Few scientific developments have created revolutionary changes in the way we think about the universe and our place in it like the Hubble Space telescope. Launched into space in 1990, the Hubble telescope had a few technical problems at first that limited its effectiveness, and cast doubt upon its future - if ever - usefulness.

Those doubts evaporated in a cloud of space dust after the crew of the Shuttle Endeavor installed a few replacement parts and we on earth began to see things in space hitherto fore unimagined.

High from its perch 370 miles above the earth's surface, operating without any interference from nighttime city lights and atmospheric pollution, the Hubble telescope has literally rewritten the books on astronomy and revised our thinking on the ultimate age of the Universe.

From a front row seat for a comet's collision with Jupiter, to the confirmation and actual sighting of Black Holes, we have learned more about the sheer size of our universe and its idiosyncrasies than we might have expected or were prepared to learn.

Most revealing in all of its work for me has been the Deep Field series, reported on in Spring of 1997. For ten days, scientists pointed Hubble to a part of the sky considered one of the emptiest of visible objects. The telescope focused on an area of the sky the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length. They made over 275 exposures of that exact spot of the sky for ten straight days, trying to collect the most light possible. When they looked at the digital photos, the whole world changed.

In one of the most empty regions of the nighttime sky, by virtue of its light collecting capabilities taken over a week and a half, Hubble revealed a sea of galaxies as far as its eye could see. In one of the absolutely striking photographs, it looks as if someone had thrown a large handful of spiral galaxies of all sizes and ages into the dark sky, and someone else had snapped a high speed photo of it suspended there. Behold the handiwork of God!

When I saw the picture, and realized what I was scrutinizing, I remember the distinct feeling of being a very tiny, miniscule part of the history of time, along with earth and all of its seeming self-importance in the grand scheme of things.

Studying the Hubble Deep Field photographs is a wonderful way to put anything one is facing into complete perspective. So much of what we worry and fret about is so insignificant when compared to such a grand scheme of things. On the other hand, even in light of this ever expanding view of the universe, the fact that God who created and sustains all this infinite glory of the Universe, that God still cares profoundly for us, for this planet we call Earth, and for all the people of this world, amazes me even more.

Here at Christmas, we celebrate such a well-known story, found in the second chapter of Luke, that even the culture at large tells it to some extent and with the basic story line intact.

But today in John's Gospel, we get no narrative of events-the Manger in Bethlehem story line. In John's Gospel, we get a cosmic story filled with images of ultimate beginnings, Incarnation, and redemption. It is a much different approach to Christmas: No baby in a manger, no shepherds, nor wise men from the East, which our culture mistakenly assigns to Christmas day. But John's Prologue does remind us of God's entry into this world, and God's purpose for doing it: that we might become children of God.

I imagine there might be some people who think that the Hubble telescope will finally put to rest the idea of a God in heaven. If we can see galaxies from 11 billion light years away, then clearly there isn't God in this universe, or else we could see that God.

First, setting aside the fact that by no means have we even begun to examine every possible inch of the nighttime sky with the Hubble telescope, John's Gospel tells us that if we want to find God, then Hubble isn't the instrument for doing it. We find God by using our hearts, according to John's writings in the New Testament.

We find God by loving, for God is love, says John in his first Epistle. "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God." We don't have to search the heavens for proof of God, for God has already entered into our world, at Christmas. A few years ago, when singer Joan Osborne posed the question, "What if God were one of us? Just a slob like one of us?" she forgets that the question has already been answered. Jesus of Nazareth could reply, "Been there, done that, got the nail prints in my palms to prove it."

The true light that was coming into the world, has, indeed, come. And the impact of that event, the Incarnation as we call it, still reaches across the years and centuries to us this very day. "The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of a father's only son, full of grace and truth." This is not a quaint story with a happy ending that we read and reread just to feel good. What Christmas tells us is that God really became one of us, so that we might one day return to God in glory everlasting. This is a glory that never fades away, even after 11 billion light years.

The Good news is that God is not just somewhere, out there beyond the view of the Hubble telescope, but that you can find God very near you, here among us, one of us, in a child born Jesus of Nazareth. And that nearness of God, whom we can know just by asking, is the greatest gift that one can receive in one's entire life, not only at Christmas time.

May God continue to bless you all as we grow into the fullness of being a child of God, who, even in the vast expanse of interstellar space, still seeks us out for a relationship on our little mail stop of the universe that we call planet Earth.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Rev'd Timothy M. Dombek
ST. JAMES EPISCOPAL CHURCH
301 Piney Mountain Road
Greenville, SC 29609-3035
(864) 244-6358
stjamesrector@mindspring.com

Copyright © 2001 Timothy M. Dombek All Rights Reserved.