Red Sky at Night

“Were the Whole Realm of Nature Mine”

7. “Red Sky at Night”

Genesis 1:1-8

First Presbyterian Church

Reverend Donald E. Ray

August 8, 2010

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Introduction to The Music of the Night (immediately preceded the sermon)

Were the Genesis creation story written today, I suspect the semi-colon lines would read: “And there was morning and there was evening,”… rather than, “And there was evening and there was morning. . . “Pointedly, the story is saying that the momentous task of creating begins with the quiet, rest, energizing of the night that equips for the ventures of the day. For those whose employment requires working the night shift, an adjustment in the time scheme may be required. Sunrise may need to become the equivalent of sunset as the prelude to rest. Eugene Peterson writes that: “Going to sleep is a biological necessity; it can also be an act of faith. People who live by faith always have welcomed the evening prayer, disengaging themselves from the discordant, arrhythmic confusion of tongues, and sinking into the quiet rhythms of God’s creating and covenanting words. The work of God begins while we are asleep and without our help” (1). That is the invitation in The Music of the Night. The lyrics are printed on the bulletin insert. You may want to follow them as Carrie and Cindy offer the music of piano and horn.

The Music of the Night Charles Hart/Andrew Lloyd Weber

Carrie Pawelski, Trombone

The Music of the Night

from Phantom of the Opera

Night-time sharpens, heightens each sensation

Darkness stirs and wakens imagination.

Silently the senses abandon their defenses…

Slowly, gently, night unfurls its splendor.

Grasp it, sense it – tremulous and tender

Turn your face away from the garish light of day,

Turn your thoughts away from cold, unfeeling light –

And listen to the music of the night…

Close your eyes and surrender to your darkest dreams

Purge your thoughts of the life you knew before!

Close your eyes, let your spirit start to soar!

And you’ll live as you’ve never lived before…

Softly, deftly music shall surround you…

Feel it, hear it, closing in around you…

Open up your mind, let your fantasies unwind,

In this darkness which you know you cannot fight –

The darkness of the music of the night…

Let your mind start a journey through a strange new world!

Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before!

Let your soul take you where you long to be!

Only then can you belong to me…

Floating, falling, sweet intoxication!

Touch me, trust me, savor each sensation!

Let the dream begin, let your darker side give in

to the power of the music that I write –

the power of the music of the night…

You alone can make my song take flight –

Help me make the music of the night…

Sunrises and sunsets long have riveted my attention, taken my breath away, moved me in awe and wonder. As I thought sunrises and sunsets, the music that came to mind was from Fiddler on the Roof - Sunrise , Sunset. But as I pictured Tevye and hummed to myself;

“Swiftly flow the days, . . .

Swiftly fly the years

One season following another . . .

That is not how sunrises and sunsets move me. Rather than marking the relentless motion of time, for me sunrises and sunsets are the stop and catch your breath, take time to smell the roses, be still and know that I am God moments. In times of stress, I’ve gone to look for sunrises and sunsets. I’ve risen early on vacation to watch the sunrise over the ocean. I have walked to a shopping plaza parking lot to watch the sunset behind the hills, driven to Celeron Park to wonder at the rose sky across the lake.

Then it seems there are times sunrises and sunsets have come looking for me. I’ve awakened in a heavy mood and driving to an early morning meeting, and spotting the colors of the sunrise over a school yard, pulled to the curb to watch the second by second changing tints of pink and lavender. I’ve noticed the colors of the sunset in the rear view mirror and detoured into the rest stop off I -86 on the way home from Erie to gaze at the evening sky. I’ve driven in the insane traffic out of Washington, D. C. on Friday evening and crested the peak of the Blue Ridge Mountains to be greeted by the most glorious sunset that washed all the tension away in a breath.

Through my early life art, poetry, music were luxuries. My mother had a few flowers around the house to brighten the landscape. She liked azaleas and wished for years before she finally got two for the front yard. The emphasis was on practical, utilitarian things - milking cows, machinery, vegetables. Those were the things that kept us alive. But sunrises and sunsets were free. They were there for enjoyment and marveling.

There is of course the scientific explanation for the colors. It has to do the sun’s diminished light reflecting off the particles in the clouds. There is a meteorological explanation for the old adage red sky at night, sailors’ delight; red sky in the morning, sailors take warning. That has to do with the trade winds and the west to east movement of weather systems. But that is like defining a symphony or explaining a painting.

Matthew quotes Jesus as saying: “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times” (Matthew 16:2-3).

There is, I am convinced, a spiritual dimension to sunrises and sunsets. The wonder of the whole realm of nature is that it speaks to the very core of life in sometimes harsh realities, but often in the beauty that catches us unawares, unexpectedly, at the most opportune moments. In a sunrise or sunset, the nature of its beauty in the second by second changing of shades and tints of color is that there must be clouds. On a clear morning or evening the sun just appears like a big orange ball in the east or is swallowed by the western horizon in the evening. Across the canvas of clouds splashes beauty in rose and lavender, pink and soft orange. To me the signs of the times speak in the midst of the clouds, the stresses and distresses, the grief and the pain, the struggles and the failures and say that there is beauty because there is a creator of beauty and if we live in love the beauty will renew our hope and trust.

When our second child was conceived, there began for us a nine month roller coaster ride of joy and fear, excitement and anxiety. One of the things some say intending to encourage parents who have lost a child is; “You’re young. You can always have another.” But the death of a baby takes away the possibility of any innocent enjoyment of expecting. On the morning Joel was to be delivered, I began the drive to the hospital in Philadelphia with the memories of that panicky trip the night Philip was delivered into his three short days of life. As dawn swept away the night, it was with the beauty of the color reflected from every cloud in the sky. And that sunrise was a gift that brought hope and courage to tint my clouds of worry and fear. It lifted my spirits and gave Joel’s mother courage when I shared it with her before she went to the delivery room.

Was it that God sent that sunrise especially to encourage me on that morning? I think I believed that at the time. Without a sense of a God manipulating circumstances for individuals’ needs and wants, I’m not ready to surrender the possibility that somehow that sunrise was created especially for me that morning. We live and move and have our being in God and the nature of love is awesome, wondrous, surprising, touching. It was a long drive with traffic and I had much on my mind and heart, but then there was a glorious sunrise. I was then, and remain convinced, that interpreting the signs of the times opened the dawn of a new day for living in trust and hope.

Niagara Falls long has been special to me. We had made numerous family trips there and had seen them from every angle - the tunnel behind the Horseshoe Falls , the Maid of the Mist, Cave of the Winds. Some months after the breakup of my family, I felt the need to travel back to the falls to reclaim them for myself. In the afternoon, I went to Goat Island and sat on the bank by the rapids above the Horseshoe Falls and let the flowing waters wash away the weight I carried. At one point I even made the motion of throwing something heavy into the river and experienced relief from its burden. I felt energized. I had a cervical disc defect so that tension was a real ‘pain in the neck.’ That was gone. I walked the island and enjoyed the falls from every vantage point. I didn’t want to leave.

As evening came, I was back by the Horseshoe Falls and noticing the beginning hint of the sunset, I stretched on my back on the hillside down river from the falls. There were puffy clouds across the whole sky and I lay there for probably an hour—time was irrelevant—absorbed in the glorious, wondrous panorama of beauty overhead. Absorbed because it was not only the sky above that was filled with awe and glory. Then, I was ready to go home, to feel like home again, to sleep better than I had in months, to be captivated in the music of the night, to be renewed for the beginning of another life day, a new chapter in life.

We begin our days with the sunrise, plunging us into the demands and challenges, pressures and distresses or perhaps the boredom and depressing nothingness from which we collapse into bed exhausted at nightfall hoping to rest and rejuvenate for the next day. And in the waking moment, it all begins again.

It is the red sky at our night that is delight. It ushers us to the rest and renewing that takes us into the quiet rhythm of God’s creating. I think the significance of sunrise and sunset is in the attention gripping pause that renews. Two years after Joel’s birth, I made that same trip to Philadelphia the morning for Matthew’s delivery. That morning there was no beautiful sunrise. There was sleet and freezing rain in the air, but there was a sunrise in my soul. Twenty one years - or two decades -after the evening I reveled in the sunset on the bank of the Niagara River , the delight of the sky that night still lives in me.

Go searching for the sunsets and sunrises. Pause, give them your attention when they come to you. Waking in the morning to the garish light of day glaring on all the tasks and stresses can drain the spirit. Waking with the vision of a sunset blending into the dark, the music of the night still humming in our soul, renews with the spirit and hope that energizes us for the new day.

Amen.

(1) Living the Message by Eugene Peterson, p. 160-161

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