St. Matthew’s Sermon 05-22-2016

Great Gifts for Small People

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31, Psalm 8, Romans 5:1-5, John 16:12-15

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God. Amen.

I remember a moment, long ago when I was a toddler, taking notice of a globe in my childhood home and asking my mom what it was. “This is the earth”, she told me, and she continued to show how it represented the great planet we live on. She showed me the North American continent; narrowed that down to the United States; moved her finger to a little purple rectangle calling it Pennsylvania; she then pointed out a star and a dot she called Harrisburg and Philadelphia; and explained that “we live right about here”, using her fingernail to indicate a blank space between the two cities.

Mom did her best in explaining all this, but I remember several frustrating minutes after she walked away trying to figure out how we, my family, and our house, fit into such a tiny space. My small mind just couldn’t grasp the concept that this small globe wasn’t the earth I held in my hands, but a miniature model of it.

As I grew older and learned more I did grasp the reality that the earth is much bigger than that globe, in fact, I learned that it is huge, now much bigger than my imagination could conceive.

Then I learned about our universe; how our sun is a star among millions and millions of stars; and how many of what I thought were individual stars are actually distant galaxies, each of them made up of millions of stars; and I learned how distances in the universe were expressed in “light years”, the distance light travels in a year’s time. Suddenly, the earth seemed so small once again; even smaller than the globe I could hold in my hands; now it seemed no more than a speck of dust drifting through endless space.

Coinciding with these discoveries came the reality of time. I learned that time didn’t begin the day I was born or even at my earliest memory. I learned that there were thousands of years between me and Jesus Christ, whom I learned about in Sunday-School; and that there were thousands of years more between him and Adam and Eve. And that the earth has existed for millions of years before that.

When the two were added together, space and time, came the incomprehensible thought of infinity; the inconceivable idea that space never ends in all directions and that time extends infinitely into the past and the future. Now I seemed so very small in size and my lifespan so very small in length. My thoughts were a long way from the days just a decade earlier, yet my mind still not able to perceive it all.

Have you ever had thoughts like these? And, if so, have you ever related them to God our creator?

Just imagine, in all that endless time, and in all the unbounded space, God created everything we know to exist. And who knows how much more remains unseen by us; how many trillions of stars, many with planets like ours circling around them; perhaps a few of those, billions maybe, have life on them, and it’s possible that a few of those, I don’t know, tens of thousands,  have human-like life on them. And yet here we are, whizzing around our tiny star, the sun, in the outer part of our little galaxy; on an imperceptible speck of dust we call Earth.

Now imagine that on this speck of dust are about eight million, seven hundred thousand species of plants and animals and  today our one species, the human race, number about seven billion, four hundred million people (give or take a few).

Yet, in all that time and space; and in the midst of all those plants and creatures; and among all those people; right here, right now, God loves and cares for [your name] and each one of you…  and Ron, just as much as every other thing, living or not, in all the universe! This puts some real depth to the question asked in today’s Psalm, “what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?

This is amazing! And these are the thoughts Lady Wisdom calls us to ponder in today’s reading from Proverbs.

“The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago.
Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth…. and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.

Isn’t it enough to grasp the thought that God made us in a way that we can be mindful of him? How much more then, that God is mindful of each one of us! To me that thought is mindboggling; how can I be such a tiny speck in all of creation and yet be so important as to have the personal attention of the Creator himself?!

Yet I know it’s true! It was true when God created humanity; it was true when God sent the Prophets; it was certainly true when God sent the Christ;  Christ assures me that it will always be true; and by the Great Gifts God gives me, there is no doubt that it is true!

And what are those “Great Gifts”? Well, of course, there is life itself; and there are all those species living with me, available to me for sustaining my life comfortably; and I might not need them all, but there are other humans to share in life with me; and, of those, there are the particular friends to add special meaning to life; and many other things in the physical world that make life enjoyable.

But there are also gifts beyond the physical: like the wondrous gift of mindfulness; mindfulness of things beyond my physical senses, even mindfulness of God’s existence and activity in my life. And there’s wisdom that enables me to ponder things like the vastness of the universe and my little place in it; or the way my actions, no matter how small, influence the entire universe for good or for bad. And there is “The Word”, the wisdom of God; and the gifts of the prophets that reveal God’s Word; and above all of them, there is the Word-made-flesh, Christ himself, sent to bring me back to “The Word”. And through Christ I receive another great gift, the gift of hope; hope that even greater gifts are yet to come!

Oh, these are just a few, there are so many! But looking back again to the 4^th verse of today’s Psalm “what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” I am reminded that all these gifts come through God’s mindfulness of me.

Oh what a wonderful thought; how difficult to comprehend; that even the Angels have no more of God’s personal attention than you and I!

That is the greatest gift, and for that I will strive to be daily His delight, rejoicing before Him always!

Amen

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
8:1 Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice?
8:2 On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand;
8:3 beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
8:4 “To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live.
8:22 The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago.
8:23 Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
8:24 When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water.
8:25 Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth–
8:26 when he had not yet made earth and fields, or the world’s first bits of soil.
8:27 When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
8:28 when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep,
8:29 when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
8:30 then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always,
8:31 rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.

Romans 5:1-5
5:1 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
5:2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.
5:3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,
5:4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,
5:5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

John 16:12-15
16:12 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
16:13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.
16:14 He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
16:15 All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

Psalm 8
8:1 O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.
8:2 Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger.
8:3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established;
8:4 what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?
8:5 Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.
8:6 You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet,
8:7 all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,
8:8 the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
8:9 O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!