Until my wife and I came to Grace Point Church, back then, Twin Orchard’s Baptist, I did not know Joe. Oh I knew a few Joe’s, just not this one. Over the past few years as I have come to know him better I found myself wondering, a couple of times, what kind of kid he must have been, what was his environment. What sort of soil,” I wondered, “produces an adult with as broad a range of interests as anyone I have ever had the pleasure of coming to know?” Among Joe’s interests are: things that fly, (almost anything I think); bee keeping; shortwave radio; stoking fires with a leaf blower, which almost instantly transforms smolders flames into an eye-brow singeing inferno; and of all the things of which I had no idea, the orbit of the International Space Station.
It was earlier that evening in July when I got the text, “If you will look in the sky tonight around 9:10, you can get a very clear look at the International Space Station flying over head.” To be perfectly honest my first thought was that I probably would not bother, I mean who wants to take the time required to walk from the living room all the way out to the deck. Did Joe think I had nothing better to do with those 6-7 seconds? However, the nearer it got to 9:10 PM the more compelled I felt to go out and look up. “What’s the big deal?” I thought. But as it turned, out was. In fact it was a very big deal, and still is. Much bigger than I had anyway of knowing, and frankly a hole lot bigger than Joe could have known. By a simple and innocent invitation to share in the joy of what brought him joy my friend unknowingly set my gaze heavenward, and moments later I found myself flooded with wordless wonder. Shared joy has that potential.
At approximately 9:16 PM I watched as without a single sound that I could hear; while reflecting back light it was borrowing from the sun that was some 93 million miles away, the Space Station, looking like a diamond against black velvet, floated effortlessly across a cloudless sky. In an orbit roughly 300 miles above our world, moving at five miles a second (yes, per second), it appeared without announcement over one horizon, then absent any fanfare, disappeared far too soon over the other. It’s coming and going only wetting my appetite with wonder.
The astonishment that washed over me took me completely by surprise. Because it did, maybe because it happens so rarely, I wanted to, needed to watch, to stand there longer in rapt amazement. Neck bent back, face facing heaven, still staring, now at where the space station was, but certainly not at nothing. “Maybe”, I thought, “this is one of those uncommon moments when I am not looking at nothing, but actually, maybe… everything.”
I don’t know what life was like in Joe’s world as he grew up, but whatever it was I am thankful for it. Thankful because I’m thankful for him, and frankly for everyone in my life who has reminded me, invited me, to look up.
This morning I want to be a Joe. My hope is that when you leave here, or stop watching, you will feel compelled to look up, to be amazed. So, speaking of amazing, when was the last time you read these words?
SLIDE 1……”
“What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have observed and have touched with our hands, concerning the Word of life — that life was revealed, and we have seen it and we testify and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us — what we have seen and heard we also declare to you, so that you may have fellowship along with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.” 1 John 1:1-4 HCSB
John, Christ’s apostle, is telling us of that which was from the beginning. And in a way I think might only be possible when the writer’s pen is guided by the Holy Spirit, with just five words, “what was in the beginning…”, he overwhelmed my human capacities of understanding and reason, sending my senses spilling over into astonishment.
He is writing about the what that was present at the start of creation, but more than that, the actual cause of it all. This is staggering stuff! Of it, John writes, we have heard it, really heard it; seen it, actually seen it; observed and even handled it. This is the Word of life, he writes, its source, what actually caused life and sustains it. Here, if I was the Psalmist, I would add the word, “Selah”, which means, “Stop and think about that.”
SLIDE 2…..
The Common Jewish Bible renders John words like this, “The Word, which gives life! He existed from the beginning. We have heard him, we have seen him with our eyes, we have contemplated him, we have touched him with our hands! The life appeared, and we have seen it. We are testifying to it and announcing it to you — eternal life! He was with the Father, and he appeared to us.” 1Yochanan (1 Jo) 1:1-2 CJB
If the Jew of John’s day, living under the heavy hand of Roman rule, was looking for a mere man, a king, to come and set up a physical kingdom, to take over; from that perspective, with that as their hope, Jesus of Nazareth would prove a deep disappointment to some; a threat to others; and on the whole an utterly miserable messianic failure. I suspect John had that very hope in mind when he first heard of Jesus, then actually heard Him, then later, by invitation, started following this charismatic son of a carpenter.
There would however, come a point, (and may God bring us to such a point too), when he and the other disciples were to be brought to understand that the what that they had heard, seen, observed and handled, what had been revealed to them, was infinitely more; indescribably more; wondrously more, than an earthly king ushering in an earthly kingdom, providing salvation from oppressors, and reparations for all the wrongs that had been done to them and to their ancestors.
I can’t help but wonder if the time and place when it all began to come into view, at least for John, when the Word of Life, revealed by and reflecting the glory of God, broke over the horizon in his heart, was when standing in the opening of a empty borrowed tomb, John was shown that in looking at what wasn’t there, like me starring at the place where the International Space Station had been, if rather than looking at nothing he was instead being shown… everything.
Who, standing there in astonishment, could doubt that this was a sacred emptiness from which wonder poured out in wave after wave. No more empty than the night sky above me was at 9:18 PM, when the Space Station, leaving the unhindered illumination of the sun, slipped into the shadows, seemingly disappearing from view. Whether the disciples knew it then or not, the absence of Christ’s body, and the place where he was, and the silence within the now empty tomb, only spoke more loudly, with more certainty of the glory of God, and the wonder of Christ.
Let me bring this down to earth and make it practical. Just as I had to lift my head to see a man-made object the size of a football field tracking like a troubadour across the heavens at 22,000 miles per hour, ( yes, 22,000), so too, we who believe in Christ and seek to follow Him, will find that frequently we need to get my eyes off the ground. A head-down, earthbound perspective will rarely allow us to be filled again with that God-given gift of wordless wonder that takes both our words and breath away.
Friends, there is a joy that comes after the loss of words, out past the limits of human capacities. Repeatedly we need to lift our vision higher, gazing again at the amazing, indescribable majesty not just of the what which God has revealed, but the Who, in Whom, He placed all the what. This is the wonder that is Christ. This is Him of Whom Paul wrote,
In Colossians Paul wrote,
SLIDE 3…
For the entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily in Christ, and you have been filled by Him, who is the head over every ruler and authority.” Colossians 2:9-10 HCSB
And in Corinthians…
SLIDE 4…
For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give to us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” 2 Corinth 4:6 KJV
In the middle of the muddle of the mundane, or during the confusion and confines of something like COVID-19 and things dramatically worse, it is easy to lose our grip on the greatness of this,
Christ is infinitely, vastly and eternally greater than the salvation He brings, and even the life He gives.
The life He gives as a gift isn’t something He had to go get, it’s a part of His Person, and since it is it comes to us by impartation., He imparts His life, to us. This imparting of His life could be part of what John is referring to when he writes about fellowship. It may be what happened to two of the disciples who were walking on the road to Emmaus, headed away from Jerusalem after Jesus crucifixion. Jesus himself appeared to him, eventually revealing himself to them. Luke recorded their experience this way,
SLIDE 5…
“So they said to each other, “Weren’t our hearts ablaze within us while He was talking with us on the road and explaining the Scriptures to us? ” That very hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem. They found the Eleven and those with them gathered together, who said, “The Lord has certainly been raised, and has appeared to Simon! ” Then they began to describe what had happened on the road and how He was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.” Luke 24:32-35 HCSB
Speaking of the indescribable Person of Christ, Paul wrote
SLIDE 6…
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For everything was created by Him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and by Him all things hold together. He is also the head of the body, the church;
Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul continues……
SLIDE 7…..
He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He might come to have first place in everything. For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile everything to Himself by making peace through the blood of His cross — whether things on earth or things in heaven.” Colossians 1:15-20 HCSB
The greatness of the Kingdom Jesus inaugurated gets its greatness from Him. But while our hearts and minds strain to grasp the “what” that flows out from the presence of Christ, we need to keep in mind how much greater He, the source of it all, is, for isn’t the giver always greater than the gift they give? So, if Christ is the cause and sustainer of all things, logic tells us that He Himself is greater than all things.
Today we are taking Communion together, doing it as Christ said, that we should remember Him. So while we remember, let’s remember this too, we are called to worship the King, not what He, as King, brings. Maybe it’s time again to remind ourselves that in looking at Christ, we are in ways we do not yet understand, looking at, well, everything.
When did you last spend time, neck bent back, face facing heaven, filling your heart with wordless wonder? Maybe it is time again to take the advice of that old hymn and to, “Stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene, and wonder…”.
Practical Thoughts on Biblical Things 