What are Humans?
Well, good morning, everyone. This is Maggie Keller. Welcome to a podcast version of the Sunday sermon, which was given at Beards Plaisance on Sunday, July 5th. It was a great time with the whole family together, and it's my privilege to kick off a new worship series that we're calling "Awe and Wonder."
So, "Awe and Wonder" are feelings that are inspired in us, mostly when we witness sort of overwhelming greatness. "Awe and Wonder" sound a lot like the words "awesome" and "wonderful." So think of the most awesome or most wonderful thing you have ever seen. Whatever you're thinking of, I'm sure that's a really great example of things that are awesome and wonderful.
A couple of weeks ago, I was traveling with my family, my husband Jonathan and our four kids, and my father in law. We took a road trip to Seattle, and we were traveling through Yellowstone National Park, and there were so many awesome and wonderful things to see there. We saw hot springs and geysers. We traveled through a place called Beartooth Pass in Montana. It's this gorgeous mountain pass at 11,000 feet with snow at the top and cliffs that were so steep when I looked out the window, my palms got sweaty. But by far, the most awesome thing that I saw were animals. We saw bison and moose and elk and coyote and mountain goat, and we saw black bears.
When we look around at creation, we see a lot of awesome and wonderful things. When my family stood at the top of Beartooth Pass and looked out over the valley, I felt the grand hugeness of nature. And personally, I also felt very me and my body compared to the magnitude of the mountains.
That contrast between big and small reminded me of today's reading, which is Psalm 8. And it says this:
"Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name throughout the earth.
You made your glory higher than heaven.
From the mouths of nursing babes,
you have laid a strong foundation
because of your foes in order to stop vengeful enemies.
When I look up at your skies,
at what your fingers made,
the moon and the stars that you set firmly in place,
what are human beings that you think about them?
What are human beings that you pay attention to them?
You've made them only slightly less than divine,
crowning them with glory and grandeur.
You've let them rule over your handiwork,
putting everything under their feet,
all sheep and all cattle,
the wild animals too,
the birds in the sky,
the fish of the ocean,
everything that travels the pathways of the sea.
Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name throughout the earth.
Do you know what I like about this Psalm? I like how it begins and ends in the same way. Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name throughout the earth. The message translation says, "Your name echoes around the world." And so it is with us. We find our beginning and our ending in God.
But then the Psalm begins to talk about the natural world. Do you remember what comes first? First, the skies, the moon, the stars, the hugeness of the heavens. And what next? Then humans. And after that, then animals. And then it ends with the majesty of the Lord again, God, heavens, humans, animals, God.
Our friend Cody Sanders used to serve as a chaplain at Harvard University. And he says that there is this huge stone plaque on the philosophy department's building. And it reads in giant letters, "What is man that thou art mindful of him?" That's the King James translation of that verse. And I think it's, you know, what's now reduced to irony was likely intended as a call to humility, grounding students in the truth of God's grandeur as a counterweight to the study of human wisdom.
We could read this verse as “what are human beings?” as in humans are so finite, so limited, and God is infinite and limitless. Humans are so small, why does God even bother with us? But this kind of reading can gift us a real humility by considering our own insignificance. I'm not so big standing on the edge of a mountain. I'm really just a mortal.
But what if we read these verses about humanity in the context of Psalm 8, as I mentioned earlier, God, heavens, humans, animals, God? What if the point of Psalm 8 is to root humans within the ecological web of life, to position us within the created world, and remind us of what makes us unique? Verse four isn't a rhetorical question. What are human beings that you pay attention to them? It's a question with an actual answer. What are humans? Well, humans are created with glory and grandeur and a purpose.
Other translations say that God gave humanity dominion over the works of God's hands. But we can think about dominion less like extortion and more like co-creation. If this is our job to co-create with God the creator in the midst of the natural world, what does that mean for us? God gave us the job to take care of creation and make sure it has what it needs. So what's something you can do today to demonstrate your job for creation?
I'm in a class this summer in seminary. It's a class on ethics and we're only a couple of weeks in, but I've been learning the grounds of ethics. There's a lot of them like hierarchy and autonomy and natural law. But my favorite though is flourishing. It's from a Greek word called eudaimonia. It's kind of fun to say eudaimonia. Flourishing is less about contentment or success. It's more about living well. It's humanity's highest good.
The message I had for our kids at Beards Plaisance is this. I said to them: Kids, I can tell you right now that all these grownups around you, they want to see you flourish. We want to see you grow in all the ways that you can grow, taller and stronger in your bodies and smarter in understanding and deeper in your relationships, deeper in your trust in Jesus, more assured of your sense of your own self. We all want to see you flourish and we want all of you to flourish.
But do you know what else is true? There is no such thing as other people's children. I want to see all children flourish, whether they're born in Minneapolis or Mumbai. I want our children to inherit a planet that is true too, not one that's melting and hollowed out and dying.
Psalm 8 reminds us that all of us in the created order, humans and animals alike, we're linked together. You're flourishing and my flourishing and the flourishing of the earth are bound up together. So as we sing and worship together, surrounded by God's creation, consider the message of Psalm 8 that God created you and situated you in the larger ecological web of life and gave you a purpose to co-create this world with God. Amen.