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Job 38:31-33
31 “Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades,
or loose the cords of Orion?
32 Can you lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season,
or can you guide the Bear with its children?
33 Do you know the ordinances of the heavens?
Can you establish their rule on the earth?
It's one of the most amazing stories of the summer, the first pictures from the James Webb Space Telescope. Images that lead to questions and more questions. Amazing images,
Of course, they didn’t appear overnight. The Webb telescope was 30 years in the making. 10 billion dollars. Launched in 2021. With a mirror almost twice as large as the one used in the Hubble Telescope, so large it had to be folded in order to get it into a rocket. And then unfolded in space.[1]
The images, and what they reveal, are, I believe, worth it.
You have the image on the cover of the bulletin. It is an image of a star being born.
[the descriptions of both images are taken from the NASA website]
Called the Cosmic Cliffs,[2] Webb’s seemingly three-dimensional picture looks like craggy mountains on a moonlit evening. In reality, it is the edge of the giant, gaseous cavity within NGC 3324, [in the Carina Nebula, the image reveals an area of star birth]…. the tallest “peaks” in this image are about 7 light-years high. The cavernous area has been carved from the nebula by the intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from extremely massive, hot, young stars located in the center of the bubble, above the area shown in this image. The blistering, ultraviolet radiation from the young stars is sculpting the nebula’s wall by slowly eroding it away. Dramatic pillars tower above the glowing wall of gas, resisting this radiation. The “steam” that appears to rise from the celestial “mountains” is actually hot, ionized gas and hot dust streaming away from the nebula due to the relentless radiation.
Or maybe you’ve seen one of the other images, it looks like a night sky and yet so much more than a night sky. SMACS 0723:[3]…. is approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length. This deep field uses a lensing galaxy cluster to find some of the most distant galaxies ever detected. The image we are seeing is SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago, with many more galaxies in front of and behind the cluster. It is as close as we have ever been to the edge of the universe, to the beginning of time.
The beginning of time.
Now, before you wonder if you mistakenly made your way to science class this morning instead of church, let me proclaim that what the Webb Telescope is telling us is absolutely related to our faith.
And it is clear to us that people of faith have always been aware of the stars, and our connection to them.
As Brian McLaren reminds us:[4] According to the first creation story, you are part of creation. You are made from common soil . . . dust, Genesis says; stardust, astronomers tell us. [As creation reminds us] In that story, you are connected and related to everything everywhere. In fact, that is a good partial definition of God: God is the one through whom we are related and connected to everything.
The story of the stars is a part of the story of faith, our faith.
In Genesis where we are told that the stars were created:
And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. Genesis 1:14-16
When God calls Abram and Sarai to go to a new land:
He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” Genesis 15:5
Stars are frequently a part of the poetry of the Psalms.
It is a star that leads the wise ones to Jesus.
It is also the stars that will fall from the sky when the Son of Man returns so the gospels tell us. “Immediately after the suffering of those days
the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from heaven,
and the powers of heaven will be shaken.” Matthew 24:29
They are featured in Job through the names of the constellations, our reading for today.
The story of the stars is a part of our story.
Throughout the history of faith how we see them, and what we know about them have inspired songwriters and scientists, theologians, and children as they, as we look to the skies.
In 1559 John Calvin wrote these words.[5]
Wherever you cast your eyes, there is no spot in this universe wherein you cannot discern at least some sparks of [God’s] glory. You cannot in one glance survey the vastest and most beautiful system of the universe, in its wide expanse, without being completely overwhelmed by the boundless force of its brightness. … This skillful ordering of the universe is for us a sort of mirror in which we can contemplate God, who is otherwise invisible.
And sometimes, our response to seeing something so massive, so overwhelming, can make us feel small. Or wonder if we are unique, at all.
We now know that there are so many planets. So many solar systems. So much time. What are the chances, the odds, that we are the only planet with life?
Peter Gomes, in a chapter of one of his books, responded to speculation about the possibility of life on other planets. wrote:
These are the kinds of questions that have always made Christians nervous. Rather than rejoicing in the possibility of the discovery of God’s handiwork beyond our previous knowledge or imagination, Christians historically have worried, literally, about losing our alleged pride of place in the sun. Science has consistently managed to unmask one fundamental Christian heresy; Rather than placing God at the center of our universe, we have placed ourselves at the center of God’s universe and determined that we are the objects of his existence rather than the subjects.[6]
Of course, the primary response I’ve heard from most and felt myself is that close cousin of fear, awe.
As William Brown writes,[7] Awe “stops us in our tracks,” arrests us in our routines, and shatters our “illusion of control and omnipotence,” while at the same time arousing a desire to venture forth in a new direction in wonder. Awe awakens wonder, and wonder overcomes fear. In awe and wonder, a new attentiveness is born, a freshness of perception that “imbues the world with a
certain quality.”
Awe. Which both puts us in our place and calls us out of that place.
And at this moment, we are like Job, beginning to see something we never before understood, how mere a glimpse we have of the Glory of God.
In our text for today, a text not included in the Revised Common Lectionary, God is responding to Job. Responding to Job who has cried out in his distress. The book of Job is an allegory of a battle between God and Satan where they take away everything a man has to see if he will curse God.
If he will give up on God.
In the pit. In the mud. In agony. Job does not, but he does cry out. He laments to the God he still trusts, and asks why.
And he pushes because God responds harshly in return and asks Job some hard questions – mainly- who are you to think that you know the same as God? Not, as in the words of the Psalmist, that you are close to God, but that you can presume the mind of God.
God responds to Job in part in part, by calling upon the stars and the constellations and asking Job if he knows how to move the constellations. As we heard earlier, Justin Roberts sings so beautifully in his song entitled “Where were you?” “Where were you when I set the stars in place and they all sang together, and they all sang together up in space. Where were you.”
And Job responds as we do when faced with the idea that we can see stars billions of years in the past. When we see stars being born.
For any of us who are rendered speechless, Job can tell you that you are not alone.
4 “See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you?
I lay my hand on my mouth.
5 I have spoken once, and I will not answer;
twice, but will proceed no further.” Job 40:4-5
But here’s what is amazing. It’s not all. God does not leave Job there.
As we consider what we are learning, what I believe we are called to consider is not only how awesome God is, but how we are called to be a part of this symphony, this constellation, this amazing epic poem.
For as William Brown reminds us, Job is not left being scolded by God, and Job is not left being silent. What Job is, is invited by God invited to be reoriented with his new understanding.
When it is all said and done, Job’s life is not restored, he is reborn. He moves forward, changed, into a new life.
William Brown writes something that I’m not sure I had ever truly noticed before:
In Job, a “shift happens.” How does Job handle this? Enter the epilogue. In the book’s concluding narrative (Job 42:7-17), awe is proven to have its own moral outcome, now that Job is back home fully restored. The moral impact of awe directs the reader’s attention, not to Job’s new life per se, restored as it is, but to Job’s new way of life, as revealed by one single yet telling act on his part. With the same number of children as before (see 1:2), Job the patriarch commits the unprecedented act of sharing his inheritance with his three daughters (42:13-15)…. And perhaps it is because for the first time Job is able to see the world through his daughters’ eyes. His world had been upended, and now he’s doing his part to bring balance back to an upended world.
How can the same be for us? How can what we are learning do the same for us?
We live in a world where there are new discoveries every day. The world grows ever larger.
But let us not make the mistake of seeing these as nothing more than interesting, or beautiful like artwork in a museum.
Before us is a grand opportunity in these billions of years of stardust is seeing with a new appreciation those that are before our eyes the creation that is around us. The people around whom we live and breathe. The earth that feeds us so gloriously and gives us light in the morning and lights at night.
A grand opportunity to see where we are and realize that we are not alone and that there is nothing more awesome, nothing grander, nothing more wonderful than the gift of caring for one another – particularly those who are in need, those who are the most vulnerable, and walking together in this life that is before us.
That is the awe of the stars that God calls out of Job and I believe wants to call out of us.
As Mary Oliver so beautifully wrote, “What is it you plan to do with your wild and precious life?”[8]
Seeing what we have seen, knowing what we now know, is not a release from where we are in the present moment but a call to recognize anew the beauty and gift of the world on which we live, and the creatures with whom we share this planet.
As stardust, with the stuff of the galaxies knit into our very souls.
What a fellowship, what a joy divine.
Alleluia. Amen.
[1] https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/james-webb-space-telescope/en/
https://webb.nasa.gov/content/observatory/ote/mirrors/index.html
[2] https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-reveals-cosmic-cliffs-glittering-landscape-of-star-birth
[3] https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2022/news-2022-028?Collection=First%20Images
https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2022/news-2022-035
https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-reveals-cosmic-cliffs-glittering-landscape-of-star-birth
[4] Brian McLaren, We Make the Road by Walking, (New York: Jericho Books, 2014)
[5] Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559) I.v.1.
(That is, Volume 1, book 5, section 1). Dr. Martha L. Moore-Keish, professor at Columbia Theological Seminary pointed me to this quote.
[6] Gomes, Peter. The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Heart and Mind. New York: Avon Books, 1996, page 316.
[7] Brown, William P. 2022. “The Fear of the Lord and the Politics of Awe.” Journal for Preachers 45 (4): 26–31. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a6h&AN=ATLAiFZK220527000386&site=ehost-live.
Professor Brown was one of the presenters in a webinar I attended on the Webb Telescope - that lead me to his article where I discovered his focus on the book of Job- the passage I had selected for this Sunday.
[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBPHUE961zI
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