Christmas Sermon 2009

+ In the Love of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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This past summer marked the 40th anniversary of an extraordinary event.

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On July 20, 1969, the lunar module Eagle separated from the command module Columbia, and began its descent to the Moon. The astronauts soon realized that they were descending more quickly than they had planned, so they had to scramble to land safely on the rock-strewn landscape. Finally, with only 25 seconds of fuel left, the Eagle landed at 3:17 in the afternoon, Chicago time.

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About 6½ hours later, Neil Armstrong opened the hatch of the lunar module and began climbing down the nine-rung ladder to the surface of the Moon. Just before 10 o’clock, Neil Armstrong set his left foot on the Moon, and seconds later both feet were on the Moon. And then Neil Armstrong said his now famous words, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

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I was nineteen years old at the time, home from college, and I remember watching that historic and incredible moment with my brothers and sisters in our parents’ bedroom on their small black and white television, as we listened to the great newsman Walter Cronkite reporting. It was an amazing moment, an almost unbelievable triumph of science and technology and courage.

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In fact, the Apollo missions to the Moon changed the way the whole world sees our planet, beginning with this photograph, taken during Apollo 8, which is now known as “Earthrise 1968.” We had seen the Moon rise on the Earth’s horizon, of course, but we had never seen the Earth rise on the Moon’s horizon!

 

 

Here’s what The Digital Journalist says about this picture:

“The late adventure photographer Galen Rowell called it ‘the most influential environmental photograph ever taken.’ Captured on Christmas Eve, 1968, near the end of one of the most tumultuous years the U.S. had ever known, the Earthrise photograph inspired contemplation of our fragile existence and our place in the cosmos.”

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Here’s a similar photograph taken during the Apollo 11 Mission from the command module Columbia.  

 

 

Two years later, in 1971, Astronaut James Irwin commanded the lunar module for Apollo 15. Afterward he described the astronauts’ experience this way:

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“The Earth reminded us of a Christmas tree ornament hanging in the blackness of space. As we got farther and farther away it diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful marble you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man, has to make a man appreciate the creation of God and the love of God.”

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A year later during the Apollo 17 lunar mission in 1972, which would be the last lunar mission, the famous Blue Marble picture of the earth was taken (with the island of Madagascar in the center of the photograph!).

 

And just two years after that, in 1974, a man whose name was Howard Galley, a captain in the Church Army, wrote a prayer for the Eucharist which would become Eucharistic Prayer C in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. Most of you will recognize these words:

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“At your command all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.”

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The words, “this fragile Earth, our island home” is the direct result of the Apollo lunar missions.

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This deep sense of awe about the heavens and the God who created all things, in heaven and on earth, is as old as humanity. The Psalmist put it this way [Psalm 8:4-5]:

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“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, * the moon and the stars you have set in their courses, What is man that you should be mindful of him? * the son of man that you should seek him out?”

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Last July we celebrated the night that a human being first set foot on the Moon; tonight we celebrate something even more incredible and incomprehensible: tonight we celebrate the night that God first set foot on the Earth.

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Last July we remembered these famous words: “. . . one giant leap for mankind”; tonight we remember these prophetic words, given more than a century before the first Christmas: “while gentle silence enveloped all things, and night in its swift course was now half gone, [God’s] all-powerful word leaped from heaven” (Wisdom of Solomon 18:14-15).

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We may never know the answer to the Psalmist’s awestruck question, “What is man that you should be mindful of him? * the son of man that you should seek him out?”

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But tonight we celebrate the birth of the God who is ever mindful of us, the God who always seeks us out, the God who seeks us out tonight, the all-powerful Word who leaped from heaven and set foot on the Earth.

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Alleluia! Unto us a son is given. O come let us adore him! Alleluia!

 

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The photographs inserted in this post were reproduced and held up by me in the course of the sermon. Here is a YouTube film of Earthrise 1968: