March 12, 2000

James R. Gorman

Apollo 8, the first manned mission to orbit the moon, entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, 1968. That evening the astronauts Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders did a live television broadcast from lunar orbit, in which they showed pictures of the Earth and moon seen from Apollo 8.

Jim Lovell said, "The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth." They ended the broadcast with the crew taking turns reading from the book of Genesis.

William Anders read:

"For all the people on Earth the crew of Apollo 8 has a message we would like to send you:

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness."

Then Jim Lovell read:

"And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day."

Then Frank Borman read:

"And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters he called Seas: and God saw that it was good."

Borman then added, "And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you - all of you on the good Earth."

I remember when the astronauts sent back that message. It was a Christmas Eve of the year in which I had returned to church, but I hadn't really fully returned. I was a member, but still in some significant rebellion from God. Anyone who thinks that a rebirth experience changes everything in one day is sadly mistaken. I still had a ways to go.

By which I mean that I thought that the Christmas Eve broadcast of this message was a bit maudlin. A bit too Sunday schoolish. I wanted faith, but I didn't want it to be simple.

But I've had time to reflect in the 32 years since. And one of the perspectives I've been given is the perspective of the loneliness of the cosmos from which those astronauts began their reading. I'm sure I missed it the first time around, but the astronauts began by noting the vast loneliness of space. Their reading of the Creation story touches the heart of the Jewish and Christian story. Creation is the result of the loneliness of God.

G. K. Chesterton, journalist and author of the Father Brown mystery series of the 1920s once said of the Bible, "The central idea of the great part of the Old Testament may be called the idea of the loneliness of God. God is not the only chief character of the Old Testament; God is properly the only character in the Old Testament."⁽¹⁾

Rather than a wrathful, despotic impersonal God, we have in the book of Genesis a Father who is deeply in love with the creation he has brought into being, and at the same time deeply disappointed with how things have turned out. Now his creatures have decided that they are more than creatures. They think they are little demi-gods with powers beyond those that God has given them.

They have begun to worship themselves, and in the story of Noah, we have a sense of God's aching loneliness.

Israel retells an ancient story of the flood in a way that introduces us to a God who is pleased with creation but has discovered that creation has rebelled. God's creatures, especially the human creatures, have fallen in love with themselves and their own considerable talents, skills, freedoms, and mental capacities. God has discovered in a very short time that the creation that has been brought into being is just now gone off on its own, declared its independence from its creator and wandered into far off countries like the prodigal sons and daughters we all can be.

And like the story of the prodigal son, we learn of a God who will do anything to get creation back.

It helps, I think, not only to read this story from the point of view of the vast loneliness of space, but also to read this story from the point of view of a parent of a teenaged child. Parents never really know what to do with a rebellious child. (And I say this in the full hearing of the children of the church).

If you come down hard on a child in the throes of exercising their independence, you risk losing them to the vast chaotic options that lie out there for them. In their anger against you, they can make choices that are even more destructive than whatever behaviors or decisions brought you to the threshold of your anger in the first place.

If, on the other hand, you decide to be tolerant and patient, you risk giving permission to the behavior that you know to be destructive for them and their future.

If you give a child all your attention when they call on you, you risk making them dependent on you. If you ignore their pleas for help in the hope that they will exercise some independence of judgment, you risk letting them make mistakes that could cost them dearly.

Should you let them drive the car at age 16 and allow them the freedom that every American treasures? Or should you make them wait until they exercise good judgment? And when will you know that they have good judgment?

Should you let them stay overnight at a friend's house when you are not sure who is in that house and what adults will be watching? Or should you risk embarrassing the child you love by making multiple phone calls to assuage all your questions?

For the children that are listening, let me speak on behalf of your parents to say that the worry that they express to you when you go out and do not call to say where you are, is a real, deep and unspeakable worry.

And let me also say that it is possible for parents to lose their temper and to feel deeply sorry for having done so. There are scores of incidents in the raising of our kids that I wish I could take back and do over.

And it is now from this perspective that I read this story of Noah.

At the end of this story, creation is still creation. The human heart is still rebellious (8:21). What is different at the end of this story is that God has promised never again to destroy the earth in order to make its inhabitants stay in line.

What changes at the end of this story is God.

There will be floods, of course. But never again should any of us interpret such floods as a sign of God's anger. Never again should we construe a natural disaster as a warning that we should repent. God has repented of such an approach to the discipline of creation. For after every flood there will be a rainbow to remind us of God's deep and uncompromising love.

In James Weldon Johnson's sermon, "Creation," Johnson begins,

"And God stepped out on space.

And he looked around and he walked around and he said,

'I'm lonely. I'll make me a world.'"

Which reminds us of what the Hebrew Scriptures have been trying to tell us lo, these many years. We are created by God out of God's own aching loneliness. And every story that follows in the Old Testament and the New is about God chasing after us to bring us back to him so that he can, out of his own love, hold us tightly to his bosom.

Will we continue to rebel and make decisions that will disappoint God? Of course. But the story of the Bible, right to the cross of Jesus, is about God's deep need to find us in our rebellion, bring us back and provide new opportunities for renewal.

And God does this.

Again and again, God does this.