A Place to Stand

Let’s pray, shall we, and we’ll be seated to pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. Well, good morning to you all, happy new year. Wonderful to see you here. Thank you for your good wishes around the new year. I've got a little short conundrum for you: What do you do if you have only two spare days and you're in Melbourne?. Let me think about this... Go to an Ashes test match. So it was a lot of fun, a lot of excitement concentrated into two days. It was great. Now some people say that people who've gone to Moore College have three-point sermons; I did know a person who used to use two-point sermons, and some of you pointed out that I use a one-point sermon, and this morning is a one-point sermon. I want us to think for ten minutes or so about lost identity as a motif in literature and film.

When I mention lost identity, we are thinking about the protagonist who needs to sort themselves out, and that is the trajectory of the plot—it's one of self-discovery. Go to sleep with a mirror and wake up to yourself, that kind of idea. When I mention this, you might be thinking of a classic by Alfred Hitchcock like Spellbound with Gregory Peck or you might be thinking Lost Weekend with Ray Milland. But I inhabit the realm of Harry Potter. Who is Harry Potter really? Well, at 11 years of age Harry Potter discovers that he is a wizard and that he has a past and he has a destiny. That is not just going to propel that particular book or film, but it's going to propel the whole series. Or perhaps you remember this one: "You have forgotten who you are and so you have forgotten me. Look inside yourself. You are more than what you have become.". If I said it in a deeper voice, you'd pick it as James Earl Jones as King Mufasa in The Lion King. Poor old Simba needed to sort himself out, and part of sorting himself out was to work out who he was. It was a little bit the same with Luke Skywalker, although Luke didn't really want to know who he was; come to think of it, it was the same with his dad Anakin Skywalker, and you'd have to forget who you were if you ended up turning to the dark side.

The lost identity is a popular theme in movies, literature, and life: Who are you, what were you made for, what is your destiny?. It's just one of the many questions that the Bible wants to put to you and answer as well. Or you could say, what is your worldview?. It's kind of a trendy thing these days to have a worldview—a lens through which you look at the world and you make sense of the world. Is there a Christian worldview, and if so, what does it look like?. More accurately, when you look through the Christian grid, what sense do you make of the world?. Experts say that a good worldview has to have two things: explanatory power and logical coherence. First of all, explanatory power. Horoscopes have explanatory power. Here is a little of mine for today: "If you can battle the boring stuff right at the start of the day, once you get things done you'll be free to enjoy the carefree nature of the rest of the day. Focus on fun stuff and avoid any conflicts or boundary pushing. Splurge on a spontaneous purchase that leaves you smiling again and again.". They are just vague enough to be almost always true without really saying much at all. They have explanatory power, but they also have to be logically coherent,. Astronomy has told us that we have this thing called the procession of the equinoxes. What it means is that the horoscopes that were invented some couple of thousand years ago are all wrong. They've all moved; they've slipped, so they are not correct anymore. Someone said to me, "Astrology is to science like the game of Monopoly is to real estate.". It's fun to play around with, but it doesn't really have any coherence with reality.

A good place to start a worldview is your view of yourself: Who are you, what are you made for, what is your destiny? One possible answer going around these days is that you're just an evolutionary accident. You're not planned; you're just a highly evolved germ or microorganism. You're just a small part of the universe that could not care less about you. To use a phrase coined by a famous Australian atheist, you are a stray sock in the cosmic laundromat. Not a very enjoyable thought, really. Francis Crick says this: "You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.". Philosophically it's called reductionism. That means you are nothing more than your biology, chemistry, and the laws of physics. Except that today science would say that's not true; rather, science would say that you are an emergent self. You are unique and special; you're a complex self that has arisen out of your biology and chemistry, but also your manifold experiences, emotions, thinking, and relationships. You are much, much more than just the biological ticking in your brain.

The Bible says that the crucial relationship you have is with your Maker. He is the one who knows all, sees all, and is all-powerful, all-loving, and all-wise. This brings me to Psalm 8: "When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars which You've set in place, what is mankind that You are mindful of them, human beings that You care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor." This is the mystery and riddle of human identity: you've been designed and planned by God. He made the body you live in and the mind you think with, and so you experience the world uniquely as you. Before you were anything, He knew you. He put you together using DNA and RNA and all the other stuff that humans are made of. You are a creature with a Creator.

Now it's true that we humans are amenable to chemical analysis mostly H2O I'm afraid to say we are of the dust. Stardust, the astrophysicists tell us. We are material beings. We enjoy material morning tea, not just the idea of morning tea but we enjoy a material morning tea for a real material thirst and hunger. It's very good too I hope you can stay to join us for it. And it is true that we are amenable to biological analysis We are life and we are animals no less. But we are hardly machines created by our genes. Is there a machine that knows it's a machine? Well not yet anyway. Despite the hype about AI, I'm yet to be persuaded. We bear the divine image; that’s the difference. We bear the divine image, Psalm 8, tells us that's the difference. We are in some ways godlike. Look at verses five and six, “You made him that's mankind a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands and put everything under his feet.” We are godlike in some way. In what way is it our rationality? Is it our conscience? Is it our need our dispensation to relate to other people? Is it because we are the highest form of life that is functioning on earth? What's worth pondering on, but what is abundantly clear, is that we are not reducible to mere matter or mere animality or repositories of the selfish gene that needs to replicate itself. We may share an enormous amount genetically with the chimpanzee but will the chimp ever know it? No, we do though!

This news is both comforting and inconvenient. The implications are that you are not yours and I'm not mine; I don't belong to me but to one greater than me. I was not designed just for my own pleasure or for chasing my dreams; I'm a creature and I have a creator. The flip side is that God has plans for you. Psalm 8 says he's made you a little lower than the angels You have a destiny. And it says in verse 5 “you've been crowned with glory and honor”. A reminder as I read those verses Does not CS Lewis echo this in the Chronicles of Narnia where the children of Adam, Peter, Susan I can't remember the rest of their names but they're important are kings and queens in the land of Narnia. Does he not echo these words and when you gaze up into space it's easy to feel small and puny. We are so insignificant in the whole scheme of the cosmos. But Psalm 8 says "You are made a little lower than the angels the heavenly beings.” You are magnificent. God has a destiny in store, and if we are able to catch just a glimpse of it, it would knock us over. And the note of Psalm 8 rather than feeling small and insignificant the note of Psalm 8 is astonishment that in the vastness of the universe it's not that it's empty or meaningless but that verse four - He's mindful. He's mindful of us. That He cares for us.

Only humans have the ability to ask this question. Only humans have the ability to doubt the truth of this, to not just acknowledge the maker but to talk to Him. “Oh Lord our Lord how majestic is Your name in all the earth.” That's how the psalm begins and that's how the psalm ends. “Oh Lord our Lord how majestic is your name in all the earth.” And it's no accident that he writes this way because to understand the riddle of humanity you need to ask yourself not who is man but who is God. God reveals his name. Such a personal thing to do. What God ever revealed His name to humans. He raises humans to the dizzying heights of dignity. The greatness of humankind is seen in His visiting of man “God sent his son.” And when the New Testament picks up Psalm 8 uh you'll see it in Hebrews chapter 2 The writer goes straight to Jesus He says "We see Jesus who was made lower than the angels for a little while but now crowned with glory and honor because He suffered death so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone." The writer to the Hebrews connects us with Jesus and His glory and honor. And so He is the object of devotion. I worked at a school for a long time. When I turned up at this school for the first time, I was told on the first day, I was doing the devotion. I thought "What on earth is a devotion?” It's the funniest term when you think about it. What a strange term for a talk." But it's a good term isn't it? Because what we're talking about here is we're not actually talking about a worldview or who humans are but we're talking about the object of devotion. It was the Greek mathematician Archimedes who was discussing the use of a lever and he said quite famously “Give me a place to stand and I can move the world.” The idea was picked up by an American theologian called Elton True Blood. And in his book entitled A Place to Stand he argues that Christ, as He comes before us in the Gospels, is that place to stand. He is the object of devotion. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who died at the hands of the Nazis in 1944 towards the end of the second World War, wrote a poem a very famous poem. And I'm going to read to you some lines from it. He says "Who am I? This or the other. Am I one person today and tomorrow another? Am I both at once a hypocrite before others and before myself a contemptably wobiggone weakling or or is something within me still like a beaten army fleeing in disorder from a victory already achieved who am I they mock me these lonely questions of mine Whoever I am thou knowest oh God I am thine."

‍