Un-eclipse-able Goodness--April 9, 2024

Un-eclipse-able Goodness--April 9, 2024

"Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is not variation or shadow due to change." [James 1:17]

We were joking, as we watched the total eclipse just a few hours ago as I write, that there isn't a section in the hymnal of "Eclipse Hymns" (and thus, that's why, instead, I put songs like, "Moondance," "Here Comes the Sun," and "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" on the playlist for the church watch party). But there is at least one well-known hymn of the faith that is eclipse-based--and it is actually inspired by this verse from the letter we call "James."  I bet you know it.

The opening verse goes, "Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father; there is no shadow of turning with thee; thou changest not, thy compassions they fail not.  As thou hast been, thou forever wilt be."

And as you can see, it's basically just a paraphrase of these words from James 1:17.  And the verse from James is talking eclipses.  Well, eclipses, shadows, phases of the moon, and a whole host of other astronomical phenomena would all be in James' mind.  Even though James' first-century culture didn't have satellites or even telescopes, they could see how the lights in the sky changed, dimmed, waxed, and waned over time.  And they knew that even the seemingly most permanent and most reliable objects in the cosmos--like the sun and the moon--could be dimmed.  The moon goes through a regular cycle of vanishing into shadow and re-emerging every month, and as so many of us witnessed just recently, even the sun's light can be hidden in shadow when an eclipse happens.  Even the most essential, most vital, most dependable things in our universe turn out to be changeable, shakable, and--as Einstein taught us--relative.

Well, except for God's goodness, James adds. God's generosity, God's sheer extravagant graciousness, turns out to be the one thing that doesn't vary or flicker.  It is the one reality in all the universe that truly doesn't diminish and cannot be overshadowed... ever.  Like the Julie Miller song says with her own Einsteinian allusions, "The only thing that doesn't change makes everything else rearrange--is the speed of light, is the speed of light: your love for me must be the speed of light."  That's how James sees things:  the love of God is the one thing you can count on, even if the sun, moon, and stars, all fall out of their orbits or lose their light.  The generous goodness of God is the one thing you can know is true, unchanging and yet changing everything else.  And the self-giving nature of God's grace cannot be blocked by the moon, hidden in the clouds, obscured by night, or diminished by our stingy hearts and crooked ways.  

I think that's what I'm taking with me from my experience standing in the open field of the church yard this afternoon, looking up at the sky while U2's "Staring at the Sun" played in the background.  Here in real time I was watching the closest thing I've ever known to permanence--the sun that has shone for every day of my life and that will keep on burning for billions of years--being covered in darkness by a much smaller ball of rock we call the moon.  And to me it was one more reminder that everything else in my life, indeed in this world, is ultimately impermanent.  Jobs change, friendships get frayed with time and distance, loved ones grow old and grow apart, and our piles of currency lose their value to inflation.  Everything else, even the sun itself, isn't quite as fixed or set in stone as we think.  And as the earthquakes of the last several weeks in the news remind us, too, even the very stones in the ground are not as fixed as we imagine.

James, however, insists that beyond all of those things is the love of God, which can be counted on, and really doesn't depend on the alignment of the planets or the phase of the moon.  God's generosity is what we can stake our lives on.

And to be honest, that's really all that faith is--it is a matter of deciding what is (and is not) worth staking your life on.  I can have faith in my investments or my 401(k), only to have it all crash in value with the next market "correction." I can have faith in my job, only to have the company "downsize" or "right-size" my position away. Or James tells us that we can root our faith in God... and not be disappointed.  

If you also have found that staring up at the eclipse was a humbling experience that reminded you of your place in a vast, swirling, dynamic universe, then maybe today is a moment to re-examine what--and who--we put our trust in, and what things are not worth staking our lives on.  James would tell us that the One who doesn't change is also the One who changes everything for us... forever.

Lord God, reorient our lives and our faith toward your unchanging goodness.