Epiphany 4 year C Sermon Cosmos
Here’s a riddle. When is a dirty snowball not a dirty snowball...
When it’s a comet...the Comet McNaught to be exact.
How many of you got to see it this week? Wasn’t it beautiful?
The Christchurch Press described it as ‘a...
hurtling ball of ice and dust. Comet McNaught blazes so brightly... it’s visible to the naked
eye at twilight, portrayed by astronomers...
as a dirty snowball.’
An astronomer at Mount John Observatory in Tekapo says the comet has a nucleus... of loosely compacted snow... surrounded by dust and gas...
As a comet gets closer to the sun... its nucleus evaporates ...and leaves a vapour trail. And in Comet McNaught's case, this trail...
is millions of kilometres long.
"It's a lovely natural phenomenon." The astronomer says...one you’ll be able to see regularly... about every 85 thousand years.
Millions of kilometers long...Let me get this straight. The tail of the comet... which I can spy with my little eye...right over Mt Roy as I stand outside my house in the twilight... this tail... is millions of kilometers long.
What else do we know that’s so enormous? Anybody?
Well...the sun’s diameter is over a million kilometer’s, and you can fit over a million Earth's... inside the sun.
And Comet McNaught has still got 25 million kilometers to go before it gets to the sun...and all of this we could see... just standing in our front garden this week. Amazing
A comet sure makes you think doesn’t it...Where is God in all this? And if everything was created by God... that would have to include the dimensions of time and space and the whole universe as we now know it.
So what does it mean to have faith in the creator
of a universe which is...zillions of times bigger and more complex than the million km long tail of Comet McNaught?
Talk to your neighbour about that for a minute?
And for me... two more mysterious questions arise.
One: If the universe includes all creation...created by God...is there a part of God that exists outside...
the boundaries of the universe...And the second question: is God present and active everywhere...
in all the vastness of the universe?
Talk to your neighbour about that for a minute?
God who is outside and inside all creation and even born into our humanity in Jesus? That could be a way of getting your head around the Trinity couldn’t it?
Then even more exciting and mysterious questions unfold.
The first creation story in the Bible tells us...God created the heavens and the earth and it was good, so right at the beginning... it was all good. Everything...all creation was good. Good good good good good. God didn’t create some good stuff and some bad stuff...just good stuff and good people...
But somehow through the freedom God gave there’s been a fall from this goodness... The evidence is everywhere...isn’t it in the Bible and all around us...there’s enough food and people starve...enough land and people kill each other for it...some keep all the wealth and others have no share in it...and our greedy consumption of creation causes it to be polluted.
Then this really big question hit me...if all that is true...and I believe it is...is anything beyond God’s power to save...is anything beyond restoration to its original goodness even the powers and principalities.
if Jesus is the saviour of the world... the universe... the cosmos...all creation...if Jesus is the way the truth and the life...sent to reconcile all things to God
then nothing is outside God’s power to save.
You see our Christian faith proclaims that in the person of Jesus...the creator of the universe entered time and space to show us his way to us in the flesh... to shine the light on the way out of this fallenness...
to realign creation with its original goodness... with God’s will.
This is good news this is the hope that lies at the heart of our faith...that in the beginning everything in all creation...whether in time and space or in some other dimension...every power and principality...all of nature...every human community...every human being...every ocean every river every tree every microbe... all of it... was created good...
and every last bit of it...every polluted... greedy... dominating... exploitative...oppressive...selfish...self absorbed...raging...abusive thing...every fallen thing... every system... every institution...
every power every principality...
can be redeemed by the way of Jesus...revealing God’s will of Shalom for creation...
In life and in death...there is hope for everything...hope for us...hope for the world... God is working to reconcile all creation to himself... and to restore all the original goodness...
Jesus has made it our work too.
So while a part of our mission is to proclaim the wisdom of God...revealed in Jesus...to fallen human beings...we are also called to ensure the wisdom of God is worked out in fallen communities and systems and global institutions and all the powers and principalities... even the church.
This is a hope worthy of Jesus...the One...
in...and through... and for... all things were created the one whose praises we sing as we wait for the ultimate reconciliation of all things in the embrace of divine love.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made. In him was life, and that life was the light of humanity. That light shines in the darkness....
It’s amazing what a comet can bring to mind isn’t it?
Here’s a riddle. When is a dirty snowball not a dirty snowball...
When it’s a comet...the Comet McNaught to be exact.
How many of you got to see it this week? Wasn’t it beautiful?
The Christchurch Press described it as ‘a...
hurtling ball of ice and dust. Comet McNaught blazes so brightly... it’s visible to the naked
eye at twilight, portrayed by astronomers...
as a dirty snowball.’
An astronomer at Mount John Observatory in Tekapo says the comet has a nucleus... of loosely compacted snow... surrounded by dust and gas...
As a comet gets closer to the sun... its nucleus evaporates ...and leaves a vapour trail. And in Comet McNaught's case, this trail...
is millions of kilometres long.
"It's a lovely natural phenomenon." The astronomer says...one you’ll be able to see regularly... about every 85 thousand years.
Millions of kilometers long...Let me get this straight. The tail of the comet... which I can spy with my little eye...right over Mt Roy as I stand outside my house in the twilight... this tail... is millions of kilometers long.
What else do we know that’s so enormous? Anybody?
Well...the sun’s diameter is over a million kilometer’s, and you can fit over a million Earth's... inside the sun.
And Comet McNaught has still got 25 million kilometers to go before it gets to the sun...and all of this we could see... just standing in our front garden this week. Amazing
A comet sure makes you think doesn’t it...Where is God in all this? And if everything was created by God... that would have to include the dimensions of time and space and the whole universe as we now know it.
So what does it mean to have faith in the creator
of a universe which is...zillions of times bigger and more complex than the million km long tail of Comet McNaught?
Talk to your neighbour about that for a minute?
And for me... two more mysterious questions arise.
One: If the universe includes all creation...created by God...is there a part of God that exists outside...
the boundaries of the universe...And the second question: is God present and active everywhere...
in all the vastness of the universe?
Talk to your neighbour about that for a minute?
God who is outside and inside all creation and even born into our humanity in Jesus? That could be a way of getting your head around the Trinity couldn’t it?
Then even more exciting and mysterious questions unfold.
The first creation story in the Bible tells us...God created the heavens and the earth and it was good, so right at the beginning... it was all good. Everything...all creation was good. Good good good good good. God didn’t create some good stuff and some bad stuff...just good stuff and good people...
But somehow through the freedom God gave there’s been a fall from this goodness... The evidence is everywhere...isn’t it in the Bible and all around us...there’s enough food and people starve...enough land and people kill each other for it...some keep all the wealth and others have no share in it...and our greedy consumption of creation causes it to be polluted.
Then this really big question hit me...if all that is true...and I believe it is...is anything beyond God’s power to save...is anything beyond restoration to its original goodness even the powers and principalities.
if Jesus is the saviour of the world... the universe... the cosmos...all creation...if Jesus is the way the truth and the life...sent to reconcile all things to God
then nothing is outside God’s power to save.
You see our Christian faith proclaims that in the person of Jesus...the creator of the universe entered time and space to show us his way to us in the flesh... to shine the light on the way out of this fallenness...
to realign creation with its original goodness... with God’s will.
This is good news this is the hope that lies at the heart of our faith...that in the beginning everything in all creation...whether in time and space or in some other dimension...every power and principality...all of nature...every human community...every human being...every ocean every river every tree every microbe... all of it... was created good...
and every last bit of it...every polluted... greedy... dominating... exploitative...oppressive...selfish...self absorbed...raging...abusive thing...every fallen thing... every system... every institution...
every power every principality...
can be redeemed by the way of Jesus...revealing God’s will of Shalom for creation...
In life and in death...there is hope for everything...hope for us...hope for the world... God is working to reconcile all creation to himself... and to restore all the original goodness...
Jesus has made it our work too.
So while a part of our mission is to proclaim the wisdom of God...revealed in Jesus...to fallen human beings...we are also called to ensure the wisdom of God is worked out in fallen communities and systems and global institutions and all the powers and principalities... even the church.
This is a hope worthy of Jesus...the One...
in...and through... and for... all things were created the one whose praises we sing as we wait for the ultimate reconciliation of all things in the embrace of divine love.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made. In him was life, and that life was the light of humanity. That light shines in the darkness....
It’s amazing what a comet can bring to mind isn’t it?
