The Experience of Awe
By Charles Rush
February 5, 2012
Luke 1: 26a, 30, 31, 32, 46-52 and Luke 2: 9-14
[ Audio
(mp3, 5.4Mb) ]
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Rev. Rush's sermon this Sunday was illustrated with a number of
photographs and was largely extemporaneous. The text below is a slightly edited transcription.
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've got an unusual passage of scripture this morning that I can normally never talk about during Christmas because we're doing different things then. So we actually took two texts this morning, because I just want to make one simple point. The first text was the angels coming to Mary and then to Elizabeth telling them that they will be giving birth to children who have special missions. And then usually we read this text on Christmas Eve and it goes like this:
“There
in that region the shepherds were out in the fields keeping watch over their
flocks by night. And an angel of the
Lord appeared to them, and the glory of God shone round about them. And they were sore afraid.
[I love that line from the King James.]
“And the Angel said to them, fear not for
behold I bring you good news of great joy. Unto you is born this day in the City of David
a savior who is Christ the Lord. And
this will be a sign. You will find the
babe lying in a manger wrapped in swaddling clothes. And suddenly with that angel there appeared
a multitude of hosts in the heaven praising God and saying Glory to God in the
highest, and on earth Peace among all people with whom god is well pleased.”
It's a beautiful passage of scripture, and we frequently see
this in the Bible where they are speaking and we read the phrase “the fear of
the Lord”. Unfortunately that word “fear”
is not quite accurate because it also conjures in our minds when we read it
that God must be like some awful great uncle who comes to visit us once in a while and you'd better
not offend God or else. But really the
word literally tries to capture the sense of overwhelming majesty that we
experience. I think the closest to that
I've ever come in my own personal life was actually standing and watching a
hurricane come in at the outer banks of NC. There is a sense of fear that comes with that because of the
overpowering character of it. But
there's also a transcendent sense of awe that we have in the presence of the
world. And this transcendent sense of
awe is very important for us to have in our lives and to cultivate it.
In fact I've found it to be a constant in my life that I've
cultivated whether I've been in the church or not. This has always been a part of my prayer
life. As child growing up in
Mississippi, my grandfather used to take us hunting and we were always fishing
and we were always getting up before dawn. Seems like I spent most of my childhood up before dawn! And really today I'm channeling my
grandfather, and I find myself becoming him more and more, and I'm constantly
up before dawn! And maybe at dawn is
the place that I actually experience this sense of awe most powerfully. And I have this one picture, because I had
that experience just two weeks ago duck hunting down near Atlantic City.
[02]
This first picture is actually taken in the summer right
here in NJ looking out from the shore. It's a reminder that we can participate in
the beauties of nature. We don't have
to go all that far.
[03]
Likewise this other picture. It shows dolphins accompanying our boat when
we go out tuna fishing. We go out a
hundred miles to the Atlantic Canyon straight out from NY City. At about 30 miles from the NJ shore this is
exactly what you see right next to the boat. It's really powerful.
Our world today, it seems to me, has gotten so much more
dramatic in the way that we can experience awe.
[04]
This is a picture that my son took when he was sky diving in
Hawaii. He took that picture at the
dawn, and I have always… you will not see that from me! I admire his ability to jump out of a
plane.
[05]
This photograph is coming into that point from the other
side, from the east. It's just an
incredibly powerful and beautiful place to be.
[06]
Where I personally have experienced a lot more of it is under the water
in Hawaii. This picture shows some of the
incredible coral fish that exist. I was 19 when I went on my first dive in Egypt, I've been doing this ever since. For me, at least it seems like you go into a
whole different world. As you know, the
rule of thumb under the water is that the brighter the colors the more
dangerous they generally are. So you keep away from them.
And I'm always impressed in nature by the way that certain
fish mimic other fish. Thus, the fish in this next photograph
[07]
are actually designed
-- their camouflage pattern is designed -- to make them look like they are swimming
in the opposite direction – they mimic the previous fish that we saw.
[08]
The next photograph illustrates how fish can blend
incredibly with the coral when it's alive! When coral is alive it has these redolent colors
that are all around it. You can see the
fish right there that are picking up some of the accents of the coral that they
live around.
[09]
The next picture was taken by a friend of mine who had taken
his sailboat around most of the world. This one is up in the far north, an incredible place that is carved
simply by water freezing and melting every year.
Sometimes I'm struck by the wonder of animals that exist
throughout the world, but especially in the rain forest which is just so
powerfully overwhelming.
[10]
This picture is from Costa Rica.
[11]
[12]
And these beautiful waterfalls are in Belize. (However,
I have to tell you that the day that these photographs were actually taken and
I thought about jumping in that water, by the time I
actually got into the water I had been bitten by 10,000 bugs that you can't see
here. So be warned!) These places are so peaceful and fill you
with that sense of the mystery and wonder of our world that transcendent
sense.
[13]
And in Belize, especially, the butterflies
are just so unbelievable. You really
can't see through the rain forest because it so thick, but what you can see
constantly is the incredible variety of species we have on this earth.
[14]
And then there is that experience that almost all of us have
in the rain forest at some point, where you literally turn around and are looking
face-to-face at a threatening animal. And it's so close and well hidden that you don't see them until you're a
foot away from them. It's just
amazing.
[15]
This one is a slightly doctored picture (with colors
enhanced) but it gives us a sense of the other parts of our natural world that
we are more likely to take in the sense of awe today because of our
relationship to it. These are the
northern lights up in Canada.
[16]
This next one is not a doctored. It's what you can literally see at the northern
edge of Alaska looking out toward the arctic the incredible northern lights
that we can experience.
[17]
This has been so moving for our ancestors for a long, long
period of time -- in the ancient world. I once had a chance to ask an anthropologist
what those people did at night. He
pointed up at the stars. We had to have
been in New Mexico at the time -- we were
out there looking at the cave dwellings and cliff dwellings. He was explaining how much of the time early
people spent looking at the night sky and interacting with it, and how much
more familiar they were with it through direct observation than we are.
[19]
But of course today our ability to interact with it is
magnified tremendously because of the Hubble telescope and others, so we can
actually now take pictures of galaxies that are deep in space. And it fills us with an even more dramatic
sense of wonder.
[21]
We can even see the formation of stars as they're emerging
from gas clouds and are coming together.
[18]
And of course we have our own solar system. This is a picture of Saturn, taken by the
Hubble space telescope, which is so incredibly beautiful.
[20]
And there is Mars. You can see they have a north pole pretty much like ours, as well.
[22]
And Jupiter.
[23]
This is Venus, which we see in the mornings and evenings. It's one of the brightest objects that we
see in the sky.
[24]
Here is the face of the moon. Even in the course of my lifetime, really
the most miraculous one moment was when our astronauts stepped on the moon for
the very first time. That changed our
perspective forever.
[25]
The thing that telescopes have really been able to do is to alter
our perspective. This is a composite
picture but it makes the point. But it's
our perspective and our view of ourselves is maybe the most dramatic thing that
the telescopes have been able to give us. What we almost take for granted -- but it's only been 30 years -- is the
ability to see the earth from a different perspective, like that which other
people would see us if they came to us from outer space. And this
in itself has given us a view of what we are like as humans, and what our world
is like, and that has dramatically transformed our entire perspective.
[26]
You can in this next picture there's a hurricane forming off
the Gulf of Mexico, and several others coming in toward South America from the
Pacific.
[27]
This is another incredibly beautiful photograph, and you
just how that sense of how wonderful and how fragile our earth actually
is.
[28]
Here is Africa taken on an exceptionally clear day.
[29]
Then a picture of the earth as it is seen by magnifying things
around the outside edge, and the incredible development that you can see on our
earth as people have said, even if other people were looking for us throughout
the universe, it's only in the last 100 years that they would have been able to
identify anything because it's only in the last 100 years that we've had radio
waves that would make us known to the rest of the universe.
[30]
That sense of awe and that sense of perspective have always posessed the imagination of our ancestors. Our very first places of worship that we had
were in very tall tree forests. And all
throughout Europe, especially, we worshiped in these ancient oak forests. And that's exactly where we built most of our
churches – over the top of them. It was
about 1100 or 1200 when the first advance of knowledge really began to happen in
Europe and we rediscovered Aristotle. Maimonides in the Jewish tradition, and St.
Thomas in the Catholic tradition began to collect and recover knowledge in a
big way, and this would lead to the renaissance – the middle ages. But when we first started accumulating this knowledge,
the very first thing that it changed in us is the realization of how little we
actually knew about the world.
[31]
And so
what we did was we built churches that reflected that same sense of majesty
from nature, the way trees are so much taller than us, to emphasize just how
little we really are in relationship to the world and in relationship to God.
[32]
Our cathedrals were built during this period and that's
what we really tried to emphasize. And I think that today we should have even
more of that sense, because of our understanding that the world is so much more vast.
[33]
If we
could develop a cathedral that would be in proper perspective, it should be
probably many stories tall just so that we would have that sense of our own
puniness.
[34]
And for me, I think that in addition to that, one of the
things that I find so moving with the cathedrals in Europe is realizing just
how many thousands and millions of people have walked through those places before
me.
It again gives us a sense of our own smallness in the middle
of this huge trove of people that have come before us.
[35]
It's great because it gives in this sense of
perspective. If we look deep into the
universe as in this picture, what we're seeing is actually not stars but
galaxies. Our world is really so much
bigger than the world of the middle ages – our world view is so much
bigger. It allows us, I think, to see
transcendence not only in things that are far away and majestic, but at the
same time in things that are very close to us.
[36]
The birth of a new child is incredibly that way. I think one of the fundamental spiritual
experiences is the birth of your own children, because there's just something
about that that's just tinged with transcendence and awe. And you are so filled immediately with that
sense of gratitude about life.
[37]
Here's another, and absolutely beautiful child. They all have that quality to them in that
way.
[38]
We see transcendence of course at the other end of life as
well. We just heard Heather sharing
this morning about somebody leaving, in the process of dying, in the process of
aging at the very end of life. And,
boy, do I hope to grow into somebody who is as beautiful a person as the woman in
this picture is. There's just a sense
of the tenderness and the sacredness of life that comes through. And it's in existence – that's why we feel
it.
So what I hope in this winter season is that you're able to
find ways in your own life to cultivate that sense of transcendence and awe,
and the gratitude that it brings with it. That you can see it in things great, but also in things small that are
ordinary around you.
[39]
[40]
Occasionally I'm also just taken by the incredible beauty of
something like snow or a raindrop. But more than that
in the world in which we exist, I hope that you can regularly find a way that
you can be in it, participate in it, and develop your own sense of peace and
your own sense of meditation, because these experiences are important for getting
us to reflect on our own lives as well.
[41]
I hope we're all at peace in our journey on this earth – which
is all too short. And I hope that you
have a chance to reflect on that and be able to think about it.
[42]
And as you're doing that, participate in the
mystery and wonder that really is our world. It's from that that we come back refreshed, renewed, and we find a new
way to develop meaning in the midst of all of the stuff that we do have to
engage in, in the other parts of our lives
[43]
[44]
My brothers and sisters, I hope for you that sense of awe
and wonder, because our world really is full of that, and to stay in touch with
that, because it keeps us in our spirits, not only gentle and strong, but
remembering what's really important in this life, and what we're here for.
[45]
Amen.
