Light of the Pale Blue Dot

Light of the Pale Blue Dot

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John 1:1-14

The New Testament in a Year sermon series

Rev. Brian North, Westminster Presbyterian, Chehalis, WA

December 24th, 2011

You and I live on a dot. A very tiny dot. We think the earth is big. We know it’s bigger than us, but even this dot we live on is tiny. That makes you and me pretty miniscule, in the grand scheme of things. In the first half of the year 1990, people realized just how small of a dot we live on, and how small we are. The Voyager 1 had been launched into space on September 5, 1977. 12 ½ years later in early 1990, while still traveling at 40,000 miles per hour, it had traveled about 4 billion miles from earth.¹ At the suggestion of famed astrophysicist and Cornell University professor Carl Sagan, NASA scientists had the Voyager take pictures of the planets it had long since passed, including the one we all call home. While the pictures of earth have virtually no scientific value because of the distance, they do show our place in the cosmos. And it’s rather humbling. Here is one of the pictures that the Voyager beamed back to scientists:

Do you see our home there? In the midst of the top band of light you can see a pale blue dot, as this picture came to be called. That’s you and me, almost 22 years ago, in the first half of 1990. That’s earth. In fact, if you look really carefully and closely, I think you can see the lights of Chehalis shining into the darkness. Well, maybe not quite. In fact, you might be having trouble picking up on it at all. Here’s the same picture with a helpful little hint about where to look:

Does that help? Who would have thought you’d need a big old arrow pointing out where the earth is? Surrounding that pale blue dot is outer space: our solar system, our galaxy, and the universe. If you could take a picture of all of that, you wouldn’t even see the earth.

A few years later, Carl Sagan gave a lecture at Cornell University where he showed this picture and said, “That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.”²

Because Sagan didn’t believe in a living, personal God, it’s ironic that he comes close to Biblical theology in that speech he gave. In fact, I love the last phrase, that this pale blue dot called earth is “a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.” The earth is not just suspended in the light of the sun, it has been visited and touched and inhabited by the Light of the World, the Son of God. This pale blue dot, as tiny as it is, and even more so the people on it, you and me, who are tinier yet, we are the object of God’s affection. You and I, and all the people who have ever walked the face of this earth, are loved by God. And: Into this world, suspended in a sunbeam in the midst of a dark universe, God shines His light in the person of Jesus Christ. And the light of the world continues to shine in and through all “who believe in his name” as John 1:12 says. That’s the Good News of Christmas.

Matthew and Luke paint the picture for us in the grounded, tangible, “just the facts ma’am” kind of way: angels and shepherds, Mary and Joseph, the stable and the manger, the birth of Jesus. That’s the story of the light coming into the world told through real people and real things that we can touch and feel. A Sunday school teacher once asked her class, “What was Jesus’ mother’s name?” One child answered, “Mary.” The teacher then asked, “Who knows what Jesus’ father’s name was?” A little kid said, “Verge.” Confused, the teacher asked, “Where did you get that?” The kid said, “Well, you know, they are always talking about Verge n’ Mary.”

Well, John doesn’t tell us about Verge…or Joseph or Mary. Matthew and Luke did a great job of capturing the details of the first Christmas. John tells us of the same event in a more poetic, theological, and even scientific, way. And he’s saying that: We’re not just “suspended in a sunbeam,” rather: the light is here with us, amongst us, and in us. Do we believe that?

Now, some people have a hard time believing that Good News. Carl Sagan was one of those people. He passed away in 1996, and he never believed in God – at least not as most of us here tonight would probably define God. To him, God was simply the laws of physics that governed the universe, and even he said that wasn’t a God worth praying to.³

In his book, “Cosmos,” Sagan wrote, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” We can apply that to Jesus, too. I mean, let’s be honest: the birth, the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus are extraordinary. And yet the evidence for them is equally extraordinary. We have more information about the life of Jesus Christ than just about any other person or event of the ancient world. The earliest New Testament writings were written within 25 years of his death and resurrection; we have manuscript evidence dating to 130 A.D. which puts it 40-70 years within the originals being written. Compare that to other works of literature that are considered authoritative – such as Homer’s Illiad and Caesar’s Commentary on the Gallic Wards – and have a 500 to 1,000 year gap between the original writing and the earliest known manuscript. There’s so much more I could say on that subject. But the point is that there is extraordinary evidence for the extraordinary claims of the New Testament. And the first of those claims is what we celebrate at Christmas: That Jesus Christ is the Light of the pale blue dot.

The questions for us, then, are ones such as: Do we see the light? Is He the light of my life? Is there some other light in my life that’s making it hard to see the light of Christ? As bright as the light of Christ is – and you only have to read the gospels once to understand that He can light up people’s lives like no one else ever has or could – as bright as that light is, sometimes we have a hard time seeing it, because there’s a lot of ambient light from other lights shining in our lives: light from our jobs, light from our friends, light from politics, light from our Christmas trees…light from other religions, light from philosophy, light from our money, light from science, light from our stuff, light from our own selfish desires…there are all kinds of lights shining in our lives. Some of them point us to the light of Christ, but others that can make it hard to see the light of Christ. They compete for our allegiance and our faith, or they plant seeds of doubt about the true Light of the World.

It’s much like looking at the stars at night. Walk out after the service tonight and look up at the stars. Even in a smaller town like Chehalis, let alone a big city like Seattle, the lights from the city make it hard to see all the stars. But get out in the country, away from the city, and many more stars become visible. It’s the same in our walk with Christ. And in order to see His Light and allow it more fully into our lives, sometimes we have to dim the other lights around us. Maybe there’s too much ambient light in our lives to see the light of Jesus Christ clearly.

Is the Light of the World the the light of your life? You see, we may live on a dot suspended in a sunbeam…and we may be miniscule even in comparison to that dot…but we’re really, really important to God, and loved by Him. Humanity, including you and I, are the reason Jesus was born, the reason he lived, died, and rose from the grave. And that’s all an act of grace, unearned by any of us. It’s a gift from God to the world. So if he’s not the light of your life, I invite you to allow that light into your life, beginning tonight. Or perhaps Jesus’ light shines in your life…but only in certain areas. Let His light shine more completely in you, beginning tonight. The other lights in your life will try to compete for your allegiance, but only Jesus Christ gives the promise of truth, grace, and abundant and eternal life. And there’s no time like Christmas to begin letting that light shine in our lives brighter than it ever has before. Let’s pray…Amen.