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“Here Be Dragons”
Genesis 1:1-2:4
May 18, 2008
An Old Map
Seas and skies. Land and animals. I’ve been thinking this week about God the Creator, perhaps because I’m surrounded by such spectacular creation this Spring. Considering all the sermons that could be preached on the creation story, I decided that what I most want to tell you about today is a map that I found, which is ironic since quite possibly I’m the most map-challenged person in the room. I know I’m not the only one out there for sure, after all we’re the reason GPS systems are so popular now. We map-challenged people.
But even so, I want to tell you about this Map, or to be specific, this globe I found, which is housed at the New York Public Library, and of which I’ve only yet seen pictures. It’s called the Lennox Globe. Some of you have no doubt seen it. Historians claim the Lennox Globe was crafted sometime around 1500. From the pictures online, this globe is really beautiful. It’s quite small-about 13 cm in diameter. It’s made entirely out of copper, though the tiny details are still visible.
But beauty alone doesn’t what makes it rare. The Lennox is priceless because it’s the second oldest human representation of full earth that exists today. There are plenty of maps older than that, of cities, empires, even entire hemispheres, but the Lennox is an entire globe, the second oldest human picture of our planet. It tells the story of how our ancestors viewed the whole creation!
When I studied it a bit, I noticed that part of this 500 year old globe was adorned with beautiful details: beloved mountain ranges carved with care; scratched-in squiggly rivers which had carried their boats along for generations; bumpy waves on their well-known seas. Anyone could see where in that 16th century world those globe crafters had traveled and where they had not. The Globe was distinctly divided between the places Know and Unknown, between the Us and the Them.
And there must have been some map-challenged folks around even back then, because the Lennox Globe makes it crystal clear where that great Unknown begins. For right along the east coast of Asia, if we get out our magnifying glasses, we’ll find the Latin words carved into copper: hic sunt dragones. Here be Dragons!
Here Be Dragons!
Here be dragons? Dragons! Does that sound like a particularly inviting phrase to you? Here be Dragons!
Does it conjure up images of friendly, Puff the Magic Dragon type creatures? No! Here be Dragons! It’s supposed to sound threatening—like turn around and run. I recall the latest Pirates of the Caribbean film, in which Johnny Depp as Captain Jack is taunted: You’re off the edge of the map now Jack! Here there be monsters!”
Like the sea monsters in Genesis I wonder? Here Be Monsters? Here Be Dragons…on the map? Are we to assume some 15th century explorer rowed a boat to the Asian shores and witnessed hoards of fire-breathing people-eating dragons? Are we really to believe that friends? Did anyone ever really believe that? I dunno.
Or do those words—Here be Dragons—have less to do with the great unknown, and more to do with the people who carved the?
Modern Maps, Modern Dragons
So I guess I’ve had creation and maps on the mind this week. I looked at pictures of old maps, even older than the Lennox like Ptolemy’s famous one from the 2nd century, and saw incredible serpents, and wild mythological beasts sketched along the maps edges, ferociously defending the line between the Known and the Unknown, the Us and the Them.
If you’ve never done that, consider it your homework. Go to the library, go online and look them up—they are amazing, especially when we compare them to the maps of today. Holding the little Lennox Globe up to today’s global mapping satellite systems, like Google Earth, is like witnessing in a split second half a millennium of scientific exploration.
The bottom line is that we know more about this world-this creation than we ever have before! This is an amazing time to be alive, is it not! I was reminded recently that for the past three years NASA has had two robots called appropriately Spirit and Opportunity roving the surface of Mars, discovering all manner of things on another planet altogether, even signs of water which point to life. Incredible! Pictures from space now show us what our own planet looks like: a pale blue dot in the deep void.
We’ve reached deeper into the oceans than ever before and found entire ecosystems of which we’d never dreamed. With microscopes the invisible is now visible. For the first time history we’re studying viruses, even human DNA up close and personal.
What I’m trying to say is this: our map is bigger than it used to be! We see, we hear, together we know more….
…but we don’t know it all.
No matter how far our telescopes reach, there’s always further out to wonder about. No matter how powerful our microscopes, we still grieve as bodies battle new viruses, addictions, cancer. With every new discovery—in our oceans, our rainforests--- we rediscover how little we actually do know. This creation around seems ever more vast, more fragile.
Our map is bigger than it used to be, much bigger than my tiny copper Globe, but even now with satellites and telescopes and 300 years of Enlightenment pushing us forward, our map is still unfinished. There are still boundaries we don’t know how or even whether to cross. The fine line remains between the Known and the Unknown.
And perhaps we understand that better if we consider what a map of our own life might look like. Wouldn’t that be a good journal entry one day? A map decorated with winding paths, perhaps, or dead ends; bridges burned or bright blazing trails. What would a map of your life look like? A map of my life?
What about our life together as St. Andrews—what sort of a map might we be? What do our Known places look like, and where does the Unknown begin? What separates the Us in here, from the Them out there? And what, I wonder, do our Dragons look like?
For I would argue that even now, in 2008, our maps most definitely have dragons. They may not seem so fantastic or mythical. And maybe we Presbyterians call our dragons by different names. Anxiety perhaps. Ever rowed your boat to her shore? Or Worry—that’s the dragon on my map this week with the new house. Or Despair. Whatever we call them, they are still the growling guardians around us, still holding the line. They can still send us scampering home, even as we wonder what’s beyond them.
In fact I’m beginning to wonder whether part what we do here together in worship isn’t really about those Dragons on the map. Learning how to see them with Open Eyes, perhaps, finding words to name them. Gaining the courage to see beyond them. And remembering most of all that, in the end, it all belongs to God.
This is God’s World
For it’s no accident that Genesis starts like this: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. In the beginning… God.
Not you. It’s not your job. And not me. Not our parents’ parents—no matter how great we think they were, nor our children’s children—no matter how much we worry. By Word and Love, God alone created. Father Son and Spirit together, the Trinity, God created all that was and ever will be. Including us. And friends, there is no part of our map, no part of our life, no part of this great world, with which God is not altogether familiar.
It goes without saying, but I’ll say it nonetheless. There is no mountain too high nor valley too deep for God to find you. No desert too wide nor ocean too rough for God to reach you. No suffering too small for God to notice, nor heart too broken for God to restore.
And though it’s been engraved for 500 years on my little Lennox Globe—hic sunt dragones, Here Be Dragons—the good news today friends, is that on the maps of our lives there is nothing--no thing, no fear, no shame, no anger, no disease, no terror—no dragon!—that could ever stand between us and the One who made us. For, in the words of Paul,
I am convinced that neither death nor life
nor angels nor rulers,
nor things present, nor things to come
nor powers, nor height, nor depth
nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Halleluiah, and Amen!
Copyright 2008 Rev. Shelaine R. Bird
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