Wonderlust...

 

Colossians 1:15-17

1:15 Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation;

1:16 for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers--all things have been created through him and for him.

1:17 Christ himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

 

“It makes our spirits soar.” This is a line spoken by the character, Cliff Buxton, a scientist played by actor Sam Neill, in the feel-good film, “The Dish.” The film is about the radio telescope crew at Parkes, Australia that had the awesome responsibility of relaying communication from Apollo 11—including the live TV pictures--during the historic moonwalk. His assessment of that event could well be applied to this week’s revelation of the first photographs from the James Webb Space Telescope, or “JWST” as it is known, including the photo above. One would have to be brain-dead to not gaze in wonder at these pictures, and they are just the first of a cornucopia of startling images we will see in the years of the JWST’s life. Our spirits will indeed soar, again and again.

 

The early images released by the James Webb Space Telescope team are astounding, to say the least. I have a 27 inch Apple MacIntosh computer with a “Retina” screen, meaning it is extremely sharp. It’s actually sharper than the five megabyte images released to the public thus far, but still, the first image I downloaded to my Mac caused me to lean forward on my writing desk, bringing me just a foot from my computer’s large screen, put my chin in my hands, and just stare at the photo. Everywhere I looked, I could see galaxies. Now, the Hubble telescope had taken a similar “deep field” image of a narrow section of the sky, and its image was certainly spectacular for its time, but this—THIS JWST was astounding! Even MORE galaxies popped into view on the screen, and the colors were just as astounding. I have just enough “space brains” to be dangerous, but I am aware that many of the colors represent the distance the object pictured is “away” from us (an almost meaningless term, actually) and/or how fast it is traveling as it moves opposite our direction of travel through the cosmos, as the universe continues to expand. A “red shifted” object is far away, and is probably moving away from us at a great deal of speed, both facts of which cause the light we see from it to be from the red spectrum. One could only gaze in wonder at the JWST’s tiny, tiny slice of the space “sky,” which yielded so many other galaxies in our universe. Looking at the other pictures thus far released provoked my coining the phrase, “wonderlust.” It wasn’t a word, but it is, now!

 

Before we consider the theological and spiritual questions these new photos of the cosmos raise, let’s just “wonder” a bit about what we see in them, in terms of what science is telling us. Here is the first image we were shown:

 

In it, we see all of those galaxies I mentioned earlier. GALAXIES! Can we comprehend that these hundreds of things dotting this photo—some large enough to see their spiral nature, and some that appear just slightly larger than stars—are galaxies made up of millions and millions of stars, just like our own Milky Way is? And just imagine how many of those billions of stars in all of those galaxies may have planets circling them, just like our own solar system. And what are the odds that some of these may have also been gifted with sentient, intelligent life like we profess to be here on Planet Earth? Forgive the expression, but it’s probably “astronomical.” Then, take a moment to ponder two additional, incredible facts: 1. These galaxies (and therefore their stars and planets) are so many billions and billions of miles apart that it is most likely impossible for one of those civilizations to visit another, even with whatever advanced technology they could contrive. Even Star Trek’s “warp drive” could not traverse these distances, at least in the lifetime of the average human. And 2. The light we see from many of them is billions and billions of “years old,” in that it took that long to reach us, traveling at 186,272 miles PER SECOND! Which, of course, means that even if one could travel to one of those distant galaxies, it may not even be there anymore, having lived out its life and burned out or burned up, or been swallowed by a Black Hole. Keep staring at this photo, and let your imagination run wild—life’s too short to limit one’s “wondering!”

 

The second photo released is the one pictured as the lead-in to this week’s sermon. These beautiful clouds of space dust have been dubbed “star factories” by the scientists of the JWST team, meaning that in the midst of this “gold” dust, gravity is gathering material to ignite yet another new star. Some of the bright stars pictured around the cloud may well be new ones that just were “created” within the past few billion years, or so. Hubble gave us a similar view of a dust cloud/star factory that literally looked like fingers reaching into the heavens, an image some folk dubbed, “The hand of the Creator.” Again, spend a few moments just “wondering” about what you see in this photo. Try to put higher reasoning and conjecture together beyond just how “pretty” the colors are—come up with a few theories of your own, as to what is going on. While we’re not astronomers, astro-physicists, or space scientists, we have the right to advance our own ideas, and have almost as much to go on as the former bunch does! Maybe more, if you add in our childlike way we do our “wondering,” unencumbered by book-learning and Ph.D.s. I just can’t look at these photos without inserting an “intelligence” into them. Are not they just too beautiful, awesome, staggering, and inspiring to be a snapshot of random, cataclysmic events? Those of us who reckon ourselves to be at least “grassroots” theologians have to ask ourselves, where is GOD in all of this?

 

As we examine a few of my thoughts on this matter, let me say, first of all, that I have the utmost respect for any of the scientists on the JWST team who would declare themselves to be “atheists” or “agnostics.” These declarations serve as scientific “partitioning” or “controls,” allowing them to study the phenomenon revealed by the James Webb Space Telescope with purely their “science minds,” themselves unencumbered by the burden of proving or disproving a “Creator’s hand” is at work. Let their science do its work, then we’ll see what happens to the prevailing witnesses to the majesty being uncovered. I have often said that I most enjoy good conversation with those who “don’t believe in God,” as long as both parties don’t judge the other as deluded, right off the bat. The same will certainly be true for these “wonder” workers, in the case of the JWST.

 

If the cosmic reality we see in these mind-boggling photos is the culmination of a series of random, unplanned or unguided events, then I will say that such randomness has, itself, risen to the level of cosmic consciousness, and deserves to be given a divine seat. In my life, when randomness prevails, things go to hell in a hurry, never organizing themselves into anything coherent. Witness this sermon, for example, or many of them I write, for that matter. But then, if this universe-wide series of random events has been going on long enough—and it has, when they talk about billions and billions of years—maybe it would succeed in creating such a beautiful, systemic universe. After all, enough time has passed that a whole host of inferior universes conjured up by chance could have come and gone, only now leaving in their place the masterpiece we now behold. I just can’t get there, however.

 

At the my first glimpse of the James Webb Space Telescope photos, what immediately came to mind was the recent experience of standing in a large, dark warehouse building surrounded by beautiful strains of music and animated projections of the art of Vincent van Gogh moving all around me. I marveled at the creativity of this man, and was momentarily “lost” in the all-encompassing beauty of it—“immersed,” as they said. If the technical geniuses who put “Immersive Van Gogh” together just wait a few months, collect the photos surely to be handed down by the JWST team, and give them the same treatment as what I witnessed in that Pittsburgh warehouse, we will most assuredly be treated to an inspiring display by another artist! Maybe we should dub the Divine the “God of all Randomness”? Whole galaxies spinning in space, newly-minted stars, and colorful dust clouds will take the place of impressionistic water lilies and “starry nights.” Surely—SURELY—there is an “artist” behind what we are seeing in these revelatory photographs from a telescope parked at “Lagrange Point Two,” a million miles out in space? 

 

Now, let’s let today’s passage from Colossians really blow your mind: This divine artist not only sculpted the “random” galaxies and stars in our universe, but the Divine also visited us in human form! Colossians 1:15-17 gives us the unique description of the “cosmic” Christ, the one for whom “all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible.” Don’t you just love the author’s “scientific” theory that “in [Christ] all things hold together”? Modern science has demonstrated that the forces in a single atom of matter are exponentially strong, and that this power is “held together” by something called the “strong nuclear force,” which they don’t understand, but for which there is incredible empirical evidence (witness nuclear power and, of course, nuclear weapons). The author of Colossians may be postulating that the Son of God is not only a co-creator of all things visible and invisible, but that his “hand” may be this strong nuclear force literally holding all matter together! Even if one is to take this sentence figuratively, it is still an important truth—Jesus is that which brings meaning and “sense” to the whole of creation, especially our human lives. And all of this power “pitched his tent” among earthly humans—the “Word made flesh,” as the Gospel of John tells us in its first chapter. The “human” Christ is also the “cosmic” Christ, as well as the Savior Christ. Look into your own heart, and you will find Christ’s divine love at work. Look at the images from the James Webb Space Telescope, and you will see the results when that same love is expanded to a cosmic size!

 

For me, the “magic” of my faith has always been this deeply personal, yet immensely cosmic creativity and love I see in Christ, my Savior. I have never had the idea that I would want to “hug” Jesus when I get to the Divine Realm, but step back and just take him in—just like I have been doing with the photos from his “family photo album” from the JWST. I’ve been less impressed with the question, “What would Jesus Do?” than I have been with the reality, “Look what Jesus DID!”

 

At a few funeral services of dear, dear parishioners who “got” this deeply human, yet universally cosmic view of God, I have shared a few sentences from Robert Fulghum’s book, “From Beginning to End: The Rituals of Our Lives.” In the book, Fulghum tells of buying his grave plot, and going out on starry nights and lying on it on a blanket and staring up at the heavens. He recounts:

 

"Looking up and trying to conceive of the magnitude and complexity of space, I was caught between two overwhelming thoughts: that there may be no other intelligent life out there or that the number of worlds occupied by life like us may well be infinite. Either point of view staggers my mind. Just being able to consider such questions is amazing enough...I have never liked the phrase that says we're just made of dust and return to dust. We are energy, which is interchangeable with light. We are fire and water and earth. We are air and atoms and quarks. Moreover, we are dreams, hopes, and fears held together by wisdom and driven apart by folly. So much more than dust. The biblical verse should say, 'Miracle thou art and to Mystery returneth.' 

 

'The light I see from my grave started toward me before I came into being. The source of the light may have died out by now. That's a scientific fact. My life gives off another kind of light as it consumes its energy. That light may shine long after the source is gone."

 

May it be so for the light of each of our lives as followers of Jesus Christ. Amen!