Sermon from January 16, 2011
"The Daring of God
Psalm 8

A new dad recently showed me pictures of his twins in his digital gallery. I have never seen anything like it. The pictures were taken when the children were very young – three days old from the moment of their conception to be precise. It was a moment of awe later, when I held each in the hospital, 6 lbs and 4 lbs respectively, and thought to myself, “I saw you when they measured you in number of cells.”

Carole and I stood last June at 9000 feet in the inky black of a Rocky Mountain night and looked up into the heavens and saw stars brilliant beyond East Coast possibilities and numerous beyond our ability to count them; and the Big Dipper so close I thought I could reach out and grab it and ladle water from a mountain stream. Their brilliance and patterns made me know why the ancients studied the stars.

The microscopic look at human life in its first days of existence and the star-spangled firmament whose scope is beyond comprehension cause me to say with the Psalmist: O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. You can sense ecstasy in his expansive language: in all the earth! and above the heavens. The man who wrote that had seen and felt something that overcame him. Heaven and earth were not big enough to contain it. He would never be the same. It left him feeling awe, left him feeling small. It made him worship.

What did he see? What did he feel? Did he get it into words? You have to be disciplined to get such intensity into words. Only if you succeed can you awaken other people to the same awe and worship. You know he wanted to try.

Raid on the Inarticulate
Join me in Psalm 8 where the Psalmist tried. He discovered what people in a thousand languages have discovered. Speech fails us, when we try to express the deepest meaning of our emotions about the deepest meaning of life. We utter platitudes. We stammer. We fall silent before the mystery. He got off to a good enough start in verse one, but I think he already knew that his “raid on the inarticulate” might not live up to his expectations. So, he wrote four lines that are the most perplexing in the Psalm.

From the lips of children and infants
     you have ordained praise,
because of your enemies,
     to silence the foe and the avenger.

Did he really mean children and infants? Their very existence is a praise to God; but it’s hard to see how what comes out of their mouths could silence the foe and the avenger. I can’t make that work, so I have a different idea. It goes like this. The Psalmist felt the difficulty of getting into words his intense emotions. He could not make words do justice to the enormity of what he felt. They seemed like the babbling of children, when he was trying to move the stars to pity.

But maybe that’s how God wanted it. Maybe that’s how God ordained it. “So be it,” said the Psalmist! “Let the praise of my lips do no better than children and infants.” I have to say: If he considered this Psalm the babbling of a child, I don’t know where that leaves the rest of us. Yet it doesn’t matter. Our platitudes, stammering, and silent wonder serve the same purpose as finely woven speech: to silence the foe and the avenger.

Do we not know, have our hearts not grasped that the best answer to skepticism and unbelief is to praise God? Billy Graham once told the story of a small village in Soviet Russia. The Commissar called the town together on Easter Sunday and lectured them long on the glories of Communism. At the end, he turned to the Orthodox village priest and said, “Okay, you have five minutes.”

The priest replied, “I don’t need five minutes.” He faced the villagers and said in a voice like a trumpet, “Christ is risen.”

As one man they thundered back, “He is risen indeed!” They silenced the foe and the avenger with the childlike praise of the children of God.

The best answer to the strutting and sometimes shrill atheism of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Stephen Pinker, and other dimmer lights is congregations like this one, who Sunday by Sunday lift their voices in praise to God. You don’t spend any other hour in your week better than you spend this one.

Mindful of Man
Having made his eloquent statement of his ineloquence, the Psalmist moves on to the next three verses. They begin to give Psalm 8 its distinctive character. They make a comparison that star-gazers have made from time immemorial.

When I consider your heavens,
     the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
     which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
     the son of man that you care for him?
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
     and crowned him with glory and honor.

The Psalmist redirects our attention away from the majesty of creation to the creature called Man. He wasn’t interested in stars. He was interested in the little human bi-ped, who studies the stars or ignores the stars, who breeds and feeds and wars and loves and dies. He was supremely interested that man, who is dwarfed by the incomprehensible canopy above should come to the attention of Him who made the incomprehensible canopy above. What is man that you are mindful of him?

It was no passing glance that the Creator cast our way. The second line in verse four repeats the first but deepens it: the son of man that you care for him. Before we read our ideas of caring onto God’s idea of caring, we should continue on to verse five. Remember: the particular habit of speech that the Psalms use is repetition, but they are never repetitious. Their repetitions expand our knowledge, and they do it in verse five.

You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings. He gave us a dignity only slightly lower than that of heavenly beings; and crowned him with glory and honor. Verse one says that God set His glory above the heavens. Verse five says He bestowed glory on Man. We may be specks in the universe, but we are spectacular specks.

Jesus caught the Psalmist’s emotion and the Psalmist’s meaning when He said: “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows (Luke 12:6-7). Our Lord taught His followers not to measure a person’s significance by laying him side by side with the diameter of the universe. He taught us never to be intimidated by mere size, whether the measuring rod is Goliath or the distance to the farthest galaxy.

The Lord has crowned us, says verse five, with glory and honor. Honor has to do with the esteem in which a person is held. Honor in the context of this Psalm has to do with the esteem in which Man is held by – well, yes, by whom: by the heavenly beings; by the Creator; by himself; by all the above? Take your pick for now. The Psalmist goes on to use the cunning beauty of repetition to bring us at last to the main theme of Psalm 8. In what does our honor as the human race consist? The answer tells us what the Psalmist saw and felt that prompted him to write the Psalm. Verses 6-8 give the answer and introduce us to the daring of God the Creator.

Everything Under His Feet
You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
     you put everything under his feet:
all flocks and herds,
     and the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air,
     and the fish of the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.

You, the Maker of heaven and earth, made him, in whom you have planted a portion of your reason and will, ruler over the works of your hands. We get tense at the prospect of handing over keys for the family car to a teenage driver. God handed over the keys of creation to man. The second line of verse six expands our understanding of what that means: you put everything under his feet.

Had the Psalmist been reading Genesis one? God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground” – Genesis 1:28.

The first examples in verse 7 are modest: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field. These are the domesticated animals. The examples of verse 8 pose a greater challenge: the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. People in the Psalmist’s day could catch birds in a snare and catch fish on a hook. Perhaps they had already begun to train certain birds to serve human purposes. But all that swim the paths of the seas?

He chose examples his readers would know. We know them too, but they couldn’t dream of what verse six means to us who inhabit a scientific age. We make sub-atomic particles serve the needs of Man. We map the human genome. We walk on the surface of the moon.

This authorization to subdue and rule God’s creation has not been rescinded, nor is it optional. I’d like to reflect on what that means after we allow the Psalmist to bring this Psalm to its conclusion in verse nine. He simply repeats verse one.

O Lord, our Lord,
     how majestic is your name in all the earth!

“Let’s go back to where we started. Now you have some idea of what I saw and felt, of what moved me to worship. Now you know it isn’t stars that astonished me, although they are astonishingly beautiful. It isn’t the stars; it’s the stargazers, the star-struck, the star-crossed, the starry-eyed that startled me. The Creator of all things has put all things under their feet to subdue and rule. Our smallness did not deter Him from that daring move. The Creator stooped down to make Man great. Blessed be His name!”

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
I mentioned teenage drivers a moment ago. They can’t wait until they get their driver’s licenses. They are 16, and it is their right. We, who with mixed emotions hand them the keys to the car, know it is a trust. We trust them. Their fellow citizens trust them.

When God gave humanity the keys to creation, He gave us a trust. Ruling over the works of God’s hands is a trust. How does it work? How do we discharge that trust?

The answer begins with another question: What is your life’s work? Whatever it is, it is your primary task in ruling over the works of God’s hands. Before work is economics, it is theology. You serve God before you work for your company. Before the global economy is a political problem, it is a theological fascination. As jet travel and the digital revolution make the world small, they made theology large. 

Back to your work! Your boss may be corrupt. If so, he not only betrays the people who work for him, he also betrays the mandate to subdue the earth and rule it. Your job may be tedious, but subduing the earth can be tedious but no less necessary.

We behold with wonder and sometimes dismay the growing interdependence of nations. The massive, throbbing energy of seven billion people is being coordinated to subdue the works of God’s hands. We know we can also destroy the planet. That possibility reminds us of God’s daring in placing all things under Man’s feet. It also reminds us that we must instead subdue and rule the planet. 

Vital to this global effort and this global threat is the work of a relatively small number of people. They hold in their hands the instruments for discovering and harnessing the powers of nature to serve the needs of Mankind. I mean of course those who engage in mathematical and experimental research and the application of research findings to human life. Their work determines the material shape of human life.

On behalf of those who benefit from their work, and who are victims of their work, I want to pose to them a question? Does your love for people exceed your love of power? All the natural sciences minimize the human dimension. That is not a fault. It is how scientific method works; but minimizing the human dimension can fuel the love for power, and it is not enough for human thriving. Can you remember the human dimension as you go about your scientific and engineering labors?

A disturbing reality makes it urgent to do that. Simply put, we now know that so-called “conquest of nature” is an idea tainted with arrogance. It gives rise to the doctrine that if we can do it, we should do it. That doctrine needs critical reevaluation. The threats posed by Science to human life and to the planet are now so great that scientists and engineers themselves must challenge the doctrine. They must also allow others – theologians, philosophers, politicians, and artists – to help them rethink what a more humble science might look like.

Vital also to subduing and ruling the planet is the Church. We learn from the Church a coherent reason for human labor in the doctrine of creation. We also learn from the Church the intrinsic purpose for human labor in the doctrine of the New Jerusalem. And in the Church the people of God on behalf of all created beings give praise to our daring Creator and merciful Redeemer. If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!