Alien Life: Transcendence
We Are Free to Love
1 Peter 1:17-23
Rev. Tim Callow
Preached Sun. April 23rd, 2023
One blessing I’ve had the past number of years is I’ve never been far from the night sky. When I lived in North Carolina I lived in a big enough city that the light pollution blocked all but the brightest stars. When I was in the Upper Peninsula I could see the milky way from my backyard. Here, the dark night sky is not far away.
When you see the night sky, truly see it, you understand why the ancients thought the planets and stars were divine. Why they so obsessively plotted the courses of the planets. Why they told tales about the various constellations. Why they thought that the stars and planets determined the course of life on earth. That sense that the heavens are the realm of immortal life may have faded from us now, even those who check their horoscopes probably don’t think the stars are living entities determining their destiny. But we have a greater appreciation for the sheer expanse of interstellar space. We have seen photographs of the Horsehead Nebula and the Pillars of Creation. Some of us watched as astronauts walked on the moon. We know the stars in the sky are so far away that the light we see is thousands or millions of years old. And we know we’re not even in the center of our own galaxy let alone the universe. The night sky may remind us of our relative insignificance.
And then consider the length of history. A human lifetime is but a speck. The industrial revolution, in the grand scheme of things, happened but yesterday. It is as Macbeth says in the Scottish Play, “Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,/ And then is heard no more. It is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing."
The ancients, too, knew their time was short. And they manufactured various ways to cling to immortality. They sought the honors of their peers, and hoped their deeds would be immortalized in stone and song. They contemplated wisdom, focusing on that which they knew was unchanging and eternal. They raised children to carry on the family name. And they died because no one gets out of life alive.
We, too, manufacture various ways to cling to a semblance of mortality. We may not have the same honor culture but we do seek fame. The more people notice us, the more we are remembered, the more our memory may pass on in some respect. We, too, raise children and tell stories and build things with our names on them.
Our mortality, the shortness of our life, the smallness of our planet in the grand scheme of the cosmos, leads us to seek transcendence. Because we know we are meant for more than this. But most attempts at transcendence fail. How many ancient greeks can you name? How many people from a generation ago can you name? Human attempts at transcendence end in futility. As Peter tells us this morning, “You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors.” The futile ways of the ancients aren’t much different than the futile ways of us moderns. Though perhaps we have, at times, been more destructive.
But we are not condemned to those futile ways for as Peter goes on to say, “You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.” We do not need to continue in the futile ways of our ancestors because we have new ancestors. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, those who relied on God in spite of all they suffered and faced. We are born not of a seed that perishes, but we are born through an imperishable seed. We are born again to eternal life.
Having been freed to eternal life we are free to a different sort of life. Peter says, “Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart.” We are made free to lead lives characterized by love. We do not need to make a name for ourselves. We do not need to save our own lives. We do not need to seek out our own fame or glorification. Because we have our hope in Christ. And following Christ we love. We love one another. We care for one another in our troubles, we forgive one another our foibles. We suffer for one another if need be.
This is what Christ showed us by giving up his own life and receiving it again.