That said, I vividly recall lying on my back in our backyard on a chilly winter night. It seemed Sputnik was all anyone had talked about for weeks. I had somehow gotten it into my head that I would be able to see it pass overhead that night. So there I was, bundled up against the cold, a light frost barely visible along the tips of the grass blades. It was a while before anyone came looking for me that night. I was a free-range kid.
In October 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite, the world was electrified. Sputnik not only explosively kicked off the "space race" between the USA and the USSR, it changed the trajectories of millions of lives. Whole career categories appeared that had, before, only existed in science fiction (remember Homer Hickam's great memoir, Rocket Boys, and the movie version, October Sky?).
It not only changed the mid-century world, it created the world we live in, today.
The impact of that wintry night's vigil —and the events surrounding it— stayed with me for a long, long time. Later —probably years later— I recall getting the thought that we, Sputnik and the moon and me, were all three speeding through space that night, circling the sun ... all together.
In a very real sense, we were all Sputniks in the Fall of 1957; "fellow travelers," as the name implies, moving along a celestial path. Ideally, we would all still be traveling together. But, you see, Earth was too big, Sputnik too close. After three short months, the relative enormity of Earth led to our gravitational field pulling Sputnik from its course, and eventually to its destruction.
In a spiritual sense, Paul raises a similar concern in this week's Lectionary selection from the Letter to the Romans. Paul's focus is on the then-current dispute of whether followers of Jesus could eat meat sacrificed to idols. But make no mistake, "to eat or not to eat" is not the question. He makes it clear that neither those who eat such meat, nor those who refuse to do so, has the authority to judge the other.
God reserves to Himself the power of judgment. It is not our purview.
But there's another message, a more subtle one: "We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves" (Romans 14:7). In this, Paul makes an excellent case for us to view each other as "fellow travelers" on individual spiritual journeys ... separate beings, but God as our common destination. Like Sputnik and all those satellites that followed, we can be pulled off course, if you will, our focus pulled away by disputable matters. Or, perhaps worse, we may be the larger body, overwhelming the smaller ones with our insistence they must act as we think they should.
We are not to think ourselves so important (or so in-the-right) that we pass judgment on those who oppose us on disputable matters.
We are to love our fellow travelers more than we love our opinion.
_________________________
READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Proper 19 (24) (September 17, 2017)
http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=159
Exodus 14:19-31
Psalm 114 or Exodus 15:1b-11, 20-21
Genesis 50:15-21
Psalm 103:(1-7), 8-13
Romans 14:1-12
Matthew 18:21-35
_________________________
Like the Sputnik logo? You can get your own here: https://www.chopshopstore.com/products/sputnik-first-in-space-sticker?variant=11890200579
_________________________
Join us Friday morning for Lectionary Breakfast. You can find us at 8:00 at the Waco "Egg and I" restaurant. We are presently meeting in the function room (around the back). The food is quite tasty, the Bible discussion quite lively, and the folk quite lovely ... fellow travelers, all.
Blessings,
Steve
No comments:
Post a Comment