Hilton Head Island, SC – August 27, 2017
The Chapel Without Walls
Psalm 19:1-6; Psalm 8:1-9; Psalm 148:1-6
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. – Psalm 19:1 (RSV)
Last Monday, millions of Americans witnessed something most people see only once or twice in a lifetime, if at all. It was a total eclipse of the sun. On Hilton Head Island a heavy cloud cover prevented the eclipse from being seen in its full glory, and I am truly sorrowful about that.
The total solar eclipse could be seen in a seventy-mile-wide band stretching from the northern coast of Oregon to the coast of South Carolina. The most recent time an eclipse was seen in much of the USA was in 1947, seventy years ago. Our family was living in Fort Scott, Kansas at the time. I remember standing outside Central School, taking a very quick look at the partial eclipse. Our teacher, Mrs. Hill, warned us to take only a very brief glance; otherwise our eyes could be permanently damaged. (There were no freebie special dark glasses then.) In a quick blink, the sun looked like a new moon, except that the sun was dark with a small crescent of bright sunlight at its side, whereas in a new moon the moon is dark with a small crescent of sunlight.
The night sky has always fascinated me. The older I get, the greater is the fascination. “The universe” is absolutely astounding. When I was a young boy in school, we were taught that “the universe” was usually defined as our solar system: the sun, and the nine (but maybe now only eight) planets. Then, the more I read, the larger the universe became. Astronomers told us that the universe is expanding at an enormous and ever-increasing rate. So “the universe” is “space,” all of it, whatever shape it takes, and the astronomers apparently are not agreed on its shape.
The late famous astrophysicist Carl Sagan used to be on television fairly frequently. Many times he waxed eloquent about “billions and billions of stars.” It was an unforgettable phrase. Well, the universe is trillions and trillions of miles wide, and is expanding by millions of miles every day. It all amounts to zillions, actually. The dictionary defines a zillion as an indeterminately large number. But then, how can anyone or anything “define” a number as being “indeterminate”? Space is like that, and we have to live with that reality. Space is really BIG.
The sun is the biggest thing in our solar system. It is 109 times the diameter of the earth, which means that 1,300,000 earths, all crumbled up, could fit inside the sun. And the sun is, as we all recall, 93,000,000 miles away. The moon, on the other hand, is a mere 250,000 miles away, or so, and is only about a quarter the diameter of the earth.
The reason there are so few total solar eclipses is because the sun is so far away and the moon is relatively so small compared to both the sun and the earth. The orbits of the earth and moon are not perfectly round, but elliptical. Therefore the moon can never be between the sun and the earth so as to cause a total eclipse everywhere on earth, and in fact can cause partial eclipses only very infrequently and total eclipses almost never. If you don’t really understand what I am saying, don’t worry, because I don’t really understand the mathematics or the mechanics of it either, even though I am fascinated by trying to get my mind around it, which is why I am preaching this sermon on this Sunday, six days after a total eclipse of the sun.
If you had been able to see the sun in total eclipse last Monday, you would have noticed that around its darkened circumference there was a ring of light. On May 24, 1919, British astronomer Arthur Addington was in South America to witness a total solar eclipse. As a result, he postulated that the corona around the darkened sun was light from distant stars that was bent around the edge of the sun, so to speak, by the sun’s gravitation. In making that hypothesis, he gave “proof” of Einstein’s theory of relativity before Einstein had even published his theory. The gravitation of stars and planets causes light to bend. That is amazing. Astronomy is amazing. Space is amazing. But to say that is not the point this sermon is trying to make. The point comes later.
Bob Ryan has been s broadcast meteorologist for forty-five years. He has spent thousands of dollars over that period of time going all over the world to see eclipses of the sun. He wrote an article for The Washington Post called “Witnessing the indescribable: Why I’ve chased solar eclipses all over the world.” He and other eclipsomaniacs have told of their obsession leading up to August 21. He had several pieces of advice for eclipse novices, one of which was this: “If you get stuck in a traffic jam near the centerline of totality, don’t worry; seeing totality even for thirty seconds is a lifetime experience. And,” he added, “if you miss this one, total eclipses of the sun really aren’t that rare. Just plan ahead for the next one.” I would say this to that: If you follow that last bit of advice, start saving your money, because it may cost you thousands of dollars to travel to Timbuktu or wherever you must go to see the next total eclipse. And I’m really sorry the thick clouds prevented you from seeing the free eclipse here. It isn’t tragic, but it’s very unfortunate.
I read a story about a man who has seen every eclipse in the last fifty years. He has to be a very wealthy man. It is much cheaper to live under where an eclipse is coming, and wait.
Carlo Rovelli is an Italian theoretical physicist who wrote a remarkable 81-page book called Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. In his sixth lesson, entitled “Probability, Time, and the Heat of Black Holes,” Dr. Rovelli writes about how hard it is to understand the meaning of the word “time.” I won’t go into why it is hard, because I understand it only very vaguely, and it would take too much time to explain it, especially if I were the explainer. But he says this: “Borrowing words from my Italian editor, ‘what’s non-apparent is much vaster than what’s apparent.’” He continues, “From this limited, blurred focus we get our perception of the passage of time. Is that clear? No, it isn’t. There is so much still to be understood” (pps. 62-3).
If I understand even a tenth of the Seven Brief Lessons on Physics (an enormous “If”), I think one of the things he says is that there was a Big Bang, of undetermined and indeterminable origin. Before that, he implies, the mathematics of creation existed, but it had not yet fallen into place. It fell into place, I think he says, through a series of highly improbable statistical probabilities. In other words (if I understand Carlo Rovelli correctly), creation just happened, without a Creator.
And now we begin to move toward the point of a sermon called Thoughts on a Total Solar Eclipse. I am convinced it is a statement of faith and/or belief to say that creation just happened. It is also a statement of faith and/or belief to say that there was and is a Creator. Neither position can ever be proven beyond dispute, at least not in the space/time continuum in which we all currently exist. Maybe sometime, but not now; not in this life.
However, I would also add that my concept of the Creator (i.e., God) is much more diffuse and Rovelli-like than it was when I was younger. I have no doubt that God exists, that He created the entire universe, our solar system, our planet, us, and everything else on earth. But I no longer perceive Him to be nearly the “hands-on” God I once perceived. But my thoughts on that are neither here nor there for you. What matters is what are your thoughts on this question. And here is where I ask you to think about certain things regarding God, the universe, and the eclipse.
The eclipse of August 21 did not “just happen.” No one of any theological, philosophical, or scientific persuasion would claim that. It occurred because the sun, the moon, and the planet Earth are so intricately and carefully positioned in space, or in “space/time” to use the physicists’ phraseology, that the orbits of the moon and earth made it inevitable that there would be a total solar eclipse that day and in that three-thousand mile strip from the west to the east coasts of the USA. I don’t believe improbable statistical probabilities were the origin of that astrophysical phenomenon; God set those three celestial bodies in motion, and He, the Prime Mover, made it happen. But that is a statement of faith, not fact, just as improbable probability illustrates faith.
It was not until I was on my third or fourth cruise that I realized you can sit on the ninth deck of a cruise ship and actually see the curvature of the earth. You sit there, and you look straight ahead, with the surface of the oceans exactly parallel to the top railing of the safety rails. Then you look as far to the left as you can see the ocean’s surface, and as far to the right, and there is a slight dip on both sides. The earth is round. The earth is round! The sun is round, the moon is round, the stars are round! Laws of physics made them round. But it was God who made the laws of physics! (That is a statement of faith, not of fact, although it may be a fact.)
Jim and Louise Galan are two of the snowbirds who attend The Chapel during the winter months. They invited Lois and me to come to their home in the mountains of North Carolina, because there would be a total eclipse there. I have looked forward to this astronomical rarity with great anticipation since I first read that it was coming. The night before the eclipse, I had two nightmares. In the first, Lois and I were in Cleveland, where we lived for five years. In the dream, the total eclipse was to occur there, except that it was totally overcast, as it often is in Cleveland. I was so upset I woke up. When I finally went back to sleep, I again dreamed about the eclipse, except that this time, there was a fog so thick you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.
When I awoke last Monday morning, it was foggy at 3800 feet in North Carolina. But there usually is morning fog there at this time of year. The fog burned off by nine o’clock, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. By 11 AM there were a few fleecy clouds. By 1:30 it was quite cloudy to the south, right where the eclipse was going to happen. By 1:30 PM there were clouds moving west, toward where the eclipse was to occur at 2:12. At 2:10 those clouds merged into the western clouds, and there was a glorious window of opportunity whereby we saw the eclipse in its totality. Lois said it was like the waters of the Red Sea parting, and it was. What I had so longed to see had come to fruition. The sun went totally dark for two minutes, but its corona glowed, and we could see countless constellations of stars all around it.
There were five of us gazing up at the sun through our eclipse glasses. We had had glimpses of the moon inserting itself over the sun through the clouds. The sun got darker and darker, as its crescent of sunlight got smaller and smaller. The quality of the light was like nothing I have seen before, nor shall I ever see it again. For half an hour, it got continuously darker, but it was unlike any sunset I have ever seen. Then came the totally darkened sun of the eclipse. Then, for another half-hour, it got lighter, but it was unlike any sunrise I’ve ever seen.
Christian people, the light during the eclipse was unearthly! It was the light of physics! Light was being bent around the sun’s corona. This was not sunlight; it was starlight! It was the light from zillions of stars, projected from the glowing corona! It was indescribably beautiful! It was serene! It was surreal! I was spiritual! It was light made possible only by a Power able to put every star in space into orbit, and all that light was lighting the earth when the sun itself was completely dark! I shall never forget that unearthly, singular light.
Josef Haydn was one of the last composers of great oratorios of the Late Baroque Period of music. In 1798 in Vienna he directed the premiere of his oratorio Die Schoepfung (The Creation). It was performed in the Schwarzenberg Palace of his patron, Baron Gottfried van Swieten. Haydn spent the next year revising The Creation, and its first public performance was on March 19, 1799, at the Burgtheater in Vienna. Haydn had told his biographer, “I was never so religious as during the composition of The Creation. Daily I fell on my knees and asked God for strength.” After the first public performance, Haydn told the biographer that as he was directing the oratorio, “Sometimes my whole body was ice cold, and sometimes I was overcome with burning fever. More than once I was afraid that I should suddenly suffer a stroke.” But the premiere was a huge success, and the audience was greatly moved by the powerful music.
In the musical score, the best-known chorus of The Creation does not come at the very end, but at the end of the sixth day of creation. In 1712 the English writer and essayist Joseph Addison wrote a poem which was published in a literary magazine called The Spectator. The poem followed an essay Addison had written, entitled The Strengthening of Faith. The early nineteenth century was the beginning of what was known as “The Age of Reason.” Addison’s poem was an attempt to yoke both reason and faith by considering God as “The Great Original.” Haydn’s German text was based on the words and poetic meter of the poem, but it is not an exact translation of the English words by any means. The Addison-Haydn duo combined to produce one of the most majestic hymns in the English language, The spacious firmament on high.
The Psalmists lived very close to nature. Most of us do not. People who lived three thousand or two thousand years ago were much closer to the natural order than we are. Every day they saw the sun, the mountains, the desert, the green fields and the sparse landscape, the animals, birds, and insects. At night they saw the moon and the stars in a blaze of light that we, who have artificial nocturnal light, can never see. The night sky was ablaze to them. To us it is just dark.
“O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth!” (Ps. 8:1) “Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise him in the heights! Praise him, sun and moon, praise him all you shining stars!” (Ps. 148:1,3) “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork….In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes forth like a bridegroom from his chamber….Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the ends of them” (Ps. 19:1,4-6).
There is a great two-line, two-verse hymn that, sadly, hardly anybody knows. The poem was written by a man named Henry Richard McFadyen, about whom I know nothing. But the words sound almost as though they could have been written by an American Indian, living on the high plains of the Dakotas before the white man came. “The lone, wild fowl in lofty flight/ Is still with Thee, nor leaves Thy sight;/ And I am Thine, I rest in Thee;/ Great Spirit, come, and rest in me. The ends of earth are in Thy hand/ The sea’s dark deep and no man’s land;/ And I am Thine, I rest in Thee;/ Great Spirit, come, and rest in me.”
We began with what appears to us to be the largest orb in space, the sun. But it isn’t. At best the sun is an average-sized star. Six days ago its light was blotted out by the moon. Next we went to the stars, and to creation itself. Lastly we pondered the One who walks with us every step of our lives: unseen, often unfelt, but always present, brooding, bleeding, dying, and rising with us. The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims His handiwork.
God is great. God is good. Let us thank Him for - - - everything in creation.