘It is Elijah.’ And others said, ‘It is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.’ ¹⁶But when Herod heard of it, he said, ‘John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.’

17 For Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because Herod had married her. ¹⁸For John had been telling Herod, ‘It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.’ ¹⁹And Herodias had a grudge against him, and wanted to kill him. But she could not, ²⁰for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him. ²¹But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his courtiers and officers and for the leaders of Galilee.

²²When his daughter Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests; and the king said to the girl, ‘Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it.’ ²³And he solemnly swore to her, ‘Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom.’ ²⁴She went out and said to her mother, ‘What should I ask for?’ She replied, ‘The head of John the baptizer.’

²⁵Immediately she rushed back to the king and requested, ‘I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.’ ²⁶The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her. ²⁷Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, ²⁸brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl. Then the girl gave it to her mother. ²⁹When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb.