Central Lutheran Church - Elk River
Central Lutheran Church - Elk River
Yirah, and That One Time I Was In the Ocean with Pastor Ryan Braley
Dive into a captivating exploration of the profound interplay between fear and wonder in the realm of faith in this episode. Drawing from personal stories and biblical narratives, we unpack the meaning of Yirah, a Hebrew word that translates to a unique blend of awe and fear in respect to the divine. As we share experiences of standing at the edge of mountains and experiencing the unrivaled vastness of the ocean, we awaken to the idea that encountering God invites both reverence and thrill.
Join us as we discuss the transformative impact of awe on our understanding of God, encouraging listeners to embrace the mystery of life and the divine presence woven into our experiences. With insights from well-known figures like Jacob and Ezekiel, we reflect on how such encounters shatter our perceptions and lead us to deeper wisdom. By recognizing the miraculous moments around us, we foster a sense of connection with the divine that can enrich our lives.
Ultimately, this episode is a rallying call to open our hearts and minds to the expression of wonder in our everyday lives, advocating for a shift in perspective that prioritizes the magic of existence over the mundane. Engage with us and discover how fostering a deeper sense of awe can lay the groundwork for an enriching faith journey. Let's embark on this exploration together—don’t forget to subscribe, share, and leave a review!
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amen, let's pray actually, here's, I want to pray too this morning. So, um, so we believe that god is alive and well and that the god of the bible, who's present in these stories, these ancient stories we've been reading, many of us, for a long time, so it's pretty new to them that this god, the god who, as the, speaks, and somehow, in doing so, he creates all kinds of wonderful things. And the story also goes that this God takes a bunch of dirt and breathes into it, like blows into it, and the spirit, or the wind, or the breath of God goes into dirt and it becomes alive. And this God, who was alive and well way, way back then and is the sort of the source of all things, the creator of all things that the scriptures say, is the sustainer of all things too, that with, apart from this God, all things would cease to even exist. This God is often called the ground of all existence itself. This God, this divine mystery, the ineffable one, this God is alive and well today.
Speaker 1:And in the Jewish story they would go to this temple to worship this God. And Jesus shows up around the first century and he begins to say things like well, this whole thing is a temple, which is actually the psalmist was already saying that Even Solomon himself knew this that a building couldn't contain God. So David writes that the earth is all of its gods and is full of his glory and his presence and a lot belongs to him. And Solomon suggests that when he builds the temple, how could this thing even hold you? And so then Jesus says things like well, this whole thing is a temple and you are a temple that somehow you embody or you house the spirit, the presence of God. So if that's true, then here we are gathered together in this place and the presence of God is alive and well and is dwelling in you somehow. So we're going to pray and as we pray, I guess I would ask that you just would open your eyes and your hearts and your minds to that idea that is wildly radical and potentially life-changing, that this Spirit of God is alive and well and in you, and to suggest that if you do so, if you just sort of open your eyes a little bit wider this morning and maybe presence yourself a bit more this morning, you might just encounter this God in a new and a fresh way, and it might be something that you need so desperately. Maybe you don't even know you need it. So we're going to come into this prayer with our eyes wide open. You can close them, but, metaphorically speaking, you can keep them wide open. Fair enough, okay, let's pray.
Speaker 1:Holy God, we pray that you would come and give us a deeper sense of your presence here. God, would you awaken in us all the things that have fallen asleep and would you resurrect all the dead parts of our lives? May we recognize the absurdity of the miracle of this moment. May we not take it for granted, at least for the next 20 minutes or so, god. May we be awake and alive and aware of this thing we call life. May we be here. May we have a sense of your tangible physical presence here too. May it change us in spirit as we encounter you this morning, and would you help us to approach these stories with creative and strategic thinking. I want you to bless our time this morning and do ask God, for those of us who come this morning with special needs and desires or wounds, that you would help us. You'd meet us where we are. And so we say yeah, here we are. Meet with us this morning. In jesus name, amen, amen, you can be seated. Oh well, here we are.
Speaker 1:We are wrapping up our b-sides series and I wanted to take this morning to talk about. Uh, I've sort of like changed my mind a couple of times on this sermon and the one I gave a couple weeks ago, and I'm going to get away from reading or talking a lot about, at least at length, about the final minor prophet. The scripture was from the book of Malachi, but I want to talk about a thing or a theme that I see present in all of the minor prophets and the major prophets as well, and one that I grew up with and one that maybe you grew up with, or maybe you have this background idea or understanding of this theme, and I want to chat about it this morning. Would that be all right? Which reminds you, then, of this great Hebrew word, yirah. Everyone say yirah, yirah, and that time that I was in the ocean. Are you ready? All right? A couple of you are, the rest of you better hold on tight, because we're going anyway.
Speaker 1:I was born in Colorado Many of you probably know this about me and, in case you didn't know, colorado is a landlocked state, so there's no oceans in Colorado, lots of like reservoirs. We don't have that many lakes necessarily, unless you're in the mountains, but Colorado's mostly entirely landlocked. So I will never forget the first time that I saw the ocean. I was 14 years old or so. I was in Carlsbad, california. Anyone been to Carlsbad California? Okay, beautiful place. I loved it and I will never forget.
Speaker 1:I came over this hill and I ran down from our hotel by myself, like I gotta see this ocean. I was in my street clothes. I was absolutely mesmerized by the ocean. There it was. It went on as far as I could see. It lasted forever. The sun was glimmering off the top of it, reflecting off. It was just beautiful. It looked like diamonds in certain parts of the ocean. I was struck by how much water there was. I'm like that's a lot of water. It was unbelievable. And I stood there and I stared at it and I just couldn't take my eyes off of the ocean. It's unbelievable and at the same time I felt like just, I felt drawn to it, like it was sort of like magnetic and I couldn't, and I'm like I've got to go in there To this day. I still feel that way about the ocean, Even though I live in Minnesota. I'm from Colorado, but I just feel drawn to the ocean.
Speaker 1:Anybody else can relate to this a little bit. Yeah, it's mystifying and I'm like I've got. So I'm 14, I've got to go in there. So I ran back to the hotel and got my swimming trunks on and because here's the deal with the ocean, I find it even to this day like utterly mystifying and beautiful and magnetic, and I also, at the same time, I find it terrifying, like it's horrifying. I'm like what is down there? And so it's like this weird mix of like awe and wonder and terror and fear. I'm like I've got to go into that thing.
Speaker 1:So I went in there and my first time in there I don't know if you know this about oceans or not at all, but oceans have waves, and waves come in sets. I didn't know this, I didn't know how powerful they are actually either. So I'm in the ocean, I'm like, yeah, this is awesome, and this wave comes and I can see out of the corner of my eye my first thought was, oh, no big deal, I'll just stand here and it'll probably go around me, or I'll just embrace it and I'll just, you know, I'll be fine. No, that wave took me out and like, with power and vigor, just tossed me. It was like I was in a spin cycle of salt and water and no oxygen. I couldn't breathe. It was dark, I didn't know which way was up, which way was down.
Speaker 1:That was also when I learned that the ocean is actually made of salt water, not regular water. Maybe you know this. I'm like I thought oceans tasted like a lot of lakes or rivers. No, they're like this punch you in the mouth salty, crinkle your lips and tongue at the same time. Salty mixture of water and salt. It was wild and I'm like this is really weird and I couldn't stop spinning. I was like flipping over upside down, and then the second wave came and thrashed me and I was terrified and I got up and I was like I've got to go back out there and do it again. This is incredible. What is this thing the ocean? And so I went back out there and did it again.
Speaker 1:Then I learned also that the ocean has I don't know if you know this about the ocean, but the ocean has creatures in it, like small ones and also some big ones, and these creatures are actually really well developed. They're really adept at swimming. They're great in water. We humans are not so good in water. We think we're good. We're not that good in water. You are not so good in water. We think we're good, we're not that good in water. You ever seen a fish swim really fast? They're like really good swimmers, we're not good swimmers.
Speaker 1:So I remember one time I was in Mexico with my wife and family and I'm like we got to go, I'm going to go snorkeling and I want to see some of these creatures, because I'm like what kind of creatures are down there? I had to know. So I got this, I got this goggle and my snorkel tube, you know, like from Walmart, and I go out there and I'm like I'm going to go out there really deep and experience the deepest parts of the ocean and just snorkel out there. So I went out seven and a half, eight and a half feet I'm from Colorado, what do you expect? I couldn't. I mean, I'm only six foot three. I had to be able to try to touch it at some point. But I was like swimming out there and I'm looking around and there's no fish anywhere.
Speaker 1:And then I remember I'll never forget I turned back this way towards like the out, like where the ocean got deeper and I went like this and I'm not kidding right there, like within two feet of my face, was this huge gray. I don't even know what it was. I still don't see a fish of some sort like a giant head, just hovering, not even moving, just like staring at me. And I swear I heard him say what's up, bro? And I was too scared to even. I was like ah, and I swam back in so fast and I came out of the ocean like there's this giant octopus out there and Katie's like there's not a, but I'm like I have to go back out there and see it. I was terrified, but I'm like I had to go back out there and see it. This has like been my reaction even to this day.
Speaker 1:When I fly over an ocean or see it from afar, it's this mixture of awe and wonder and fear. A friend of mine says it like this I love this. He said it's kind of like sitting on a surfboard just offshore and finding a huge whale surfacing beneath you. Has this ever happened to you? No, not me neither. I've seen videos, though incredible. The immensity of the moment or the event causes awe and respect and, yes, a certain fear as you're lifted. Whales are gentle but still wild, and the vastness of the sea. Encountering such a giant can't but leave you breathless, and you love it. Mountains give me the vastness of the sea. Encountering such a giant can't but leave you breathless and you love it. Mountains give me the same kind of experience, although I'm more familiar with.
Speaker 1:I grew up around mountains and I love this day going to the top of these peaks when I go snowboarding with friends. I was there a couple weeks ago. We were up in loveland and keystone. You go to the top. I love being at the peak of these mountains because you have this incredible sense of how small you are and like you have this miracle of like that you're even there. It's incredible and like up at the top of the mountains. Oftentimes the wind can get uncontrollably vigorous up there and it'll whip around like you're in a hurricane and you're blowing all over. It's just wild and sometimes the clouds will descend so low that it covers everything and you feel like you're in the sky and you're like what? And you can't see, and it's maybe snowing. You're like I'm just going to go for it and you sort of start riding down the hill just hoping to God that you do. Okay. Sometimes the clouds will lift, and when they do and it's a cloudless day you can see for miles, and you can see other resorts and other valleys in Colorado, and it's just beautiful and it's captivating.
Speaker 1:It's also dangerous. If you fall in certain parts of these cliffs, you know you can do yourself a pretty good amount of harm. My favorite ride of the day, though, is that, right before the lifts close around four o'clock most of them close at four o'clock I'll take a lift to the top, as high as I can go, and when I'm up there, this is like my favorite part of the day, because the sun begins to go down. It's darker and the shades of everything become like a gray or a blue, and the crowd is thin out. It gets quieter, and you have this ominous sense you're on a mountain and it's dangerous. There's all kinds of wild animals out there as well, and you're alone for the most part, and it's this long ride down to the bottom, and I love it. It's like the most peaceful ride that you have that entire day, and I'm usually alone, or maybe with a couple buddies, but it's yeah. The sun's gone down and nightfall is all around you and you can sense it getting darker when you go to the bottom. I love it. I love it. It's my favorite ride of the day.
Speaker 1:Maybe you've had a similar experience when you're stood on the edge of a cliff and you look over this cliff and there's like this your heart starts to beat a bit faster because you're aware of the danger of this cliff and yet you can't help but look over the edge and like what's down there and it takes your breath away, or maybe your stomach goes up into your chest a little bit and your throat. And many of us in these moments have this innate sense of like being totally out of control. You can't control what happens in a lot of these places and when you're in the water of the ocean or up on the mountain on a cliff, or there's so much that you don't and all of our intellect, all of our smarts, all of our technology today, and there's very few things in these places that you can actually control and you have this sense you're on like the razor's edge of mystery. You ever been there?
Speaker 1:Interestingly enough, on almost every occasion in the Scriptures when there's a God, encounter the people who encounter God, the divine, the creator of the whole world, the universe, the source of life itself, the sustainer of all living things. When they encounter that, they have a similar kind of reaction of fear and awe and wonder and terror all at the same time. It's incredible and in those moments it's like their whole worldview crumbles and what they thought of God or reality or life itself just sort of falls away and they're encountering a brand new way of seeing the world. So, for example, there's this great story in Genesis when Jacob falls asleep and he has this dream and he wakes up and has this sense that God was there and he didn't know it. So he wakes up from the sleep and he says surely God, the ineffable one, was here and I didn't even know it. And he was afraid. Yeah, this is his. Of course, he was afraid. He's filled with terror and awe and wonder all at the same time. And I say he says how awesome is this place. This is none other than the house of God. He calls it Bethel. Bethel is the name for this. Any Bethel graduates in the house today? Nobody, oh, my gosh, just me. Okay, all right, yes, you and me, brother. So Bethel means the house of God and this is the gate of heaven.
Speaker 1:Then, later on, in the book of Ezekiel, ezekiel one of the prophets he's one of the major prophets. He has this encounter with God, the divine. Watch his reaction, like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day. So was radiance around him. He notices radiance around God. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I fell face down. Yeah, of course I did.
Speaker 1:There's a scene in the Gospels and, by the way, today is if you're church calendar geeks today is the day of the Mount of Transfiguration, sunday, that's what we call this day, and so our prayer was about the story of the Mount of Transfiguration. Jesus goes up on this mountain with three of his disciples, his followers, his buddies, and he becomes transfigured. He starts glowing. It's really this incredible encounter and like this thin place and somehow this veil between sort of the physical world and what we call the spiritual world it's like, opens up and then Jesus is sort of transfigured, he becomes a different sort of imaging, or he's like a different, he looks different, and then they hear this voice from heaven. It says this this is my son, whom I love. With him, I'm well pleased, listen to him. This is the voice of God. What does the voice of God sound like? What does it sound like to hear in this audible way the voice of God? They heard it and when they hear it, they fall face down on the ground because they're afraid, terrified.
Speaker 1:This is one of my other favorite stories. Jesus, the disciples get into a boat and they go out in the lake, the Sea of Galilee. It's this beautifully big lake over in the northern part of Israel, and I've been on this lake and it's huge. And they're out there just before the dawn. So imagine this is the darkest time of the night. It's ominous, it's eerie, it's like the hour of the wolf. And they're out there doing whatever fishermen do at this time of day. And then Jesus goes out to them walking on the lake, which is wild, and when they see him you know doesn't happen all the time out in Galilee and they see him walking and they're terrified and they think he's a ghost Of course they would. And they see him walking and they're terrified and they think he's a ghost. Of course they would think he's a ghost and they're terrified and they cry out in fear. I love it. It's just.
Speaker 1:All these God encounters, are these mixture of awe and wonder and fear and terror, and you're not sure what to do. You can't look away. The great Lutheran pastor, rudolf Otto, calls this mysterium tremendum et fascinans. This is some Latin for you this morning. Any Latin lovers in the room? Okay, a couple, all right, yes, excellent, good.
Speaker 1:So it means this tremendous mystery and also a tremendous fascination, and Rudolf Otto talks about these incredible experiences and encounters with things like this, and it's both a tremendous mystery and a fascinating mystery as well, or tremendous fascination, so tremendous mystery. It's like this incredibly awe-inspiring thing and it's overwhelming and you have this sense of being terrified and afraid in these moments of experiencing this tremendous fascinance and it's beyond comprehension or control. You have this sense like this is utterly. It's like earth shaking and I'm not really sure that the ground I'm on is firm and what's happening. It's tremendously mysterious and it evokes feelings of fear and humility as well, and it's like sensing this power of something sacred or divine around you that's more powerful than anything you've ever come into contact with. Yeah, this is mysterium, tremendum, but it's also fascinating. You can't look away. At the same time, you're afraid. You also can't look away. Like what is this, and it's sort of like alluring and mystifying and it draws you in and you can't stop watching or wanting to experience it. It's frightening and magnetic all at the same time and there's a sense of awe and wonder while you're terrified.
Speaker 1:And for us, in those moments, it will generally create two extremely fascinating sort of responses. One is that we recognize in these moments how insignificant we really are like, how small we are and how minuscule of time our life actually is. When you're on top of a mountain that's been there for like thousands of years, longer than you've been even around, or in the ocean that's been around since the beginning, or something like this like I'm not that big a deal and this mountain could blow me off its peak any moment. Big a deal, and this mountain could blow me off its peak any moment. Or a whale could come and swallow me right now, I'm like I'm just not that significant. You ever had that happen to you. At the same time, you're also like I'm alive, like you have this sense of the miracle of being there at all, and like your existence. This it's an incredible gift and a miracle that you're even alive. That's both of these. This is the mysterium. Tremendum at Fasting Nones.
Speaker 1:Okay now, the principal virtue in the Hebrew scriptures is this word called Yerah. Everyone say Yerah one more time yeah, yerah, yerah Again. This is the principal virtue in all of Scripture and religion and they talk about it a ton in the Bible. This idea of yirah, or it's yirah Hashem. Now yirah most often is translated as fear. Isn't that interesting that the principal virtue in Scripture is this idea of being afraid or fear.
Speaker 1:Now, unfortunately for many of us, the word fear has this kind of connotation of like an expectation or anticipation of something that will come, that will cause us harm or evil or pain or suffering. So fear, we don't look forward to having fear, because fear in and of itself is an expectation of something bad that might happen or something evil that might be coming. Now here's the interesting thing. This word is used a lot in the Hebrew when it talks about the fear of God. So it'll say things like to fear God is a command in the scriptures Yerah Hashem, fear of the name of God, because they often were so reverent of the name of God they wouldn't even say the name, they would just say the name. So Yerah Hashem.
Speaker 1:Also, there's many times in scriptures. You heard Job say it to fear God is the beginning of wisdom. So when you fear God or are afraid of God, it sort of is the beginning of wisdom. And I always wondered what this meant, because for me I'm like why would I be afraid of God? Or what does that mean to be afraid of God? And how is being afraid of God the beginning of wisdom? Yeah, yirah Hashem, is this what fearing God means For many of us?
Speaker 1:We might find devotion to God because we're afraid and fair enough, so you might come to church, you might pray, you might read your scriptures, because somehow, someway, you're afraid of what might happen if you don't do these things and maybe you grew up in a household where that was the case. Right, you better go to church. If not, there'll be consequences. This is fear. They're instilling fear in you and, to be honest, the church, historically, has done a good job of doing just this. You better come to church, you better give money, you better come, otherwise there's a fear of a punishment coming, either now, in your body, now, maybe in your job, now, in your family, now, or in the age to come, when you die. There's going to be a punishment. So you better have fear of God, and now that does create a certain level of devotion. People do find themselves being faithful in some kind of a way along the way. But is that what the Bible means when it says Yerach Hashem?
Speaker 1:I have a good friend who has a father who, when he grew up there, he was super abusive and is always angry at the smallest things, and he would talk about how his dad used to hate it when they would make noises at night. And so one night him and his sister wanted to play a game and the board. They were upstairs, the dad was downstairs and the board game was on top on the top shelf in his closet. And so he climbs up there to get this board game down, knowing his dad's downstairs in the living room and the sister's there watching, and he climbs up on this chair and he gets the game down. And in that moment he was so excited to get the game he forgot about his dad and he jumps off the chair, like you know kids do, and it was boom, oh, and he knew it. He knew his dad was going to come up there and he did and he was. So he told me I was so terrified of my dad coming upstairs and yelling at us and he did yeah, like that kind of fear will try to will mostly get you from to stop jumping off of chairs like that, won't it? Because you're so afraid.
Speaker 1:But is that what the Bible means by the fear of God?
Speaker 1:I've always thought that this is in some way what it means to fear God, to be afraid of God. Well, in the Jewish tradition, this kind of devotion to God because you're afraid of him in this way is actually the most inferior or low-level kind of devotion, because the Bible and most scholars think this is not really what they mean by Urah or the word Urah A better rendition, because actually in our Bibles it's actually translated as fear, which doesn't help us because we think of this kind of fear. Rather, the kind of awe or Urah that the Bible talks about is awe and wonder. So maybe it's more like this, like this Yerah of God or Yerah Hashem is more like hey, the awe or wonder of God is the beginning of wisdom. Yeah, instill in your own life the sense of awe and wonder, because somehow that will translate into this wisdom that is deep and profound and mysterious the Yerah of God, yerah Hashem. Be in awe and stare in wonder at the name, the name of God, this ineffable divine, creator and sustainer of the whole universe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is a better, actually rendition, because here's why being afraid, this kind of fear, this kind of fear of something evil or painful or negative to come, this is really incompatible with love. It creates devotion, but it's a low level of devotion. People will be devoted to you if they're afraid of you, but it's not love. They can't have both. They're incompatible. It's also incompatible with joy. How can you experience joy in the presence of God if you're always afraid of him?
Speaker 1:But this kind of Urah, awe, wonder, this overwhelming sense of like this divine, this reverence, this is entirely compatible with love. Also, because when this happens, the you, the I, becomes off of center, because you realize, wow, in this presence of this divine god, like when I'm in the ocean or at the top of that mountain or on the edge of a cliff, I'm not in control. And so there's this part of me that like, let's go, and I'm taken over by this awe and wonder and mystery of God. And this, I would argue, is the beginning of wisdom, deep wisdom, and it's the beginning, for many of us, of faith. See, I often thought, oh, you better just come to church, read your Bible, pray, and that will somehow lead you to kind of fall in love with God or maybe create awe and wonder. And I think we have it backwards. I think instead, if we could somehow devote ourselves to becoming more awake and aware to wonder and awe and mystery, it might just lead to faith.
Speaker 1:The great Abraham Joshua Heschel I've quoted many times already in this series. He says that awe always precedes faith. Like that, awe is the root of faith. So perhaps we don't have a problem trying to manufacture or our problem is not that we're trying. You know that we have. We don't have enough willpower to manufacture faith. Perhaps our problem is actually that we don't have enough willpower to kind of find awe and wonder in the world. What if instead, we filled our lives with awe and wonder and opened our eyes to the mystery and the miracle and the magic of God all around us in this time and place? I think a better rendition of yirah is awe and wonder.
Speaker 1:By the way, too, the name for a person of faith in the Hebrew scriptures, in the tradition, is not a believer. We use that word a lot. Oh, are you a believer? Are you a believer? No, they don't use that word in the Hebrew Bible. They instead use the word Yarei Hashem, the one who is in awe of the name of God. So the next time someone asks you are you a believer? I'm a person who has awe and wonder at the name of God. Just tell them that. See what they say yeah, yarei Hashem. But here's the problem.
Speaker 1:We live in a world that is entirely disconnected from mystery and wonder and enchantment. We live in what they call a disenchanted world and for all kinds of reasons, we're busy people. We got things to do, we got places to be, our calendars are busy, we love empiricism, we love rationalism. We've become in many ways cynical. So we stare at a sunset and instead of being like, look at that, that's amazing. We say things like oh, that's just light being distributed throughout the atmosphere, no big deal. And we rush from one thing to the next, to the next, to the next. And we love things too. We think that that thing, if I buy it or own it, it'll give me joy. I've been there as well. And then we prefer things over experiences and we live in many ways disconnected from the natural world, the wild world.
Speaker 1:When was the last time you were in a forest and just felt overwhelmed by how small you were in this forest, with all the animals and the creatures and the trees that are swaying in the wind? This is why sometimes, when people tell me, oh, I miss church because I was out on the lake fishing, I will often sometimes be like, like they get it, you know, fine by me. When it was up to me, you stood on a mountain and looked around and thought, oh my gosh, who am I? Yeah, we live in a world disconnected from nature. We have a fear of the unknown. We don't like the unknown, we don't like mystery, we want to figure it all out. We don't like not being in control, we love control. So we avoid places where we're not in control. Yeah, we're not in control. Yeah, we're not really people who find awe and wonder very often.
Speaker 1:If you're like me, I was in a tube the other day. It's like a metal tube, a long metal tube, and it's in the air and it gets you from one place to the other pretty quickly. Maybe you've been in one of these. They're called airplanes, and here I am, like flying through space at a a rapid rate and I had to call the flight attendant. There was a problem, like, ma'am, the wi-fi is down, got it like what are we doing here? Come on, I paid lots of money for this airline ticket. Where's my wi-fi?
Speaker 1:The day after that, too, I actually went to the sink to get some water. You have these things in your house that when you turn a little knob, water comes out. Did you know this? Yeah, and here was the problem, though. I went to this faucet. I needed hot water, and I had to stand there for like 15, 16 seconds for hot water to come out. Come on, man, this is ridiculous. Who built this stupid? And then my daughter needed some cold water. I'm like, don't worry, I opened this box in the kitchen and in it was ice. They have these boxes where you can just get ice made for you. You know how they used to get ice in the olden days? Not like that. Here's your ice.
Speaker 1:I was at a party one time and they had these fruits. I didn't even know what they were. They were like a mystical, weird-looking fruit. I'm like, ryan, you want to try one of these fruits? He goes no, I do not. I don't know what that is. What is that weird looking thing. I don't know what that is. Give me that chicken nugget over there. Do you know what's in that? No, but give it to me anyway, I don't care.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we live in a world that just flies right by miracles all the time, we just don't even notice it. Maybe the secret to life is not more stuff, more events. The secret to life is not more stuff, more events, or trying to sort of stir up faith in our own lives and trying to white-knuckle our way through and memorizing more scripture or attending more church services. Maybe it's to find awe and wonder. And maybe it's in the most ordinary moments of your day, to be people who just see burning bushes all around us and we instill in ourselves this sense of wonder and mystery and magic. The great Abraham Heschel says it this way as civilization progresses and advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Humanity will not perish for want of information, but for want of appreciation. How could we perish from information? We don't or want of it. We have plenty of information. We have more information at our fingertips than we've ever in the history of the world, and we're still more miserable than ever. Yeah, it's because we lack wonder.
Speaker 1:Moses is in the desert and he's wandering around around. He sees this bush on fire you know this story probably and he, like, looks at this bush and the text tells us he's terrified, he's scared, but he can't look away. And so he goes closer and it's then that God speaks to him and he goes closer. Peter's in the boat that night when he sees the ghost walking out on the water and they're terrified and they fall down in the boat and they can't look, but Peter's sort of. And then Peter says if that's you call me out on the water, how can we be people who live in response to wonder Like that, have our eyes open? This is, after all, what Christian practices are supposed to be about. When we pray, it's to somehow open our eyes to the mystery and the miracle of life all around us, like this terrifying feeling that my life is a blip on the radar. I'm totally insignificant and yet it's a miracle. I'm even here. Let's take a minute and thank God for this delicious burrito I'm going to eat.
Speaker 1:And Ash Wednesday on Wednesday is Ash Wednesday. It's just a night. We get together and we rub ashes on our foreheads and we sort of hey, open your eyes, because life is fleeting. It's a gift. It's here and then it's gone, and you came from dust and you'll go back to dust, but in the meantime we have this magical thing right here. Now let's live and let's do some things.
Speaker 1:And when you read your Bible, I know that many of us are like, oh, I've got to read the Bible, little Job 5. But in your hands you're holding this text that's thousands of years old. These stories have been told around campfires and on journeys from generation to generation. They're passed down orally for many years, before they even invented the printing press, and they were told over and over again. And all the unimportant parts are kind of left or forgotten or trimmed off and all you have is this distilled, incredibly ancient story of all kinds of wonderfully magical people doing amazing things and encountering the living God. You want to read that book? Yeah, that's here's what I want to do.
Speaker 1:I want to invite Eric back up and we're going to practice this just briefly for just a couple minutes. I know I'm burning daylight, I apologize. If you hate mystery, you can leave now. It's fine. I want you to close your eyes and I'm going to lead us through just a quick little thing. And my prayer then is that you will leave this space with a sense of awe and wonder and keep it going. And my prayer, then, is that you will leave this space with a sense of awe and wonder and keep it going.
Speaker 1:And it's easy to fall back asleep. Don't go back to sleep Tomorrow morning when you're driving through traffic and some guy cuts you off. I get it, it's easy, but don't do that. Stay awake. Foster the awe and the wonder and the Yerah Hashem, the awe of God that the prophets had. The prophets encountered God and were overwhelmed by the awe and the mystery and the power of God, and it changed their lives and they shared it with other people and it changed their lives and to this day it changes lives. May that be true of us. So close your eyes and open yourself up to wonder and mystery, just for the next minute or two.
Speaker 1:Did you know that everything in your life, everything, everything you've ever done, has led you to this moment, right here and now? Every decision you've made from the time that you could start making decisions is a little tight Every good decision, every bad decision, every person you met in your life that impacted you in one way or another. Every event that's happened to you, both positive and even the horribly negative ones, all of these moments have contributed to bring you here. Negative ones, all of these moments have contributed to bring you here, right here and right now with us. It's a sacred moment, friends. No-transcript. And what were the odds of your parents meeting and their parents meeting? What are the odds of you? You know all the biology stuff too. What are the odds of that? One little thing. What are the odds of that happening? Well, about one in 400 trillion. Ooh, you're a miracle. That's pretty great. Good for you. You deserve a good for you this morning. One in 400 trillion.
Speaker 1:Also, you and I are moving right now at the rate of 1.3 million miles an hour. You know this. We're flying through space right now. Earth is spinning at about 1,000 miles an hour. That's how fast we're flying through space. Right now, earth is spinning at about 1,000 miles an hour. That's how fast we're spinning. It's orbiting the sun about 67,000 miles an hour. And our solar system is orbiting in the galaxy at about 500,000 miles an hour. This is why some days, you wake up and you're kind of tired and don't want to go to bed. Yeah, 1.3 million miles an hour, that's how fast we're flying through space right now.
Speaker 1:Did you know that Crazy? You know there are more stars in the universe when you look up into the sky. There's more stars in the universe than there are sands, grains of sand, on the Earth's surface in their beaches. I've been to beaches and there's a lot of sand there. There are more stars in the sky than that and it isn't even close. And, speaking of these stars, when you look at them, many of them are shooting out light that takes millions of years to get to your eyes.
Speaker 1:At that moment, standing on your back deck or your back porch, looking up into the sky, you're literally looking at light that's millions of years old in some of these places and it's been traveling for millions of years through space to get to your eyeballs. You're looking into the past, literally looking at millions of year old light, fascinating, before it hits your eyeballs, there's a tree in California. It's appropriately named Methuselah. They have to hide where its location is. They don't want people to kind of mess with it or tinker with it or vandalize it or steal it, but it's still alive and it's 4,800 years old. It's older than the pyramids in Egypt. This tree it's an old tree, of course. They would call it Methuselah. You can Google it. It's wild looking. It's just like what you'd picture it to look like.
Speaker 1:There's this lake in Antarctica that's been sealed off from the world for 15 million years, called Lake Vostok, and it's buried under two and a half miles of ice. So it's buried under all this ice and they found it, and scientists believe it may contain that's my favorite part it may contain unknown life forms. You thought your secret fishing hole was a good one. This one sounds incredible. Let's all go from here to there and fish. Yeah, it's been hidden for 15 million years.
Speaker 1:Your brain, did you notice about your brain? Your brain generates enough electricity to power a light bulb. Well, some of us more than others, but here we go. It produces generally about 20 watts. 20 watts of electricity while you're awake. Good for you. You didn't do anything. Here you are, look at you producing electricity. Good for you, 20 watts. My man, my lady, good job. Your eyes, by the way, can distinguish about 10 million different colors. 10 million, and you only have one favorite. Come on now. A lot of colors Also.
Speaker 1:I've mentioned this before, but you're constantly replacing yourself. Your body replaces millions of cells every second. That's what your body's doing. In about ten years, almost every cell in your body will be new, which is why, also, some days, you wake up and just don't feel like yourself. That's why you're not. And lastly, if you could fold a paper in half 42 times, it would reach the moon. We don't need rockets, we need more paper. Man, let's pull in that Central Lutheran Church.
Speaker 1:May you experience the awe and wonder of God, the Yerach Hashem, this fear of God, this awe and wonder. And when you're in places like the ocean and the mountains and on the edges of cliffs, may you experience this terror and fear and wonder and this magnetic allure. The mountains and on the edges of cliffs. May you experience this terror and fear and wonder and this magnetic allure. May you foster this in your own life. May it lead to a deeper faith. And when you sense God, may you have that same encounter of the mystery and the wonder and the awe and a little bit afraid and scared and terror. But may you also know that God is good and God is trustworthy. You can trust God. And so, as you experience that fear and terror, may you let go of control and let go of trying to figure it out, and embrace the mystery of God and know that he's good and he's trustworthy. And as you leave here today, may you indeed have a deep sense. In the most ordinary and mundane moments you have a deep sense of wonder. Amen.
