Sunday Worship 30 March | Let There Be Lights In The Sky

It's a short reflection today, as this morning was cafe church, with reflective and creative activities on the theme of mothering to mark Mothering Sunday, and discussion questions and crafts on the theme of the morning's readings.

Genesis 1:14-19

And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

Psalm 8:3-4

When I consider your heavens,

    the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars,

    which you have set in place,

what is mankind that you are mindful of them,

    human beings that you care for them?

I don't want to say too much, because the beauty of cafe church is that it happens around the tables in discussion and creativity, but we've been following Ruth Valerio's book ‘Saying Yes to Life' through the days of creation, and so I do want to pull out three themes from her chapter on the fourth day.

Firstly, Ruth reflects on the scale of the universe. She says “Day Four causes us to look beyond this world into the incredible, dizzying space that is, well, space, and to remember all of this was made by God. The world is one tiny piece within a vast universe so vast that I, at least, can scarce comprehend it. The world we inhabit is one planet within a solar system, within a galaxy, within the universe. Our sun is just one of between 200 billion and 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, and earth is just one of at least 100 billion planets. There may also be ten billion white dwarfs, a billion neutron stars and a hundred million black holes. And that is just one galaxy out of possibly two trillion galaxies!” The universe is vast and we are tiny. No wonder the psalmist marvelled that God is mindful of us.

Ruth also talks about the way the sun, moon and stars mark the rhythm of our days and the passing of the seasons. That sense of order is really important in scripture. In Genesis 8:22, God promises “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease”. And in Ecclesiastes 3, we are reminded that “to everything there is a season”. It's also important in the practice of religion, with its calendar of festivals and observances, and in our lives in general, although it does feel at times like our society runs constantly without much sense of pause or pattern. As the sun and moon rise and set, and the stars move across the night sky in their constellations, we ought to be reminded that our lives are meant to be shaped by cycles of activity and rest.

And finally, Ruth points out that heavenly bodies feature in many eschatological passages, verses that point to what we might call the end times. According to Acts 2, “the sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood”, and Isaiah 34 says that “all the stars in the sky will be dissolved”. It sounds terrifying, but we saw in our study of Revelation that those kinds of passages employ a lot of symbolism, and we are not waiting for the stars to come crashing down so much as we are waiting for the renewal and fulfilment of all things. Given the current atmosphere of climate anxiety, it is important that we think about what that means for how we live in this now and not yet, responsible for the world that is and anticipating the world to come.

Let's close with a prayer on the sun, moon and stars from the Philippines: Our heavenly Father, as we look up to You in the vastness of the skies, the sun that you have made opens our eyes to a world lit in colour and clarity, and the moon and the stars remind us of Your faithfulness and steadfast presence, amidst the seasons of darkness and our community's moments of uncertainty. Lord Jesus, you have shown us how from beginning to end was the light of love, That as endless as the heavens above so is the grace that sustains all things, so with faith that the Spirit has wrought in us, we sought the care every creature is to have, as we dream, hope, and labor for a future wrapped in the fullness of joy that Your new creation brings. Amen.