Stars, Camels, and Other Improbable Wonders: Psalm 8
Second Sunday of Easter; observance of Earth Day
O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
2 Out of the mouth of babies and
infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger.
3 When
I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in
place,
4 what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
5 Yet you have made him
a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
6 You have given him dominion over the works of
your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
7 all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
8 the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
9 O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth! (CEB)
Happy
Easter! Christ is risen! Christ is risen!
No, we’re not
in a time loop; last Sunday was the one we call Easter and this is not that—but
Easter is not just a day. It is a whole
season of resurrection, of appearances, of Jesus being a little bit of a
beautiful gremlin as He teaches the disciples the next step of living as this
thing called Church in the world.
It’s also
spring, sort of—we are in Michigan, after all—and that is a season of
resurrections, itself. I’m not
particularly a fan of spring, but I appreciate watching others appreciate the
bursting flowers and the trees waving shyly at each other as the robins and sparrows
chirp their seasonal hellos. Spring is a
good time to pay attention to the fact that we live on a planet that is, quite
frankly, impressive.
One part I do
like is that I’m an early riser by inclination, which means that as the days
get longer I get to see the full impact of the sunrises. I often make a point of watching them, even
on the cloudy days, just for the meditation of seeing the new day as the planet
turns this side toward the sun. They’ve
been beautiful this week, the sunrises, with the different layers of lavender
and creamsicle orange and blushing pink melting into each other over my
neighbor’s house.
In fact, that
beauty of nature is one that often comes up in my conversations with people
about where they find God. The answer is
so often “in nature,” because nature can be deeply awesome—in the original sense
of “full of awe,” not just “really rad, yo.”
Many folks who look at the sunrise, or see a dragonfly skimming across a
pond, or listen to the thunderous power of the ocean breathing against rocky
shores, say, “Here, here is God. Here is
God’s majesty,” even though most people don’t tend to use the term “majesty”
all that often.
The psalmist,
too, looks at the splendor of his world and is bowled over by it. “When I look at your heavens, the work of
your fingers, / the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,” he
writes, and doesn’t continue “oh wow” but kind of does. Psalm 8 is a hymn of praise, the first in the
psalter, and is actually the only hymn addressed entirely to God.[1] There is no moment of addressing the
congregation, or one’s enemies, or even the stars and the sheep; this is all a
conversation with God, the marvelous and creative God Who built the world and
invited us to be part of it.
For all that
creation is devastatingly fantastic, though, it’s also deeply weird. That same sunrise yesterday that made me wax
poetic about the nature of color also gifted me the amusement of a skunk
trundling along the back fence as it searched for a way to cross under, at one point
startling a robin into chittering hops away.
Skunks move in such a strange, almost undulating way, like their bodies
and legs aren’t in agreement as to how “forward” should work.
And when I was
in Israel recently, I had the adventure of briefly riding a camel—which, I can
tell you right out, was absolutely nothing like riding a horse. Camels are deeply strange creatures that are
built to survive the intensely dry heat of the deserts and, as such, are all
practicality and very little grace. Their
necks curve like animatronic dinosaurs in patterns you can’t predict, and there
are essentially elbows in their thighs that make getting off the ground a
three-step process. (Very bumpy when you’re
part of that; I nearly slid down that neck, which was mortifying.)
This, too, is awesome;
this, too, is part of God’s wondrous creation.
It’s the stars and the majestic sunrises and the beautifully thunderous
ocean—but it’s also the bizarre camels and the trundling skunks, the half-hearted
ferns slumped against exasperated oaks.
All of this speaks to God's majesty and, says the psalmist, to ours. “When I look at your heavens,” writes the
psalmist, lost in wonderment, “what is man that you are mindful of him?”
It’s important
to remember here that the psalm wasn’t originally in English—none of the Bible
was, but this particularly is Hebrew poetry.
“Man,” here—translated “human,” sometimes, to make explicit the gender
neutrality of it—is a-DAHM,[2] the same word that gives
the first human his name. “Adam” is
related to the Hebrew word Adamah, which means “dirt” or “mud” or,
appropriately, “earth.” (In fact, the
names of both Adam and Eve are linguistic puns, which should absolutely be part
of every conversation we have about the creation stories in Genesis and what
the authors were trying to do with them.)
Here, in this
psalm from around the first millennium BC, the psalmist is juxtaposing the
height of God in the glory even above the heavens with mud-folk,
earth-people. “Adam” means “humanity’s
finitude and fallibility,” writes Professor Jerome Creach. “The human is from the earth, not from the
heavens.”[3] What are creatures made of clay to the God of
all things? Not even “who,” but
“what”? How are we special enough,
beautiful enough, to merit notice?
It’s important
to note that the psalmist never answers his own question because the answer
isn’t the point. We are; we are
special enough, beautiful enough, whatever enough, and God does notice
us. Not only notices but elevates: “you
have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings / and crowned him with
glory and honor. / You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; /
you have put all things under his feet”.
Episcopalian theologian Dr. Elizabeth Webb writes that, “Royal language
like that previously used to describe God is now ascribed to human beings. The
range of our dominion, like God’s, is all-encompassing, from the domestic
animals that share our labor to wild animals, birds, and sea creatures (verses
7-8). We are made to share in God’s governance of the world, to serve as
representatives of God’s own dominion.
“By the time we reach verse 9, the
repetition of verse 1, we know more fully what it means to call God ‘Lord’ and ‘Sovereign,’
and what it means to share in that sovereignty. The lordship of God is revealed
precisely in God’s care for us. God provides for us, desires our good, and
enables us to seek it. We reflect God’s image in the proper governance of our
fellow creatures.” We mud-folk, we
humans, are made kings—and given the responsibility of kings. “The king who serves in God’s image keeps the
covenant and observes God’s law, not ‘exalting himself above other members of
the community’ (verses 18-20). In our dominion over creation, we are to
remember the covenant and God’s commands, and not seek our own good at the
expense of the domestic and wild world.”[4]
What are humans that God should
take note, should care for us? We are the
bearers of the imago Dei, the image of God, as stewards of this
creation, made majestic because of the task given us. We have been tasked with the oceans and the
stars and the sunrises, but also with the skunks and the camels and the
robins. We have been given the sublime
and the absurd and told they are all precious and we are meant to care for
them. This is what it means to be
majestic, according to the psalmist: that we, like God, glory in this creation
and care for it, are mindful of it, keep it safe.
We’re not doing a bang-up job, in
case you didn’t know. Storm systems
running from Arkansas to Wisconsin are gearing up again even after claiming 32
lives in the last month as climate change intensifies weather patterns.[5] California salmon fishing will be put
off-limits for the first time in 14 years due to low population numbers driven
by drought, heat waves, and agricultural damage.[6]
“You have given him dominion…over the
fish of the sea”. We are not acting like
kings, we who have been given the gift of this world. There’s an entire section in the United
Methodist Book of Discipline titled “The Natural World,” and I recommend
reading it not just because I will always recommend reading the Book of
Discipline. “All creation is the
Lord’s and we are responsible for the ways in which we use and abuse it,” it
begins. “Let us recognize the
responsibility of the church and its members to place a high priority on
changes in economic, political, social, and technological lifestyles to support
a more ecologically equitable and sustainable world leading to a higher quality
of life for all of God’s creation.”[7]
How do we do that? Some of it is the small things: avoid plastic
bags and single-use plastic when you can; walk or bike or take public transit
if it’s available; plant trees; turn off lights and faucets when you’re not
using them. Some of it is the
medium-sized things: lobby your homeowners’ association or city council to let
you grow wildflowers instead of having to use time and gas and water on
maintaining a grass lawn; support local farmers and gardeners when you can financially
do so, especially given the upcoming season of farmers’ markets; use birthdays
and holidays as opportunities to give gifts of sustainable materials,
especially if the giftee isn’t able to afford such workarounds on their
own. (It is an entirely different
sermon, Church, how expensive we’ve made healthy and sustainable living.)
If you have the energy and the focus
for it, there are the big things:
there’s figuring out which companies are lying about their green status
and putting more money into fossil fuels instead; there’s writing your
lawmakers about not using the Great Lakes for unsustainable business practices;
there’s lobbying for better public transit and affordable sustainability
measures. If you’re not sure where to
start, you can connect with the creation care group here at First; you can also
check out what the larger UMC is doing via the General Board of Church and
Society, which has named environmental justice as one of its five areas of
focus for the year.
“O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is
your name in all the earth?” ends the psalmist, same as he began it. How majestic is this creation, with the weird
camels and the hilarious skunks and the spilled pomegranate sunrises and the
oceans licking scouring tongues across the beaches. What are mud-folk that we are not only part
of that but given that to care for?
Are we ready to claim that kind of
power, with all its responsibilities? It
is, after all, the only earth we have.
May we be brave enough to love it even
a fraction as much as God loves us.
Amen.
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