Jack McKinney

Pullen Memorial Baptist Church

March 19, 2006 – Third Sunday in Lent

Text: Psalm 19:1-6

A Sermon without Words

I have a propensity for reading three-day-old newspapers. Reading three-day-old newspapers makes about as much sense as cramming for a test that happened yesterday, but I do it anyway. You see, my life tends to get overfull occasionally and I might go a few days without reading the paper. But instead of just moving on with things, and reading today’s paper, I have to start back where I left off and catch up with the news. Why? Because there is usually something that I missed and how can I ever be happy in life knowing something has happened without my observing it. For example, Don Knotts died recently and I didn’t know about it until a couple of days later. And when I finally did read that good ole Barney had passed away I felt kind of sad, and I felt kind of stupid because I had been gliding through life without realizing that Barney had died. So, I read three-day-old newspapers.

If, by chance, anyone else here shares my strange anxiety that something is happening in the world that you don’t know about, and maybe you should know about, I’m going to fill in a big blank for you this morning. A huge debate has been taking place for about 200 years that has something to do with the Psalm we read silently a moment ago. And I imagine that most of you have just been sailing through life unaware that this debate is even happening, but now that I have awakened your consciousness, you must know about it, or how else can you ever be happy again? But first, before I tell you what this theological debate is about, let us revisit these words from Psalm 19:

The heavens are telling the glory of God;

and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.

Day to day pours forth speech,

and night to night declares knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words;

their voice is not heard;

yet their voice goes out through all the earth,

and their words to the end of the world.

In the heavens God has set a tent for the sun,

which comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy,

and like a strong man runs its course with joy.

Its rising is from the end of the heavens,

and its circuit to the end of them;

and nothing is hidden from its heat.

This beautiful poem describes the daily sermon given by nature without a word spoken: “Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.” What I wouldn’t give if just once in my life I could write four lines of poetry as perfect as that.

But let’s go back to our debate that has been raging for 200 years that by now you are just itching to learn about. What could this beautiful poem about the silent witness of nature have to do with that? Well, everything really. Since the early 1800s the seminal theological argument has been whether we can know God and the ways of God through general revelation and reason, or do we need special miraculous revelation to know God. In other words, can we observe the created order and generally deduce something about the mind of God, or is the only way to such knowledge through the incarnation of Christ and other miraculous ways God reveals Godself in our lives? And while that might sound less interesting to you than finding out that Don Knotts died last week, I will tell you this debate affects all of us in ways beyond our imagination.

In 1888 the Gifford Lectures began in Scotland. Lord Gifford was a judge who cared more about religion and metaphysics than the law, so upon his death he endowed a lectureship that has become the most important theological lectureship in the world. Lord Gifford’s sole aim in setting up this series was to prove that God could be known through natural theology without any reference to the miraculous. Over the decades great philosophers and theologians were awarded the Gifford Lectures. People like William James, Alfred North Whitehead, Albert Schweitzer, Karl Barth, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Paul Tillich have all spoken to Lord Gifford’s quest to discover a natural theology based on observation and reason. However, in ways that might make Lord Gifford spin in his grave, many of these scholars have determined natural theology is a dead end. In 2001, Stanley Hauerwas of Duke Divinity School was awarded the Gifford Lectureship. Hauerwas declared that the God one would discover through natural theology was not a God he could worship.

And why should we care about any of this? Because right now our world is bitterly divided between those who believe the poet’s universal vision in Psalm 19 and those who believe God and the truth can only be known in our sectarian communities and traditions. The poet of Psalm 19 sees each day declaring in silence the beauty and power of a creator who is open to all. On the other hand, the world is filled with religious extremists who declare God and the truth can only be known through their interpretation of the Quran or the Bible. We see political operatives insinuating that God and the truth are on their side. We see disputes in the public schools pitting people of different faiths and worldviews against one another. And increasingly we see the polarization of faith and politics and international affairs because we are so certain that our particular tradition or our particular religion or our particular worldview has all the answers. And what I fear is that the vision of the poet in Psalm 19, and the hope of Lord Gifford, is dying. The idea that we can observe the silent witness of the created order, and from that witness deduce universal truths that draw us together, is not an idea that holds much sway right now.

And we are paying a terrible price for ignoring the universal truths that are preached each dawn and each dusk. Even the most basic universal lessons are being pushed aside in favor of brutal sectarian aims. Suicide bombers destroy innocent lives in the name of Allah. Smart bombs are reigned from heaven onto the heads of innocent people in the name of freedom. Torture is not only tolerated, but has become a tool of the United States to secure our liberty. How absurd is that? Can there be a more basic universal truth than it is wrong, immoral, indecent, and obscene to torture other human beings? But this Administration has so parsed the Constitution that even torture is justified as an acceptable act. And this is what happens if we retreat far enough into our narrow philosophies, religions, and worldviews. We can end up justifying torture and mass killings as for the greater good.

Of course there are other crucial points the natural world makes to us each day in its silent speech. Surely we can see that the desecration of our water, air, and land is a sin according to the magnificent sermon that comes with the break of day. We shouldn’t need virtually every reputable scientist telling us that global warming is real, and that environmental abuse is the great holocaust in our future. We should simply witness the proclamation of day and night and want to preserve this treasure that has been handed to us.

But truth be known, it is hard for us to hear this sermon without words. Technology has allowed us to fill the night with light, and to fill every silence with sounds, and to fill every empty space with video pixels. We are busy and productive and affluent, but we are also anxious and exhausted and empty. We know more than any generation before us, information that used to take hours to access is immediately available to us, and we can connect to people around the world in seconds. But we don’t know our next door neighbor’s name, and the information we have doesn’t make us more satisfied, and while we are smarter I don’t think we are any wiser. Our inability to hear the silent sermon of nature, and its universal truths, not only means we are committing atrocities against one another, it also means our personal lives are decadent and dead.

My nephew, Matthew, will turn eighteen on Wednesday. I remember this because Wednesday will also be the eighteenth anniversary of my grandfather’s death. Papa, as we affectionately called him, died on the same day that his first great-grandchild was born. Truly it was a day of rejoicing and weeping in our family. I spent more time with my grandfather in the early part of my life than any other adult male. And, looking back, he had a profound impact on me even though he was a very quiet person. Despite Papa’s stoic and stodgy ways, or maybe because of them, we got along well. It was not unusual for us to go play golf, and drive twenty minutes to the course, and play a round in four hours, and drive twenty minutes home, and not to have exchanged more than 100 words. But it didn’t matter to me, because I learned everything I needed to know about him through silent observation. He was a consistent man who was dependable. He was a frugal man who didn’t need extravagance to be happy. And he proved he could change his mind on important matters. Papa’s attitudes on race relations were pretty typical for a white man of his generation in the south, but when his urban neighborhood transitioned from almost all white to almost all black, he lowered his resistance and let his new neighbors befriend him. All of these lessons I learned from him in silence, and maybe that is why they stuck.

The heavens are telling the glory of God;

and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.

Day to day pours forth speech,

and night to night declares knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words;

their voice is not heard;

yet their voice goes out through all the earth,

and their words to the end of the world.

In this world ablaze with sectarian violence, and divided by narrow self-interest, and filled with non-stop noise and clutter, there is a way out of our splintered, empty ways. It is through the daily sermon of nature that begins at dawn with a beauty that can move us and a power that can shake us. This silent proclamation is open to all without regard to nation, creed, race, or religion. And if we will stop, and pay attention, and recognize the universal truths contained in this wordless speech, we can be healed, and we can be whole, and we can be one.