Something Greater Than Ourselves

Something Greater Than Ourselves

Christmas Eve 2014

            I did a double-take when I saw the headline:  NASA Emails a Wrench to International Space Station.  Did you see that in yesterday’s paper?  NASA Emails a Wrench to International Space Station.  How do you email a wrench?  Evidently, you email a wrench the same way you email anything else, if you have the design on the sending end and a 3-D printer on the receiving end.  It was a monumental moment, because it demonstrates that you don’t necessarily need a space shuttle to move material objects from earth to space any more.  And if we can digitally send objects to the space station, then we can send them to a base on the moon, and we can send them to a base on Mars, and we can send them beyond the solar system.  It was less than three weeks ago that the Orion spacecraft was launched, the first test of a capsule designed to take human beings on trips millions of miles and multiple years long.  To some of us, this may come as a mild surprise, because it’s been forty-two years since a human being last stood on the moon, and the whole idea of space travel has slowly disappeared from our consciousness; there’s just too many other things going on in our world and our lives to occupy our minds.  But there is no denying the human desire to explore and expand our boundaries, to breach the frontier and to look to the stars.  From the very beginning, humanity has yearned to seek out something greater than ourselves.

            And I think this is one of the things Christmas does for us.  People all over the world will come to worship tonight and tomorrow morning.  Some are people of deep and abiding faith, some are still working out their own idea of God, and some come simply because it is Christmas.  And every reason is a good one.  This is a good place to be tonight and tomorrow morning, because it reminds us that no matter what our lives are like, no matter what we’ve had to deal with since the last time we were together in this place, in this moment you and I yearn to seek out something greater than ourselves.  Whether we are scanning the sky for the star, checking Santa’s progress with our children on the NORAD web page, or taking these precious moments on Christmas Eve to look deep within our hearts to discern the presence of the Christ child’s spirit, you and I are drawn into the presence of God because it is God’s spirit that beckons us, the same spirit that beckoned the shepherds and the magi two thousand years ago.

            In fact, it was two thousand years ago that the skies commanded humanity’s attention in a manner unlike any other.  It was the host of heaven that sang the Gloria in Excelsis:  “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace, good will among humanity.”  And when the angels departed, they returned into the heavens.  On that first Christmas, it was the reach of the skies and the depth of the heavens that spoke to the shepherds.  And the magi – the wise ones – were in fact astrologers, studiers of the stars and the skies, and it stood to reason that if anyone noticed the star in the east, its import and meaning, it would be they.  Throughout human history, humanity has felt compelled to look to the heavens in order to make sense of life on earth, from the time of the ancients who looked to the skies and saw the archer and the water-bearer and the dippers and the twins and the ram, to our contemporaries who dream of travelling beyond the moon to the planets and stars, we yearn to seek out something greater than ourselves.

            But as I suggested, sometimes this can be found, not millions of miles above us, but deep within our hearts and spirits.  Last Friday a handful of us sat with the students and staff at Recovery High School, a school for young people with drug and alcohol dependencies.  We had a conversation with them about the second of AA’s twelve steps, and asked them, “Who or what – to you - is the power greater than ourselves?”  Now, we are usually very careful to avoid specifically religious topics, because Recovery High School is a public school, and as such can’t compel any kind of organized religion on its students – although as we often say, we’re the UCC – our religion is about as unorganized as it gets!  But that morning, the question about the power greater than ourselves evoked a conversation deeper and more profound than any we’ve had in the four years we’ve been reaching out to them.  One of the students talked frankly about his wrestling with God, and his inability to make it through even one day without God’s help. Another talked about the community being her higher power, her family, her friends.  Another talked about her complicated prayer life, how it has to spell out for her each and every relationship in order bring her meaning.  It was truly astonishing to hear these kids, who by the way liberally season their sentences with four-letter words and phrases that would make both your Aunt Gladys and your Uncle Henry blush, talk about how they understand their higher power, that piece of their lives which not only provides spiritual succor, but helps them get through that day sober.  Most of the time.  I didn’t say this on Friday morning, because I wasn’t quite aware of it yet, but their words during that discussion actually helped me to write tonight’s sermon.  Because their thoughts and their easy way of telling difficult truths, revealed in a unique way, the common human yearning to seek out something greater than ourselves.

            It was on Christmas Eve in 1968 that human beings first slipped away from earth’s orbit and circled the moon.  Astronauts Bill Anders, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell took the first photograph of an “earthrise,” a shot of the earth “rising,” over the curvature of the lunar surface.  I was a freshman in high school, and I can remember watching the television broadcast through the din of our annual family Christmas Eve party, and hearing the voices of the three astronauts as they took turns reading from the opening chapter of Genesis: 

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.  And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.  And God said, ‘Let there be light;’ and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.  And God called the light Day and the darkness Night.  And the evening and the morning were the first day.”

On that Christmas Eve 1968, whether it was a literal watching out the window or the figurative following it on television, millions of human beings around the world looked to the skies, because in that moment, we were collectively engaged in something greater than ourselves.

            And so it is on this Christmas Eve 2014, forty-six years later, when you and I know that now at this time, close to the stroke of midnight, and here in this place, we can find the object of our yearning.  Whether it is in the venerable hymns we can sing from memory, or hearing the comfortably familiar nativity stories, or sitting once again with family and greeting dear friends, or knowing that the presence of Christ, alive in our hearts, at once transforms us as it transforms our world, there is something greater than ourselves that calls us, that makes us one in this moment, and that brings the depth of meaning that is sought by every human heart on this night of nights.

            Will you join me in the closing prayer, one that was first spoken by astronaut Frank Borman on that Christmas Eve forty-six years ago:

Give us, O God, the vision which can see your love in the world in spite of human failure.  Give us the faith to trust your goodness in spite of our ignorance and weakness.  Give us the knowledge that we may continue to pray with understanding hearts.  And show us what each one of us can do to set forward the coming of the day of universal peace.  Amen.