Sermon: Awe

AWE

Psalm 111

Sermon preached by Dr. Mark Smutny

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Pasadena Presbyterian Church

Psalm 111 Praise the Lord! I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart, in the company of the upright, in the congregation. ²Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them. ³Full of honor and majesty is his work, and his righteousness endures forever. ⁴He has gained renown by his wonderful deeds; the Lord is gracious and merciful. ⁵He provides food for those who fear him; he is ever mindful of his covenant. ⁶He has shown his people the power of his works, in giving them the heritage of the nations. ⁷The works of his hands are faithful and just; all his precepts are trustworthy. ⁸They are established forever and ever, to be performed with faithfulness and uprightness. ⁹He sent redemption to his people; he has commanded his covenant forever. Holy and awesome is his name. ¹⁰The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding. His praise endures forever.

God of the Sparrow, the hymn we sing following the sermon, asks this evocative question: “God of the sparrow, God of the whale, God of the swirling stars, how does the creature say awe, how does the creature say praise?”

How do we say awe? Awe is at the heart of the Hebraic and Christian faith traditions. It is essential to the Islamic faith tradition as well. Awe is the human response of reverence in holy encounter with the Divine. The God who is beyond all, above all, beneath all; the God who, in the words of Karl Barth, is “wholly other,” evokes in the creature a sense of wonder and reverence, a sense of awe. Before the God who is not created but is Creator, we the created ones, respond with awe. Our foundational narrative in the beginning stories of the Bible tell us that God is not created but is Creator. We are the created ones. We in holy encounter with the Creator respond with awe.

Essential to each of three great religious traditions that found their origin in the ancient near East, we as the created ones are to respond with awe but not only awe but also with holy humility, fundamentally we respond with an ethical response. Our worship is to have an ethical dimension. Our worship is to lead to right conduct. As the psalmist says, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” By fear he does not mean terror as much as he means reverence. The beginning of wisdom is reverence toward God. Reverence is how we become wise people. We behave ethically. We behave morally because we know our place as humble, created people. We are not God and therefore our fundamental approach toward creation, toward one another, toward other creatures is to be humble. We are not to play God for we are merely created. We are merely human.

How does the creature say awe? How does the creature say praise? We say praise by being ethical and not arrogant, by not being full of ourselves. When we are in awe of God we do not lord it over others. We do not play God as though we know everything—as though we were God himself, God herself. This is the beginning of wisdom: fear of the Lord—reverence and awe toward God and knowing we are merely creatures, knowing we are simply human and not God.

This wisdom is fundamental to Biblical faith. It is the foundation upon which our faith is built. As people of the Word, people of the Book, as people who trace their heritage from Abraham and Sarah, through Moses and the prophets, and then as Christians through Jesus, our wisdom begins with reverence and awe before the Holy One, before God who is our Creator.

Of course, the human condition is far, far away from understanding ourselves as anything close to creatures that fear God, as creatures who do not lord it over others, who are humble before God, who are humble before each other, who are humble before creation. The Bible has a special word for those who elevate themselves to the level of gods. It calls it the sin of idolatry when we believe we are like gods, when we behave like we are God himself, God herself. The Bible tells us we are idolaters when we lord it over others, when we dominate others and dominate the earth as though we are God, as though we are the Lord. We are idolaters.

In the first creation story in Genesis when it says we human beings are to have dominion over the earth and its creatures and we take it to mean that we have a license to do anything we want. When we take it to mean we are given carte blanche, the freedom to do anything we want to pillage the earth, to desecrate our planet without restraint in the name of a particular economic theory no matter what, we distort what dominion means. Dominion means we are to be stewards. The biblical word means to be servants or slaves to the master. We are to be servants to God, caretakers of God’s creation.

Remember that we are to respond with awe before God? So, too, we are to respond with awe at God’s handiwork, to respond with awe at God’s marvelous creation. We are to respond with ethical, humble awe. Instead we kill each other. We kill the earth. We exterminate its creatures.

We are not to play God as if we are God. Can you not hear Mother Earth groaning? The stain of her blood is upon us. We must not be idolaters. We must not lord it over her. We must treat her with awe.

We need to return to a sense of awe: to ethical, humble awe, to remember that we who we are. We are God’s creatures. We need to remember that we are not God; that we are not the Creator, that we are not the Lord. We cannot return to awe unless we make space for God. When we make space for God, we allow awe to return. We allow for reverence. We allow for respect. We become stewards of one another and of creation.

We can make space for God in so many ways: in nature’s delight. For me I find awe in the mountains. Whenever I lift my eyes to the hills, I find my help. I seek those magical thin places where the human and the divine meet. I love their majesty. I always have. I’m a mountain person. My wife loves the beach. Maybe for you, you have a special place in nature where you stand on holy ground. Maybe you find awe in nature’s delight in the exquisite design of a flower’s petals or a gazelle’s leaping run.

Maybe you are scientist or an engineer and the steady, unfolding precision of the scientific method, the facts and theories of empiricism, the exactitude of mathematics gives you an unemotional steadiness to your days. Then you look at the expanse of the heavens on a starlit night or you grasp a tiny baby’s hand and she coos specifically at you. Then despite your rationality, a sense of wonder presses in on you and your electro-chemical, hormonal impulses overwhelm even you and you admit it must be awe. Yes. Its awe and reverence and you believe.

Maybe awe comes upon you when you have been in the belly of a fish, the belly of a conversion experience. Awe comes upon you when you encountered God and God through a voice, through Holy Encounter said to you, “Go a new direction. Pick up a new cause. Love in a new way.” And you were humbled. You were filled with awe that God would pick you to do a new work. You were called to do a new thing. You were in awe.

Maybe awe came upon you when you really messed up and instead of being judged you were loved into a new way of life. You were overwhelmed by people who came to you and forgave you. You came to know that God had forgiven you as well and you were in awe that people loved you and forgave you. You felt awe at God’s overwhelming acceptance.

Or maybe you were in desperate straits because you were losing a loved one, a dear one, a husband or wife, a life-long partner. The ache of losing that person, that love of your life was more than you could bear. Then the people of the church came to you. They came to you in your hour of need. They came to you and they hugged you. They listened. They sat with you. They wept with you. They carried you on their shoulders when you could not walk by yourself. They carried you until you could walk again. They became love to you. They became God’s love to you. When you came up for air you were in awe of how present God was in all of it: in the dying, in the loving, in all of it. You felt gratitude and reverence. You felt awe.

The beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord. Not fear in the way abusive religion teaches. Fear in the sense of reverence, awe, of knowing that we are in the Holy Presence of God.

It’s like when love is so present between a couple, it’s holy.

It’s like when a baby utters her first cry.

It’s like when you’re on a mountaintop and everything is so quiet and serene.

It’s like when a person dies and you know she or he has merged into eternity and all will be well.

Wisdom is when out of our reverence for the Creator we the created respond with ethical humility toward creation. Wisdom is when we love one another as Jesus loved us. Wisdom is when we ache for one another when one of us is aching. Wisdom is when one of us has joy and we all rejoice. Wisdom is when we marvel at the miracle of Christian community. When you and I in the providence of God are brought together to love one another and it is beautiful. We marvel at our good fortune and are filled with awe and gratitude.

“How does the creature say awe? How does the creature say praise?” asks the hymn. We, as God’s creatures, say awe by recognizing that we are creatures. We are not the Creator. In this recognition we do not lord it over others or over creation. We’re humble. We’re ethically humble. We refuse to be idolaters. We do not dominate. We make space for God. We create space for awe and reverence: in nature’s beauty, in all things bright and beautiful, in all things great and small. We make space for God by looking at ourselves and our cosmos differently, reverently, respectfully. Then as God’s humbled creatures we live ethically by co-creating with God a more just, more loving, more beautiful world. With God’s help, as God’s creatures let us respond to God’s awesome presence in our lives and our cosmos with our praise, with our awe, with our humility and with our right and compassionate living. Thanks be to God. Amen.