Unity Lutheran Church + Chicago
follow us
  • Welcome
  • Who Are We
    • Eternal Flame Saints
    • History of Unity
    • Affiliated with
    • Welcome & Vision Statement
    • Constitution & Bylaws
  • Our Faith in Action
    • Concerts at Unity
    • Green Space
    • Social Justice
  • Space Sharing
    • Calendar
    • Picture our Rooms
    • Space Sharing Partners
  • Contact Us
  • Donate
    • Offerings & Gifts >
      • Unity Special Funds
  • Community Resources

Sermon by the Rev. Fred Kinsey, "Heliocentric"

8/29/2017

0 Comments

 
Reading for August 27, the 12th Sunday after Pentecost
  • Isaiah 51:1-6 and Psalm 138  
  • Romans 12:1-8  
  • Matthew 16:13-20

"Heliocentric" by Pastor Kinsey
The earth revolves around the sun, right.  Nothing shocking about that.  Not anymore.  It’s a fact that everyone agrees on – although I haven’t consulted with the Tweeter-in-Chief… maybe he’d find some merit in the ‘many’ other sides of the argument! 
 
500 years ago it was different, even Martin Luther himself cast doubt on the subject, declaring that Copernicus was, more or less, a young upstart trying to make a name for himself, and needlessly upsetting the apple cart.  Luther was just going along with popular opinion, I guess you could say, as most people were pretty skeptical of the idea at the time. 
 
Even a few decades later, towards the end of the 16th century, after Copernicus and Luther, along came scientist Johann Kepler.  He was himself a devout Lutheran, and Kepler added to Copernicus’ heliocentric belief, that the Earth revolves around the sun, by correctly calculating for the first time that there was an elliptical pattern to the Earth’s orbit – which, only managed to help get Kepler in trouble with the Lutheran Church, and he was barred from his position at Tubingen University, and later excommunicated. 
 
So, there was a time when saying, earth is not the center of the solar system, that was not acceptable!  It took some time for us as a people to catch up to this heliocentric solar system!
 
At the time, of course, theology and science hadn’t been compartmentalized, and were still one discipline.  And Kepler himself was motivated to learn more about astronomy, because of the biblical view – that the sun, and moon, and stars, and all the celestial bodies, were closer to God – which made his calculations about them all the more fascinating to him.  And so, it’s not that surprising that Kepler also proposed a theological explanation for a heliocentric solar system – that, just as by faith we all revolve around God’s Son, that is, Jesus Christ is at the center of our lives, so God created the planets to revolve around the Sun – s-u-n. 
 
Which brings me finally to our gospel: “13Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’”  In other words, do people think everything and everybody revolves around their own lives?  Or, do they begin to see that their lives, and all their families, clan, religion, and all the nations, revolve around the Son of God? 
 
It’s no coincidence that Jesus took his disciples to the edge of Israel, way up north, to the district of Caesarea Philippi.  As the name implies, this was the stomping ground, the playboy mansion, really, for the Herod’s and other Roman elites, built as a resort get-a-way in the back-water of Palestine.  There was no question that their world revolved around Caesar.  We might see a parallel in present day Mar-a-Lago, a palatial resort, where only the super-rich are welcome, and might hope to play golf with the once, and perhaps future, Reality TV celebrity, our Commander-in-Chief.  This was the type of place Caesarea Philippi was, and where Jesus asked his disciples for a candid take on what people were thinking about him. 
 
It was roughly half-way through Jesus public ministry – between his baptism and crucifixion.  His reputation was spreading among the masses who had been healed by him, who had learned from him, or heard of the miracles he performed.  ‘So, what do they make of me,’ Jesus asked his closest friends and fellow journeyers? 
 
Some say you are John the Baptist or Elijah come back to life, which was thought to be the sign that a new age was about to dawn.  ‘Others still’ claimed he must be Jeremiah or one of the prophets, due to his speaking truth to power – to the corrupted Jerusalem crowd.  Either of those titles would be a huge complement to most of us, yet to Jesus, they represented only minor planets of the solar system. 
 
So Jesus asks his own disciples: “who do you say that I am?”  Only Peter speaks up, or maybe he speaks on behalf of them all, “you are the Messiah, the Christ, God’s anointed one,” he tells Jesus, “the Son of the living God!”  And Jesus affirms that Peter has spoken correctly.  But not because Peter really understands what he has said – more on that next week! – but because God, Jesus’ father, has ‘revealed’ the answer to him.  Jesus is ‘Son of the living God,’ and by a shot of insight God has revealed it to Peter. 
 
Nothing about Jesus’ identity is completely comprehensible for us – apart from the Holy Spirit, that is, apart from revelation, or knowledge that comes from faith. 
 
Yet, how often! do we think our striving toward God, is a way to garnish our faith creds, when it’s really the other way around!  It’s God, who comes to us, God who loves us first, passionately and completely – and that’s the only kind of knowledge that can begin to form the gift of faith, germinating in our lives like a tiny mustard seed, about to blossom into a huge bush. 
 
Or as Teresa of Avilla says, “It would be absurd to suggest that someone go into a room she is already in!” —(Teresa of Ávila,1515-1582)  In other words, God has given us the room, the whole of creation, and the kingdom and realm of God, to live within, if we have the eyes of faith to see it, and welcome it, as a gracious gift.  That’s the Copernicus and Kepler revolution – reorienting who we are, and transforming our lives.  It’s not by our striving or work, that God’s love and forgiveness come about.  It’s not by our status or ego.  And only the counter-intuitive realization, that we already live in ‘the room,’ that we already revolve around God’s Son, within the realm of God, equally with all others – are we able to joyfully discover the revelation, that has already saved us.  We are not the center of the universe!  We draw our life from the light of the son… the Son of the living God.
 
God, is the great lover, the unambiguous giver of all good things.  Even in suffering, God is bringing all things back around to life.  Because as Paul says, suffering produces character, and character produces hope, and the hope we have in Christ Jesus, does not disappoint us!
 
Or, as Richard Rohr says it, “It is not that if I am moral, then I will be loved by God; rather, I must first come to experience God’s love, and then I will—almost naturally--be moral.
 
And the disciples have been hanging out in “the room” with Jesus long enough to feel it.  It seems to roll off Peter’s lips, that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God.  At least surrounded by the glitz and egos of the swanky district of Caesarea Philippi, it’s not hard to get it!  But it’s when they get back to Galilee, back to their friends and families, and all the distractions of every day life, that they have a more difficult time discerning where the kingdom of God actually exits.  Where is the center of the heliocentric universe, when there are so many bright attractive stars all around? 
 
‘It’s hard to tell the weeds from the wheat,’ Jesus says.  And, all that glitters is not gold! 
 
After all this, Jesus tells the disciples – in fact, ‘sternly orders them’ – not to tell anyone that he is the Messiah!  Wait, don’t spread the good news about Jesus Christ?!  That seems wrong! 
 
But I’m guessing Jesus is thinking of all the people who know him as John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.  You can’t just tell people what to believe.  We’re talking about the living God here – how do we come to know the living Jesus, in the Holy Spirit?  How do we find the courage to let the world – spinning around ‘me, myself, and I’ – go?  How do we find a patient persistence, in sharing the good news, in such a way that others don’t reject the revelatory Copernican news, that the Son of God is the center of our lives, even though, some days, this calling seems to risk as much as Johann Kepler did! 
 
But how can we keep it to ourselves!... that we indeed have found our true selves, we’ve had our eyes opened, and experienced that we live in the room of God’s amazing love and grace, already, right now, every day! 
 
How can we?!
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    November 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly