Sermon Text

Christmas Eve, 2009

WONDER

It was January, 1996, and Betty Anne and I were in Orlando, Florida, to be trained as Stephen Leaders for our congregation’s Stephen Ministry program. While we were there, we heard that there was to be a nighttime launch of the space shuttle, sometime around one o’clock in the morning. It was one of those times when people had become nonchalant and complacent about the space program – the Challenger disaster was 10 years in the past, and the Columbia was still well in the future.

But we determined that we were going to see it, and so we went to bed a little early, set our alarm, and set out about midnight for the Cape, or as close to it as we could get. After almost an hour of travel, listening to the countdown on the car radio, we finally pulled into a crossover on the rural highway we were travelling. We were still about 10 miles away from the launch site, and so we couldn’t see the tall, 35-story rocket sitting on its gantry, lighted by powerful spotlights. We could just see a slight glow off in the eastern sky, almost too little to notice.

Then the countdown came to zero, and then came the launch. The first thing we saw was this extraordinary orange light, and it was illuminating everything for miles around. It was intensified by a layer of ice a couple of miles into the atmosphere, and the light was bouncing off that ice, shining like an orange dawn. It rose up in total silence before us, because we far enough away that it took the sound a few seconds to reach us. Then there was this strange, crackling noise, followed by a BOOM and a rumble that entered right into you. We realized that neither of us was breathing, and that both of us were crying. We realized that, on top of this blue flame and in the midst of all this bright orange light, there were human beings on top of that giant candle. The light from the shuttle seemed to gather closer and closer together as they approached the layer of ice, and then it broke through, and the light spread out again for miles in all directions. We read later that the launch was visible, lighting up the sky from Savannah to Miami and Key West. It was an extraordinary, wondrous night. We couldn’t stop talking about it, all the way back to the hotel, and it was hard to go to sleep. I think we may have just gone down for an early breakfast.

But the word that captures it best for me, I think, is wonder. It brought forth in me the strongest, almost palpable sense of wonder. I know neither of us will ever forget it.

Someone has said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but there is another that is at least a close second – wonder. To stand, mouth gaping, entranced, a blank to such mundane matters as breathing, mesmerized, lost in the moment of wonder, is flattery.

To be in wonder is, knowingly or unknowingly, to offer praise. In admiring the object or the act we compliment the doer or the maker. When you sit in rapt wonder, listening to a symphony with a look of pure ecstasy on your face, you flatter the composer, living or dead, and the musicians who are producing the music.

I think that one of the things that made us stand in such awe and wonder at that shuttle launch was a sense of subconscious praise of the Creator of all that power and the Maker of the human beings ingenious enough to harness it. I think that, there on that little Florida highway, 10 miles from Cape Canaveral, in the middle of the night, we had touched the holy.

Admittedly, some people lose their sense of wonder. Life gets dull and ordinary to them. I guess it happens to all of us, from time to time. Presbyterian Minister Rusty Freeman writes: “Last night I was lying on the couch, tired from a long day, watching a ballgame. From the bathroom, my 10 year-old son, Matthew, began calling, ‘Dad, come here!’ Too lazy to get up, I called back, ‘What do you want, Matthew?’ “There’s something really neat in here I want you to see!’ ‘What?’ ‘The dirt in the sink looks cool!’ I yelled back, ‘That’s nice,’ and continued to lie there. ‘Daaaad, come here; you’ve really got to see this!’ I finally went to the bathroom, where he excitedly showed me how the soap bubbles had collected the dirt just washed from his hands into little bubble-combs. It was neat! The world is full of wonder to non-glazed eyes.”

Just consider the everyday act of holding a newborn baby – this fragile miniature human who just a few months before was of microscopic proportions, a being who has within it the potentiality to grow up to be a rocket scientist. If the child is your biological child, this little being somehow has a part of you and of your spouse inside and yet is now a unique mix with a chromosomal map that is terrifyingly complex. Generations of your family look up at you through that face. You have held something wonderful.

Sometimes we churchly people get too comfortable and complacent about the Bible so that it becomes commonplace to us – it loses its wonder. Can you break away from the familiar story and really imagine what it was like for Moses the first time he met God on the mountain?

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then God said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” God said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. (Ex. 3:1-6)

Have you read those verses so many times that you have read the wonder out of them? Put yourself in Moses’ sandals. First, he saw a sight equivalent to seeing the Aurora Borealis for the first time. Then he saw God! The sight made him cover his eyes, because he was afraid. What did he really see? The folding of time and space? A myriad of supernovas? The implosion of being? Whatever he saw, it was wonderful.

Come with me on a rushed journey. Turn off the ballgame, and get off the couch. Slip on your house shoes, and step out of the door. Look up at the immense glory of a starry night with the bedspread of heaven thrown over you. Watch your breath get caught and crystallized.

Feel yourself being hurried along by someone tugging at your hand, and saying, “Come on, come on, you’ve got to see this!” Experience the queerness of walking through the folds of time, until you realize that you no longer walk on a soft carpet of grass, but on a hard, pebbly path, worn into a hillside by centuries of animal hooves. See the fires burning in the night on distant hills where a few shapes gather around their light and warmth. Notice your shadow following you, caused by a bright place in the sky that is looking like the Aurora Borealis for the first time.

Running out of breath, you finally pull back on the hand. “What are we going to see?” “A baby,” comes the reply. A memory flashes through your mind about the sacred moment when you first held your baby. You felt her skin and tiny frame, felt his chest heave, saw the quiver of a heartbeat. You looked into your baby’s eyes and saw the mystery of the bond between you and your spouse looking back at you – small, delicate, but very alive. And you knew, having seen, that you wanted to be a better person. Still, people have babies every day, and it has been a long time since you have looked at one with non-glazed eyes.

The hand pulls you up the slope of a hill, the world full of silver and shade, until finally, you come to a cave that has been modified with rough beams, stick walls, and a doorway to serve as an overnight pen for the sheep you hear bleating through the valley around you. You creep up and look through the stick slats until you see by lamplight some young couple’s first bundle of pride and joy. “Why have you brought me all this way to see this baby?” you ask. The voice of a ten year-old shepherd boy comes back to you in a wide-eyed whisper, “Because an angel told us, that this baby is God!”

You look again, expecting to see a myriad of supernovas, or the implosion of being. Instead, you see a fragile yawn, covered by a gossamer bubble.

Somehow, you know, you are looking at the greatest wonder there ever was.