June 3, 2007 Psalm 8

Trinity Sunday 

"Putting Us In Our Place"

Many people at so many different times in their lives have asked ultimate questions about the meaning and significance of life. College students spend much of their time thinking about what they should do with their lives. Men and women in mid-life crisis question whether what they have done to this point has any real value. Elderly people look back at their long lives and wonder if all the struggle and hardship, the pain and the heartbreak are worth it. In other words, people of all ages down through the centuries have wondered what their place was in the universe.

Psalm 8 seems to address that very issue. Psalm 8 is a hymn of praise, because it testifies to the greatness of God and his deeds. Typically, a hymn of praise contains three parts, the first of which is a call to sing praises to the Lord. This is followed by the actual praise of God. The conclusion often leads back to the beginning and is a repeat of the opening. You can see this three part structure clearly in Psalm 8, which is one of the most beautiful psalms in the Psalter.

The psalmist begins by proclaiming that God’s glory is visible in heaven and on earth. He knows this just by looking around him. He looks into the heavens, and there he sees the moon and the stars and all that God has created, and he is overwhelmed. He cannot comprehend how such things could be done.

Perhaps some of you have had the same experience. Some evening when you are outside and all the stars are out and you look up and marvel at the starlit heaven. And we say along with the psalmist that we marvel "at the work of thy fingers." The beauty of the creation makes the writer think about the greatness of the creator.

I had this experience myself recently. This past week I had the opportunity to visit the State of Arizona, and while there with my family I visited the Grand Canyon for the first time. We arrived at the Canyon late in the afternoon, and as I stood at the edge of the South Rim and tried to take in the panoramic view, my initial reaction was to cry. I was so overwhelmed by the sight that I was truly speechless. I felt small and insignificant as I looked at the vastness of the Canyon. And human life seemed so brief and transitory when compared to something that had survived millions of years. In those moments I felt that I had encountered what the psalmist calls "the work of [God’s] fingers" (Psalm 8:3a), and I was awed and humbled by what I saw.

That awareness of the awe-inspiring character of creation leads the psalmist to think about who human beings are and how they fit into God’ creation. The psalmist marvels at himself and humanity when he writes:

What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?
Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.
You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet . . . "(Psalm 8:4-6)

The psalmist affirms that God has created men and women so that they fall just short of the divine realm. They are crowned with glory.

I want you to understand how revolutionary this view of humanity is when measured against the views of Israel’s neighbors. Israel’s neighbors believed natural powers to be gods, so they worshipped the gods of the rain and sun and the seasons. And they believed their lives were controlled by the movement of the stars and the sun and the seasons.

But Israel’s God was not a nature god. He created nature. He transcends the realm of nature, and humanity has been made a little lower than God, or "a little lower than the angels" says one translation. Human beings are above nature. And to indicate this high position God has commissioned us to have dominion over the works of God’s creation. We are to be caretakers of God’s creation. And as beautiful an idea as this is, the implications are sobering.

The psalmist goes on to tell us that the Lord has given us "dominion over the works of [God’s] hands" (v. 6). This verse is an echo of the Creation story in Genesis 1, where the Lords says to his new human creation, ". . . fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth" (Gen. 1:28)

Now we need to be careful when we talk about "dominion," because it is easy to misinterpret this word. Some wrongly understand "dominion over creation" to mean that one can use the creation for one’s own end, however exploitative or destructive that is.

You know what I am talking about. It should be clear to you the problems this kind of thinking causes. Our air has become so polluted that in some areas of the country there are some days when it is hard to breathe. We allow chemical companies to dump chemicals in our water. Preservatives are routinely put in our food. Certain species of wildlife have been so ravaged as to be on the brink of extinction. Beautiful forests have been leveled. In addition to that, our scientific advances make it possible to wipe out human life as we know it with nuclear warheads. There is no question about it, we have abused the responsible position that has been given us in creation.

But the proper understanding of the word "dominion" is explained in the following passage in Genesis 2. It is here that we see Adam, the man, naming all the creatures that God has made. The text says that "Adam gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field. . ." (Gen. 2:20). Notice that it is not God who names the creatures, rather it is Adam who names them.

One who names another establishes a personal or intimate relationship with that which is named – as when one names a child or names a pet. Therefore to have dominion means to have a caring relationship with what God has created. Dominion is a trust; we are to be caretakers of what God has given us. We are to take care of his creation. We protect it.

This was the theme of Youth Sunday, which we celebrated a little over a month ago. Our young people, through proclamation of the Word, drama, and music, urged us to take care of the world that they were inheriting. As the psalmist says and as we learned last months, "Out of the mouths of babes and infants" (Psalm 8:2a) we have heard God’s plea to be responsible in our use of what God has created.

How can we avoid abusing the exalted status that God has given us? We are less likely to abuse the position we have been given, if we remember to read the last verse of the psalm; it is a repeat of v. 1: "O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!" "O Lord, our Lord" shows us that we have a Lord over us; we are not in the supreme position. We are a little lower than God.

When we talk about prominent positions, I am reminded that today we ordain officers at Pine Street. And I am sure that some of those new officers feel a little overwhelmed by the vastness of the task to which they have been called. These persons have been given a prominent place in the Church, and they are charged with caring for the people of God. And they undertake their ministry with a sense of awe and humility, but also with the confidence that God will lead and empower them to do God’s will.

The psalmist in Psalm 8 tells us how God’s people are called to be caretakers of all of God’s creation. That includes the environment, but it also includes the people of God. All of us are called to act in love toward all that God has created. And all of us are called to give God the glory that is God’s due. Let us all proclaim, "O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!" (Psalm 8:1).