4/12/26 Sermon

I need to be honest with you. I almost didn't know what to say this morning.

I've been watching the news. I imagine you have too. And I sat down to work on this sermon and I just — I sat there. Because what do you say?

Six weeks now. Six weeks of war. The United States and Israel struck Iran on February 28th. Nearly 900 airstrikes in twelve hours. And since then it hasn’t stopped. Iran struck back launching missiles at bases across the Middle East. The Strait of Hormuz shut down. A missile hit a girls' school in a town called Minab. A girls' school. And then a sports hall during a girls' practice in another town. Children.

Over 1,700 people have been killed. Gas prices are out of control. They're talking about draft registration again. And as of just yesterday the ceasefire talks stalled. Again.

I sat down this week with the Bible open, the commentaries out, the blank page in front of me, and for a while I just sat there. Because what do you say in a week like this? What do you say while the news keeps coming, while the numbers keep rising, while children die, while ceasefires stall, while everybody with a screen and a conscience feels that familiar mixture of grief, anger, helplessness, and dread?

One of the things I can’t stop thinking about this week is the heavens — the heavens that the Psalmist looked up at with wonder — those same heavens are where the fire is coming from now.

That's what got to me this week. The heavens.

We talk about the heavens as though they belong to God. "The heavens declare the glory of God." "Your glory is higher than heaven." We sing about it. We teach our children about it.

But the heavens are also where the cruise missiles come from. The B-2 bombers. The drones. Fire from the sky. That's what the heavens mean to a family in Minab. That's what the heavens mean to a girl walking to school in Iran.

We’ve been taught to look up and feel awe. That somehow the sky and the heavens are more God’s domain than ours. But lately, for so many in our world, looking up means fear. That death will reign down.  And I don't know about you, but that kind of reversal can make me feel a kind of hopelessness that's hard to put into words.

Now, I'll tell you who else wanted fire from the sky. James and John.

When we look at Luke chapter 9, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. And Luke says he "set his face" to go there, which is Luke's way of telling you this isn't casual. He knows what's coming. He's walking toward it on purpose.

And on the way, he sends some people ahead to a Samaritan village to get things ready. But the village doesn't want him. They look at Jesus — headed to Jerusalem, which is the wrong city as far as Samaritans are concerned — and they shut the door.

Now, James and John. The Sons of Thunder, Jesus called them, which tells you something about their temperament. James and John see this rejection and they have an idea. "Lord," they say, "do you want us to call fire down from heaven to consume them?"

Fire from heaven. On a village full of people. Because they said no.

Doesn't that sound familiar?

A nation is seen as a threat. As a rejection. As an obstacle. And the answer — the first answer, the instinctive answer, the answer that comes so naturally we barely even question it — is fire. From the sky. Burn it down.

The technology changes. The instinct doesn't.

And you know what strikes me? They thought they were being faithful. They thought they were on God's side. They'd been walking with Jesus. They'd heard the sermons. Seen the miracles. And still — still — when the moment came, what rose up in them wasn’t love. It was fire.

"You don't know what spirit you belong to."

That's what Jesus said. Some of the old manuscripts include that line. And it's devastating. Because he's not talking to the Samaritans. He's not rebuking the village that rejected him. He's rebuking his own disciples. His own people.

You don't know what spirit you belong to.

I think about that when I watch the news. When I see the language we use. "Surgical strikes." "Proportional response." "Collateral damage." All of it dressed up in words that sound reasonable. Strategic. Maybe even righteous. They even use the language of faith to try and bless and justify it too.  And underneath all of it, the same ancient impulse: somebody rejected us, somebody threatened us, so — fire. From the sky.

You don't know what spirit you belong to.

And Jesus — what does Jesus do after he rebukes them? Does he sit them down for a lecture on just war theory? Does he explain the geopolitics of Samaria?

No. He just goes to another village. Keeps walking. Toward Jerusalem. Toward the place where he will be on the receiving end of the violence. Where he will absorb the fire instead of sending it.

That's what the cross is in some ways. It's God's refusal to call down fire. It's God saying: I would rather take it than deal it. I would rather die at the hands of my enemies than destroy them.

But I'll be honest. On a week like this? That feels far away. That feels almost impossible. You look at the news and you think — is this just what we are? Is this all we are? Creatures who figure out how to reach the sky and then use it to kill each other?

Which brings me to the Psalm. And to the other thing that happened this week.

Because something else came from the heavens this week. Not fire. Something else entirely.

Psalm 8 says, "O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name throughout the earth! You made your glory higher than heaven!"

Now, if David wrote this psalm, he wrote it looking up. He was a shepherd. Out in the fields at night. No city lights. No screens. Just the sky. And the sky didn't frighten him. The sky filled him with wonder.

"When I look up at your skies, at what your fingers made — the moon and the stars that you set firmly in place — what are human beings that you think about them; what are human children that you pay attention to them?"

What are we?

That's the question, isn't it? After six weeks of war, after the missiles and the school and the stalled negotiations — what are we? Are we just the fire? Is that the final answer?

David didn't think so. David looked at the same sky the missiles fly through and he saw — fingers. God's fingers. He saw a God who set the moon in place, gently, the way you'd set a child in a crib. And it made him ask not "why is the world so violent?" but "why does God care about us so much?"

And this week — this very week, while the fire was falling — a man went up there. To the moon. And looked back.

His name is Victor Glover. He's the pilot of the Artemis II mission. Its the first crewed flight to the moon in over fifty years. And Victor Glover is a Christian. He’s a member of the Church of Christ down in Friendswood, Texas. He has four daughters and a wife named Dionna. He’s the kind of guy that takes communion cups to space. I'm not making that up. He had communion cups sent to the International Space Station back in 2020 so he could worship from orbit.

And on Easter Sunday — last Sunday — a reporter asked Glover if he had a message from space. He didn't have anything prepared. But here's what came out.

He talked about looking back at the earth — at this earth, the one that's on fire — and seeing it as one thing. Not borders. Not enemies. Not sides. One thing. He called it an oasis. "A beautiful place that we get to exist together." And then he said — and this is what got me — he said, "Maybe the distance we are from you makes you think what we're doing is special. But we're the same distance from you. And I'm trying to tell you, just trust me: you are special."

You are special.

That's Psalm 8 in a flight suit, a quarter of a million miles from home. David looked up at the moon and said, "What are human beings that you think about them?" And Victor Glover looked down from the moon and said, "You are special."

Same wonder. Same awe. Same God.

And it gets better. The next day, the spacecraft was about to slip behind the far side of the moon. Forty minutes of total silence. No radio. No contact. Nothing but the dark and the emptiness of space.

And in that last moment before going dark — the last moment before the signal disappears — Glover sent one final message. He quoted Jesus. The greatest commandment. Love God with all that you are. Love your neighbor as yourself.

And then he said: "We love you from the moon."

Do you see what happened? Do you see it?

The same heavens. The same heavens James and John wanted to call fire down from. And now we have found a way to do exactly that. Even now, fire is falling from the sky onto cities and schools and ports. That is one way human beings have chosen to use the heavens.

But Victor Glover went up into those same heavens and sent love back down.

Fire. Love. Same sky. Two completely different answers to the Psalmist's question.

What are human beings?

We are the ones who rain fire. Yes. That's true. That's on the news every night. But we are also — also — the ones whom God has crowned with glory and grandeur. The ones who can look at creation and be filled with wonder instead of rage. The ones who, from the farthest point any human being has ever traveled, chose to send back not a weapon, not a threat, not a demand — but the greatest commandment.

Love.

You know, the Psalm begins and ends with the same line. "O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name throughout the earth!" It's a frame. And everything fits inside it — the glory and the violence, the moon and the fire, the wonder and the wreckage.

And here's what I want you to hear this morning. The frame holds.

The fire is real. The war is real. The girls' school is real. The stalled negotiations and the rising gas prices and the fear — all of it’s real. I’m not going to stand up here and pretend it isn't.

But the frame holds. God's name is still majestic throughout the earth. The moon is still set in place by God's fingers. And you — you — are still crowned with glory, whether you feel like it or not. Whether the news makes you feel like it or not.

The heavens aren't only for fire. The heavens are where God's glory lives. And this week, a man went up there, looked back at this broken, burning, beautiful world, and his first instinct was not to call down fire.

It was to call down love.

I think that's the word for today.

Jesus rebuked the ones who wanted fire. And then he kept walking — toward Jerusalem, toward the cross, toward the place where he would take the fire instead of sending it. And he did it out of love. For the Samaritans who rejected him. For James and John who wanted to burn them. For all of us who get it wrong, over and over, and reach for fire when we should be reaching for each other.

The Psalmist looked up and saw God's fingers in the sky.

Victor Glover went up and saw God's people on the earth.

And both of them — the shepherd and the astronaut, three thousand years apart — both of them were filled, not with the desire to destroy, but with the oldest, most stubborn feeling in the universe.

Wonder.

And wonder is the beginning of love.

So here's what I want to leave you with. The next time you look up at the sky, don't see the place the missiles come from. See what David saw. See what Glover saw. See the moon that God set in place with his fingers. And let it make you small. And let your smallness make you wonder. And let your wonder turn to love.

And then send it. To your neighbor. To your enemy. To the village that rejected you. To the world that's on fire.

From wherever you are. From whatever emptiness surrounds you.

We love you.

It's the only message worth sending. And the heavens — the real heavens, the ones God made — are still carrying it.

Amen