First Sunday in Lent
Cosmos
O Lord and Ruler of the hosts of heaven...You made the heavens and the earth, with all their vast array. — The Book of Common Prayer, Canticle 14, p. 90
In this first week of Lent, I invite you to meditate with me on the largest structures of God’s creation. Not the large things that we on Earth have seen or created, but structures that fill the sky and are fundamental to the organization of the universe and our own existence. I invite you to meditate with me on what we can learn by looking at the darkness of the night sky, the sameness of creation over vast distances, the meaning of time, and more.
On this first Sunday in Lent, as many of us begin our yearly pilgrimage in a formal way, I ask you to consider the scale of creation. Much of what I will present over the next weeks is organized by scale, beginning at the largest, the cosmic scale, and ending in the last days of Lent and Holy Week at the smallest, the quantum scales. The greatest conundrum in my mind is that it is possible for us to use our imagination to conceive the cosmos.
The universe is essentially a giant empty, soundless, cold, chaotic void. In incredibly rare instances, there are small pockets of organized matter. The little pockets represent very simple things like electrons, a proton, a cosmic ray. Even more rarely those little bits of organization combine into something complicated—a hydrogen or helium atom. Even more rare than that are clouds of hydrogen. Stars, planets, and everything else that we can see are very small and very rare things when we think on the cosmic scale. It’s hard to imagine that God fills all of this vastness with the fire of love, or that God can comprehend its totality.
And yet that is just what we insist on believing about God as Christians. And more than that, we believe that the same God who animates the vast cosmos knows each of us individually by name and loves us. And that God came into the cosmos at a specific moment in history here on the Earth, a nondescript rocky planet in orbit around a boringly typical and relatively small star. It is when I think about the universe at the largest cosmic scales that I am most dumbfounded by what theologians call the “scandal of the particularity of the Incarnation.” We are so small and yet for some reason we matter so much to God. It is a thing near impossible to grasp. And yet it is central to the teaching of the prophets and the apostles.
Do you believe the God of the cosmos hears your prayer?
If you find yourself struggling with that, could you, at least for today, envision what changes in you if you believe that?
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"Lent is Not rocket Science" was published by Forward Movement, a ministry of the Episcopal Church which publishes accessible low cost resources on discipleship written by the laity, clergy, and bishops of the church largely on a pro bono basis.
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"Lent is Not rocket Science" was published by Forward Movement, a ministry of the Episcopal Church which publishes accessible low cost resources on discipleship written by the laity, clergy, and bishops of the church largely on a pro bono basis.
I love your thoughtful and challenging writing!
ReplyDelete1. I do, in that the God of the cosmos is confined by neither space nor time. My limited understanding of creation confines it (life, planets and stars and their denizens, consciousness) as a space/time thing.
2. I don't wanna grow up!