Seeing from God's view

1969 was a profound year in American history. 

However, for the fact I was 8 years old that summer, I was oblivious to much of it. But on one warm evening in the summer of ’69 I got to stay up late and, with most of the planet, watched Neil Armstrong put his left foot on the moon. Fifty years ago, it was clearly one of those “Where were you when …?” moments in our lives. 

I’m quite certain that even my childhood self grasped the enormity of sailing this new sea, of climbing this highest mountain, of going to the moon because we chose to go to the moon, and that we chose to do such a thing not because it was easy, but because it was hard.

That President Kennedy had memorably spoken those words a mere seven years earlier would’ve impressed even my pre-adolescent self to realize that time was accelerating in unprecedented fashion, and that humankind was living in an era of rapid scientific advancement and breakneck societal change.

Because July 20, 1969, was a Sunday, I’m quite certain I was in church that morning. The message, alas, is beyond my recall. So I’ve wondered, how did we as people of faith contemplate this remarkable achievement? What did preachers preach? What did Sunday schools discuss?

I’d like to imagine that if I were to preach that day, I would’ve included the 19^th Psalm.

“The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.” - Psalm 19:1

Neil Armstrong’s small step for man and giant leap for mankind was in fact humankind merely dipping its little toe into a cosmic ocean so vast that we cannot fathom its depth or breadth.

Just as Jesus long ago made the invisible God visible, the lunar landing put flesh and bone and moondust on the previously held fairy-dust fantasy of space exploration. We humans could now dare thrust ourselves onto God’s magnificent celestial stage and live to tell about it.

To look skyward on that July night 50 years ago and imagine real men on the lunar surface rather than the mythical Man on the Moon was a moment of awe, wonder and mystery.

I hear the word of God coming to us from the prophet Isaiah:

“To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal?” says the Holy One. “Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these?” - Isaiah 40:25-26

Indeed, we may have engineered the spacecraft and the technology to travel to the moon, but we didn’t put the moon there in the first place.

That’s the kind of cosmic reordering we can all use from time to time. The world doesn’t begin and end with us, and we aren’t the center of the universe.

My favorite image of the moon landing is seeing Earth from that vantage point.

Look at our earthly home as God sees it. There is, from this vantage point, God’s vantage point, no rationale for not sharing equally among God’s beloved the resources of this abundant sphere, no justification for treating people differently because of the color of their skin.

We are, rather, created in God’s image in this one creation, related, inextricably, to one another.

Perhaps we need the awe of another event like a moon landing to remind us of what Martin Luther King said so eloquently, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny, whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” 

To know that would indeed be one small step for us, one giant leap for all of God’s creation.

The photo and inspiration for this reflection were posted on Facebook on July 19, 2019, by the Rev. Canon Peg Chemberlin 

A birthday from beyond the veil

Today is my mother-in-law's 88th birthday. Not that she knows, of course, anymore than she knows Monday from Wednesday or her family one from another. The clutch of dementia has drawn down the shade to hide personality, awareness and acknowledgment. But make no mistake, she was - or is behind that impervious curtain - learned, well-read, engaged and opinionated.

On this birthday, she gave me a gift. As I pulled her Jerusalem Bible off the shelf, I opened the hand-written pages where she inscribed the details of her family tree and the record of her children's and grandchildren's births, baptisms, schools-attended and marriages. They are events beyond her memory's reach but not ours.

This leather-bound Bible, however, is more than a family keepsake. Its taped cover and worn pages reveal copious underlinings and notes in the margins. This was her study Bible. It's unclear whether she used it in one of many classes she taught, or when she went back for a second college degree in her late 60s.

She jotted in the end piece references to a dozen Scriptures: Philippians 4 (on money), John 5 (take up your mat and walk), 2 Corinthians (on reconciliation). Next to a notation for the dry bones in Ezekiel was one for the tree by the waterside in Jeremiah 17.

An entire section of Ecclesiastes is paper-clipped. I note to myself that my late father had similarly set off the same book. Perhaps each resonated with the cynic of Scripture.

I wonder what she thought as she highlighted a footnote in Exodus explaining the image of a woman in labor as a common biblical metaphor. Or the passage in Psalm 55 where she circled: "Were it an enemy who insulted me, I could put up with that ... But you, a man of my own rank, a colleague and a friend ..."

Eventually I turn to the editor's foreward, penned by Alexander Jones from Christ's College, Liverpool, 1 June 1966. As time has stopped still for my mother-in-law, I realize life in many ways is timeless.

Jones writes of this "new" translation of Holy Scriptures as being necessitated by two principal dangers: First, the reduction of Christianity to the status of a relic, irrelevant to our times. Second, its rejection as mythology cherished in emotion with nothing to say to the mind. Furthermore, the foreword suggests the Bible, though crystallized in antiquity, is not to be considered fossilized.

"Now for Christian thinking ... two slogans have been wisely adopted: aggiornamento, or keeping abreast of the times, and approfondimento, or deepening of theological thought."

I imagine sitting at a dining room table over coffee, or in a church study with my mother-in-law holding court, discussing with her the enduring pull of Scripture and our ongoing tug-of-war as we wrestle with its place in our lives and our lives' place in Scripture. It's not a conversation that will take place today, but I'm thankful for all those who had it with her over the years.

Happy birthday Nancy.