Cosmos Sunday Liturgy
Suggested Liturgy.
This liturgy introduces ideas about ‘God Beyond’, the size and age of the Cosmos, that humans are physically part of it and that the Cosmos, God, and all living things, including humans are united. There is information about other possible themes in the Background Reading, e.g. comparison of the Hebrew imagination and 21st Century imagination of the Cosmos. Use what you wish.
This is not a prescription but some suggestions for your use. Leadership notes are occasionally inserted, for your assistance.
It is advised that all your liturgy material, particularly images, be created as slides to be projected through a computer onto a screen. The slides of printed material will enable those who have a hearing impairment to participate as fully as possible.
Short introductory sentences (not included in the liturgy below) should be used to lead those gathered into the next part of the liturgy.
If you use the material below, it takes about 45 to 50 minutes, so there is time for short comments, homilies etc, to be inserted where you wish,
Welcome - Leader.
Welcome. Everyone is welcome to be together in this sacred place. In this series of church services, The Season of Creation, we ponder the Cosmos, our Earth home, the wonders of Earth’s nature, and ourselves. Today, we concentrate on the amazing, limitless, wonder of the Cosmos. All and every place is sacred, but this place, where we are now, has a special spot in our hearts, for it is here, that we are together.
Leader.
We are thankful for the God-saturated Cosmos, as we meet together.
We are thankful for the belief that God, not only saturates the Cosmos, but that we can experience God everywhere, and at all times. God is Beyond but never distant. Jesus, who shows that God is love, is the ever-present influence in our lives, calling us to follow him. The Cosmos shows us that God is the ever-present, unknowable, life-giving force in everything, sustaining and pulsating through all, the Divine Mystery over, above and in us all.
We sing together.
God Beyond
Tune Ar Hyd Y Nos TiS 168
All the Cosmos is a mystery;
God is beyond.
Limitless yet with a history;
God is beyond.
When we think of human millions,
Study galaxies in billions,
When we ponder stars in trillions,
God is beyond.
Science drives investigation;
God is beyond.
Is God in each constellation?
God is beyond.
Can the Cosmos stay together?
Much is understood, however,
Nothing stays the same for ever;
God is beyond.
With our questions we stand silent;
God is beyond.
Overwhelmed, in raw amazement;
God is beyond.
Sacred and divine are flowing
In the Cosmos. It is glowing.
All is pointing us to knowing,
God is beyond.
Conversation about God Beyond.
Important note. All conversations, of which there are 3, need to be rehearsed with participants at least three times. Any interruption can prevent the easy flow of sense and meaning. Each ‘voice’ needs to be thoroughly conversant with where they come in, what they say and how they say it. It is suggested that one voice be a female and the other voice be a male. Your choice. You may wish to have 3 different couples involved, which will require more preparation before the service,, You may wish to give different roles to different genders. However, each conversation must be rehearsed.
Voice 1. ‘God is Beyond’? What does that mean? I haven’t heard that before.
Voice 2. Well, if you think of it, just about everything is ‘Beyond’ us. Everything is outside of us. Everything we see is either in front, behind, alongside, above or below us, sometimes near but very often a long way off. When we think about the whole Cosmos, most of it is a long, long way away from us. It is all ‘Beyond’ us. It isn’t within us. It is ‘Beyond’ us and it is all sacred. God is the divine dimension of it all.
Voice 1. I suppose that’s OK, but I still think using the word ‘Beyond’ a bit strange.
Voice 2. Well, put it this way. When I looks at the stars at night, I experience the mystery of God. But that experience is about what is ‘beyond’ me.
Voice 1. I suppose it does make sense, but that word will take a bit of getting used to. I don’t make up much of the Cosmos and I accept that. The Cosmos is much, much bigger than little me. So, I suppose you can say lots is ‘beyond’ me.
Voice 2. Exactly. That’s what I’m trying to say. And God is everywhere and in everything. That’s part of the mystery of God that I experience. God is saturated with the Cosmos and the Cosmos is saturated with God. The two are united.
Voice 1. This is all a bit different, but I will think about it and maybe take at least some of it on board.
Leader - Reading.
Psalm 139:7-10.
Note. I very strongly suggest that if these Bible verses are read, they should be followed immediately, by a 21st.Centiury imaginative comment, like that which is below. These biblical verses should not be read unless a 21st Century version is also given. Otherwise, we are left back with 1st Century thinking. Introduce it with something like,
“Let us hear what the Psalmist says in Psalm 139.”
Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend to heaven, thou art there! If I make my bed in Sheol, thou are there!
If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there thy hand shall lead me and thy right hand shall hold me.
But today we might say: -
Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend to the edge of our Solar System or the edge of our galaxy, the Milky Way, thou art there. If I make my bed in the molten centre of the Earth, thou art there.
I can’t, but if I could take the wings of ‘light’ and dwell in the uttermost parts of a galaxy, billions of light years away, even there thy hand shall lead me and thy right hand shall hold me.
Leader - Prayer of thanksgiving .
We give thanks for the mysterious wonder of the immense, beautiful Cosmos. We are constantly reminded of this when we experience the warmth of the blazing Sun and see the beauty of the silent Moon. We are witness to this immense wonder each time we look at the stars at night. As we stand together before this mystery, we are thankful that we are all a privileged, unique part of it all, and thus connected to each other in God Beyond. We are totally dependent on it, and we thankfully receive its precious gifts.
We are thankful that the forces which govern the Cosmos establish the stability we experience. We feel safe, that our Sun will be there tomorrow, that the tides will continue to ebb and flow regularly and predictably, that the fundamental force of gravity in all the Cosmos, will keep the Moon in its allotted path, and not collide with our Earth. That our ‘Home Earth’ is not going to explode, and that our ‘Home Earth’ is not going to collide with other planets or galaxies, sending us all into oblivion.
All this and far more, is our inheritance, given to us by the Cosmos, and we are thankful.
Congregation.
With our thanksgiving, we pledge to respect all that is around us and, where possible, make a positive, caring contribution to our environment in this tiny part of the Cosmos, we call ‘Home’. We confess that often, we take all of this for granted. So we seek the mind of Christ, that we may be thankful for all the Cosmos and be responsible for our tiny part of it. AMEN.
We sing together.
Imagining stars
Tune Stuttgart TiS 272,291,349
When, at night, the stars shine on us
Light years* from our tiny earth,
Songs and psalms invoke the questions
Of our fragile human worth.
These gigantic specks are burning,
Balls of fire, as at play;
Stars in billions share their light and
Thus create a Milky Way**.
We all gaze in raw amazement,
Contemplating timeless space;
Numberless, the stars keep stories
Hidden from our human race.
Myst’ry strides across the canvas
Of the picture we might paint;
Godliness is grandly present;
We adore without restraint.
Note. The leader could explain these 2 phrases.
* One light year is a measure of distance. It is approximately 9,000,000,000,000, or 9 thousand billion kilometres. This is explained more fully later in a ‘conversation’.
** Our Milky Way, just one galaxy amongst billions, has between 200 and 400 billion stars in it, the oldest of which is estimated to be well over 10 billion years old.
Leader.
As we celebrate the size and age of the Cosmos, it stretches our imaginations! The numbers we encounter are just too huge to understand. They are all outside our normal thinking and seldom, if ever, are part of our normal conversations. Yet this is the Cosmos we now acknowledge as our understanding of reality and how it works.
Conversation about the size and age of the Cosmos.
Voice 1. If I think of the universe, or as you say, the Cosmos, I get lost and bewildered with the numbers. I can’t understand them. They’re just too big!
Voice 2. Join the club. Same for me. But that’s the science and you’d better take it on board. For instance, a light year is a measure of distance, NOT time. It may not sound it, but that’s what it is, the distance light can travel in a year. You may not know, but light travels, just like sound. A light year is about 9 million million kilometres, a fair distance. And the nearest galaxy to us, Andromeda, is more than 2.5 million Light Years away from us. That’s a long way! Get your mind around that!
Voice 1. No! I can’t. Anyway, what does this have to do with worshipping God?
Voice 2. Well, if we wish to worship God, as Creator, I think it is necessary to have some idea about what the creation might be. If we want to praise a chef, we need to see and eat what she or he has cooked. We need to appreciate the food that has been cooked. Then, and only then, are we really able to thank the chef.
Voice 1. Fair enough.
Voice 2. But what I have said about ‘creation’ so far, is just the start. You need to know that there are billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars in them. The Cosmos contains countless stars. Our Sun is just one star among, what astronomers’ estimate to be about 2 to 400 thousand million stars in the Milky Way. Our whole Cosmos contains probably more than 200 billion trillion stars.
Voice 1. You have completely lost me with these numbers! They’re just too big. My mind goes numb!
Voice 2. I’m not surprised, but just one more thing. Cosmologists and astronomers now believe that most of the billions of stars have one or more planets that revolve in orbits, around them. Millions, if not billions, of these planets revolve around their ‘parent’ star in orbits, that are in what’s called the ‘goldilocks zone’- the zone where it is not too hot nor too cold, for some form of life to exist. Just like out home Earth. Not too hot and not too cold. That’s one reason why we keep looking for other life forms within the Cosmos. There are billions of possibilities for life ‘out there’.
Voice 1. (Getting agitated.) Please, stop! I can’t take any more!
Voice 2. (Continuing with excitement!) Did I tell, you that the Cosmos is about 13½ billions of years old, and it is expanding at an accelerated rate?
Voice 1. (Getting quite agitated to the point of raising the voice!) Please! Please! I asked you to stop. So, Stop!!
Pause.
Leader. I think it’s time for a bit of quietness to reflect.
Silence.
Leader - Children’s talk.
How big is BIG?
Note. Some ideas for use. You may have others, better suited to the age of the children present. For some of what is suggested below, slides are essential to give some idea of the numbers.
Have you ever tried to count the number of stars that are in the sky? The number is big.
So, How big is BIG?
Have you ever tried to count the numbers of grains of sand that are in the bucket, when you are building a sandcastle? I bet you haven’t.
Have you even tried to count the number of grains of sand in just one ordinary sized teaspoon? If you have, I’ll bet you lost count and then gave up. Well, I have tried. I counted about 1,500 and then estimated that the full teaspoon would have about 30,000. Probably out by many thousands! When I showed my wife the teaspoon full of sand, I asked her, “How many grains of sand do you think are in this spoon?” and she replied, “Oh. About 300.” “No, I said. About 30,000.” She found that hard to believe. The sand I had was very fine.
Just imagine how many grains of sand that are on the beach where you go for a swim. I suppose you can’t imagine that. I can’t. Just one more thing. Can you imagine how many grains of sand there are on all the beaches on the whole earth? Scientists estimate there are about 7,500,000,000,000,000,000.
Well, there are more stars in the sky than that. That’s more than 7 ½ thousand trillion.
So, How big is BIG?
How many letters in our alphabet? 26.
How many words are in the English language? About 1,000,000. That is a big number.
How many letters are used in all the words? About 5,000,000. That’s an even bigger number.
And that is for just 1 language.
How many languages are there in the world? About 7,200.
That means there could be over 7,000,000,000 words, (7 thousand million) that could be being spoken in the world today! That’s a huge number.
So, How big is BIG?
There are about 7 ½ billion human beings, like you and me, living on the Earth. That’s 7,500,000,000. That’s 7 ½ thousand million, or 7 ½ billion.. That’s a big number.
But there are more than 1 million billion ants on the earth. That’s 1,000,000,000,000,000. That’s a huge number. A lot more than huans.
So, How big is BIG?
To get to the moon, travelling at 100 klms/hour nonstop, it would take 1/2 a year to get there.
To get to the sun, travelling at the same speed, it would take about 173 years to get there.
For the universe, the Cosmos, there are about 100 thousand million stars in the Milky Way, the galaxy where our ‘home earth’ belongs. That’s 100,000,000,000. That’s a big number.
Our whole Cosmos contains probably more than 200 billion trillion stars. That’s about 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That’s more than huge. Its gigantic!!
We can’t really imagine how immense the Cosmos is. And our ‘Home Earth’ is just a tiny speck in it. We can’t even imagine that!
All this immense Cosmos, God, and all of us are united.
Leader - Bible and other readings with short comments.
Note. Reference, with a short explanation, should be made to the non-canonical gospels. See Background Reading in ‘Background reading regarding the basis of my Liturgy.’A1. In these gospels, God is believed to be the inherent, the divine dimension of all that is. God saturates the Cosmos. Let us celebrate this.
From Ephesians. There is one body and one spirit…one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
From The Gospel of Truth. All things have searched for the one from whom they have come. All things are within him – the uncontainable, incomprehensible One who surpasses all thought. All things are in him and all things have need of him.
All things are in God. God is in all the Cosmos, over it, through it, and in it.
From the Gospel of John. Phillip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied.’ Jesus said to him, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you do not know me, Phillip? He who has seen me has seem the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me?”
From the Acts of the Apostles. For in him we live and move and have our being.
From the First Letter of John. God is love; he who dwells in love dwells in God, and God in him. From The Gospel of Truth. And the Father is within them and they are in the Father. They are full and undivided from the one who is truly good. They need nothing at all, but they are at rest, fresh in spirit, and will listen to their root.
Jesus is in the Father; the Father is in Jesus; God dwells in us and we dwell in God. We live and move and have our being in God. There is a unity of Jesus with God and with all of us. Jesus, God, all of us, the Cosmos, everything - is united in each other.
Leader - Meditation.
We have been challenged to see the ‘face of Christ’ in everyone we meet. Let us now contemplate that we all live, move and have our being in God, just like all the rest of the Cosmos. Jesus, who shows us God, can have an influence in our lives, in all that is around us, in other people with all good thoughts and ideas.
We can listen to God within us, that good spirit within us, prompting us and guiding us. We may also refuse to listen. What does this mean for us personally? What can this mean for all those around us?
Silence.
We sing together.
In God we live and move and be
Tune Ballerma TiS 515(i)
In God we live and move and be,
In God we have our place;
If we accept this for ourselves
Then love shines from our face.
In God we live and move and be,
We all are truly blest;
With all the Cosmos family,
In God, we safely rest.
In God we live and move and be,
Together. Not alone;
In spirit, God is one with us;
And love is always known.
In God we live and move and be,
In God have harmony;
We share with all the Cosmos, now
This mystic unity.
Silence.
Leader - A Creation prayer.
We are present to the Divine Mystery in all things, at all times. We are silent before the limitless Life-force in all of nature; birds and beasts, in rocks and rivers, fish and flowers, bugs and beetles; and importantly, in us human beings; ‘In God we live and move and have our being’.
We stand in awe at the energy in lightning storms, in changing tides, in exploding and collapsing stars, in black holes, in every atom, and in countless galaxies.
We are thankful that we are part of this interdependent, mysterious reality, that we are connected to all that is, that we can contribute to the well-being of what is around us.
We are thankful we are given this opportunity.
We’re not sure what ‘loving’ the Cosmos means, but we still stand in thankful awe of its beauty, its order and the stability it endows upon us.
We learn from Jesus to love our neighbour as ourselves, and the Earth is our neighbour. We know that to love the Earth is to respect the fragile balances in Earth’s nature, to refuse to exploit Earth’s resources just for the sake of wanting ‘more’, to shun luxury, and to give back to the Earth something in return for the Earth’s constant giving to us.
This we pray, in the name of the One who gave his all. Amen.
Conversation about being part of the Cosmos.
Voice 2. God is saturated with the Cosmos and the Cosmos is saturated with God. The two are united. Because we are part of the Cosmos we are in God, and because we are in God, we are part of the Cosmos.
Voice 1. Hey! Wait a minute. How do you know we are part of the Cosmos?
Voice 2. Well even though one of the Genesis creation myths says we are ‘Dust of the Earth’, actually, we are all ‘Star dust’, literally, physically.
Voice 1. You’re kidding.
Voice 2. No, I’m Not. We humans are all made of ‘star dust’. More than 9/10th of us is made up of Hydrogen, Oxygen, Carbon and Nitrogen atoms, all of which came into existence at the Big Bang, or just after, when stars began exploding.
Voice 1. (With a joyful superior voice) Well! What do you know. I’m Star Dust. You had better treat me well then hadn’t you? I’m ‘Star Dust’!! Whee!!
Voice 2. But that also makes most of you more than billions of years old.
Voice 1. Oh Dear. Maybe I should be happy just being ‘Dust of the Earth’.
Voice 2. No. No. No!!! You are not ‘Dust of the Earth’. You really are ‘Star Dust’ and remember that.
Use the utube clip - https://youtu.be/MBv38ahelms=
Note. The comment about ‘forgetting Jesus’, is totally irrelevant to what he is talking about. It is right at the end of the clip. It should be deleted.
The offering.
Leader - Offering Prayer.
We give generously because we have been given so much, and at no cost. It has been a gift. With these gifts of ours, we continue to tell the story of Jesus so that others may give generously.
We sing together.
God is mystery.
Tune Lasst Uns Erfreuen TiS 72,100,150,360
God in all galaxies beyond,
Yet, being Star Dust, we respond;
God of mystery shares our history;
God is in everything we see;
Always within both you and me;
God of Star Dust, and of Earth Dust;
God of mystery shares our history;
Alleluia.
All of the Cosmos is beyond;
We, being Star Dust, find a bond;
God of mystery shares our history;
We all adore the stars above,
Telling us all that God is Love;
God in hiding, yet abiding;
God of mystery shares our history;
Alleluia.
In God we live and move and be;
Sharing the Cosmos’ destiny;
God of mystery shares our history;
In our beginning and our end,
God, in the Cosmos, is our friend;
God gives glory to our story;
God of mystery shares our history;
Alleluia.
Jesus, on whom we all depend,
Just like the Cosmos, is our friend.
God of mystery shares our history.
Jesus, the human one who cares;
And like the Cosmos, always shares.
God of living, ever giving;
God of mystery shares our history;
Alleluia
Sending out.
Congregation.
Let us go out with the peace and love of Jesus in our hearts and so love our Neighbour, our mother Earth, our home within the giant Cosmos. Let us be thankful for the Cosmos that provides stability and all that we need to live. Let us be thankful that we are united to all that exists.
Leader.
May God bless you with thankfulness for life and breath. May you have eyes to see God in everything, in people around you, in forces of the Cosmos that give you stability, in all your goings out and your comings in. Now and for ever. Amen.