Creation Series: Sky

Consensus Volume 46 Issue 2 Lutherans and the Nicene Creed Article 7 7-25-2025 Creation Series: Sky Laura Sauder Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus Part of the Practical Theology Commons Recommended Citation Sauder, Laura (2025) "Creation Series: Sky," Consensus: Vol. 46: Iss. 2, Article 7. DOI: 10.51644/WETU9296 Available at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol46/iss2/7 This Sermons is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Consensus by an authorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact . Sauder: Creation Series: Sky Creation Series—Sky Laura Sauder1 Text: Job 38:4–38 T he book of Job tells the story of a man by the same name. And it’s important to emphasize that this is a story. While some parts of the Bible are historical, the book of Job is not one of those parts. Set in the fictional land of Uz, the book of Job is a meditation on the problem of suffering. It wrestles with that age-old question: why do bad things happen to good people? And if there’s one thing you need to know about Job, it’s that Job is good people. In fact, Job is said to be the most righteous person who ever lived. And then the worst things imaginable happen to him: he loses his livelihood, his home, his health, and even his family. No one—neither he nor his friends—can make sense of how so much tragedy could befall one person, especially Job! Incredibly, through all his suffering, Job doesn’t curse God. But neither does Job let God off the hook. Job demands an answer from God as to why God has allowed Job to suffer so greatly. So what does Job’s story have to do with creation? Well, after 37 long chapters, God finally responds to Job’s pleas with the passage we just read together. To Job’s question of human suffering, God responds by telling … a creation story. Makes total sense, right? Job demands God answer for what has befallen him, and God waxes poetic about the wildness and freedom and beauty of the created order. About the seasons, the elements, the creatures. And at no point do we hear God say anything about human suffering! Some might argue that God ignores Job’s suffering altogether. But I wonder, might it be instead that God takes Job on this guided tour of the heavens to help Job understand that, while we might think the world revolves around humans, God does not? For example, we see that God will do something as foolish as bring rain to the desert, where there are no humans to benefit from its goodness. This is something that to ancient Israelites—whose lives depended on precarious, never-too-abundant rainfall—would have been seen as wasteful extravagance.2 It’s not that God doesn’t care about human suffering. It’s just that, from God’s perspective, human suffering is part of a much, much bigger picture that matters too! (In other words, “it’s not all about us!” even though we might be keen to argue otherwise.) I love the way Dr. Ellen Davis puts it. She tells us that the view of the world that God presents to Job—and to us—“plays havoc with our notion of the way things ought to be—which is to say, sensible, well-adapted to human purposes, and aove all, predictable.”3 But oh how hard we have tried to make the world “sensible, well-adapted to human purposes, and predictable.” The history of human “progress” has been all about controlling and manipulating the world around us: 1 Laura Sauder is the pastor at St Peter's Evangelical Lutheran Church in Cambridge (Preston). This sermon was delivered on Sunday, June 22, 2025 2 Ellen F. Davis, Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament (Cambridge, MA.: Cowley Publications, 2001), 136. 3 Davis, “Getting Involved with God,” 137. Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2025 1 Consensus, Vol. 46, Iss. 2 [2025], Art. 7 • • • Electricity and energy that enable us to produce 24/7 so there’s little need to rest. The ability to reliably transport produce around the globe so we can eat what we want when we want, regardless of whether it’s in season. GPS or maps on our smart phones that will tell us where we need to go so we don’t need to rely on the sun or stars (or even the spatial maps in our heads) to find our way. And while there are many things about modern life that I am so grateful for (things like penicillin and indoor plumbing and TV streaming services), we’re also in a time of deep spiritual crisis precisely because of our success at making the world “sensible, well-adapted to human purposes, and predictable.” We’ve convinced ourselves that we should be able to manage and control the world around us, that we don’t need to be bound by the limits of seasons or natural cycles. And yet, I think we can also see that one of the great losses of modern, Western life is our disconnection from the rhythm, cycles, and seasons of the natural world—which really is our disconnection from the sky. Yesterday was the summer solstice. How many of you here were up at sunrise to greet this longest day of the year? The summer solstice happens twice a year, once in each hemisphere. For us in the northern hemisphere, this is when the north pole has its maximum tilt toward the sun. Celestial phenomena like the solstices were marked by many ancient peoples—like those who built Stonehenge some 5000 years ago. And the solstices are still marked by many indigenous cultures today. This is why National Indigenous Peoples Day takes place on the summer solstice. The summer solstice holds deep spiritual and cultural significance for many Indigenous Peoples, marking a time of renewal, connection, and celebration.4 The very act of acknowledging something like the summer solstice puts us in a posture of humility and awe. Because, as much as we humans have developed ways of mastering the world around us, we have yet to guide the stars or command the sun to rise. Last week I invited you to remember the lands that raised you. As someone who was raised on the great plains of Turtle Island, this week is my week, as we reflect on the sky. Because the thing about the prairies is that it’s like 95% sky and 5% ground—more of a skyscape than a landscape.5 Standing on the open prairie (and it’s not pancake flat everywhere!), you can’t help but feel small. When it’s just you and the sky, you can’t help but feel the vastness, the expansiveness, the awesomeness of God. And yet, when there’s nothing between you and the sky, somehow there’s also this sense of God’s closeness. I can’t put it into any other words but to call it Great Mystery. The prairie sky has the power to teach me about both God’s power and God’s closeness. The poet David Whyte writes, “your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were 6 alone.” Acting the drama as if we were alone has gotten us into a lot of trouble as a species. And the worst part—it’s not true. Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, “National Indigenous P (...truncated)