Pentecost 16 (NL4) John B. Valentine
Genesis 1:1 – 2:3 September 12, 2021

“WOW! WHOA! YIKES!“

And so it begins!

Today we start the cycle anew.

In years now past ... we’d call this day “Rally Day” ...

• a day to “rally the troops” and “rally our energy” ...

• a day to celebrate the return to Sunday School after a long summer break ...

• a day to inaugurate some new programs and invite new members to get involved.

But the health protocols we’re dealing with at the moment mean we can’t do much ‘rallying’ right now ...

And we can’t really ‘kick-off’ a Sunday School year because we’ve been advised to not put our kids at risk in that way in the face of the ‘Delta variant’.

Nonetheless ... we ARE starting the worship cycle anew.

We’re starting our annual walk through the Bible ... as it were ...

We’re going back to the beginning ... all the way back to Genesis actually ...

And between now and Christmas ... we’re going to hit some of the key stories and big themes of the Old Testament.

So let’s get after it ... and see how this Word of God might be a word from God to us.

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“In the beginning ... when God created the heavens and the earth.”

I trust you’ve heard those words before ... a time or two ... or fifty.

It’s Genesis ... chapter one ... verse one ...

• the beginning of a story that becomes a book ...
• the beginning of a book that becomes a library ...
• the beginning of a library that become a cultural treasure ...
• the beginning of a cultural treasure that is ... for us ... the Word of God.

So let’s begin our look at the beginning by thinking for just a moment about “the heavens and the earth” and this story about the creation of the heavens and the earth .... and consider for just a moment how colossal God’s Creation is.

And ... in order to get into that story ... I’m going to need for you to have three words at the ready ...

• WOW ... and
• WHOA ... and
• YIKES!

You got that??? “Wow” and “Whoa” and Yikes!”

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I was reading an article the other day about the work of NASA ...

And I happened upon the details of a space probe that NASA sent up back in like 2006 named “New Horizons”.

They ... errrr ... ‘we’ .... sent that New Horizons Space Probe up in 2006 ... back when Pluto was still on the list of planets.

And ... since that time ... it has been traveling at a rate of something like eight miles per second ... about 36,000 miles per hour ... for more than 15 years.

And:

• it has actually made it past Neptune ...
• it has made it past Pluto ...
• it has made it past the collection of cosmic dust called the “Kuiper Belt” ...
• and is now headed out into what can actually be classified as “Deep Space”.

So any ideas about how long it would take for this ‘New Horizons’ contraption to reach the next nearest star??

About 100,000 years!

Then consider that there are approximately one hundred billion stars in our galaxy.

Which means ... if our solar system were relatively the size of a quarter ... our galaxy would be about the size of ...... North America.

And ... if you were to count the stars in the Milky Way .... one per second, it would take you twenty-five hundred years just to count them all.

And THEN try to envision that there are somewhere’s between one hundred and two hundred billion galaxies in the universe!

If you stop and think about it ... it’s almost literally beyond our comprehension ... and it gets me to wondering “How does that make you FEEL??”

I mean ... when I consider that the cosmos is THAT big .... that just makes me want to say “Wow!”

“Wow” ... as in “That’s so cool.”

“Wow” ... as in “That’s so complex.”

“Wow” ... as in “That’s so incomprehensible.”

And that “WOW!” is the first thing we’re invited to see in this story ...

• Be it when we look at the immensity of the sun and the moon and the stars ...
• Be it when we look at the complexity of plants and trees and foodstuffs ...
• Be it when we look at the wonder of birds and fish and animals.

WOW!

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But “Wow!” isn’t the only word that this first chapter of Genesis invites us to put to use. There’s also the word “WHOA!”

“Whoa” ... as in “That kind of puts things in a different perspective.”

“Whoa” ... as in “That kind of resets my visions about my importance in all this.”

“Whoa” ... as in “It’s a scary big world out there ... and I’m just dust in the wind.”

I mean ...

Imagine you’re standing in Yosemite Valley ... looking up at El Capitan ...

There’s a part of you that wants to say “Wow!” to be sure ... but isn’t there a part of you that also wants to say “Whoa”???

Or imagine you’ve traveled up the North Coast to Redwood National Park ... and you’re standing at the base of a towering redwood tree ...

There’s a part of you that wants to say “Wow!” ... but isn’t there a part of you that also wants to say “Whoa”???

Or imagine you’ve just driven up to the top of Mount Diablo ...

Isn’t there a part of you that wants to say “Wow!” ... and also a part of you that wants to say “Whoa”???

There’s a great line from Psalm 8 that says:

“God, when I look out at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars ..... I’m left with a puzzler: Why would you care about us???

“We’re just specks on this speck of a planet in the speck of a solar system in this speck of a galaxy in this one little corner of the universe! In the face of the vastness of all that ... what difference do we make ...really?”

“Whoa!”

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Now ... honestly ... it would be easy to leave it all right there.

• To just say “Whoa!” and leave it at that.

• To just despair at our insignificance ...

• Or maybe just “try not to think about it” and go on living in our delusional delusions of some self-concocted self-importance ...

• Or maybe just give up and say “Whatever!”

But we’ve got one more word still to deal with .... “Yikes!”

You see ... toward the end of Genesis chapter one ...

• After God has made the sun and moon and stars ...
• After God has made the oceans and the air and the dry land ...
• After God has made fish and birds and animals ...

After all of those things ... God “saw that it was “good”.

But after God makes human beings ... AND after God entrusts human beings with ‘dominion’ ... stewardship ... over this amazing creation which God has made ... God sees ... and says ... that it is VERY good.

That that’s the way God created it to be.

And I don’t know how those words ring in your ears ... but to me ... that’s definitely a ‘Yikes!’

• That you and I have been entrusted with the care of creation is a ‘Yikes’.

• That you and I are called by God to be stewards of this planet on which we live is a ‘Yikes’.

• That you and I are tasked with “having dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” is a ‘Yikes’.

Because when we look around at this world in which we live ... it’s doesn’t look to me like we’re doing a very good job of the first job that we were ever asked to do.

Now we may well disagree about how best to care for creation ...

And we may well disagree about how best to good stewards of this planet on which we live ...

And we may well struggle to understand how best to live into our responsibility to “the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” ...

But while we may disagree about HOW we do it ... we may not disagree THAT we do it.

Because ... ‘Yikes!’ ... that’s our job!!

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Speaking of stewardship ... and the care of creation ...

Maybe the best example I’ve seen of that anywhere in recent days was right outside the front door of our Sanctuary by one Mister Jerry Perry.

There was that family of bees came visiting our campus in search of a new church home back in June ... and we had a whole series of pest-control companies come out and tell us that there was nothing we could do ....... nothing short of extermination. But Jerry said “Not so fast!!”

And patiently and ingeniously, Jerry devised a way to get the worker bees to move out of the front wall of our Sanctuary of their own accord ... and finally to get the queen to move out of her hive on her own accord ...

And so it came to pass that those church bees are now doing their thing on to the hillside overlooking Barbara and Jerry’s home in north Orinda!

And ... Jerry ... I’d just like to say that your efforts are an invitation to all of us to work at being better stewards of this amazing creation which God has entrusted to us all!

For that ‘Yikes’ is a reminder that we are created for a purpose by the Creator of Heaven and Earth!

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But then .... maybe just maybe ... this text is also an invitation to add one more word to our list ...

For even though the wonder of it all may lead us to say “Wow!” ...

And the immensity of it may lead us to say “Whoa!” ...

And our shared responsibility for it may lead us to say “Yikes” ...

And the end of the day ... maybe the most important thing we can say in the face of it all is “Thanks” ... “Thank you, God, for the wonder of your Creation ... and thank you for our place in it!”