Church on Morgan
1 in 8 Billion
[MUSIC PLAYING] From Church on Morgan, a United Methodist congregation whose desire is to be a reminder of the beauty of God and each other. This podcast is a collection of Sunday teachings inspired by the revised Common Lectionary and recorded weekly in Raleigh, North Carolina. And now a moment of silence before this episode begins. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] This morning, our passage is-- we're actually just going to revisit the Psalm for the day. I don't often preach. On a Psalm tends to be a bit difficult for me to pull off. I don't know how you preach poetry. But this is one of the most beautiful Psalms in the scripture. And in many ways, I think it holds together so much of what we're carrying right now. And just to be really transparent and frank with you, I'm not sure I did a great job at 9 o'clock. Pray for those people. But this week is World Communion Sunday in the Methodist Church, which is the one Sunday every year where we devote all of our attention to our global efforts. And so we had planned to celebrate. Our partnership was Zoe to try and raise some funds in that direction, talk about our trip to Rwanda, interview people who've been recently. And about halfway through the week, we were like, I'm not sure that's the right thing to do right now. This is also the tomorrow will be the one-year anniversary of October 7th. And a number of churches that we deeply admire and respect have kind of collectively made the decision that though we've often probably been more silent than we should have, this would be a weekend that as a group of churches, we would lean into the discomfort of that and name the suffering that's taking place on the other side of the world and the ways in which we participate in some ways there. And then utter devastation of Western North Carolina. And so when I opened kind of the election area this week to go, whoo, like what do we do, right? What could possibly hold this together? I found myself finding a center in this song, in this prayer that really just gets at one of the biggest questions we will ever face on this planet which is just simply what is a human being. And so this morning I'm gonna ask you to do something pretty difficult but at 11 o'clock you're a little more caffeinated as am I. And so I have, I'm feeling like we got a better shot at this go round. But to hold a couple of things within yourself at the same time. Not only some concepts that we're gonna walk through but all the pain that we are being presented with in the world right now without having to sort of ignore one to hold another. And so with that, would you join me in just a moment of silence and stillness here as we prepare to join this prayer together? Oh God, may the words in my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight and Lord our rock and our redeemer, amen. This is Psalm eight. Oh Lord, our sovereign. How majestic is your name in all the earth? You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes to silence the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established, what are humans that you are mindful of them? Mortals that you care for them. Yet you have made them a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands. You've put all things under their feet, all sheep and oxen and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the air and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the sea. Oh Lord, our sovereign. How majestic is your name in all the earth? Friends, this is the word of God for us, the people of God. Thanks be to God. So I wrote about this just briefly in our weekly email this week, which if you're not subscribing, you should. But you might have noticed over the past month that our table's been missing most of the table of it, right? We had no boards out there and that's because some really generous folks who don't even worship at church on Morgan agreed kind of pro bono to restore and rehabilitate our table. 10 years had kind of been exposed and so they took the boards away and replayed them and got all the epoxy output, new epoxy in, stained it, sealed it so we might get another couple of years and it's beautiful. And some of you noticed it when you walked in today. But as they were delivering the boards, one of the gentlemen said, the guys in the shop were like geeking out hard over this wood. And I was like, yeah, it's like cool wood, like that's right on, right? He's like, no, no, no, come here, let me show you. So he walks me down around to the edge of the table and he points at kind of one of the cuts where you can kind of see the wood that's there. In fact, I took a photo of it, you can kind of just, it's the only photo that will ever work on this screen. But he said, now what you're looking at, this is called heart pine. It's one of the hardest woods. It's native to this part of the world. And, but what's wild about it nearly became extinct. In fact, in the late 1800s, it was so heavily forested that there's only 3% of it exist today as it once did. And so you can no longer buy lumber that's made out of heart pine, but in the 1800s, this was like the jam, right? And it's because it's so beautiful, it's because it's so hard. And so when the guys saw this, they were just like moved, like my God, this is heart pine, it's incredible. And I'm like, that's awesome. So this board was likely milled, cut, installed, put in a barn over a hundred years ago, probably late 1800s. And I had remembered when we had this table built that whoever built it had been like, I got this reclaimed wood and probably told me something meaningful then too, and I wasn't paying attention. And so he's like, you just think about that, man. Somebody cut this over a hundred years ago and put it in a building. And it was there for probably decades that created shelter for some folks and life and all the rest of it. And one day got repurposed and was sent here. I was like, yeah, that's really cool. No, but look at this. Also, we started looking at the wood and like counting the rings and like just a loose estimate. This tree itself, when it was cut down was probably over a hundred years old. So this tree was likely grown somewhere close by here and lived over 200 years ago. This was a tree that made up a forest area around here when there was no electricity or running water or heat inside. This was probably 40, 50, 60 years before the Civil War. This tree saw things you can't even imagine. A whole other world that we weren't even a part of and we get to care for it and you get to put your coffee on it and our kids jump on it, right? It was this weird little moment, like I don't know if you've ever had this experience where you get the kind of existential like vertigo, like you're just sort of like, what am I also, right? Like this, we were just putting boards on a table and all of a sudden I'm feeling dizzy, right? It's, to me, the kind of thing that I imagined was taking place with the psalmist when he wrote Psalm 8. It says that when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established, what are human beings? It sounds like the psalmist finds themselves outside, laying down, looking at the sky and having, connecting a couple of dots and going, my sense is that those are whole other bodies and experiences and stars and suns and planets and galaxies. What is, how far could that possibly be? What else might be out there? The thing that created that created me, what is a human being? So this week, as I think felt overwhelmed by all of the things in the world and wondered if there was some 101 we might could get back to, to center ourselves. This felt like a meaningful question. So I texted my friend Jacob, who's a pastor, a holy family in Houston, Texas. Many of you know Father Breeze. We often prepare sermons together, so I'm allowed to steal his stuff. But I said, you got any fun galaxy stats? I think I'm working on like that moment when you look at the sky and you're like, "What am I in all of this, right?" He goes, "Oh, did you hear my Ash Wednesday sermon last year?" I'm like, " Remind me." (audience laughs) And so he sent me a transcript and I just wanna read you the opening of his Ash Wednesday sermon last year. And I've kind of adjusted a few things for our own context, but this is how it sounded in Houston a few months back. He said, "You are dust." I mean it, think about it. You're sitting in one seat of about 300 here in this building at 136 East Morgan Street. And that building is just one of countless buildings in our city, which has nearly 500,000 people in it. You are just one soul among 500,000 people that call Raleigh home, which is just one town in our state, which is comprised of over 10 million people. You're just one of 10 million North Carolinians alive today. And North Carolina is just one of 50 states. In this country, this comprised of 387 million human beings. You are just one of 387 million human beings who live in this country right now, which turns out to be just one of 195 countries in the world. This comprised of eight billion people. You are one of eight billion people and you live your life alongside of nine million other animal species. All of this takes place on a rock that turns out as the third from the sun and has been evolving for four and a half million, four and a half billion years. Within our solar system, which is made up of, at least officially, seven other entire planets. And all of these reside in an area called Orion's Arm, which is 10,000 light years long and 3,500 light years across and the Orion's Arm itself is just a minor spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy that we call home. The Milky Way galaxy contains 400 billion stars and 100 billion planets. And Milky Way is a part of this local group alongside of Andromeda Galaxy and about 52 other galaxies that take up seven million light years of space. And that one local group that we're a part of is just one of 99 others. That make up a super cluster called Virgo, which is 50 million light years wide. And that's just one of 10 million other super clusters spreading out over 100 million light years. And that's where we push up against the limits of the observable universe. In other words, all the matter that can be observed from planet Earth, all two trillion galaxies. And that could very well just be one of many multiverses. What is a human being? Like zoom out, zoom out, zoom out, zoom out, right? When I look at the heavens, when I consider the works of your hands, what is a human being? Who are we? It's like I couldn't find the landing of the joke on this, but it feels to me like you should read that whole thing. And at the end, like this could be like a customer service representative script after you've ranted that you've been on hold for 20 minutes. And they're like, sir, do you know that you are one? I get that you're upset, but do you know who you are? Do you know where you are, right? One of our staff members has become fond of this one phrase. And it's not me. And I'm not gonna tell you who it is. It probably won't be your first guess. But from time to time, there are people, believe it or not, in our community, who need to be reminded of the very liberating good news of creation that you are not special. The Psalmist says, what is a human being when I consider the heavens, what is a human being? At some of us this morning, we need to be reminded in that sort of way that we are not special. Others of us, we hear that and go, yeah, 100%. That's how my whole life feels. Yeah, I mean, how could you come to any other conclusion, not only looking at the sky, but look at the suffering in the world, look at the suffering in our own state? I mean, I think it's pretty clear, is it not that we do not matter at all? And that's why I think the Psalm is so wisely like, continues to shape shift throughout the Psalm. It says, well, all of that is true. One of eight billion, that is all true. It is also true that you've been given this divine vocation that human beings have been given the holy work of stewarding, caring for, running all of creation. That you are one of just eight billion on one rock in the midst of 100 trillion light years, and yet somehow you've been given this wild task of managing the created order. Not only that, the Psalmist says, having looked so far outside themselves, they begin to look inside themselves and say, is it also not mind boggling? That while you are just this small speck, you also have been made just a little bit lower than God. You've been given these divine attributes that you have as a human being, the ability to experience transcendence, that you have a consciousness and awareness that allows us to have whatever this weird conversation is we're having right now where you can think about yourself, vis-a-vis time, and space, and history, and other beings, and God, and creation, and like we have been made just a little lower than God to have these sort of gifts that have been given to us. And not only that, but the Psalmist says, one of eight billion, and yet also, is it not true that God is mindful of us, that God cares for us, mindful as into God thinks about you, careful as in God visits you. Just as week I had two friends who live across the country I haven't seen in a while, randomly each send me texts just saying, was thinking about you, miss you, right? It's a moving thing that we just gently do, but this idea that God somehow, the creator of all of that that we covered is also somehow thinking of you, present to your very life. It's why we rightly, as much of the nonsense that's begun to come out on social media in the last 24 to 48 hours, as people try to politicize a devastating moment. For all of that nonsense, there have been some really sweet things and holy human things along the way. One of the things I noticed this week is that so far, and I'm sure this will change in the coming days, and it's okay, and it's appropriate that at some point it would, but the headline yet, at least from the channels I've been flipping through, and the things on my feed has not been the dollar amount of devastation. I have not yet heard this is what this financially cost us, but what I have heard every single day and every place I turned in is how many human lives have been lost. As of yesterday's count on CNN 113 just in North Carolina. This matters, that a human life matters. It's why search and rescue is the number one priority from the beginning over and above everything else. There's a sense in which we understand as small as we are, we deeply matter, that people matter. Now, as uncomfortable as it might be for some of us in the room to be pushed back on and sort of told, hey, you're not special. Ironically, what's even more scandalous for me to do this morning and to push back on, the place that will make you even more uncomfortable, is to push on just how important human beings are. This is the work of the prophets in the church, of which I am not one. And I say that full disclosure to say, I'm with you, I wanna sit in a room with you right now as we listen to the spirit of what prophets sound like, just so you don't get confused. This is not Justin kind of going off, but this is my sense of what it sounds like when the prophets are among our midst, reminding us of the humanity and dignity of human people. What I mean by that is this week, I've watched Todd Nihisi Coates show up on a number of television programs. He's got a brand new book out called The Message. And in it, part of what he does, and I have not read it, but part of what he does is he addresses the violence, the suffering, the warfare that Palestinian folks have experienced. And he's doing his best to advocate on their behalf. And in these interviews, and these were CBS, MSNBC, John Stewart, all sort of all just progressive, leaning progressive kind of news channels, every single person that's interviewed him has said, we all love and appreciate you, we appreciate your work beforehand, but I think we're all a little concerned that you're writing out of naivete, that the account that you're giving us is only one-sided, that had you seen something else, have you gone on a tour with someone else, had you visited this site instead of that site, that you would have come to a different conclusion. And my sense is, do you have the full picture? Do you understand everything that's happening over there? And the long years that it's been happening, and to be honest with you, that's why I think I've often shied away from speaking into this for a number of other reasons, of like, this is a hairy, complex, decades, centuries, long conflict that anybody who tells you, it's super simple to clean it up this way, right? I just am like, you don't know what you're talking about. And so in a really generous way, Tanahisa Coates, to each of these interviews, it's like they had not watched the interview before. I'm like, you all would be doing well to check each other's channels out, right? He comes back to the same thing again and he goes, no, you don't understand me. I am not making the case for the suffering of Palestinian people and the need for a ceasefire, because I think in some way they've got the moral upper hand. I'm not looking at this situation and going, well, who hit who first? And who should stop hitting who now because of that? That is not at all the way I'm thinking about this. So I'll just give you, here's an example. He says, I don't believe in the death penalty. And they're kind of like, okay. There's no, I don't believe in the death penalty. So you could tell me that someone slaughtered 10 children and eight, five of them. And I still wouldn't think it's right for you to take their life. I don't think this is about who had the moral upper hand. I think this is about what it means to be human. And in that, all the interviews stop. Nobody has a follow-up question. You're like, dude, you just canceled yourself straight out of all of our groups, right? Like who's gonna take this guy's side tomorrow? This is what it sounds like when the profits show up. There's uncomfortable as this to tell you that you're not that special. The truth is we actually wrestle even harder with how special the others around you just might be. What dignity is imbued in humanity and what are our options? But some of us hear this, we gotta be honest. And we're a little too comfortable with our crown of glory. We're like, no, he's right. I'm pretty sure I'm all that matters, right? And we live that out in creation. We live that out in our companies. We live that out in our families. We're so sure of our worth that we lose the others. So what is Solmate saying? If you're feeling confused, you're kind of following along, right? What is a human being? The Solmate says you are a paradox. You are two opposite things at the same time. You are insignificant and you are incredibly grand. You are peripheral and yet somehow essential. You were made a little lower than the angels, but don't forget that you were made on the same day as the cows and the creeping things. You are one of eight billion souls on the planet alive in this very moment and yet God is mindful of you and your neighbor, which is why dominion has never been about domination. The reason we return to the psalm again and again and it has shaped the church, why the Hebrews writer in today's electionary quotes it, why Job wrestles with it, why for many of us, if you've memorized two psalms, besides Psalm 23, this is the other, is because this is the sort of existential reorientation of what it means to be a human being that we are wise to return to again and again. And on some days you will need to be reminded of your smallness and on some days your significance and the same for those around you. The result of living in the truth about who we are is that it creates in us both a sense of humility and confidence. The psalm made is the first psalm of praise. It's when we understand ourselves rightly that we can't help but give thanks and praise to the God who created us, both small and yet full of meaning and leads us to praise the one who lived a life of paradox, who was fully human and fully divine, who walked this earth with complete authority and yet demonstrated it in service, who knew the glory of this life and of being God and yet suffered utter humiliation, whose ministry was one of both grace and truth. - We want to hold a story that's one or the other and it is always both, even you. So may you live in the freedom of that paradox today and may it shape the way that we live with each other in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen. - Thank you for joining today. If this episode has been meaningful to you, would you take a moment to share it with a friend? To support this ministry or learn more about our community, visit us at churchonmorgan.org. (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) You