The Evolution of Praise

A Sermon Preached by J. Stuart Taylor III

St. Mark’s Presbyterian

October 21, 2007

The author Annie Dillard tells the story of an old man who is a member of the island community where she lives.  This man who lives alone in a cedar shake shack on a cliff looking out upon an ocean view,  is unremarkable in every way except one: this man is trying to teach a stone to talk. When this peculiar  project was first discovered by the island community,  wisecracks abounded for awhile. But gradually, over time everyone came to a place of tolerance if not respect for this man’s life project of teaching a stone to talk. Of course, he could have  probably chosen anything for his tutorial:  a pinch of sand, a wave, a tree but it is in fact a rock that he chose: a palm sized beach cobble whose dark gray is cut by a band of white.  Several times a day the old man takes the stone off the shelf where it is kept, removes a leather pouch in which it is wrapped and starts a lesson. No one knows exactly what goes on in these lessons but it is probably the mix that is found in any ritual: a letting go of self-consciousness; an opening up of the will to be a channel for something else. Who knows? But it strikes the island community as a noble work,  or at least better than selling shoes. Reports differ on just what he expects or wants the stone to say. Annie Dillard writes, I do not think that he expects the stone to speak as we do and describe its long life with its many or few sensations. No he is hoping that he can teach the stone to say a word,  like cup or uncle. He realizes that this is a project that will take some time so he is trying to enlist  his grandson  so that the work will go on beyond his own death.  Does this old man trying to teach the stone to talk seem like a demented fool to you? I suppose we could look at it that way. But a God-like fool to be sure. For is not our Creator  dedicated to the same purpose with humankind? Is not our God teaching a stone to talk, teaching dust to praise?

Once upon a time 15 billion years ago, there was neither space nor time. Nothing existed save a pinpoint of possibility smaller than a proton what scientists call a singularity. Then an explosion happened and a universe of energy expanded a trillion times a trillion, When the universe was a second old every spoonful of stuff was denser than stone and hotter than the sun. Gradually it cooled into matter in a delicate yen-yang balance with something called anti-matter. Elements began to form. The temperature dropped further stars began to take shape and matter began to form. How many more aeons passed before matter made that mysterious leap to life itself? And then a hop, skip and a jump of millions of years and human beings began to walk on the face of this planet.   Evolution continued until that morning when the first human being looked upon the sky in wonder and said to no one in particular “thank you”. And in that moment all heaven rejoiced.  For billions of years since the big-bang moment of creation, the Creator has been patiently teaching a stone to talk, teaching dust to praise. I am indebted to Barbara Brown Taylor and her little book of essays on science and religion for this idea about the evolution of praise, the evolution of dust into a human creature that is self-conscious, aware. A creature able to transcend the physical necessity of life by thinking thoughts, by reflecting on what has been and what could be, a creature who can experience awe as we contemplate this vast universe and its terrifying beauty.  There is an old Jewish folk tale that captures this unique place humankind occupies in the evolutionary scheme of things.  One day god said to Abraham, if it weren’t for me you wouldn’t be here. To which Abraham replied, “True, but if I weren’t here there would be no one to think about you”. Barbara Brown Taylor writes that we are like chickens that can penetrate the mystery of their own eggs; we have been given the ability to glimpse our own origins.  Think of the eyeball of a scientist, squinting through a telescope at a light sensitive cell that is squinting back. How many millions of years of evolution are spanned in that glance? Humankind has evolved to the place where we can contemplate not only our origins but the future to which we are evolving.  The philosopher Bertrand Russell said skeptically of God’s evolutionary purpose for humankind: “If I was granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as a final result of all my efforts”.  Even after you take his remarks with a grain of salt, Taylor writes, Bertrand Russell raises a very interesting question. Is humankind the final result of evolution? Have we gone as far as we can go, or is there more to hope for?  The Rev. Bennet Sims who was the Episcopal Bishop of SC and Georgia until he died recently offers us a compelling answer to that question in his book, Servanthood: Leadership for the Third Millennium. Bishop Sims makes the case that Jesus is the prototype of an entirely new level of evolving humanity. As much as Jesus might have looked like any other homo sapiens, he was not. He was the first born hetero pacificus (peaceable humanity), who will bring a new species of creature into being. Theologically speaking Jesus was and is the new Adam who opens up a way for all of us to continue our evolution into the full and complete humanity that the Creator intends for us. Maybe this is what the Apostle Paul meant when he wrote in his epistle to the Romans, that all creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. All creation is waiting for the revealing of human beings who will finally fulfill their original calling, the reason for which they were created. We are all evolving toward creatures that are capable of awe, of ecstasy, of gratitude and praise offered to the Creator for the gift of creation. All creation waits for human beings who contemplate this beautiful creation and know that creation is a gift from the Creator to be nurtured and cherished.  We are all evolving to become again what we once were: a new Adam and Eve. We are evolving toward the second innocence of earth man and earth woman, earth lovers who walk with the Creator in the cool of the evening. Humankind was created for this cosmic purpose:  to be gardeners in God’s paradise, to be stewards of God’s good creation. And wherever human beings live into the goodness of our original purpose, a gateway into Eden re-opens.  

Is this the highest peak of our evolutionary destiny? To look upon the creation and to say “thank you”? Is this the future to which we are called, to sing praise to the Creator as many of the psalms do for all the divine blessings poured out on all creatures through the gift of creation? No we are called to evolve still higher until we learn that our voice of praise is not a solo performance. The voice of humankind singing praise to the Creator is not a solo voice but only part of a chorus.  We are a part of a cosmic choir made up of all God’s creatures the sun and the moon, the earth itself praises the Creator.   Nowhere is this expressed more eloquently than in Psalm 19. “Day to day pours forth speech and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, their voice is not heard, yet their voice goes out to all the earth and their words to the end of the world”. Cs Lewis considered Psalm 19, to be the greatest poem in the Bible and one of the greatest lyrics in the history of the world. Normally a psalm begins with a summons to the faithful to raise a song of praise to God but here in Psalm 19 this invitation is omitted because the hymn of praise has already begun. Aeons ago at the time of creation the notes were first sounded.  The heavens proclaimed God's handiwork. The created universe around us reveals the skillful design and loving intention of a master artist, Our Creator.  But creation's witness to the artistry of the Creator did not end with some primordial moment of creation. There is neither pause nor break but a continuous testimony of rapturous joy. “Day to day pours forth speech and night to night declares knowledge. With these words from vs. 2, we have ascended to the supreme expression of Hebrew poetry found in the Psalms.  With this line we imagine each day handing a trumpet to its successor to blow the same triumphant note, and when evening falls and the stars come out so does each night take up this unfailing song, “the hand that made us is divine”.  The word "pour forth" in vs.2 literally means bubbles forth, keeps on speaking the glory of God. In other words this is not an intermittent revelation, as if God were to send a prophet one year and let many years go by before sending another. Nature has unceasingly proclaimed God's glory since the beginning of creation, every day of the week, every week of the year, year after year, aeon after aeon the created order testifies to the Creator in unfailing, continuous praise.

This testimony of praise found in the Psalms is exuberant and effusive, in response to the reality of life in a reliable, generous, gift giving world. The language is doxological and lyrical Walter Bruggemann writes it is language that soars, cut free to match the extravagance of God.  Just as Israel participates in covenant with the Creator, so does all creation. A covenant that in its essence, is the ongoing interaction of gift and gratitude.  But these psalms which imagine nature giving praise to the Creator are not simply allegory or hyperbole but something more. The praise of all creation for the Creator is not something that can be objectified or explained. Psalm 19 calls us to imagine that all of nature enjoys a relationship to God. In some mysterious sense that cannot be classified or analyzed, nature knows God and is able to praise God and bear witness to the life-giving abundance of Divine Love.  St Francis who called all creatures brother or sister understood this when he preached to the birds and exhorted them to sing praise. All Humankind will understand this as we evolve to a deeper awareness that all creatures have a relationship to God that is independent of us. All creatures are our brothers and sisters in the family of God. God is teaching all creatures in their own language to praise God for the beauty and wonder of creation and to give thanks for the abundant gifts of life.  This creation praise of the Psalmist, this creation language of wonder and mystery invites us not to the manipulation, control and dominance of nature but to respect, awe, and finally loving stewardship for the well-being of creation.

 “Day to day pours forth speech, night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech; nor are there words; yet there voice goes out to all the earth”. We began with Ann Dillard’s story of an old man teaching a stone to talk. Let us close with her beautifully poetic Midrash on Psalm 19: “We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it. The holy mountains are keeping mum. Did the wind use to cry and the hills shout forth praise? Now speech has perished from among the lifeless things of earth, and living things say very little to very few. Birds may crank out gibberish, and monkeys may howl. Horses neigh and pigs say oink. But so do cobbles, beach stones, rumble when a wave recedes and thunders break the air in lightning storms.  I call these noises silence. It could be that wherever there is motion there is noise, as when a whale breaches and smacks the water- and wherever there is stillness there is the still small voice; God’s speaking from the whirlwind, natures’ old song and dance, the show we drove from town. The mountains are great stone bells; they clang together like nuns. Who shushed the stars? There are a thousand million galaxies easily seen by stargazers; collisions between and among them do of course occur. But these collisions are very long and silent slides. Billions of stars sift among each other untouched. , too distant even to be moved. Heedless as always, hushed. The sea pronounces something, over and over in a hoarse whisper. I cannot make it out but God knows I have tried. At a certain point, you say to the woods, the sea, to the mountains, the world, now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening. After a time you hear it; there is nothing there. ….You feel the world’s word as a tension, a hum, a single chorused note everywhere the same. This is it: the hum of silence. Nature does not utter a peep- just this one. The birds and insects, the meadows and swamps and rivers and stones and mountains and clouds: they all do it; they all don’t do it. There is vibrancy to this silence, suppression, as if someone is gagging the world. But you wait, you give your life’s length to listening and nothing happens.  The silence is not suppression; instead it is all there is. The silence is all there is. It is the alpha and the omega. It is God brooding over the face of the waters; it is the blended note of the ten thousands things, the whine of wings. You take a step in the right direction to pray to this silence, and even to address the prayer to “World”. Distinctions blur. Quit your tents. Pray without ceasing.” Let us pray: Good and loving Creator, thank you for the gift of creation; we join with all your creation in praising you for the abundant life that you pour out upon us. Give us ears of faith that we might hear the silent music of your creation. Give us ears to hear the music that is playing just about our heads. We give thanks to you God of all creation who teaches stones to talk and dust to praise.