Sermon for January 4th, 2015

Psalm 8:1-9

1O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. 2Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger. 3When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; 4what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? 5Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. 6You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet, 7all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, 8the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. 9O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Faith & Film III: Interstellar=

• Clip #1: Trailer

When I first heard about the premise for the movie Interstellar, I was pretty excited. As a self-professed science fiction nerd, I actually have a real problem with the vast majority of science fiction films that have been produced in the past two decades. Invariably the message of recent sci-fi films can be boiled down to this: Space is dangerous and it will kill you, so don't go there. If there are alien life forms out there, they are dangerous and they will kill you, so don't go looking for them. The same is true about most sci-fi films when it comes to technology. The message is that new technology (whether its robots, artificial intelligence, or machines) is dangerous and it will kill you, so don't invent it.

This is actually a horrible message. It sells movie tickets for the same reason horror movies do...we like to be made afraid in the controlled environment of a movie theater with cushioned seats, air conditioning and large quantities of popcorn. But it undermines the golden age of space exploration in the 1960s and 70s, when brave pioneers like Alan Shepard, John Glenn, and Neil Armstrong inspired the world to dream of what was possible. Space is dangerous, and in our real life space program, real lives have been lost. But in the 60s and 70s, we as a nation and a culture decided that the risks, the danger, were worth the cost. And many science fiction movies and shows of that era reflected that optimism, that strong belief that we should boldly go where no one had gone before.

The movie Interstellar doesn't shy away from the risks and dangers, but it's message is clear: Go. In the end, it will be worth it.

Plot Summary

The film begins in the near future, on a farm somewhere in the midwest. The main character, who goes by his last name, Cooper, or Coop, is a former NASA astronaut turned farmer, and a father to son Tom and daughter Murphy. But in this future, giant sandstorms, famine, and blight ravish the land. Crops are dying, and the earth's food supply is quickly running out. All of humanity's resources are diverted away from science and exploration, towards producing food instead.

• Clip #2: Useless Machines

Around this time, the few remaining NASA scientists discover a wormhole in our solar system that would allow us to travel to another galaxy, and potentially place new, habitable worlds within our reach. Cooper is the only remaining qualified NASA pilot, and so is recruited to lead an expedition through the wormhole, to find a previous expedition of 12 astronauts (the Lazarus project) who had earlier gone in search of habitable worlds.

With great difficulty, Cooper leaves behind his family and embarks upon a journey into space. Before he leaves, he promises his daughter that he will be back. Due to the laws of relativity, and some pretty hardcore (and credible) science surrounding a giant black hole, days and weeks pass for the expedition in space while entire decades pass on earth, straining the relationship between Cooper and his daughter, as she begins to believe he won't keep his promise.

After a series of disasters and betrayals on worlds that prove to be less-than-inhabitable, only Cooper, his fellow astronaut Amelia, and one potentially habitable world remain, but not enough resources to reach it, or to return to earth. Cooper comes up with a plan to use the black hole's gravity to slingshot Amelia to that last planet, in the process sacrificing his own life by plunging his landing vehicle into the black hole itself.

Rather than dying, he finds himself trapped in a space-time singularity, an anomaly that allows him to transcend time and space, transcend the 4th dimension, reaching out to his daughter in the past. At first, he uses this anomaly to try to stop himself from leaving her all those years ago.

• Film Clip #3: Make Him Stay

When that fails, he shifts his focus from the past to the future, and is able to communicate to his adult daughter information that she uses to save the people of earth, leaving behind the dying earth and bringing them into space, to a new home. When Cooper finally escapes from the black hole, he is reunited with his daughter near the end of her life, just as the hope and promise of humanity's future finally seems secure.

Is Our Destiny Among the Stars?

• Murphy's law

• Organ clip