Before I came to this mountaintop as Pastor, I came here like so many of you as tourist, staying many a summer in the state parks, enjoying the sights, hiking trails, being out in nature, and so many of the other activities that we all enjoy living here. Most of you already know this about me, about my history here. Now, one of the activities that we would often enjoy while we were here was to drive down past Seneca Rocks and go down to Cass to the trains and also to Green Bank. There we would go to the NRAO.

Most of you also know about me that I’m a nut for science fiction, stories of spacecraft and space exploration, aliens and far away worlds. But real science and real space exploration is at least as fascinating to me as those flights of fancy, and I loved those trips to NRAO. I’ve read dozens, hundreds of books on astronomy. I remember vividly the excitement I felt when the shuttle Columbia first launched way back in 1981. I remember the stories my mother and father would tell me of them huddling over an old TV set to watch Neil Armstrong take those famous steps onto our own moon. Even though I was, to use Paul’s language, one untimely born, I still got goosebumps hearing those stories and watching that old footage myself.

I’ll tell you something, the more and more I study and read about this, the more the sheer complexity of the universe just completely blows me away. The sheer size of things: stars 10,000x the size of our own sun, millions of galaxies with billions of star systems within, all so far away that what we see of them through astronomy is their story from the days the dinosaurs walked this earth. The more I stand in awe at this amazing complexity the more I am convinced that the universe in which we live is no accident. That one whose power is beyond our comprehension is behind its creation, that every star, planet, galaxy, and whatever may lie within or upon them was painstakingly crafted by his will.

I am not someone who believes that science and faith are incompatible. I believe, as I said, that science affirms what we believe, the God is the creator of all things. But when we think about God in those terms, God suddenly seems very remote, alien, detached. When we consider the power and might it must have taken to craft a universe of such size and splendor as ours, the being behind its creation must be something beyond our comprehension.

Would such a being even bother with insignificant little people such as us, living as we do on the planet Earth, orbiting the star Sol in the Milky Way galaxy?

Perhaps that is the most awe-inspiring thing of all. That God does look down upon us, not with disinterested eyes, but with eyes of love. That God is not remote, not detached. That the goings-on of the people of St. John’s church in Davis, WV on the planet Earth orbiting the star Sol in the Milky Way galaxy do matter to him. Because he created us, with the same amount of care and effort that he put into everything else, as he put into all those galaxies and stars.

Scripture tells us of how we are fashioned in God’s own image, that he knows even the number of the hairs on our head, and in my one of my favorite texts of the Bible, Psalm 139, “For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I will praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

It is to emphasize this very idea that Jesus tells us these famous stories that are recorded for us in the Gospel of John. Today is, by tradition, Good Shepherd Sunday and the good shepherd stories are stories about our relationship with the one who created all things. Nowhere within them is talk about how God is detached from his creation by his vast power and might, knowledge and wisdom. Instead, what we see is a level of profound intimacy wrapped up within this poetic metaphor with Christ as shepherd.

The language itself implies a tenderness between us and God. The sheep hear his voice and he calls them by name. The sheep follow where he leads because they recognize his voice. God knows each and every one of us; knows all things about us. Knows our name, knows our true self.

For some, that may be a more frightening thought than a detached far-away God.

But this intimacy is not one way. Jesus speaks of how the sheep respond because they know the voice of the shepherd. It is not just that God knows us. We also know God.

How? How can we know a being so vast and powerful that he created all things? Because he came to us in a form we could understand, a form we could comprehend. He came not in power and majesty, but unexpectedly, in humility as one of us.

Now wrap your brain around that for a second. The one who created all the universe comes to us as one of us, as the one we remember as Jesus of Nazareth. God incarnate. He came so that we could know him, so that we could touch him, see him, talk to him. And beyond all that, it was so that we could see just how much the one who created all things truly loves his creation. Jesus even suffered death for us and then rose again. This was no accident either. He died out of love, he died to save us from our own failures, our own sin, from the brokenness that we had inflicted upon the creation. God could have discarded this failed experiment, but instead he gave up his very life to save it and all of us.

This is God’s love. The love of the one who created all things. The love of one who became incarnate for our sakes. The love of one who died on a cross to save us. This is the love of the Good Shepherd.

“I am the Good Shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.” Amen.