You have to go outside (Click on the sermon title for a .pdf copy)
Genesis 1:1 – 2:4
June 15, 2014
(Play excerpt from Dan Gibson, “Land of the Loons”)
Welcome to my world …
Lakes, cold and deep and blue, sometimes still, sometimes raging, dense forests of long-needled pine and aromatic cedar and glistening birch.
The haunting call of a loon, the deliberate and unruffled movements of a moose raising itself from the water onto the lakeshore, swimming beaver and soaring eagle and stealthy walleye.
Morning mists rising off quiet waters, afternoon thunderstorms moving in so fast, night skies teeming with stars and, maybe, a glimpse of the northern lights.
This is my world, the kind of place I like to be, wild and unspoiled, beautiful, but daunting too, a place in which I feel at home, but, at the same time, feels as if it doesn’t know me and doesn’t need me and would carry on just fine without me.
I like to be there, to see and smell and taste and hear and touch, to enjoy the simplest pleasures of being alive, to immerse myself in the cold waters of the lake, to test myself against the wiles of the fish, to imagine the loons as my fishing companions, to sit and watch the sun as it rises or descends through clouds, pink and purple and gray, to steel myself against the attacks of mosquitoes and black flies, to brace myself against the wind and driving rain.
Because, you see, I like to be wet! I like to be cold! I like to be dirty! I like to be tested and challenged and pushed. I like to push myself, body and will, until I can’t push myself anymore.
Now, I realize, you may not like to be cold and wet and dirty. You may not like to do without the creature comforts your domesticated life affords you, and that’s OK. You don’t have to like to be where I like to be. You don’t have to like to do what I like to do. You don’t have to visit my world. But you do have to go outside. You have to go outside, not into my world, but into God’s.
You have to go outside, because if you stay inside, if you remains always in spaces created by human art and imagination, you will be sadly deceived. Human spaces comfort us and protect us. They insulate us from discomfort and danger. They bring us delight and make us proud. All of that is good and all of that is true, but all of that is only one small part, one very, very small part of everything that is good and true.
If you stay inside, you will be deceived. You will forget what is outside. You will fool yourself into believing that the world in which you choose to live is the world. You will believe it is your actions, your acumen, your resources that provide you a life. You will believe that you can manage your environment, maximizing its benefits and mitigating its perils. You will believe that you are in control, that you are the master of your destiny, that you are important. You will believe that you matter.
But, please, step outside! Expose yourself to the elements. Take a good look at the real world, at the vast and mysterious and disinterested universe in which you live, as it is. You will feel small, so very small. You will be awed and overwhelmed and maybe overcome, with terror or doubt or helplessness.
It is so much beyond me, so much above me and apart from me. It is so much more than me. I am a speck, an unnecessary and wholly unimportant particle of dust. I am virtually nothing more than nothing.
And my life? It is one short breath, one whispered word, the briefest flicker of flame, of no consequence, of no matter at all, measured against all that came before and all that will come after.
That’s what going outside teaches me, that I am puny! You are puny! Lebron James is puny. Warren Buffett is puny. Angelina Jolie is puny. Pope Francis is puny. But, at least, Pope Francis knows and admits that he is puny, and that is his glory. And that will be your glory, too, when you know, when you admit, that you are puny.
We are puny, but we do matter, because God made us. God made me. God made you. We are creatures, made of dirt, of the same stuff, the same atoms, the same matter — carbon and nitrogen and oxygen and hydrogen — as animals and plants and air and water and soil and stars. We are matter, subject to the same limits to which all matter is subject, earthbound and mortal, destined to return to the dust from which we came, bound in an inescapable love/hate relationship with the bodies that hold us, with the bodies that are us.
But we are creatures made by God! We are matter, but we matter, because God made us, and because God made us, men and women, you and me, to be like him, whatever that means.
We are not in control. We do not provide or secure and insure our own lives. We are dependent, utterly dependent on God, but that is our glory! We enjoy the wonder, the privilege, the glory, of receiving everything as a gift from God, everything, even and especially the gift of life itself.
You go outside — you climb a mountain, you sail an ocean or a great lake, you look up into the sky or look down from the sky from a seat in an airplane — and you ask yourself: Why am I here? Why am I? Why do I matter? And I pray you will know. I pray you will know.
We are made by God and we are made to be like God. Not to be God. We are still creatures. We are still puny — don’t forget it! But we are made to be like God.
Like God, it is not simply that we are, but that we know that we are.
Like God, we do not merely live, but live with thoughtfulness and intention and freedom and purpose.
Like God, we recognize and appreciate beauty, and like God we are capable of making beauty.
Like God, we have power, not God’s power, but power like God’s, to create and preserve, to enable and protect, to love and to provide and to heal.
Day by day, moment by moment, we can choose to be what we are, puny creatures made to be and to act like the God who made us, or we can choose not to be what we are, to pretend to be what we are not, to be and act instead like devils so morbidly consumed by our own narcissism.
You have to go outside. Maybe not to Dog Lake or the Maine seacoast or the Scottish Highlands, but you have to go outside. You have to allow yourself the experience, the blessed experience, of feeling small, of feeling insignificant, of feeling left at the mercy of a creation and a creator so much bigger than yourself. You have to go outside and remember where you belong. And remember who you are. And remember that you do matter, because the One who made all of this, made you!