10/21/2012 ~ Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost ~ Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Proper 24) ~ Job 38:1-7, (34-41); Psalm 104:1-9, 24, 35c; Isaiah 53:4-12; Psalm 91:9-16; Hebrews 5:1-10; Mark 10:35-45.
Service [1]
“Anyone among you who wishes to aspire to greatness must serve the rest; whoever wants to rank first among you must serve the needs of all.” — Mark 10:43b-44
In part because of my current office as the Moderator of the Susquehanna Association of the New York Conference of the United Church of Christ, I have made many trips to Ithaca. The Susquehanna Association goes all the way out to Corning.
As I am sure you know, Ithaca qualifies as a college town. The permanent population in the city, itself, is about 30,000, with the greater Metropolitan area of Ithaca numbering 100,000. That number does not include the roughly 20,000 students from Cornell or 6,000 from Ithaca College.
Additionally, in the words of one Bonnie Scott Connolly, Ithaca is a funky town. I think she means a place with a lot of arts. In fact, the town has crafts stores, too numerous to mention, 3 professional theaters, a civic orchestra, the Sciencenter, a hands-on science museum for people of all ages and The Museum of the Earth.
Ithaca is also noted for its annual artistic celebration of community with The Ithaca Festival, its associated parade and the Circus— catch this now— the Circus Eccentrithaca. See? Eccentrithaca? I like it— it’s a pun. Further, the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts provides grants and Summer Fellowships for New York State artists and writers.
Since the greater Ithaca area population is over 100,000, excluding students, that is a population base large enough to provide a window as to how this area might get to the level called funky or artsy. Of course, given it’s funky-ness there is something else people say about Ithaca. Ithaca— it’s seven square miles surrounded by... reality.
Now, my personal complaint is, while I go to Ithaca a good deal, I don’t get a chance to experience a lot of this funky. Most of the time when I go there, it’s on business. I either find myself driving to the First Congregational Church in Ithaca or find myself driving through Ithaca to the Federated Church, just south of the town.
That lack of my getting to the funky side Ithaca explains why I only recently found out about the Sagan Planet Walk. Needless to say most of us remember the late Carl Sagan and remember the phrase he made famous: “billions upon billions.” When he said that he was trying to help us understand the vastness of the universe.
This Planet Walk is, I think, helpful in allowing us to visualize and, thereby, to understand what vast really means. The Walk is a scale model of just our own solar system, not the universe, cut down to five billion times smaller than the real thing.
Now, let’s admit it— we have no real feeling for the size of the solar system. Even knowing the numbers doesn’t help much. That’s O.K.
You see, if I tell you the Earth is about 8,000 miles in diameter and 93,000,000 miles from the Sun, does that give you any sense of the distance involved? No. It does not. The numbers are too big. Things that are far removed from our daily experience— things like dinosaurs or— hey, Kim Kardashian— are inherently hard to understand.
But the Sagan Walk tries to make the solar system accessible by shrinking it to a human scale. Each planet is displayed in its own monolith. As you stroll from one to the next, you can’t help noticing that the first four planets are really, really close together.
It takes a few seconds, perhaps thirty or forty steps, to walk from the Sun to Mercury and then on to Venus, Earth and Mars. By contrast, Jupiter is a full two-minute walk down the block, past the Moosewood Restaurant. The remaining planets are even lonelier, each marooned in its own part of town. The whole walk, from the Sun to Pluto, is about three-quarters of a mile and takes roughly 15 minutes.
The representations of the planets are scaled down in exact proportion also. The tiniest ones, Mercury and Pluto, look like grains of couscous. The Earth resembles a pea. The largest ones, Jupiter and Saturn, are the size of donut holes. The Sun, our star, is about 10 times larger still, the diameter of a serving plate.
This is our solar system scaled down to our size, a manageable size when it come to understanding the vast expanse of space. And, despite being five billion times smaller than the real thing, the display does not even take into account our own galaxy, the Milky Way. The Milky Way could have as many as 400 billion other stars, stars like our Sun.
The display does not take into account the other galaxies, the rest of the universe. Current estimates say there might be as many as 200 billion other galaxies. (Slight pause.) So, how small are we? [2] (Slight pause.)
Jesus and all the disciples are not in the same universe when their conversation takes place. The disciples are seeking a Messiah who will be temporal, who will kick out the Roman Army of occupation. They live in a temporal, manageable universe. Jesus is addressing the eternal, the infinite.
The issue this presents to us, therefore, is how do we grapple with both the reality in which we live, the temporal, and the reality of the eternal? And I need to add our issue is not that the eternal fails to be real. It is real. But just like the universe, the reality of the eternal is both real and it is too big a concept for us to fully grasp.
But I do think Jesus frames the question in a way we can understand it? Yes. I do. (Quote): “Anyone among you who wishes to aspire to greatness must serve the rest; whoever wants to rank first among you must serve the needs of all.” But I also think that is exactly what we have trouble with.
You see, our ego suggests to us that being great— greatness— demands that we are in control. But let me ask this question: if we visualize how vast the universe is, how great are we? How great can we ever be, really?
Therefore, Jesus also addresses a second paradox here. The paradox is that we can be great. It’s just not the way most of us presume greatness happens. I think it’s likely most of us presume greatness happens because we are in charge.
I want to suggest greatness happens when we recognize that we are not in charge and that we need to not be in charge. But we do need to serve others. And all that poses the obvious question: what is serving others about? (Slight pause.) Is it possible that serving others is about forming community, about being community to one another? (Slight pause.)
Recently, there were two anecdotes in The Christian Century which, I think, explain community. (Slight pause.) The first one: passengers on a bus in Winnipeg, Manitoba were stunned on a recent, cold, early fall morning to see a man walking on the sidewalk without shoes.
The driver stopped the bus, hopped out, took off his own shoes and gave them to the man. When asked by the passengers why he had done this he said, “I’m warm and safe in the bus the rest of the day. I couldn’t stand seeing someone walking barefoot out in the cold.” (Slight pause.)
The second story speaks about an Amish farmer. The man was asked what community means to him.
He explained whenever he and his son are finished with Spring plowing, they go with their horses to the highest point on the farm where they can see 13 teams of horses working neighboring farms. He said (quote): “I know if I get sick or debilitated or die, those 13 teams and those people will be at work, helping on my farm.” [3] (Slight pause.)
You see, community is about two things. It’s about knowing how small we are. Compared to the infinite, we are small. And community is also about knowing how big we are. When we are in community, we live for each other. Then we are great.
Or as Jesus said, “Anyone among you who wishes to aspire to greatness must serve the rest; whoever wants to rank first among you must serve the needs of all.” Amen.
United Church of Christ, First Congregational, Norwich, New York
10/21/2012
ENDPIECE: It is the practice of the Pastor to speak after the Closing Hymn, but before the Congregational Response and Benediction. This is an précis of what was said: “Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. It takes light eight minutes to get from the Sun to the earth. Therefore, you can do the math and see how far that is. A light year, on the other hand, is how far light travels in a year. Scientists tell is the known universe— do note, the implication of that is there may be more universe about which they do not know— scientists tell is the known universe is 13.7 billion light years across. The idea of 13.7 billion light years is so big, if that does not make one’s head hurt just to think about it, we are doing it wrong. When we admit to the thought that being great is not putting ourselves first, it should make our head hurt. Why? The idea is so big we should have a hard time just getting our heads around it.”
BENEDICTION: There is a cost and there is a joy in discipleship. There is a cost and there is a joy in truly being church, in deeply loving one another. May the face of God shine upon us; may the peace of Christ rule among us; may the fire of the Spirit burn within us this day and forevermore. Amen.
[1] Anyone listening to the sound version of this sermon on the Web, needs to note the Pastor had a nasty cold and managed to “croak” through the delivery.
[2] http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/visualizing-vastness/?hp ~ Me, Myself and Math; NY TIMES; October 15, 2012 ~ Visualizing Vastness, by Steven Strogatz
[3] The Christian Century, 10/17/2012, pg. 8.
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