2/25/62

Scripture: Psalm 8.

Nearly 35 years ago, in May of 1927, a young man took to the air in a propeller-type plane. His load of fuel was so heavy that it was a question, for some minutes, whether the single-engined plane would take to the air. It did so; and flew north easterly up the coast from New York. Then the plane, with its lone occupant, the pilot, headed out over the Atlantic ocean toward Europe. For long, agonizing hours no one hear from the pilot --- for these were in the earlier days of flying. And communication such as we know it now, was in its infancy.

The rest of that day, and all through the night, people waited, listened to their radios, hoped, prayed for the pilot’s safety. Humorist Will Rogers refused to be funny in his news column that day. He had only a sober concern for the 25-year-old Charles A. Lindberg droning along, alone over the vast Atlantic ocean.

The next evening, Lindberg set his plane down on the runway of a field near Paris, and claimed the prize for the first non-stop flight from New York to Paris. Pent-up emotion exploded all over the world. And the young aviator became such a hero as few men have even been acclaimed. It was a tremendous feat for a man to have accomplished.

Almost everyone knew that it was a beginning, merely a “first” in what would one day become a commonplace occurrence, after the endless experiments and refinements, and advances yet to be made. But it was a day of wonder of triumph.

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Nearly 35 years later, last Tuesday, February 20th, 1962, to be exact, the world had another time of tense suspense and then of triumphant release. After patient, precise, persistent planning and experiment, a man rode on the tip of mighty rockets into outer space beyond the earth’s atmosphere, went into orbit around the planet, spun three times around the world in less than 5 hours, reentered the earth’s atmosphere, splashed into the Atlantic not too far from where he had taken off, was lifted to safety and climbed out of his orbital capsule to tell the story of what he had felt and seen.

This time, there was constant communication with the traveler. Scientists and technicians used instruments of unbelievable precision and speed to control his flight, and to keep in touch with him. John Glenn was able to talk to people at many points on the earth, as his capsule hurtled through outer space a hundred miles and more above the nearest point of earth beneath.

Once again, the traveler is a hero to countless millions of folk. Once again there is the wondering thought that this is but the beginning of something that may one day become commonplace, as trained men explore the vastness of space outside this little earth’s sphere. For John Glenn is not the first to make such a trip. Another has already been aloft longer and has made more swings about the earth, and returned to tell of it. And some are wont to say, “How wonderful is man! See what he has accomplished! Perceive what he will yet accomplish!”

And yet, lest mankind begin to worship himself or his fellows; lest he give himself over to pride in what little he knows or may know; lest he mis-use rather than rightly use the knowledge thus far opened to his understanding; it is well to remember a point of view expressed centuries ago by a Psalm writer. That is why I invite you to think, for a short time, about the Psalm which was our Scripture reading for this morning.

The eighth Psalm sounds like a “nature” psalm as one begins to read it. But it is much more than that. And it is more than a lyric echo of the creation story in Genesis, too. It could be called the psalm of a religious scientist. Some of its phrases have become part of the “permanent mental furniture of reflective people.”

It begins with a burst of praise to the God of nature: “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth.” And then the psalmist resorts to contrast. God’s “excelling” is so splendid that even little children can see and respond to it. For do not children respond to beauty? “Thou whose glory above the heavens is chanted by the mouths of babes and infants.” But it is also of such kind that it is an irresistible power against cruel and bitter men, who are still in their tracks before it. And then, abruptly, the Psalmist leaves the reader face to face with the wonder of the most high.

Look back again for another moment, at the beginning of the Psalm. “How majestic” --- “How excellent is Thy name.” That is to say, “Look at God’s creation, and let it hit home to your mind.” You may feel impelled to admit that the Creator is one whom humanity must exalt, and acknowledge to be great beyond our computing. He is thus excellent in the true sense of the word -- exceeding or surpassing the strength, the loves, the knowledge that we have. It is in this feeling of the “beyondness” of God that is displayed the essential attitude for true worship.

Part of the reason for the divorce of the scientific mind from worship lies in a man-like habit of thinking, whereby we seem to suggest that God is made in man’s image --- a projection of our own life and imagination --- and that we can thus easily grasp God intellectually. We have not begun to grasp, or even sense, what God is until we are ready to assent to the assurance that man is created in the image of God. And God is infinitely beyond what man has yet learned or comprehended or even imagined. “How excellent” --- how excellent --- “is Thy name in all the earth!”

When we have sensed the greatness of God, we can wonder at His creation -- or that part of creation that we see and about which we learn. Even babes are in awe of it. What wonder lighted the eyes of a little boy of 18 months when he first saw the sea.

The child-like in heart, even those of more mature years, instinctively give reverence to the wonders of the earth. A young farmer from the prairies went on a trip which took him, for the first time, into the Rocky Mountains. Perhaps some of us can understand what was in his soul as he said: “Beauty, beauty; I never knew there was such beauty.”

The less child-like among us may reflect soberly on the dulling of some of our response to loveliness. And we may regret the lack of shock at ugliness, or at what destroys beauty. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” [Matthew 5: 8]. The psalmist must have been one of their company!

Then he turns the reader’s thought again to the greatness of the Creator Who could establish such a great creation. “When I look at thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast established.” It is a poet’s way of trying to make truth come alive -- to talk of God’s “fingers.” One might wish to say “what kind of fingers?” And yet how could he have said it better? At any rate there is sheer wonder in contemplating the moon and the stars on a clear night; or to consider the sun by day; or to gaze through the eyepiece of a telescope at some heavenly body too distant to be detected by the naked eye.

Several summers ago, a few of us were given the opportunity to look at such a star through a telescope operated by astronomers at the University of Wisconsin. After we had seen it, the astronomer told us how many light years away from our earth that star was. He told us how many years ago the light which we saw from that star had started toward our earth, and reminded us that for all we know, that same star might, meanwhile, have ceased to exist! It was almost breath-taking to try to comprehend that little speck of the creation, let alone the universe of which it, and we, are a part!

Poets and moralists of all the ages have been stirred to remind us thereby of man’s pitiable littleness. In our present days, the thought is almost overwhelming. “The horror of vastness” is upon us. And as mechanical views of the universe give way to something less determinate, the vastness becomes more acute, and we more alien. One of our great dangers lies in the fact that man is discovering that which may petrify his moral concern. “What does it matter? It will all be the same in a hundred years.” We are tempted to think that a mathematical universe does not care, and to forget God, Who does care. “What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him?” Does not mankind seem awfully puny in the face of God’s great wonders?

And yet man is part of the care of the Creator! Despite the moment of triumph, that a living man has orbited the earth several times, he is still a most precarious part of the universe of stars. It takes all of the knowledge and skill that thousands of people can muster to keep him alive a hundred or two miles above the earth and to bring him back alive. It is as nothing yet, among the stars. Still he is precious to the Creator who “telleth the number of stars;” and “calleth them all by their names.” [Psalm 147: 4]. For the same God who cares for the Universe, cares for His children, opening for them more and more knowledge, as they work for it.

“What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him?” The authorized, or King James, version translates it “What is man, that thou are mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” Probably the word “visitest” is less accurate than “care for;” but it is nonetheless suggestive. For man has been visited by God in His great care. God came among men in the person of His Christ, and stays in the hearts of those who receive him. There are visitors and visitors; it is a wondrous thing to know of one Visitor whose sole purpose in coming is to save.

Meditating on this phrase as a starter, one may reach toward the heart of cosmic understanding. A great churchman said to his son, who also became a great churchman, “If you have only three minutes to give to Bible reading in the morning, give one minute to reading, and two to thinking of what you have read.”

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The psalmist leads the reader from the suggestion that man is so puny that it is a wonder that God pays any attention to him at all in the vastness of the created universe. Then he goes on to offer a sudden contrast, a statement of rare perception and faith. “Yet thou hast made him little less than God, and dost crown him with glory and honor.” The older translation reads, “For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor.” Man appears to be different in kind from the rest of creation. His affinity is with the Maker, not with the made. It is poetic language for the psalmist to say that man is only “little less than God.” But again, as is so often the case, poetry expresses the truth in better perception than measurement can do.

Man can think some of God’s thoughts after Him, and rejoice in that in which God rejoices. The stars in their courses are wonderful; the science of astronomy leads us beyond the Beyond; but greater than astronomy is the astronomer. The greatest wonder, short of God Himself, is the mind he has given to man. To many a modern reader, it is this that crowns mankind with glory and honor. The thought is inherent in the Old Testament story of creation wherein man is declared to be made in God’s image. [Genesis 1: 26]. The New Testament reveals it better. For the Creator placed the royal crown on man’s head when he opened the possibility that man may be Christlike.

Perhaps nothing is more firmly planted in the modern mind than the conviction of man’s greatness. Even the awful tragedies of war, and the sober realities of evil, have not dislodged this thought. Indeed, we have tended to leave out the phrase “a little lower than” and to think of man’s achievements quite aside from God. It is necessary, therefore, to emphasize that it is God who has “crowned him with glory and honor.” It is well to keep the “glory and honor” close to the awed humility of the preceding verse of the psalm. All man does, in relation to nature, is to find out God’s secrets as they may be revealed --- not to invent them!

God was the inventor of chloroform. Man only found out what was there. Moreover, man’s power of discovery is as awe-inspiring as the secrets to be discovered. He must use his discoveries with awe and responsibility; with “fear and trembling.” Anesthetics can be used to banish pain and to recover life, or they can be used for murder!

Man’s crowning “with glory and honor” puts him in supreme peril. Let him think, and be still. For unique responsibility goes with each new discovery. Of all creation, so far as we know, it is man to whom much is given, and from whom much is required.

The sixth verse of the psalm signalizes man’s dignity on a lower level -- the level of power. Man is exalted in authority over all other living things. “Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hand; thou hast put all thing under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the sea.” This is a sufficiently astounding fact when man’s physical puniness is remembered.

“Brains plus a little brawn” is the master of brawn plus a little brain. Mind is might. This sober truth needs to be remembered by all who would belittle the intellect in religion. It is quite true that the heart, the purpose of many, must be changed before the world can be made right; for the greatest thing in the world is love. But there is also required great intelligence. Mind and heart must be well in accord before the kingdom comes. Meanwhile, man’s power over the lower creation gives him high moral responsibility.

If the eighth psalm had been written in this century, the writer would not have stopped there. Perhaps he would not even have mentioned sheep and oxen. He would have been concerned, perhaps “dizzied and appalled,” at man’s dominion over performance of the atom before he can yet demonstrate his responsible use of the bow and arrow.

In the psalmist’s day, man was the slave of nature’s forces. Today, he has progressed far toward mastery over many of those forces. It is a sober and a thrilling time to be alive. For if we use our knowledge responsibly, and in the “fear of God,” we can, by Him, be “crowned with glory and honor.”

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, February 25, 1962.