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UN demographers had determined that the population would hit
the six-billion number this past Tuesday, which means that we
have had a doubling of the Earth's inhabitants in less than 40
years. The population clock in the visitors' lobby at UN
headquarters was racing so fast Tuesday morning that it skipped
from 5,999,999,998 to 6,000,000,001. One of the officials
standing there watching joked, "Somebody had triplets."
Of course, there were tens of thousands of children born on
the day of the six-billionth. They are far more likely to face
lives of poverty and illiteracy than tolerance and understanding,
especially in developing countries. One-third will not even live
beyond age five. The challenge facing the world, Anan said, is
to find "the will" to feed, clothe and house every inhabitant of
Earth. Amen.
News like this lends itself to lots of theologizing. As the
Secretary-General suggests, questions about poverty and wealth
and our responsibility to those in dire need. Questions about
population: are there limits to God's instruction in Genesis to
"be fruitful and multiply?" But the question that jumped out at
me in the midst of this news is simply, "Do I matter?" Here I am
and here you are, one six-billionth of the world's population,
not even a microscopic blip on the cosmic radar screen. Talk
about insignificant!!! 1/6,000,000,000. Do I matter?
Add to that what we know of astronomy. Scientists say that
our sun is one of about 500-billion stars in the Milky Way, which
is a medium-sized galaxy among 200-billion others, all swarming
with stars, most so far away that it will take millions of years
for the light from one of them to show up in our Carolina sky
some night. Wow! The old Psalmist, even without the benefit of
modern science was equally mesmerized: "When I look at your
heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that
you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful
of them, mortals that you care for them?"
So here we sit, 1/6,000,000,000 of the population on a
minuscule planet in an obscure, out-of-the-way galaxy. Do I
Matter? Really?
If you think about it, that question can be understood in
two ways. One has to do with the contribution we make to this
world - does it make any difference whether I have lived? For
some folks through history, the answer is ABSOLUTELY. Last
Sunday and Monday nights, the A&E cable channel ran a special
called "Biography of the Millennium." The four-hour two-parter,
based on a survey of scholars, journalists, and political
leaders, identified the 100 most important people in shaping the
world of the past 1,000 years. We could argue about the choices
(who is in, who is out) but we could all name some - Columbus,
Washington, Lincoln, Hitler, Martin Luther, Thomas Edison,
perhaps even Bill Gates - we could have fun with the process, and
in the end, we would have a list of people who, for good or ill,
made a difference. They mattered.
In many ways, whether or not we matter to the world, what we
accomplish, is up to us. In Robert Fulghum's best-seller with
that wonderful title, It Was On Fire When I Laid Down On It(3), he
recounts a conversation with a colleague who was complaining that
he had the same stuff in his lunch sack day after day. "So who
makes your lunch?" Fulghum asked. "I do," said the friend. Uh-huh. UP TO US!
Do I Matter? You have heard that old philosophical
conundrum - if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to
hear, does it make a sound? What about this one? If a person
lives and dies and no one notices, if the world continues as it
was, was that person ever really alive? I do not worry about
whether I am one of the 100 most important people in the
millennium; most of the time I doubt that I am one of the 100
most important in my neighborhood. If I matter at all, it is in
the lives of a precious few. For the most part, though, that
will be up to me.
But there is a second way of understanding the question
which is NOT up to me. Not do I matter to the world, but do I
matter to God? One of six-billion? The answer I want to hear is
ABSOLUTELY! YES! OF COURSE! But is there any evidence for
that? I think there is, and we find it in the life and ministry
of Jesus Christ.
In not many weeks, we will again celebrate Jesus' birth. A
story will be told, as it has so often before, to illustrate why
he was born. It is the tale of a man who looked upon Christmas
as a lot of humbug. He was not a Scrooge. He was a kind and
decent person, generous to his family, upright in all his
dealings. But he did not believe all that stuff about
incarnation - God becoming human - which churches proclaim at
Christmas. And he was too honest to pretend that he did.
On Christmas Eve, his wife and children went to church for
the midnight service. He declined to accompany them. "I would
feel like a hypocrite," he explained. "I'd rather stay at home.
But I will wait up for you."
Shortly after his family drove away in the car, snow began
to fall. He went to the window and watched the flurries getting
heavier and heavier. "If we must have Christmas," he thought,
"it is nice to have a white one." He went back to his chair by
the fireside and began to read his newspaper.
A few minutes later, he was startled by a thudding sound.
It was followed quickly by another, then another. He thought
that someone must be throwing snowballs at his living room
window. When he went to the front door to investigate, he found
a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They had been
caught in the storm, and in a desperate search for shelter had
tried to fly through his window.
"I cannot let these poor creatures lie there and freeze," he
thought. "But how can I help them?" Then he remembered the barn
where the children's pony was stabled. Warm shelter. He put on
his coat and galoshes and tramped through the deepening snow. He
opened the barn door wide and turned on a light. But the birds
did not come in.
"Food. That will bring them in," he thought. So he hurried
back to the house for bread crumbs which he sprinkled on the snow
to make a trail into the barn. To his dismay, the birds ignored
the crumbs and continued to flop around helplessly.
He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around and
waving his arms. They scattered in every direction...except into
the warm, lighted barn.
"I am a strange and terrifying creature to them," he said to
himself, "and I cannot think of any way to let them know they can
trust me. If only I could be a bird myself for a few minutes,
perhaps I could lead them to safety."
Just at that moment, the church bells began to ring. He
stood silently for a while, listening to the bells pealing the
glad tidings of Christmas. Then he sank to his knees in the
snow. "Now I understand," he whispered. "Now I see why you did
it."(4)
As that divine baby became a man, he tried to explain how
incredibly important each one of us is. He said God is like a
shepherd who leaves 99 sheep inside the fold to hunt frantically
for one stray, like a father who cannot stop thinking about his
rebellious, ungrateful prodigal of a son even though he has
another who is respectful and obedient, like a rich host who
opens the doors of the banquet hall to a menagerie of bag ladies
and bums. God loves people not merely as a race or species, but
rather just as you and I love them: one at a time.(5) Once, Jesus
let us in on a secret - God knows us individually so intimately
that even the hairs on our head are numbered(6)...and as some of us
are aware, that number changes all the time. Do I matter? Do
you? One of six-billion? We must.
And Jesus did more than talk about it - he showed it. He
went out of his way to embrace the unloved and unworthy, the
folks who could ask "Do I matter?" with an urgency that none of
us could muster. Lepers who were not allowed to live inside the
city wall were touched by Jesus, even as his disciples shrank
back in disgust. The handicapped beggers by the wayside whom the
world loves to ignore were not ignored by Jesus - they were
healed and given new life. A woman, too shy and full of shame to
approach Jesus face to face, grabbed his robe, hoping he would
not notice. He noticed. She learned, like so many other
"nobodies," that you cannot easily escape Jesus' gaze. Why?
They mattered. Then do I matter? Do you matter? We must.
The old Psalmist once again: "What are human beings that you
are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you
have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with
glory and honor." We matter.
It was Sam Shoemaker, one of the great preachers in the
first half of this century who confessed that during his seminary
days, as he studied and reflected on God and creation, that he
found it difficult to imagine how the Lord could even THINK about
these little specks of life called human beings. How could God
have time for us when there was so much more to demand the divine
attention? Shoemaker explained his thoughts to one of his
professors, an eminently wise man. "Mr. Shoemaker," the teacher
said, "your problem is that your God is too small. God takes
care of the sun, the moon, and the stars with just a word. Now,
he has all the time in the world just for you and me." Fifteen
hundred years before Sam Shoemaker, Augustine said it
wonderfully: "God loves each one of us as if there was only one
of us to love."(7)
Do we understand it? Of course not. It joins a long list
of other things in our lives that we do not understand. We do
not understand how brown cows eat green grass and give white
milk, but we still pour it on our cereal. We do not understand a
mother's love or a father's patience, but we count on them and
cherish them. We do not understand how pain can help us grow,
but we know that it does. Yes, there is much we do not
understand, and this is just one more thing.
Do I matter? Do you matter? 1/6,000,000,000? Yes. And
does THAT matter? That we matter? I think the answer is YES to
that as well. At the beginning of all this I said that the
question "Do I matter?" can be understood two ways: "Do I matter
to the world?" and "Do I matter to God?" The two are very much
interrelated, because if I am convinced that I DO matter to God,
I WILL matter to the world. Self-image makes all the difference.
Somewhere I read the story of Victor Serbriakov. Growing
up, Victor acted a little differently from other students in
school because he was bored. But an insensitive teacher gave him
the nickname "Dummy," and it stuck. Victor was placed in a class
for slow learners which gave him such a bad sense of himself that
he dropped out of school at age sixteen. What else could a
"dummy" do? Victor drifted from job to job because he knew he
could not really amount to much. But when Victor was 32 years
old, something marvelous happened - he applied for a job that
demanded that all applicants take an IQ test. Needless to say,
Victor was terrified. "Dummy." Well, he took the test and
scored 162...genius. Immediately, people began to say, "Victor,
you are brilliant!" And Victor came to believe it. Victor
Serbriakov became a very successful businessman and the president
of Mensa, the club for people of particularly high intelligence.
It is amazing what a change of self-image can do.
Do I matter? Do you? One of six-billion now? Absolutely.
Listen to Augustine once more: "God loves each one of us as if
there was only one of us to love."
And again: "God loves each one of us as if there was only
one of us to love."
And once more all together: "God loves each one of us as if
there was only one of us to love."
Amen!
1. Edith M. Lederer, "World Population Hits 6 Billion," Associated Press, 10/12/99 2. Stewart K. Hine, "How Great Thou Art," © 1953. Assigned to Manna Music, Inc. ©
1955, renewed 1981 3. New York: Villard Books, 1990, p. 6 4. Lewis Cassells, United Press International 5. Philip Yancey, "Do I Matter? Does God Care?" Christianity Today, 11/22/93, pp. 20-24 6. Matthew 10:29-30, Luke 12:6-7 7. William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible, CD-ROM edition (Liguori, MO: Liguori
Faithware, 1996) used by permission of Westminster/John Knox Press
Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made;
I see the stars; I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.(2)
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in.
That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.
How great Thou art; How great Thou art.
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