Psalm 47 "The Universe Within" Scott Hoezee

One of the most mind-boggling spectacles I've ever seen is a short science movie titled "Powers of Ten." Many of us no doubt saw this movie in a high school physics class. As the film opens, you see a close-up view of a young couple spreading out a picnic blanket on a grassy section of Chicago's Grant Park. Then every ten seconds thereafter the camera pulls back, each time increasing its distance from the couple by a power of ten.

First the camera pulls back just one foot; ten seconds later it pulls back ten feet; ten seconds later it pulls back one hundred feet and then one thousand feet and then ten thousand feet and so on. At first you can still see the young couple. But then you can only pick out the small square of their picnic blanket in the midst of the larger Grant Park. Seconds later Grant Park itself has been reduced to a small green patch as you can now see all of Chicago.

Next Chicago disappears as you see the whole United States. Then you see the whole planet earth, then even our own sun starts to shrink into an ordinary looking star. Within just a couple of minutes the picture has pulled back to the outer limits of the Milky Way galaxy and soon thereafter to the edge of the known universe. Once the edge of space is reached, the camera then quickly hurtles back through space, finally zooming back in on the couple in Grant Park. Then the film briefly does a journey of negative powers of ten as the picture moves in on the man's hand, plunging below his skin to arrive at molecules, atoms, blood cells, and the double-helix strands of his DNA. All in all the film is a stunning reminder of how small we are compared to the vastness of the universe.

This morning, as we begin to look at Psalm 47, I invite you to take a similar trip of the imagination. Let's begin somewhere out in the vastness of space and then let's start zooming in. We enter the bright spiral of our Milky Way galaxy, zooming past millions of bright suns. Then we enter our own solar neighborhood, zipping past the rings of Saturn and the red planet Mars, finally seeing the bright blue marble of Earth. Then we narrow our focus to Europe and Africa, descending more specifically to the Mediterranean Basin. Finally we see the region of Palestine, focusing on the country of Israel (itself no larger than Vermont). Then we move down to the modest city of Jerusalem, to the little hill known as Mount Zion, and finally we come in for a landing at Solomon's Temple long about the year 900 B.C..

Then, having made this cosmic journey to this little pin-prick on the face of the earth, we witness a group of Israelites singing Psalm 47 and thereby declaring to all who hear, "This Temple is the center of the universe! This is the throne of the Most High God--of Yahweh who is so mighty, so exalted, and so great that from this location on Mount Zion he rules every nation, every king, every speck of the cosmos!"

From the outside looking in, we cannot help but see this claim as ridiculous. It seems the height of audacity! Even if you limited your gaze to the then-known-world, Israel was a very small, middling nation. Compared to the vast empires of Persia and Egypt, compared to the splendors of Babylon's hanging gardens and Egypt's towering pyramids, Israel was a pimple on the face of the earth. So on what possible basis could the Israelites claim that they alone mattered, that they alone were the headquarters for the Sovereign of all creation?

Yet there it is in Psalm 47: Israel shouts its ardent belief that they are the theological center of the universe. Most scholars believe that Psalm 47 was sung when, as part of a worship service, the Ark of the Covenant was carried up into the Temple. That's probably why verse 5 refers to God's ascending amid shouts of joy--since the Ark was God's throne on earth, seeing it ascending into the Temple was the same thing as seeing God going up. The only true God, Yahweh himself, lived in Jerusalem and was in charge of every other king and ruler on earth.

When we read Psalm 47, we see lovely poetry that gives eloquent expression to our beliefs. But if you were some atheistic king in Babylon, if you were the Pharaoh in Egypt who was regarded as a god by the Egyptian people, then Psalm 47 would hardly strike you as lovely--in fact, it would strike you as deeply, deeply offensive. How dare those puny Israelites huddle together in their pathetic little capital city and then point their fingers at the kings of the world and say, "You're nothing! Our God could buy and sell you! You, O mighty Pharaoh, and you, O lofty Emperor of China, and you, O exalted king of Persia, you all are the property of our God! You all are mere underlings compared to the real sovereign authority which Yahweh alone wields from here in little ole' Jerusalem!"

Of course, within the confines of Israel the people did not have much opportunity to see the Egyptians or the Babylonians getting angry about such rhetoric. International communication was pretty minimal back then--Israel's worship services were not beamed via satellite to other nations; there was no such thing as printed books that might circulate a poem like Psalm 47 far and wide. So it's possible that the people who would have been the most offended by Psalm 47 never heard this poem. Thus, the Israelites could sing these words in splendid isolation, neither much seeing nor worrying about whatever scandal these sentiments might cause in the hearts of non-Israelites.

Today our situation is vastly different. These days we live in an international marketplace of ideas and religions. Now what we Christians think about Jesus gets put into print and distributed far and wide. What's more, today you don't even need to leave home to encounter people of other ethnic and religious backgrounds.

Attend any major university and your roommate is as likely to be a Buddhist as a Methodist. Have a donut and a cup of coffee in the breakroom at work and the co-worker sitting across the table from you could well be an agnostic or an atheist or a Muslim or a New Age devotee of crystals and horoscopes. And none of those people is going to like it if you present them with some version of Psalm 47. Because the Christian version of Psalm 47 would basically assert that because Jesus is Lord, Buddha is a fantasy, Mohammed was a false prophet, the New Age faith resembles a pagan cult, and all those wobbly seekers who think it's enough just to mix and match beliefs from many religions are on the wrong road.

The ancient Israelites may have given the same offense then as the Christian gospel gives today but they didn't generally get to see that offense flicker in other people's eyes. Thus, they were perhaps less tempted to water down their claims. Unhappily, the same is not true today.

Now we know only too well how much our pluralistic society prizes tolerance. Now we sense only too keenly the expectation that we will be relativists along with everyone else, quietly allowing that just maybe all roads lead to God. So these days many Christians shelve Psalm 47 and other passages like it. The last thing we want to do is to tell our neighbors that our Lord is their Lord, too. How rude it is now considered to be to say that your religion leaks out beyond your own heart such that it has something to do with other people as well!

Thus, you occasionally hear stories that would have been unthinkable only twenty or thirty years ago. A Christian ministerial association in Boston happily welcomes a practicing witch into their group because, as the Episcopal priest of the group says, they refuse to discriminate based on creed. A couple of years ago the Presbyterians hosted a conference which included seminars on goddess worship and which freely mixed a number of New Age concepts with traditional Christian theology. Even more conservative evangelical congregations have blunted various parts of the Christian tradition in favor of being sensitive to newcomers, happily tailoring worship according to customer likes and dislikes.

It seems increasingly today that the only religions Americans will tolerate are those willing to make concessions on all sides. In a provocative essay in Time magazine last month, Charles Krauthammer noted that in America a person's faith will be accepted only so long as it functions more or less like a hobby.

So long as your faith means no more to you than does your preference for Coke over Pepsi, then most of your fellow citizens are only too happy to extend to you that premiere virtue of tolerance. After all, just because you happen to think Coca-Cola is the best won't lead you to contend that Pepsi drinkers should switch, right? And if your faith can be kept in the same category of personal taste, then no one will be troubled by you.

But if your religion slips from the realm of personal preference to the realm of binding truth, then you're in trouble. As Krauthammer says, you can think whatever you want about abortion so long as your viewpoint is not rooted in religion. If you appeal to reason, to ethics, to historical precedent to make your case, you will be tolerated even by those who disagree with you. But if you base your argument on faith convictions, you are dismissed as someone who just doesn't understand that religious beliefs are supposed to be private and not imposed on others. You may call on the authority of Timothy Leary, Chairman Mao, John Lennon, or Socrates to make a point and people can live with it. Mention the Apostle Paul as a witness for your point of view, and the roof caves in.

So in this climate of pluralism and fake tolerance, how can Psalm 47 function? What are we supposed to do with these inflexible ideas about there being but one true God over all the earth? Perhaps we are called to do the same thing the Israelites were called to do over 3,000 years ago: namely, live as authentic witnesses to what we believe to be the truth. We can no more prove our faith today than could the ancient Israelites.

We, too, must acknowledge that what we say and sing every Sunday when we gather in our little churches looks ridiculous. If it's centers of power and influence you're looking for, check out Hollywood, Wall Street, or Washington D.C. Even the Vatican cannot inspire the same respect or awe as this world's citadels of military power or financial riches. Even as Israel did not look like the center of the universe way back when, so the average church doesn't look like much today, either.

So all in all Psalm 47 presents us with a pretty big challenge. How can we say or think such things about ourselves in ways that are genuine and honest? The answer is that we are called to live in such a way as to make the scandalous, far-reaching claims of Psalm 47 more credible. Our own lives need to bear out our ardent faith that the living God really is among us by his Spirit.

In the end it really does not matter whether we can convince the world that in all the vastness of space the Church of Christ really does know the truth. In the end it does not really matter how ridiculous we look when we sing sentiments like the ones in the 47^th psalm. To those who only and always are on the outside looking in, faith always looks absurd.

What does matter, however, is that if anyone bothers to get to know you, if anyone looks your life over a bit more thoroughly to check out your professional conduct, your home life, your choices in the entertainment field, your care for the environment, your conduct as a friend or spouse or parent--if anyone scrutinizes all of that, then it matters very much that what they see in you is transparent to the truth of Jesus as the Lord of all.

Because if even in your own life you have areas where Jesus is not present--if you restrict Jesus to your prayer time but keep him out of your finances, if you reserve an hour for Jesus on Sunday mornings but box him out of your leisure hours the rest of the weekend--if Jesus is not obviously the Lord of your entire life, then how can you expect anyone to believe that Jesus is the Lord of the entire cosmos?

Similarly, if we go with the pluralistic flow of America and start muttering vague generalities about how one religion is as good as the next, then this reduces faith to a little hobby that you keep out in the garage along with your woodworking and gardening tools. But then we have also dethroned Jesus from the universal Lord to a local option that the rest of the world can ignore with impunity.

Of course, as we have reflected on other occasions, finding loving ways to respect other people while proclaiming our convictions presents enormous challenges. Those who remind us that dogmatic beliefs have in the past led to violent inquisitions, crusades, and other pogroms are right. These days, too, we don't do Jesus any favors if we join in on the increasingly hostile rhetoric of the culture wars. If Jesus is the Lord of everything, then he must govern also our speech and conduct in the public square, starting with how we present our distinctive Christian witness. The method should reflect the Master.

You see, singing Psalm 47 on Sundays is one thing, living it out in the real world is a vastly more difficult matter. Believing the core truth of Psalm 47 is one thing, finding consistent and loving ways to communicate that truth is a challenge. But these are matters with which it is our privilege to wrestle. We should be thankful we serve a God so big and that we have a vision for life so broad that it forces us to grapple with many dicey complexities. Because only such a broad vision offers any hope for this whole universe and our lives in it.

We opened this sermon thinking about how quickly we can be dwarfed by the vastness of the universe. Given how big the cosmos is, isn't it a bit audacious to claim we have the corner on ultimate truth? And yet we believe we do precisely because in our faith we know how well the cosmic touches us in our tinyness.

Because once upon a time God's Son took his own cosmic "powers of ten" journey. Long ago the Son of God zipped past galaxies, quasars, suns, planets, and continents getting ever closer to this world until finally he dove deeply into the confines of a virgin's uterus. There, as a microscopic zygote, he took on human DNA, skin, organs, and blood, and was born in a small stable, all his vastness enclosed by no more than a goat's feed trough.

Never before had the cosmic and the local, the vastness of space and the smallness of a single human being, mingled in so wondrous a way. And that is the God and Lord we serve; that is why we can be so sure that despite our smallness, despite the fact that we, like ancient Israel, hardly look like the center of the universe, we really are. Because the Lord we proclaim has come down to each one of us so that one day he might lift us up to where he is, enthroned in cosmic splendor forever and ever. As this psalmist knew, this is a gospel too grand to be watered down--it needs to be sung with loud voices and the sounds of trumpets, inviting the whole world to "Sing praises to God, sing praises!" Amen.