First Presbyterian Church Albuquerque New Mexico

06/14/2009

"The Music of the Spheres" - A Sermon Preached by The Rev. Paul Debenport

“The Music of the Spheres” A Sermon Preached by The Rev. Paul Debenport June 14, 2009 + + + Hear God’s good Word, first from Psalm 19: 1—6: The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; Yet their voice [“line” or “cord/chord”] goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In the heavens God has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom from God’s wedding canopy, and like a strong man runs its it course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them; and nothing is hid from its heat. And from Colossians 3: 14—17: Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the mane of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. + + + “Anomie,” the sociology professor droned, “is the feeling that you have no roots, that you don’t belong.1. He could have saved his breath. Since summer break was only a couple of weeks away, we students were not thinking about roots. We were thinking about wings. We were not thinking about growing down into the ground like well-rooted trees, but about breaking out like butterflies from their cocoons. Moreover, at 19 years old not many of us had ever known real rootlessness. President John Kennedy’s assassination four years earlier had shaken our safe, suburban world some, but not much. Anomie, the bottom dropping out, rootlessness would come later as life got more difficult. Anomie. Maybe some people get through life without experiencing it, but not many. In today’s recessive economy, though, many are. Jobs, whole careers, and whole life’s savings and investments have gone up in smoke or down the drain or wherever they went, even for some who have never known the vicissitudes of the depression and world war of our parents or grandparents. It’s hitting the younger generations hardest. My grown children and most of their peers don’t think they will ever be able to own a home or even settle into one place and one career for the rest of their lives. These days many would give their eyeteeth for a feeling of belonging, for a piece of the rock, to ground themselves in something that would hold. A lot of people now—of all generations and at more pressing intensity—are looking for something that will make sense of their lives, something sound we can sink down into. Which is to say that the ancient questions about faith’s foundations are much more near the surface than in the last, more frivolous decade. Is there something at the very bottom of it all we can trust? Is there something we can sink our roots down into that will sustain us through economic uncertainty, the terrors of child-raising, through illness, accident, and latter life’s losses? Does what the Creator of the Universe created include some kind of bottom or bedrock or safety net that binds it all together as One? Even the scientists are asking. And here I must insert that I make no claim to be any more than a social scientist. I’m more an intuitive poet than an empiricist, and surely am stretching to venture into the world of physics, chaos theory, and string theories. But I have been reading Barbara Brown Taylor’s insightful book The Luminous Web: Essays on Science and Religion and a fascinating article in Presbyterian Outlook by Dr. Jana Childers, the dean of San Francisco Seminary, from which a lot of what I’ll be saying next comes. But what I’ve been reading, even with only partial understanding, speaks strongly to my poet soul and I hope will speak to yours as well. So back to the fact that even scientists wonder about the base of things. One contemporary physicist comments, “To my mind there must be, at the bottom of it all, not an equation, but an utterly simple idea. And…that idea, when we finally discover it, will be so compelling, so inevitable, that we will say to one another, `Oh how beautiful. How could it have been otherwise?’”2. Which brings me to cords [c-o-r-d-s and c-h-o-r-d-s, or maybe even as string theories in physics]. In Ancient Israel’s thought, cords were understood to bind the movements of heaven and earth together, to anchor, orchestrate, and order the relationships between them. Today’s scripture from Psalm 19 emphasizes this view: The heavens are telling the glories of God and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork. …Their voice [also translated as “line” or “cord/chord”] go out through all the earth…to the ends of the world.” Old Testament scholar Bob Coote points out how this way of thinking was captured in the sixth century BC by Pythagoras in his famous phrase “the harmony of the spheres.” In other words, God holds the stars, the earth, and human beings in line. Can you picture that? Or better yet, can you hear it? The world and all that God created singing in harmony, everything held together by the strong but tender chords/cords of God’s loving plan. What an utterly beautiful idea. But here’s the part that really caught my eye, or more precisely my poet’s and musician’s ear. It seems that a discovery made recently at the center of the universe echoes the Psalmist’s poetic testimony. Astrophysicists have discerned that a sound is emanating from the Perseus Cluster. Across the 30,000 light years between earth and Perseus, music ripples. A single musical note. What would you guess it is? High C? A supersonic concert A? No. It’s B-flat—57 octaves below middle C! Turns out some scientist perceive that there is something at the bottom of it all. Perhaps even something like the kind of “chords” the Psalmist declares. The kind of “perfect harmony” that Colossians describes is God’s will in Christ Jesus. To me at least, this “music of the spheres”, at the very least, reminds us of what we Christians dare to believe: we believe that at the very heart of things is God; that God is good; that God is love. That God has a will for this universe and all that is in it—a will for you and me and everyone else. And that God’s good will will be done on earth as in heaven. That God is great, greater, greatest, and that God deals with unseen realities—the cords/chords holding it all together as One. Realities that go all the way down to the center of the universe. We are rooted in God. God is, to use Paul Tillich’s famous phrase, “the ground of being”—the solid ground of our being. Before the scientists, the writers have known this truth. One of my favorites, which I’ve used here before and shall again, is from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. In this over 300 year old religious allegory of the pilgrimage of faith from the City of Destruction to the gate of the celestial city, Bunyan writes this of his characters Christian and Hopeful: “Now I further saw that betwixt them and the Gate was a River, but there was no bridge to go over; the River was very deep; at the sight therefore of this River, the pilgrims were much astounded, but the men that went with them, said, `You must go through, or you cannot come at the Gate.’ The pilgrims then began to inquire if there was no other way to the Gate [which there wasn’t]. The pilgrims then, especially Christian began to despond in his mind [anomie?], and looked this way and that, but no way could be found by them by which they might escape the River. They then addressed themselves to the water; and entering, Christian began to sink, and crying out to his good friend Hopeful, he said, `I sink in deep waters, the billows go over my head, all his waves go over me.’ Then said Hopeful, `Be of good cheer, my brother, I feel the bottom, and it is good.’ … Then Hopeful added this word, `Be of good cheer, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole.” And with that…, they both took courage and the enemy was after that as still as a stone, until they were gone over.3. Friends, in Jesus Christ the cords/chords of God, the music of the spheres, hold all things together as One. In Him, we have found the bottom, and it is good! Thanks be to God. Amen. ________________________________________ 1. As amplified by The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, this definition and most of the ideas and citations in this sermon are from The Rev. Dr. Jana Childers’ article “Anomie,” The Presbyterian Outlook, May 18, 2009. Supplemental insight also came from Barbara Brown Taylor’s book The Luminous Web: Essays on Science and Religion, Cowley Publications, 2000. 2. Quoting unnamed physicist in Margaret Wheatley book Leadership and the New Science in Jana Childer’s article cited above. 3. John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Penguin Books, 1965, pp. 1997—1999.