I want to explore a few things we
know about the sun and relate them to Jesus, who we believe to be the Son of
God.
We now know that the sun is the
center of our solar system and the source of the power that gives us life. Nevertheless,
for most of human history, we have not understood it.
Until fairly recently, we
appreciated the light from the sun every morning but did not think of it as an
energy source. Now solar panels are popping up around the world, and the
Planetary Society, led by Bill Nye, is getting ready to launch a satellite
called LightSail, which sunlight will
power.[1]
Imagine for a moment how
perceptions of the size of the sun have changed over the centuries. For
thousands of years, human beings underestimated the size of the sun, thinking
it was smaller than the earth. Even the ancient Greeks, known as the
philosophers and scientists of the ancient world, had trouble figuring out
which heavenly body was bigger. The philosopher Anaxagoras thought the sun was
just a few times bigger than his country, Greece. The mathematician and astronomer
Ptolemy calculated that it was bigger than Earth but estimated that it was just
150 times larger. Finally, in 1672 two astronomers calculated the true size of
the solar system. Today we know that the sun’s volume is 1.3 million times
bigger than Earth’s volume. Picture a baseball, approximately three inches in
diameter. If Earth is the size of a baseball, the sun is a ball with a diameter
of 25 feet.
Many people fail to grasp the
effect of the sun on our day-to-day lives. Flare-ups on the sun can affect
Earth’s magnetic field and can mess with power-line currents and oil pipelines.
Such flare-ups have caused railway malfunctions, spontaneously turning red
lights to green. You can now get an iPhone app called 3D-Sun, giving you all
the info you need about sunspots and solar flare-ups.
The point is that the sun is
powerful, big and able to affect our day-to-day lives.
The fact that in English, sun and
son are so much alike has led to much reflection on Jesus as the Son of God and
the light from the sun. What I am thinking about here is that Jesus seemed
small to many of his contemporaries. When three disciples had a vision of Jesus
on the mountain in Matthew 17:1-9, they thought they were doing great honor to
him by equating him to Moses and Elijah. Yet, they slowly learned that Jesus
was so much more than they imagined. Given that a voice from heaven refers to
Psalm 2, a hymn used at the time of the coronation of the new king in
Jerusalem, this passage suggests he is king.
Let me conclude with a note from
Colossians 1:15-20:
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all
creation; 16 for in him all things in heaven and on earth were
created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers
or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He himself is before all things, and
in him all things hold together. 18 He is the head of the body, the church; he
is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have
first place in everything. 19 For in him
all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,
20 and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things,
whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
We may well need a more creation-centered spirituality. Such
an approach could guide us to proper humility regarding humanity. It might also
help us re-think the role Jesus has in our daily lives. Yes, Jesus is larger
than any of us might imagine.
[1] LightSail is like a giant Mylar kite that light
photons from the sun will push along. The beauty of photon power is that it
lasts forever, unlike the rocket fuel on traditional satellites. A spacecraft
pushed by the sun will keep going, gradually moving faster and faster, until it
reaches speeds of one-tenth the speed of light — about 108 billion miles per
hour.
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