Some of the times when I most powerfully feel God’s
Presence have occurred on warm nights, when I can sit back, relax, and gaze up
at a clear, night sky. On such nights, I
look into the vast night sky, filled with millions of twinkling stars, and I
realize how small humans are in comparison with the huge spaces of the universe
and the millions of other possible planets.
In those moments, I feel God’s Holy Spirit rushing in to fill me with
the Divine Presence. And, I gain a
sudden, new insight into how truly awesome God’s Creation truly is.
There are no words, which
can adequately describe this feeling of wonder and awe, when one tries to fully
comprehend the universe. Yet, despite
their inadequacy, I love the way Stuart Hine expresses this wonder and awe in
the first verse of his hymn, “How Great Thou Art”
“O Lord my God! When I in
awesome wonder
consider all the worlds
they hands have made,
I see the stars, I hear
the rolling thunder,
thy power throughout the
universe displayed.
Then sings my soul, my
Savior God to thee;
How great thou art, how
great thou art!
Then sings my soul, my
Savior God to thee;
How great thou art, how
great thou art![1]
Scientists
tell us that our universe began approximately 13.7 billion years ago, in an
initial state in which all space and matter were compacted down into a tiny
point. This tiny point erupted in an
event we know as the Big Bang. Through a
process called primordial nucleosynthesis, our universe expanded and cooled
until it created a misty fog of primordial cosmic plasma. Through continued cooling the quarks and
other building blocks of the universe began to emerge. Eventually galaxies, solar systems, and
planets were all formed.
The
universe has continued to expand since the Big Bang. We know that it continues
to expand because all of the stars and galaxies that we see in the night sky are
actually moving away from us and our vantage point on Earth. Edwin Hubble proved that the universe is
expanding in the 1920s, by observing redlight shifts in stars. As had already been shown by physicists,
light moving away from an observer will be stretched. Since red is on the long-wavelength side of
the spectrum, light moving away from the observer appears redder. When Hubble observed this redshift in the
light from stars, he knew that they were moving away from us and the universe
was expanding.
There
are two main scenarios for the ultimate fate of life as we know it in the
universe: (1) Closed. In the first
scenario, the universe will continue expanding as it is now, until eventually
gravity stops the expansion. At that point,
it will have reached its maximum size, and the process will reverse, as the
universe begins contracting back to the initial point of the Big Bang. As it contracts, temperatures will increase
to the point, so that life as we know it will become impossible. In essence, life will “fry.” (2) Open
or flat. In the second scenario,
the universe is “open” in that it continues to expand forever at a finite rate;
or, the universe is “flat” in that it continues to expand at a decreasing rate,
but never quite stopping. In both an
“open” or “flat” scenario, temperatures continue to cool from the initial Big
Bang. As temperatures continue to cool,
life as we know it is no longer viable because of the extreme cold; in other
words life will “freeze.”
In
the addition to the principal “freeze or fry” scenario, scientific cosmologists
have proposed some other scenarios.
However, even in these alternative scenarios, the fate of life in the
universe remains the same. At some
point, billions of years from now, our universe will become inhospitable to
life as we know it.
Christian thought and faith has always
encompassed “eschatology,” or study
of the end times and Jesus’ Second Coming.
So, it is certainly consistent with Christian faith to learn what
scientists think about the future of the universe and then to ask about these
implications for our faith. For
instance, if the universe is closed and it will eventually contract again to a
single point, where would we expect Heaven to be? And, if regardless of the scenario, the
universe will ultimately be inhospitable to life, where will resurrected bodies
exist? In my sermon this Sunday, April
14th, I will explore these questions concerning the end of times.
Basing my sermon on
Revelation 21: 1-7, I will suggest that at the end time, God will transform the
universe into a New Creation. In my
thinking on these implications, I have been really helped by theologians John
Polkinghorne and Gabriel Daly, who caution that we should not think about the
New Creation as replacing the “old” universe that we experience and live in
now. Rather, the New Creation is a transformation
of that “old” universe.[2]
Further, Jesus’
Resurrection on the first Easter would be the initiation of this redemption which
will be finally completed at the end times, with the advent of this New
(transformed) Creation. And, as
physicist and theologian Bob Russell has argued, this new act of redemption at
the resurrection of Jesus would not be reducible or explainable by the current
laws of nature, since they will be transformed as a part of the transformation
of the physical world at the end time.
Similarly, the ultimate fate of biological life at the end time would
not be the predicted “freeze or fry” alternative, but something transformed—a
New Creation.[3]
[1]
Stuart K. Hine, “How Great Thou Art” (1953), in The United Methodist Hymnal, No. 77.
[2]
John Polkinghorne, Faith of a Physicist
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996). Polkinghorne cites Daly on p. 167.
[3] Robert
John Russell, “Resurrection of the Body, Eschatology and Cosmology: Theology and Science in Mutual Creative
Interaction ,” in Cosmology, From Alpha
to Omega, essays by Robert Russell (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008).
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