February 9^th, 2003

Pastor Christa von Zychlin

Our Savior’s Evangelical Lutheran Church

Hartland, WI.  53029

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany B

God Bends Down

It’s been over a week now since the 7 precious human lives of the Columbia space shuttle astronauts were disintegrated, lost, snuffed out like 7 holy flames of light, curiosity, scientific know-how, 7 vibrant human beings, lovingly formed and fleshed by one God, Creator of heaven & earth.

Reading from the Holy Scriptures , our American President read from the very chapter of the Bible  appointed from the church lectionary to be read & heard by millions of Christians around the country this weekend:

A reading from the Old Testament, From the prophet Isaiah the 40^th chapter:

“Do you not know?

Have you not heard?

Has it not been told you from the beginning?

Have you not understood since the earth was founded?

HE sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,

And its people are like grasshoppers.

He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,

And spreads them out like a tent to live in.”

The image of an awesome God, an all powerful Creator looking down from above on His beloved sphere we call the Earth, putting on his glasses, as it were, to peer down on our families & friendships, stooping, to admire the details of his creation, like you & I might stoop to examine a grasshopper in the lawn,

This image of an awesome God peering down from heaven is not just for children but it is an image that the best & brightest of our scientists & astronauts have been able to relate to & savor.

Many of you had a chance to read or hear the memorable e-mail that our own Wisconsin astronaut, Laurel Clark wrote, from space, the day before she died:

“Hello from above our magnificent planet Earth.  The perspective is truly awe-inspiring….  I have seen some incredible sights: lightening spreading over the Pacific, the vast plains of Africa and the dunes on Cape Horn, rivers breaking through tall mountain passes, the scars of humanity, the continuous line of life extending from North America, through Central America and into South America, a crescent moon setting over the limb of our blue planet…  Magically the very first day we flew over Lake Michigan and I saw Wind Point clearly…”

Laurel Clark was not a Christian, she was a Unitarian universalist, but she sure had one part of the Biblical witness down:  God’s creation is an awesome and sacred thing.  Before she died in the explosion, God gave her, and the other 6 astronauts, the rare gift of seeing, for a few moments, a glimpse of the earth out of ONE of God’s own perspectives:  the magnificent precious fragile sphere of life which we call the Earth, as a light blue jewel in the vast black canopy of space.

What some of the 7 courageous, intelligent, dedicated astronauts may not have known, and what at least 2 of them did apparently know & gave witness to, is that the same God who created the heavens & the earth like a ball in his hands, like a jewel in  the light,

That same God is also the God who bent down, who bent way way down to see the earth from yet another, totally different God- like perspective.  God bent down so far that he became one of us.

God emptied himself and walked the dusty streets of this earth, cried with the salty tears of this earth, lifted people up with the contracting muscles of this earth, died with the bloody violence of this earth driven as nails through his hands and the voices of this earth in his ears:  cheering crowds congratulating the political powers for putting an end to what they thought was just another small & trivial human life.

 But for God there is no such thing as just another small & trivial  human life.

 The prophet Isaiah says:

Do you not know?

Have you not  heard?

Has it not been told you from the beginning?

Have you not understood since the earth was founded?

 Why do you say… “My way is hidden from the Lord,

My cause is disregarded by my God?

Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all of these?  He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name, because of his great power and mighty  strength, not one of them is missing…”

 Today in the appointed Gospel reading, Jesus, the Son of God, walks into Simon Peter’s house.  There he meets Peter’s mother-in-law.  We don’t know her name.  We don’t know what she looked like.  We don’t know how she felt, lying in bed with a fever.  We do know that the Gospel records that the family told Jesus about her AT ONCE which shows how concerned they were.  Scared.

 But what’s another human life to the God of the universe?  People died and continue to die all the time.  Does it matter?

 What Jesus does next shows that it does matter, individual human life does matter to God.  He came.  He put his hands around her hands.  He lifted her up.  The fever left her and she felt good enough to serve Jesus and his disciples as honored guests in her home in the best Middle Eastern fashion.

 Now the Gospel goes on to say that Jesus cured many who were sick.  But not all.  In fact, it seems that Jesus makes his disciples a little angry when he refuses to stay there in their home town, taking care of everybody there.  Jesus never just stays in one place, Jesus never allows us to rest in just one small hometown perspective of who God is.  Yes, God is the healer of physical bodies in this world.  And yet,  precious as our bodies are to Him, Jesus was sent from heaven for a much more difficult kind of healing, the healing of our eternal relationship to God and to each other. 

 Right now our beloved country, the United States of America, again stands at the brink of war.  I am not a politically well-educated person.  I haven’t studied all the documents & evidence that Colin Powell has presented to the United Nations.  I have only heard smidgens of Hans Blix report on the weapons inspections in Iraq.  I don’t totally understand how much, if any of our dependence on oil may be motivating our country’s plans to go to war, nor exactly why our friends Germany and France are so deeply against beginning a war before every other alternative has been completely & even repeatedly & to some of us maddeningly, pain-stakingly exhausted.

 I am not a student of politics but I am a student of the Scriptures.  I do know that human sin is real and that the hearts & evil intentions of men like Saddam Hussein are quite possibly even more corrupt than we can imagine.

 As a student and teacher of the Scriptures, what I also know is that we as Christians can go bravely, but we can never go cheerfully into war.  We can go hoping for a speedy end, but not triumphalistically into war.  We can sometimes, rarely I think,  decide on war as the lesser of greater evils, but we can never hope for war.  And why is that?

Because the same God who created the heavens & the earth

 is the same God who is familiar with every contour of each of  the 7 astronauts inquiring minds,

is the same God who loves & knows each of our own children’s unique zany gifts even more than you and I do, 

is the God who stands beside us when we stand beside the bed of our family member who is sick,

and he’s the God who even now watches over each little child, running shoeless in the streets of Baghdad. 

Over every shuffling Iraqi grandfather,  who the first “surgical strike” will crush & kill.  Over every veiled young mother, expecting her first child, and only God knows whether there will be a birth or not.  Over every American soldier, wondering whether he or she will ever see Mom & Dad’s faces again. 

 As a student and teacher of the message of Jesus Christ, I know that our Savior came to this earth not only to heal fevers, but to heal our relationships to God and to each other.

 May the Almighty God of the Universe,

The Creator of Heaven and Earth,

The One who bent down to become a human being

The One who lowered himself to heal a broken old woman at Simon Peter’s house,

The One who bowed his head on the cross, and gave his body for the redemption of the whole beautiful Earth and every precious life upon it,

 May this same God, Our God,  lead the political powers of this world to do what is right in God’s eyes, from God’s perspective.

And may God bring healing in His name to all nations.  AMEN.

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