i preached a short homily tonight for Ash Wednesday. This is a transcript...Before I ever considered seminary or the ministry, I was first and foremost… a science geek. I love science. I love how science answers questions. If there’s no answer, there’s a theory. If there’s no theory, there’s a debate, and there are strong opinions. And I have never been accused… of not having an opinion.
However, I didn’t go into a scientific career because science, for me, didn’t answer any of the really important questions. Why are we here? Why do people do the things they do? Why do good things happen to politicians?
But science always remained and always held a fascination for me, especially space, the galaxy. The story of creation was most fascinating to me from about day one to day three, when God gathers the chaos and forms it into the heavens and the earth with his few words. The Bible records God saying, “Let there be light,” and this is amazing. But if you have ever read a scientific narration of the birth of a star from someone like famous scientist, Neil Tyson, you gain a new appreciation for craftsmanship. It’s akin to the years of time it takes it takes an oyster to form a beautiful pearl from a single grain of sand, but it takes millions of years and the process, though slow, is a dazzling light show, the likes of which no mortal has ever witnessed.
Stars are made mostly out of hydrogen and helium, the smallest elements in the universe. But stars are the birth place of all the other elements we know. It is within the womb of stars that the building blocks of all of creation are formed. These other elements are released when the largest of stars explode. As they die, they give life to all of God’s creation. Everything you are made of, everything you can see and touch and taste and hear, God knit their building blocks together in the center of a star. Everything we are and experience… is stardust.
God’s building blocks, his playdough, his clay, the dust from which we come, is not just earth, it is dust… star dust. To make you, God called light into existence. God made a star, and then a star died and then God made you from the remnants of the light he called into existence.
Like the star, all of us will eventually die and to that dust we will return. No matter how well preserved, one day we will all return to dust, to the elements from whence we come. We return to what we once were… star dust. The Lord of all, heaven and earth, our world and the sun that shines by day and the stars that shine down on us by night, has made our inward parts, has brought us to life from the very dust of stars and breathed into us. But the psalmist tells us that one day God will withdraw his breath from us and to that dust we shall return. Amen.
However, I didn’t go into a scientific career because science, for me, didn’t answer any of the really important questions. Why are we here? Why do people do the things they do? Why do good things happen to politicians?
But science always remained and always held a fascination for me, especially space, the galaxy. The story of creation was most fascinating to me from about day one to day three, when God gathers the chaos and forms it into the heavens and the earth with his few words. The Bible records God saying, “Let there be light,” and this is amazing. But if you have ever read a scientific narration of the birth of a star from someone like famous scientist, Neil Tyson, you gain a new appreciation for craftsmanship. It’s akin to the years of time it takes it takes an oyster to form a beautiful pearl from a single grain of sand, but it takes millions of years and the process, though slow, is a dazzling light show, the likes of which no mortal has ever witnessed.
Stars are made mostly out of hydrogen and helium, the smallest elements in the universe. But stars are the birth place of all the other elements we know. It is within the womb of stars that the building blocks of all of creation are formed. These other elements are released when the largest of stars explode. As they die, they give life to all of God’s creation. Everything you are made of, everything you can see and touch and taste and hear, God knit their building blocks together in the center of a star. Everything we are and experience… is stardust.
God’s building blocks, his playdough, his clay, the dust from which we come, is not just earth, it is dust… star dust. To make you, God called light into existence. God made a star, and then a star died and then God made you from the remnants of the light he called into existence.
Like the star, all of us will eventually die and to that dust we will return. No matter how well preserved, one day we will all return to dust, to the elements from whence we come. We return to what we once were… star dust. The Lord of all, heaven and earth, our world and the sun that shines by day and the stars that shine down on us by night, has made our inward parts, has brought us to life from the very dust of stars and breathed into us. But the psalmist tells us that one day God will withdraw his breath from us and to that dust we shall return. Amen.
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