Hilton Head Island, SC – April 14, 2024
The Chapel Without Walls
Psalm 19:1-6; Psalm 8:1-9; Psalm 148:1-6
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. – Psalm 19:1 (RSV)
Introductory Note: I first preached this sermon in August of 2017 after watching the first and only total solar eclipse I will ever witness, unless I live to be 106 and somebody drives me to wherever another total eclipse will be in the USA in 2045. Last Monday we watched what little eclipse there was on Hilton Head Island (about 2-5% by my inexact calculations). I kept putting on and off my freebie goggles I kept from the 2017 eclipse every thirty seconds for about 45 minutes. The reason the press made this eclipse such a big deal is that it IS a big deal. It was spectacular for the millions who lived under its path from Texas to Maine or drove to watch it, perhaps spending a few hundred dollars to see it. In my opinion, it was worth it for them. I decided not to take the time to drive four or five hundred miles to see my second total eclipse.
All that notwithstanding, I want to preach this sermon again, because it is not essentially about a solar eclipse; it is about the immensity, incomprehensibility, and grandeur of God, who exists without, within, and beyond “the spacious firmament on high..” God flung the firmament into what theretofore was a total void seventeen billion years ago, more or less. “The firmament,” incidentally, is what pre-Renaissance people thought they saw when they looked at the night sky. It was like an enormous basketball, cut in half, with stars attached, which they believed was not very far up in the night air. I made a few minor changes to the original sermon to “update” it, but you are to imagine yourselves as having been in church at Congregation Beth Yam on August 23, 2017. Please listen to (or read) this sermon in that context.
Space has always fascinated me. The older I get, the greater is the fascination. “The universe” is absolutely astounding. When I was a young boy in school, we were taught that “the universe” was usually defined as our solar system: the sun, and the nine (but maybe now only eight) planets. Then, the more I read, the larger the universe became. Astronomers tell us that the universe is expanding at an enormous and ever-increasing rate. So “the universe” is “space,” all of it, whatever shape it takes, and the astronomers apparently are not agreed on its shape.
The late famous astrophysicist Carl Sagan used to be on television fairly frequently. Many times he waxed eloquent about “billions and billions of stars.” It was an unforgettable phrase. Well, the universe is trillions and trillions of miles wide, and is expanding by millions of miles every day. It all amounts to zillions of miles, actually. The dictionary defines a zillion as an indeterminately large number. But then, how can anyone or anything “define” a number as being “indeterminate”? Space is like that, and we have to live with that reality. Space is really BIG. Furthermore, our planet may be just a mere also-ran in the universal lineup of billions and billions of planets.
The sun is the biggest thing in our solar system. It is 109 times the diameter of the earth, which means that 1,300,000 earths, all crumbled up, could fit inside the sun. And the sun is, as we all recall, 93,000,000 miles away. The moon, on the other hand, is a mere 250,000 miles away, or so, and is only about a quarter the diameter of the earth.
The reason there are so few total solar eclipses is because the sun is so far away and the moon is relatively so small compared to both the sun and the earth. The orbits of the earth and moon are not perfectly round, but elliptical. Therefore the moon is very seldom between the sun and the earth so as to cause an eclipse anywhere on earth, and in fact can cause partial eclipses only very infrequently and total eclipses almost never. If you don’t really understand what I am saying, don’t worry, because I don’t really understand the mathematics or the mechanics of it either, even though I am fascinated by trying to get my mind around it, which is why I am preaching this sermon on this Sunday, six days after a total eclipse of the sun.
Before I started classes at the University of Wisconsin in September of 1957, I went to the class adviser to whom I was assigned. The only thing I remember him doing (in those days, he sadly was almost certain to be a “him,” not a “her,”) was to save me from making a huge mistake in choosing Astronomy 1. When he saw that I had (happily) dispensed with math after algebra and plane geometry in high school, he said I would probably have a very hard time taking Introductory Astronomy. Having read a fair amount about space since then, I am convinced he was absolutely correct, and I am grateful for my adviser’s advice.
In a total solar eclipse, around the sun’s darkened circumference there is a ring of light. On May 24, 1919, British astronomer Arthur Addington was in South America to witness a total solar eclipse. As a result, he postulated that the corona around the darkened sun was light from distant stars that was bent around the edge of the sun, so to speak, by the sun’s gravitation. In making that hypothesis, he gave “proof” of Einstein’s theory of relativity before Einstein had even published his theory. The gravitation of stars and planets causes light to bend. That is amazing. Astronomy is amazing. Space is amazing. But to say that is not the point this sermon is trying to make. The point comes later.
I read a story about a man who has seen every eclipse in the last fifty years. He has to be a very wealthy man. It is much cheaper to live under where one eclipse is coming, and wait.
Carlo Rovelli is an Italian theoretical physicist who wrote a remarkable 81-page book called Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. In his sixth lesson, entitled “Probability, Time, and the Heat of Black Holes,” Dr. Rovelli writes about how hard it is to understand the meaning of the word “time.” I won’t go into why it is hard, because I understand it only very vaguely, and that’s because it has something to do with mathematics. Besides, it would take too much time to explain it, especially if I were the explainer. But he says this: “Borrowing words from my Italian editor, ‘what’s non-apparent is much vaster than what’s apparent.’” He continues, “From this limited, blurred focus we get our perception of the passage of time. Is that clear? No, it isn’t. There is so much still to be understood” (pps. 62-3). [Carlo Rovelli said that; I didn’t.]
If I understand even a tenth of the Seven Brief Lessons on Physics (an enormous “If”), I think one of the things he says is that there was a Big Bang, of undetermined and indeterminable origin. Before that, he implies, the mathematics of creation existed, but it had not yet fallen into place. It fell into place, I think he says, through a series of highly improbable statistical probabilities. In other words (if I understand Carlo Rovelli correctly), creation just happened, without a Creator.
And now we begin to move toward the point of a sermon called Thoughts on a Total Solar Eclipse. I am convinced it is a statement of faith and/or belief to say that creation just “happened.” It is also a statement of faith and/or belief to say that it didn’t just happen, that there was and is a Creator. Neither position can ever be proven beyond dispute, at least not in the space/time continuum in which we all currently exist. Maybe some time, but not in this life.
However, I would also add that my concept of the Creator (i.e., God) is much more diffuse and Rovelli-like than it was when I was younger. I have no doubt that God exists, that He created the entire universe, our solar system, our planet, us, and everything else on earth. But I no longer perceive Him to be nearly the “hands-on” God I once perceived. I have referred to that often when I talked about providence, about which I will not talk again now. But my thoughts on that are neither here nor there for you. What matters is what are your thoughts on this question. And here is where I ask you to think about certain things regarding God, the universe, and the eclipse.
The eclipses of August 21, 2017 and April 8, 2024 did not “just happen.” No one of any theological, philosophical, or scientific persuasion would claim that. It occurred because the sun, the moon, and the planet Earth are so intricately and carefully positioned in space, or in “space/time” to use the physicists’ phraseology, that the orbits of the moon and earth made it inevitable that there would be a total solar eclipse on those days and in those highly predictable swaths from west to east (2017) and southwest to northeast (2024). I don’t believe improbable statistical probabilities were the origin of that astrophysical phenomenon; God set those three celestial bodies in motion, and He, the Prime Mover, made it happen. But that is a statement of faith, not fact, just as improbable probability illustrates faith, but of a quite different sort.
Jim and Louise Galan were two of the snowbirds who attended The Chapel in the winter for several years until a few years ago, when they again became year-round residents of Hilton Head Island. In 2017 they invited Lois and me to come to their home in the mountains of North Carolina, because there would be a total eclipse there. I had looked forward to this astronomical rarity with great anticipation since I first read that it was coming. The night before the eclipse, sleeping in their guest house, I had two nightmares. In the first, Lois and I were in Cleveland, where we lived for five years when I was doing interim pastorates. In the first dream, the total eclipse was to occur there, except that it was totally overcast, as it often is in Cleveland. I was so upset I woke up. When I finally went back to sleep, I again dreamed about the eclipse, except that that time, there was a fog so thick in Glenville, NC you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.
When I awoke that morning, it was foggy at 3800 feet in North Carolina. But there usually is morning fog there at that time of year. The sun obliterated the fog by nine o’clock, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. By 11 AM there were a few fleecy clouds. By 1:00 it was quite cloudy, right where the eclipse was going to happen. By 1:30 PM there were clouds in the east that were moving west, toward where the eclipse was to begin at 2:12. At 2:10 there were no clouds where there needed to be no clouds, and there was a glorious window of opportunity whereby we saw the eclipse in its totality.
Lois said it was like the waters of the Red Sea parting, and it was. Some of you may think God caused the clouds to part so we could see the completely dark sun except for its corona, I beg to differ. God set space in motion with the Big Bang, but He stepped back to see what would happen ever since, and now He almost never interferes. His spirit moves within us and within every other living thing and everything else, but He doesn’t interfere. By God’s own decision, as it says in the Creation Story in Genesis, God put human beings in charge. At least that’s what I have believe for over fifty years, although it might change if I live to be 106.
In any case, what I had so longed to see seven years ago came to fruition. The sun went totally dark for two minutes, but its corona glowed, and we could see countless constellations of stars all around it, as though it were nighttime.
There were five of us gazing up at the sun through our eclipse glasses. We had had glimpses of the moon inserting itself over the sun through the clouds. The sun got darker and darker, as its crescent of sunlight got smaller and smaller. The quality of the light was like nothing I have seen before, nor shall I ever see it again. For half an hour, it got continuously darker, but it was unlike any sunset I have ever seen. Then came the totally darkened sun of the eclipse. Then, for another half-hour, it got lighter, but it was unlike any sunrise I’ve ever seen.
Christian people, the light during the eclipse was unearthly! It was the light of physics! Light was being bent around the sun’s corona. This was not sunlight; it was starlight! It was the light from zillions of stars, projected from the glowing corona! It was indescribably beautiful! It was serene! It was surreal! It was spiritual! It was light made possible only by a Power able to put every star in space into orbit, and all that light was lighting the earth when the sun itself was completely dark! I shall never forget that unearthly, singular light.
Josef Haydn was one of the last composers of great oratorios of the Late Baroque Period of music. In 1798 in Vienna he directed the premiere of his oratorio Die Schoepfung (The Creation). It was performed in the Schwarzenberg Palace of his patron, Baron Gottfried van Swieten. Haydn spent the next year revising The Creation, and its first public performance was on March 19, 1799, at the Burgtheater in Vienna. Haydn had told his biographer, “I was never so religious as during the composition of The Creation. Daily I fell on my knees and asked God for strength.” After the first public performance, Haydn told the biographer that as he was directing the oratorio, “Sometimes my whole body was ice cold, and sometimes I was overcome with burning fever. More than once I was afraid that I should suddenly suffer a stroke.” But the premiere was a huge success, and the audience was greatly moved by the powerful music.
In the musical score, the best-known chorus of The Creation does not come at the very end, but at the end of the sixth day of creation, after humans were created. In 1712, 86 years earlier, the English writer and essayist Joseph Addison wrote a poem which was published in a literary magazine called The Spectator. The poem followed an essay Addison had written, entitled The Strengthening of Faith. The early nineteenth century was the beginning of what was known as “The Age of Reason.” Before that was “The Age of Revelation,” as it was called. Addison’s poem was an attempt to yoke both reason and faith by considering God as “The Great Original.” Haydn’s German text was based on the words and poetic meter of the poem, but it is not an exact translation of the English words by any means. The Addison-Haydn duo combined to produce one of the most majestic hymns in the English language, The spacious firmament on high.
The Psalmists lived very close to nature. Most of us do not. People who lived three thousand or two thousand years ago were much closer to the natural order than we are. Every day they saw the sun, the mountains, the desert, the green fields and the sparse landscape, the animals, birds, and insects. At night they saw the moon and the stars in a blaze of light that we, who have artificial nocturnal light, can never see. The night sky was ablaze to them. To us it is just dark.
“O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth!” (Ps. 8:1) “Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise him in the heights! Praise him, sun and moon, praise him all you shining stars!” (Ps. 148:1,3) “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork….In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes forth like a bridegroom from his chamber (What magnificent poetry!)….Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the ends of them” (Ps. 19:1,4-6).
We began with what appears to us to be the largest orb in space, the sun. But it isn’t. At best the sun is an average-sized star. Seven years ago and six days ago its light was blotted out by the moon. Next we went to the stars, and to creation itself. Lastly we pondered the One who walks with us every step of our lives: unseen, often unfelt, but always present: encouraging, inspiring, guarding, touching our spirits with His spirit. The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims His handiwork.
God is zillions of miles away but also everywhere on earth. He is in every animal, plant, and protozoa, and in every human heart, mind, and spirit. Thanks be to the omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent God!