Sermon from December 9, 2007
I like to work Sudoku puzzles, the harder, the better. Whether easy or difficult, the inner logic of each puzzle is the same. You never have to guess in order to solve a puzzle. Everything God created has its own inner logic. That's why our language has so many ologies. Biology is the study of the inner logic or structure of living things. Geology is the study of the inner logic or structure of the earth. Theology is the study of the inner logic or structure of God's nature.

That familiar ending, ology, and the English word logic both come from the same Greek word, logos, which we usually translate as word. This dryasdust lesson in language comes alive in our hands, when we read the opening verses of the Gospel of John. In the beginning was the Word (the logos), and the Word (the logos) was with God, and the Word (the logos) was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him (who is the inner logic and structure of all things) all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made – John 1:1-3.

The complexity of the universe existed in Him as a unity and a simplicity. He could, as the poet Browning put it, imagine the whole and execute the parts. As a result, each of the multitudinous parts of creation has its own unity and simplicity. That's why we can study each of these parts with the same confidence with which I approach a Sudoku puzzle; each part has its own inner logic and structure. We labor mightily to discover it and make it work for us and to transmit our knowledge, lest it be lost.

Lest it be lost, stay with me through the following reflection on the mind of the Creator. Let us take the vantage point of looking into His incomprehensible mind before He created the heavens and the earth. The Bible justifies taking this vantage point.

The Wisdom That Made the Universe
To aid our reflection I'd like to correlate readings from Holy Scripture with photographs of our coherent universe. Let's begin with Proverbs 8:23-31, a passage that treats Wisdom as a person. Let's read it while looking at this photograph of deep space, taken through the Hubble telescope. (Show slide of Deep Space.) It's hard to count the individual centers of light in this photo, but it could be done, if we were patient.

If we were patient, and if we counted them all, we would need to prepare ourselves for the shocking news that what we had laboriously countered were not stars. They are all galaxies, and the Hubble telescope, like all telescopes, focused only on a small part of the heavens with its powerful lens. As we gaze into this tiny corner of a universe, "whose scope is beyond comprehension," listen to the voice of that wisdom by which the universe came into existence.

Look at verses 23, 27 & 30. I was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began .... I was there when he set the heavens in place, when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep ... Then I was the craftsman at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind – Proverbs 8:23-31.

The Neighborhood
Jesus Christ confirmed my seminary professor's observation that we will never be educated until we are sufficiently confused. Jesus left everyone within earshot scratching his head over a new form of teaching He had used – parables. He explained why He did that. His explanation takes us back to the vantage point of looking into the incomprehensible mind of God before He created the heavens and the earth.

Let's first zoom in, so to speak, on one of these galaxies. (Show slide of Milky Way.) This, in a galacitc way of speaking, is home: the Milky Way. The Anglo-Australian Laboratories made this composite photograph with radio telescopes.

You can see where they identify the approximate position of our solar system, nothing more than a dot within our galaxy. Now, allow yourself to gaze to move from our sun to the center of the Milky Way. The astronomers call it the central bulge and the nucleus. Light travels just under six trillion miles per year. That's what astronomers call one light year. We would have to go that distance non-stop for 30,000 years to get from earth to the central bulge of the Milky Way. That helps us appreciate the magnitude of the previous photograph through the Hubble telescope.

As we try to get our imagination around such distances in our own "garden-variety galaxy," listen to Jesus explain His strategy of confusion in Matthew 13:35. So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet: "I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world," our world.

But things hidden since the creation of the world were there before the creation of the world. The Creator of all things had them on His mind, because He had us on His mind before He created the Milky Way.

Home, Sweet Home
We have to be cautious here. Size impresses us. The size of our galaxy tempts us to disrespect human humility and human dignity. You can't measure humility and dignity by laying a six-foot man side by side with the diameter of the Milky Way. Neither our humility nor our dignity is a matter of size.

Our sense of portion begins to come right, as we approach that tiny piece of our galaxy that spun off from the sun of old. (Show slide of Earthrise.) Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home. This photograph remains closest to my heart, because it showed me earth for the first time from a vantage point outside earth.

It's all there: New York, Rio, Buenos Aires, Johannesburg, Lagos, London, Moscow, Jerusalem, Mombai, Beijing, Jakarta, Tokyo, Sidney, Wilmington, Chadd's Ford, Mt. Lebanon Road. As domestic feelings begin to return, listen to the Creator's thoughts before any of this came to be.

"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world,'" – Matthew 25:34. And so we pray, "Thy kingdom come!" – God's kingdom, that one "far-off, divine event toward which the whole creation moves," set in motion before creation!

The Personal Touch
(Show slide of Infant.) Without this there would be no London, Jerusalem, or Mexico City. Some theoretical physicists make the case that the vast size and age of the universe exist to make this child possible. And you could make the case that this child elicits the finest feelings of tenderness in the human family. And this tenderness did not originate on this planet or in this galaxy or in this universe. It was already there before the foundation of all things.

In His prayer to the Father, Jesus said: "Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world" – John 17:24. Before atoms existed, love governed al things in the Land of the Trinity, and in creating all things, love began to embody itself in this "tiny corner" of our garden-variety galaxy, spinning in a universe whose scope is beyond comprehension.

The Choices of God
Just as God created large and uncounted galaxies, which move outward in a universe that seems to be expanding, so He created the incomprehensibly small. He taught four acids to combine in different ways and then create chains that recombine and form a double helix, which reappears in ever cell, and the result is this. (Show slide of Blastocyst.) You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well – Psalm 139:13-14. The love that governs all things in the Land of the Trinity chose a process in the dark places of a woman's body to achieve the pinnacle of earthly creation.

But the mystery of God goees deeper than biological processes. Jeremiah said: The word of the Lord came to me saying, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations" – Jeremiah 1:5. The Apostle Paul likewise spoke of God, who set me apart from my mother's womb – Galatians 1:15.

Even these mysterious choices were made within a more mysterious choice. Jeremiah and Paul were sons of Israel, that most mysterious of all races and nations. Of Israel the Torah says: You are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession – Deuteronomy 7:6.

That divine election had more than Jews in mind, and it had deeper roots. The Apostle Paul said it best: He chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight – Ephesians 1:4.

The Final Mystery
Can you see better why I said that take the Bible justifies our taking the vantage point of looking into God’s incomprehensible mind before He created the heavens and the earth? Look one more time in the last book of the Bible. Revelation 13:8 expresses this final mystery almost as an afterthought. It speaks of the beast that sets itself against the Lord and His Messiah. All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast – all whose names have not been written in the book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.

With those last words all the horror of the beast and even the blessedness of the book of life fade like the sound of a bell before wind and surf. Before the worlds came to be the incomprehensible mind of the Maker envisioned the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world. 

Before creation made the incomprehensibly large and the incomprehensibly small and the incomprehensibly fast, the love that governs the Land of the Trinity chose that the Trinity would some day stoop down into this tiny corner of a garden-variety galaxy of a universe whose scope is beyond comprehension and experience man’s extremities,