The danger with a series of sermons on the theology of humanity, the danger of thinking about who we are, what we’re here for, what it means to be human, is that it could, very easily, turn into just another exercise in humanism. We could spend our time thinking about all the great things human beings have achieved over the years, the great advances we’ve made, the improvements to quality of life, to health and education. On the other hand, I’m sure that’s prompted some of you to think about the negatives of human development: of the damage we’ve done to the environment, of the pain and suffering we continue to inflict on one another, of the way humans misuse power, give in to corruption, allow injustice to go unpunished. But if we take that tack, of concentrating entirely on humanity, we miss the bigger picture and make humanity the centre of the universe.
David doesn’t make that mistake. He begins and ends this psalm with praise of God, who made the heavens and the earth and everything in them. Even though the majority of the psalm is taken up with a discussion of humanity, it’s clearly God who’s central. It’s God who has made us what we are. It’s God whose image we reflect in the glory we show forth in our lives.
You can imagine David sitting out on the hills at night, under a clear sky, looking up at the heavens and being overwhelmed. Blown away by the wonder of the heavens, and then as so often happens in that sort of situation, beginning to think about his own mortality.
He looks up and bursts out in praise: "O lord, our king, how majestic is your name in all the earth!" In Psalm 19 we find a similar idea: "The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. 2Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge." It’s as though the inanimate world has a voice that continually sings God’s praises. Jesus said a similar thing to the Pharisees on the first Palm Sunday, "I tell you, if [my disciples] were silent, the stones would shout out." God is so great that even the inanimate stars and planets proclaim God’s glory.
But then at the other extreme, "Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark [that is, a defence] because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger." If the universe declares the glory of God, so too do babes and infants.
I wonder if you remember the first time you were taken out of the city, to camp out in the bush, under the stars? Do you remember the awe and wonder as you looked up at the milky way. Do you remember being amazed at their brightness, a brightness you never see in the city, at their number, beyond counting, at the vast expanse of them, covering the sky. Young children, in their innocence, can often sense what we sophisticated adults are blind to. It might be possible for an adult to look up at the stars in a blasé way as though there were nothing new there. But a young child will be blown away by the same sense of wonder as David expresses here. And it’s that innocent acknowledgement of God’s glory that defeats the hardness of the sophisticated. In fact the weakness and gentleness of infants is often the chosen defence of God against the powerful and violent. Listen to how Jesus takes the words of this psalm in Matt 21:15, to answer the Pharisees’ objections: "When the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, "Hosanna to the Son of David," they became angry 16and said to him, "Do you hear what these are saying?" Jesus said to them, "Yes; have you never read, ’Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself’?"
Yet as David looks at the stars and meditates on what he sees, he’s driven beyond praise to humility and then through humility to wonder at God’s amazing goodness to and trust of us human beings.
He says a fascinating thing: "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers." Now I love this. It’s not "the work of your hands". Just your fingers. This huge expanse, mind boggling in its breadth, is the result of God’s fine motor skills, tiny by comparison with him. NASA sent out the Voyager space probes in 1977. 28 years or so later they’ve just about reached the edge of our solar system. Our nearest star is 4.3 light years away. That’s about 8000 times as far as the Voyager probe has gone in 28 years! The universe is beyond our comprehension! Yet what to us is overwhelmingly immense, is finger work for God. And if God is that big, what does that make us? We fade into insignificance by comparison. It puts humanity into perspective doesn’t it? How can we be so proud of our ability to control technology when we compare it to what God has done?
And so he cries out, "what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?" His wonder at God’s creation now spills over into wonder at God’s care of us insignificant mortals. Wonder of wonders, God has made us just a little lower than God.
This takes us back to what we thought about last week. Despite our seeming insignificance, we’re made in the image of God. So let’s think again about what that might mean.
It means we’re made for responsibility. There’s an inbuilt imperative within us to make decisions, particularly moral decisions. As I said last week, we’re self-determining creatures.
It means that though we’re not omnipresent like God we do have an inner drive to overcome our physical limitations. We wage a tireless war against those limitations - exploring the earth, plumbing the depths of the sea, probing the furthest reaches of space, building road vehicles, ships, aeroplanes, space craft.
It means that though we’re not omniscient, we do have an insatiable thirst for knowledge.
It means that though we’re not omnipotent, we do seek power with a passion and in the process have unlocked some of nature’s greatest secrets
We’re far from perfect, yet we desire and work for perfection. You can see this in our mythology, in our art, in our technology. Think about that for a moment. The animal world builds. Some animals and birds apparently even use technology. But the bird builds an adequate nest and is satisfied. The spider spins a web and sits back and waits for the insect to fly by. We on the other hand have a drive to refine and perfect, continually, to improve upon what we already have. It’s as though we’re continually seeking for the transcendent, for the place we belong, but can’t attain.
And this is why God has given us dominion over his world.
Yet what a responsibility! And how we’ve misused that responsibility, turning service into power.
You know, there’s a little word in Gen 2:15, about our responsibility for the world, that’s never translated literally. Our translation uses the phrase "till it". Others use "work it". But the Hebrew word that’s used there is literally "serve it". We’re meant to be the servants of the earth, the stewards who care for God’s precious creation. But humanity after the fall has turned service into enslavement, care into exploitation.
And as a result the world suffers. Listen to what happens to the land of Israel as a result of the curse brought about by its people’s disobedience: (Isa 24 NRSV) "4The earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers; the heavens languish together with the earth. 5The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. 6Therefore a curse devours the earth, and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt; ... 19The earth is utterly broken, the earth is torn asunder, the earth is violently shaken."
Paul echoes these ideas in Romans 8:20-23: "The creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it... 22We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies." Those groans are the result of us failing in our responsibility to the earth.
But that responsibility for caring for the creation hasn’t ended. We’re still responsible for our action and our inaction. Here are the words of a notice that used to on display in the Kuringai Chase National Park north of Sydney: "Fire destroys the damp leaf litter which harbours the worms and crustaceans which feed the lyre birds . . . Industrial pollutants draining into park streams kill plants and plankton which feed fish and crustaceans which feed man and bird . . . Natural environment is the product of all time – dollars cannot make it or repair it . . . No plant or animal lives alone. Where there is one there is another upon which it depends for food, support, protection. In a desert, in a swamp, on a plain, or on a mountainside, there are communities of plants and animals of various species. For better or for worse the life of each is related to the others. All living things, both plant and animal, that make up a community depend upon one another to keep their numbers in balance."
Our task is made more difficult of course because the land is a rich source of profit for greedy men and women. Short term gains far outweigh the long term risks of damage to the environment. The land owners of Brazil want to cut down the Amazon rain forest to grow crops. The copper miners in Bougainville strip the land around their mine, fill the rivers with pollutants, all in the name of company profits and the local people let them just so they can share in those same profits, so they can get access to western consumer goods. The graziers of Victoria press their claim to drive their cattle through the high country plains despite the damage they do to the ecology of the region.
As Christians we should be leading the fight to improve the ecological performance of our government, of our industries, of our local people. God has given us this great honour and dignity. He’s made us a little lower than himself. He’s crowned us with glory and honour, setting us over all the works of his hands.
Yet having said that there’s one more thing to say. This is more than just a reminder of the dignity of humanity in general. It’s also a foretaste of one who was yet to come. Heb 2:5-9 takes up these words and applies them to Jesus. There the writer points out that Jesus has been crowned with glory, not by defeating his enemies in battle, but through the suffering of death.
Now just look back at v2. What is it that characterises babes and infants? It’s their vulnerability, their weakness, their innocence. That’s exactly what Paul says about Jesus in Phil 2:5-10 (NRSV): 5Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 6who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross. 9Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth. As I said earlier, God so often uses the path of weakness and gentleness to defeat the powerful and violent.
Jesus takes the path of humility, of submission. He lowers himself to the status of a slave. He humbles himself to death on a cross. But God raises him up. He restores to him the glory and honour that was meant to be the lot of all of us. And now "we see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, ... crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone." We are made in God’s image, made just a little lower than God himself, but Jesus has come to show what that really means. Jesus has come to bring us salvation, to make it possible for us to be restored to the image of God as it was in the beginning. Jesus has brought us back to the Father, given us new birth, raised us up to new life, given us new hope of a creation restored to what God intended for it in the beginning.
So we have even more reason than David to cry out in praise and wonder, "O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!"
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