Glory

Astronomers have found the brightest known object in the universe—a glowing core of a galaxy, called a quasar, located 12 billion light-years away. Quasars are the brightest objects in the cosmos, each consisting of a supermassive black hole that’s actively devouring an orbiting disc of gas and dust. But the black hole in this record-setting quasar is gobbling up more than a sun’s-worth of mass every day, making it the fastest growing black hole scientists have ever seen.

The gargantuan object stretches about seven light-years across, and it puts our sun’s luminosity to shame—the quasar shines more than 500 trillion times brighter than the star in our solar system.

Christian Wolf, lead author of the new study, said, “This quasar is the most violent place that we know in the universe. It is a surprise that it has remained unknown until today, when we already know about a million less impressive quasars. It has literally been staring us in the face until now.”

The black hole in the quasar is ravenous, consuming an amount of material equivalent to as much as 413 suns each year, and its black hole weighs about the same as 17 billion suns.

Wolf said, “It looks like a gigantic and magnetic storm cell with temperatures of 10,000 degrees Celsius, lightning everywhere and winds blowing so fast they would go around Earth in a second. He told reports that he doesn’t think anything will ever top this record for the universe’s brightest object.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This newly identified object is 500 trillion times brighter than our sun! How can anything be that bright? Thinking about this star gives us a sense of what the glorious presence of God is like, for Scripture says that God is a being who "lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see."

Musician and author Carolyn Arends shares a story in an issue of Christianity Today magazine:

On a recent trip, I had a conversation with a man who learned I was from Vancouver. He had lived there years earlier, and after asking if a particular music shop was still in the city, he told me a story.

His wife was a piano major at the University of British Columbia. When they went piano shopping as newlyweds, the saleswoman led them straight to the entry-level models. The man told me, “She had us pegged exactly right. We didn’t have two nickels to rub together. We were going to have to borrow the money to get the cheapest instrument there.”

Everything changed, however, when the name of the prospective buyer’s mentor—a world-renowned master teaching at the university—came up in conversation. The saleswoman was panic-stricken. “Not these pianos!” she exclaimed, herding the couple away from the economy section and into a private showroom of gleaming Steinways. “I’m so sorry,” she kept repeating, horrified at the thought of the teacher finding out she’d shown one of his students an inferior instrument. Try as they might, they couldn’t persuade her to take them back to the pianos they could afford. Once the master’s name came up, only the best would do.

I said “Hallowed be thy name” this morning mumbling my way through the Lord’s Prayer. I’ve prayed that phrase countless times. But today, I find myself thinking about the reverence a flustered piano saleswoman had for a teacher’s name, and the prayer begins to change shape.

What does it mean to “hallow” God’s name? I’ve heard about the extreme care taken in branches of Judaism: Pages containing the name of YHWH are never thoughtlessly discarded but rather buried or ritually burned. When I’ve prayed the Lord’s Prayer, I’ve tried to cultivate that kind of personal reverence for his name—even while living in a world prone to profane it.

I’m glad I was taught to avoid blasphemy. But I’m beginning to suspect that my understanding of what it means to hallow God’s name has barely scratched the surface. But if we pray as he taught us, our reverence and care for his name will grow. That’s when we’ll begin to exchange our cheap instruments of self-interest for the costly Cross of Christ—the only instrument worthy of our Master’s name.

You'd think actress Amy Schumer might be enjoying her fame. But the comedienne took time one night to reflect on the downside of her celebrity status. "I'm, like, newly famous, and it turns out it's not fun. Did you guys know that?" she asked her audience. "You're, like, you know that I'm just now learning that my dreams have been a sham, and that it's actually not great and it just only comes with pain." Schumer predicted an end date for her time in Hollywood. "We all know it's going to last another three months because that's how it works."

For more than five hundred years the city of Florence has marked Easter with a wild ceremony called (in English) "the explosion of the cart." Four massive white oxen, crowned with flowers, draw a multi-storied medieval cart into the Piazza del Duomo, preceded by drummers and trumpeters and flag bearers. There, in front of the cathedral doors, the cart is laden with fireworks while the Easter Sunday High Holy Mass begins. At one point a golden dove sails down a guy wire from the high altar of the church, flies out the front door, and collides with the cart, igniting a succession of fuses that set off round after round of spectacular fireworks and explosions.

This goes on for a good fifteen minutes, in a riot of color and light and noise, to the cheers of as many people as can squeeze into the square. And then there is one final series of explosions, the smoke drifts away, and the battered cart retreats over the cobblestones.

Christian writer Andy Crouch, who was watching this spectacular show while in Florence, commented:

Thousands were crammed in to the plaza with barely enough room to breathe—"come sardine, like sardines," the man behind us said. This being Europe, the crowd was polyglot, stylish, and as secular as can be…. And a sea of smartphones, held aloft on selfie sticks, mediated the moment. A thousand screens bobbed over the heads in front of us. Go to YouTube or Flickr and see for yourself—all of them captured it. But I will tell you this: None of them captured it. Because it was louder, and brighter, and indeed more wonderful and more terrifying, which is to say more real, than anything a device can record or represent.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Distractions; Attention; Technology—This illustration shows how useful technologies can actually keep us distracted from engaging in real life. (2) Prayer; Spiritual disciplines; Quiet time—How is our technology keeping us from engaging with what is real—like the Living God, like prayer, like the power of the Holy Spirit? (3) Worship; Awe; God, glory of—The crowd of people were in the presence of beauty but none of them seemed to turn to worship the Living God, the source of all beauty and awe. Of course creation pours forth a spectacular show every minute of every day.

Pastor/author J.R. Vassar writes about ministering in Myanmar (Burma) and coming upon a broken Buddha:

One day we were prayer walking through a large Buddhist temple, when I witnessed something heartbreaking. A large number of people, very poor and desperate, were bowing down to a large golden Buddha. They were stuffing what seemed to be the last of their money into the treasury box and kneeling in prayer, hoping to secure a blessing from the Buddha. On the other side of the large golden idol, scaffolding had been built. The Buddha had begun to deteriorate, and a group of workers was diligently were repairing the broken Buddha. I took in the scene. Broken people were bowing down to a broken Buddha asking the broken Buddha to fix their broken lives while someone else fixed the broken Buddha.

The insanity and despair of it all hit me. We are no different from them. We are broken people looking to other broken people to fix our broken lives. We are glory-deficient people looking to other glory-deficient people to supply us with glory. Looking to other people to provide for us what they lack themselves is a fool's errand. It is futile to look to other glory-hungry people to fully satisfy our glory hunger, and doing so leaves our souls empty.

The drive to become famous is becoming a high value for many people in our culture. That's the conclusion of two social observers. In a speech, New York Times columnist David Brooks says, "Fame used to be a low value. Now fame is the second-most desired thing in young people. They did a study [and asked], "Would you rather be president of Harvard or Justin Bieber's personal assistant, [or another] celebrity's personal assistant?' And of course by three to one people would rather be [a celebrity's] personal assistant."

Brian Robbins, whose company creates YouTube channels for teens and tweens, told The New Yorker, "When you speak to kids, the number one thing they want is to be famous. They don't even know what for."

In an article for The Wall Street Journal, writer Leonard Mlodinow shares a funny story from the life of baseball great Joe DiMaggio:

It was the summer of 1945, and World War II had ended. Former soldiers, including famous baseball stars, streamed back into America and American life. Yankee slugger Joe DiMaggio was trying to be "Yankee fan Joe DiMaggio," sneaking into a mezzanine seat with his four-year-old son, Joe, Jr., before rejoining his team. A fan noticed him, then another. Soon throughout the stadium people were chanting, "Joe, Joe, Joe DiMaggio!" DiMaggio, moved, gazed down to see if his son had noticed the tribute. He had. "See, Daddy," said the little DiMaggio, "everybody knows me!"

I like the way Steve Farish reflects on this story in a paper he submitted to the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in 2009. He writes:

The junior Joe DiMaggio made the innocent child's mistake of assuming all the glory at the Yankee Stadium that summer afternoon in 1945 belonged to him and not to his father. Human beings, however, make a far less innocent mistake when we live as if our lives were all about us and our glory, rather than about our Heavenly Father and his glory. The apostle Paul writes in Romans 1:21 that the fundamental sin of the human heart involves a purposeful failure to honor God as God or to give thanks to him, that is, to give the Lord glory in the form of worship that he alone is due.

Most people haven't heard of the pro football running back named Tony Richardson. That's because his primary role involves helping other running backs succeed: he blocks so they can run. Over the span of seventeen pro football seasons, teams have often paired Richardson with some of the best backs in pro football. In 2001 he was slated to be the main running back, but instead he went to his teammate Priest Holmes and told him, "It's time for me to step out of the way. You need to be getting the ball. And I'm going to do everything I can to help you." Holmes went on to lead the league in rushing, but Richardson never grew envious or resentful. As Holmes would report, "He used to call me up and say, "I just saw you on SportsCenter! He was happier for me than I was for myself."

All of the running backs that Richardson helped succeed contend that his influence went beyond blocking for them. He would constantly talk to them through the game, advising, pushing, encouraging, and inspiring them. In a recent interview, Tony Richardson said, "I can't explain it, but it just means more to me to help someone else achieve glory. There's something about it that feels right to me."