O God who wonderfully created and yet more
wonderfully restored the dignity of human nature; grant that we may share the
divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son, Jesus
Christ out Lord. Amen.
In Douglas Adams’ madcap science fiction
novel, The Restaurant at the End of the
Universe, there is a scene whose theological meaning had escaped me despite
multiple readings until I read of it in the journal Theology Today in an article about the great medieval mystic and
theologian, Hildegaard of Bingen, written by one of the major scholarly
authorities on Hildegaard, Barbara Newmann -- who happens to be an college
friend with whom I celebrated Easter Vigils over 30 years ago and from whom I still
get the occasional Christmas letter in which she gives news about her cats.
That
series of improbable connections itself is almost
weird enough to belong in one of Douglas Adams’ books. In any case, the scene in question features a
machine called the Total Perspective Vortex, said to be the most horrible
instrument of capital punishment ever invented. The machine gives its victim “one momentary
glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it, a
tiny little marker, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot which says, ‘You are
here.’” Faced with this vision of cosmic
insignificance, the victim’s soul is completely overcome and perishes with a wail
of terror.
But the Vortex meets it match in the person
of Zaphod Beeblbrox, a two-headed guy
with a huge ego who among other accomplishments became President of the Galaxy just
so he could steal the new super-secret spaceship powered by the Infinite
Improbability Drive. Zaphod goes into
the Vortex, and instead of being snuffed out by the news of how inconsequential
he is in the big scheme of things, he emerges thirsty, hungry, and ready to
party.
The astonished executioner ask how he
survived the experience. For Zaphod, it
was quite simple -- he had “seen the
whole universe stretching to infinity around him – everything. And it had come with the clear and
extraordinary knowledge that he was the most important thing in it.”
The theological meaning that my friend
Barbara points out is this: what Zaphod
realized in the Vortex is true of each and every one of us: we each and we all are the most important
thing in the universe.
Now before you start thinking that reading
Douglas Adams has made both Barbara and me lose all our theological marbles, let
me remind you where the great story of God and humanity we’ve been telling
tonight began:
God spoke:
"Let us make human
beings in our image,
make them reflecting our
nature;
So they can be responsible
for the fish in the sea,
the birds in the air, the
cattle, and, yes, Earth itself,
and every animal that moves
on the face of Earth."
God created human beings,
created them godlike,
reflecting God's nature.
God created them male and
female.
We human beings alone of all the earthly
creation are made in the image of God, reflecting God’s nature. If that doesn’t make us the most important
thing in the universe, I don’t know what does.
But if you’re not convinced yet, then let’s
recall more of the story we’ve heard tonight:
The story of God choosing and freeing Israel from slavery at the Red Sea;
raising their dead dry bones from the grave of a second captivity and bringing
them back to their land; and through this chosen people offering salvation to all people, gathering all as one to come
home. Would God do all of this if we
human beings weren’t pretty important? I
don’t think so!
Still not convinced that we are
the most important thing in the universe? Then what about the story we’ve been telling and
living all this Holy Week? -- the story
of the Word made Flesh, the light shining in the darkness which the darkness
has never overcome, God’s glory lifted up on the Cross to draw all people to
himself; Jesus come to share our human nature, to live and die as one of us,
for us; Jesus searching for us in the depths of hell, trampling down death by
death,
setting
us free from captivity to the tomb, and inviting us, whether first or last, to share
in the Feast of the Resurrection. And tonight, too, we have renewed our
Baptismal Vows, an action, which among other things, re-names us, as God’s own
beloved daughters and sons, the most important things in the Universe.
“But, but, but, Jack…” I still imagine you saying -- “Isn’t God
the most important thing in the Universe?” Well, if we set aside for a moment the not unimportant
truth that God is not a “thing” in the same way we creatures are things -- the answer, of course, is yes. Indeed, in writing to the Corinthians about the
resurrection, the coming of the Kingdom,
and the final destruction of death -- humankind’s last enemy, St. Paul
concludes by saying that finally,
“all
things will be subjected to God so that God may be all in all.” Even Zaphod Beeblebrox can’t get more
important than that!
But, curiously, to name this truth of God’s
importance in no way diminishes our own cosmic importance. For we human beings are important not over
against God or in competition with God or on our own apart from God. We are cosmically important because of God, by
God, with God, in God.
To be sure, we often seek our importance
apart from or against God, and when we do, we call that sin. But when we sin in this way it is precisely
because we fail to recognize how divinely important we – and everyone else --
already are. If Adam and Eve had
recognized what it meant to be made in God’s image, the temptation to eat
forbidden fruit in order to “become like gods” would hardly have held much
allure. God already had given them the
cosmic importance the serpent promised them.
We are important because God made us in God’s
own image. We are important because God
has chosen us. We are important because
Jesus came to share our life and die and rise for us. We are important because God’s loves us. We are important because God is in us.
When we eat and drink
the Eucharist, Jesus, the living God, comes to take root inside our bodies; --
something that happened first in Baptism we have renewed tonight. The crucified and risen Jesus lives in us, body, soul, mind, and spirit. This is
what the Total Perspective Vortex actually would reveal to the man or woman who
stepped into it: “one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of
creation, and somewhere in it, a tiny little marker, a microscopic dot on a
microscopic dot which says, ‘You are here’ --
and here in you is the Word made Flesh, crucified and risen.”
Such a
vision would give the clear and
extraordinary knowledge that we are the most important thing in the Universe.
You see, God is not “out there” somewhere beyond the universe busy being more
important than we human creatures; God in Christ lives in us human creatures. We have been made one person with Christ in
Baptism and Eucharist, in dying and rising, one with him so that we cannot be
separated, making us, all of us,
unimaginably important.
If you’ve ever wondered whether you really
mattered;
If you’ve ever doubted whether you had any
value;
if you’ve ever feared that you were
unimportant;
know from this night that you – and every
other human creature -- are the most important things in the Universe. For tonight we celebrate the Word made Flesh,
Jesus the Christ lifted up on the Cross to draw all people to himself and
raised from the dead to live his life in us,
that God might be all in all -- in us.
Alleluia, Christ is Risen!
The
Rev. Jack Zamboni, Easter Vigil 2010