There is an Old Testament story about a prophet named Elijah who was at the end of his rope.
His life's work was falling apart, nobody was listening to him, people with power, big
power were out to kill him, and he was on the run, ready to give up, even praying at
one point, his deepest, most desperate point, that God would take his life.
He was finished and desperate, desperate, desperate for a word from God.
And then, just at the right time, holed up in a cave, God spoke to his prophet.
And the words spoken were good and right for Elijah to hear and encouraging and hopeful.
But what was beautiful in recalling that story this week was how the word, the revelation,
came.
The Lord said to Elijah, go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord,
for the Lord is about to pass by.
And then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before
the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind.
And after the wind, there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.
And after the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.
And then after the fire came a gentle whisper.
And when Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the
mouth of the cave.
And then a voice said to him, what are you doing here, Elijah?
And then God spoke to him and gave him direction and hope.
And an important lesson for what we're going to talk about this morning to people who like
the prophet are desperate, I am, to hear a word from God in the middle of my confused,
sometimes lost, messed up life.
The message is that a mysterious God often speaks in ways we don't expect at times we're
not ready for or prepared for, mysterious ways.
And in this particular case, with a very still, soft whisper.
Sometimes God speaks in such small, quiet, almost insignificant ways.
Which makes me wonder if the reason I never get what I always want is because I never
listen well enough and I'm quiet enough and I'm so surrounded by noise in my life to
perceive it.
So this week, been thinking a lot about the many different ways that God's revelation
is imperceptible to us.
Sometimes God's voice is too soft, a whisper.
At other times, his ways are too different and therefore beyond our perceptive capacities.
At other times, I think God moves too slowly for us to see.
And at other times, too fast to be noticed.
And there are times where God is doing things that are way, way too small for us to perceive,
to notice.
And at other times, I think so big and huge that we can't even see it.
So okay, next week's film, I have a confession, I watched it this week.
I won't give it all away.
And the film for you will be about the beauty and the color and I'll talk about the theology
of it.
National Geographic's Mysteries of the Unseen Worlds.
Just a beautiful, beautiful look at everything that you never, we never, ever see.
And the whole time I'm watching the film, I'm doing what I do and making all these
God connections, faith connections, seeing how all the different ways that we can't physically
perceive reality connect to the different ways that we're spiritually unable to perceive
capital R reality.
So for example, the nature of light.
We've talked about that in our church before, but human eyes can only see light on the visible
spectrum.
You remember that from high school.
But on either side of that spectrum are wavelengths of light.
On the one side, there are ultraviolet and x-rays that can see right through you, x-rays
can.
On the other side, infrared radiation that can read your surface temperature and show
you things you'd never be able to notice.
And as I pondered just that simple truth about light, the thought hit me that all this unseen
light is a pointer to the reality of an unseen light with a capital L.
The very fact of unseen light filling your world is an everyday reminder of God's invisible
presence in your life.
Of the God who sees right through you, like an x-ray does, God looks into the heart.
And of the God who knows your temperature and your pulse and your racing heart.
And a reminder that all things in this world that are invisible were also made by God.
Or in Him all things were created, the apostle Paul wrote, things in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible.
I've always read that verse in terms of the spiritual world, and surely that is true,
but why not the physical world?
Everything invisible, ultraviolet radiation was made by God.
So every time you get an x-ray, every time you see an infrared image in a movie or in
a science report on the news, every time you consider all of the unseen light that fills
the cosmos, you have a reminder and a pointer and an opportunity to worship God.
God has filled the cosmos with invisible reminders of His very real presence.
Another reason that we can't see things, unseen things, is the fact that they move too slowly.
So think of a flower blooming, or a glacier retreating, or all of those stars and galaxies
that traversed the night sky last night.
We know that they move, but we can't with our naked eye see the motion.
We just can't see it, and we know that there's movement happening.
As I took in all the beautiful time-lapse photography of that National Geographic film,
I thought to myself, this is true of you, God.
I think there are many, many times where you are moving so slowly that we can't see what
you're doing, and not in an uncaring or slothful way, but in a patient at just the right time,
at just the right pace and place kind of way.
Peter wrote pastorally to a church saying, the Lord is not slow in keeping His promise
as some understand slowness, instead He's patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish,
but everyone to come to repentance.
So when it comes to being saved by God, I'm very thankful that God is slow to judge and
slow to anger, those parts of His nature, but thinking about it more, I'm also very
thankful for all the very slow and imperceptible ways that God is moving in the world and in
your life and in my life right now, because those very slow ways also teach us something
about the heart and maybe the mind, the scientific mind of God.
Maybe they remind us of this abstract idea that God is eternal and timeless.
Time is a different thing for God, it's His creature.
He made time.
Jesus once said to some religious leaders, I assure you, before Abraham was, I am, rippled
out the gravity of what he just said there, above time, co-eternal with the Father, co-eternal
with the Father who created time and stands outside of time is Jesus.
God just is, Jesus just is right now timeless and eternal.
So from God's perspective, waiting for our planet to rotate, one complete rotation, 24
hours for that to happen, or allowing a few weeks for all of those little tree buds that
you've maybe noticed on all of those trees in our city to come into bloom, or working
for three years on your heart for that one thing, that one thorn maybe to be extricated,
to be pulled out of you, to deepen your faith in Him, well, for God that's no time at all.
In terms of the big scheme of things, from His perspective, and if you've seen time-lapse
photography, then you know that the most beautiful things that ever happen in our world happen
very, very slowly, don't they?
And the more intricate it seems and complex or important the thing that's happening,
the slower it seems to go, 13.8 billion years to unfold the universe, your whole lifetime
to begin the shaping process of your soul, and eternity for all of us to be with God
forever knowing His mystery and delving into it and knowing more and more and more and
more, forever.
Sometimes I wish I had a kind of time-lapse photography for my life and recording our
spiritual lives so we could really see how much is happening, and maybe that's the film
we get to see at the end when we see Him face to face.
He runs your life as a time-lapse and you see this thing bloom and you see color and
you see movement towards His light and the bending of the plant and the growth in a way
you never could have imagined.
No one's ever seen or heard anything like this, never so much as imagined, anything
quite like it, what God has arranged for those who love Him.
But you've seen it, you just felt it a little bit, you've seen it in a mysterious way and
heard it because God by His Spirit has brought it out into the open before you.
Seeing unseen things.
Another reason we can't see things in our world is because they move too fast.
So you think about a dragonfly's wings or a speeding bullet or the way a sparrow takes
off.
This next picture is one of my favorite photos I ever took in the Weaselhead and just dumb
luck because I don't know how to set the camera to catch a bird taken off like that.
It was just amazing to me, beautiful, this flurry of things going on that I sort of
captured that it moved from a still position and then all of a sudden it's flying, but
what happened in between the two?
Now if I had had a high-speed video camera there that day aimed at that sparrow, I think
I would have been able to see more of what really happened like this photographer did
with a bird he saw.
Only even with high-speed recording equipment, I still can't see that take off from the bird's
eye view from its perspective while seeing everything that's playing out internally within
that little avian wonder, structurally with its bones and muscles and internal organs,
while also seeing the complex air patterns and aerodynamics and the gravity and everything
that's there that would allow for that to even happen, all surrounding those exploding
wings and every feather on each of those wings doing what every feather does, can't see any
of that, not fully, and the truth is we're able to, the whole new set of unseen things,
the more we slow things down it seems, the more there is to see.
So what does that physical truth in the universe made by God say about who God is?
I guess it says that we can trust that God is way, way ahead of us on every front.
Before they call, I will answer, while they're yet speaking, I will hear, and not just chronologically
ahead of us on that scale, but omnisciently ahead of us on the knowledge scale.
You know what I am going to say, God, even before I say it, Lord.
And I suppose that knowing that God moves so fast, infinitely faster than anything you
could ever imagine, is a pointer to how much God can get done because God moves as fast
as God moves, through all those things that are going on in ways that you can't see.
Oceans saw you in action, God, saw you and trembled with fear.
Deep ocean was scared to death, clouds belched, buckets of rain, sky exploded with thunder,
your arrows flashing this way and that from whirlwind came your thundering voice, lightning
exposed the world, earth reeled and rocked.
You strode right through the ocean, walked straight through the roaring ocean, but nobody
saw you come or go.
Am I not present everywhere?
God asks whether seen or unseen, a last way that God goes unseen in our lives is by doing
things that are just way too small, physically small, small acts that are too small to see.
And there is so much in our world that is too small to see and with every new technological
development over the last few centuries we see more and more deeply in what seems to
be an infinite, infinite, infinite direction, the infinitely small nature of all things.
Did anyone watch the Homer clip I assigned with the E news?
Does anybody read the E news?
It was amazing, this clip, not this clip, this one.
But it started at a human being and then basically started scaling down to smaller and smaller
things and then in the bottom right hand corner showed the ten to the minus one, ten to the
minus and just keeps going and going and going from a human being to a hummingbird, to an
ant, to a dust mites, to a blood cell, to a bacterial phage, whatever that is, to DNA,
to a carbon atom, to gamma rays, to electrons, to quarks and all kinds of different quarks,
to neutrinos, right down to as far as we can see right now, quantum matter, which I'm sure
is huge compared to what's really beyond that.
When I look at something like that I realize there is more unseen matter in the cosmos than
any of us and all of us could collectively ever imagine.
And the scale on that little link goes the other way, of course, too, to the very edges
of the universe, things too big for you to see.
We are infinitesimal tiny blips on the cosmic scale, bigger than anything that's smaller
than us and smaller than everything that fills the universe.
We are so small and only a minuscule slice of reality is what we see when we see what
we see, physically, conceptually, spiritually.
And in terms of time, no matter how fast or slow it goes, we're not even that in terms
of cosmic time, a micromoment, a breath, here today, gone, tomorrow.
And we are all of that before a God who is the opposite of all of that, a God who made
all things, who holds all things together, who fully knows the nature of all things,
has done so for some 13.8 billion years in relation to our universe, and then in eternity
before that, that God.
So if you're into science and you think the nature of the universe gives you some perspective,
and that little scale of the universe activity, then think again about the God who goes off
in infinite directions before and after and smaller and bigger and deeper and longer and
higher his love for you.
And ironically, thinking about unseen matter, it's unseen things that give us a unique reminder
and pointer to that God.
Unseen physical matter, unseen perceptual limitations, unseen chronological limitations,
unseen spiritual shortfalls, unseen blind spots because we're all broken, unseen mortal limitations,
unseen because we can't see, unseen because we won't see, we choose not to see, which
Jesus spoke to in a seeing kind of context saying, you have your heads in your Bibles
people constantly because you think you'll find eternal life there, but you miss the
forest for the trees.
These scriptures are all about me, and here I am standing right before you, and you aren't
willing to receive me from me the life you say you want.
Such a life, so much unseen power, so much unseen glory because he is the Lord of it
all, heaven and earth, and everything that fills it, from the infinitismally small to
the infinitely large, the slowest to the fastest, the nearest to the furthest away, the smallest
to the biggest, the knowable to the most mysterious, it's all his, your God's stuff.
We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen.
We look at this Son and see God's original purpose and everything created for everything,
everything above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank of angels, everything got
started in him and finds its purpose in him.
He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this
very moment, and when it comes to the church, us, he organizes and holds us together like
a head does a body.
He was supreme in the beginning and leading the resurrection parade, he is supreme in
the end.
From beginning to end, he's there, towering far above everything and everyone, and so
spacious as he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without
crowding, and not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe, people
and things, so not just souls, things, all things, animals and atoms get properly fixed
and fit together in vibrant harmonies all because of his death.
What a mystery, what an incomprehensible reality, and his blood that poured down from the cross.
All of this holds together because an infinite God before and behind and around and surrounding
and holding and making and through Christ, everything made, came in an almost imperceptible
way as a human baby in a backwater town, nobody, no wonder, nobody noticed, and then goes
on to live a three-decade life or so, dying, and then equally in mystery, rising to make
everything new, it's unseen in its wisdom, like what do you do with that, how do we
make sense of that, apart from just trusting, try to wrap your head around the ungraspable
here with you, right now, mystery of that Jesus, a land with a psalm, Lord our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth, you've set your glory in the heavens and when
I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have
set in place, when I consider all the infinitesimally small things that fill my life, when I consider
all that is too slow for me to see and all that is too fast or too big for me to see,
which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them?
Who am I, God, that you're mindful of me, who is God, who are you that God is mindful
of you, us, human beings that you care for them, and yet you have made them a little
lower than the angels, God, and crowned them with glory and honor, Lord our Lord, how majestic
is your name in all the earth. Let's pray. May the truth of that poet's words, God, and
all of those things that we just heard about and saw and all the things that we hear about
and see in life, stuff we're going to see face to face at the Science Center next week
if we're going there, may all of that open us up to who you are and be an icon through
which we see a making hand and heart and mind and an attending spirit, a keeping, co-creating
and holding the cosmos, Holy Spirit, and through it all and in it all and bringing purpose to
it all and loving it all and dying for it all and raising it all, presence of Jesus
Christ so that when we look at a body, at the body works thing, we somehow see you and
know you with us. When we love our families, when we go to work, when we live this life
you've given us, filled with parables, give us eyes to see and hearts to go, to be your
naming, recognizing, discerning, coming alongside loving, heart and parable to this world and
help our community to do that collectively and to find our way into that, whatever that
means. So that heaven and earth filled with glory, that people can know that so that your
name could be honored so that we could know you in your fullness and know ourselves and
know you forevermore, we pray. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Amen.
