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Psalm 148, v. 4-6: "Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens! Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded and they were created. He established them forever and ever; He fixed their bounds, which cannot be passed."

Sometimes when something new and wonderful comes into our lives, we have a difficult time adjusting to it. This is paradoxical; we don’t expect trouble from blessings, but trouble we sometimes get. And so it is with the gift of Scripture, too. These verses from Psalms can lead Christians swiftly into error, for we instinctively think that the bounds the Lord has fixed for the heavens (and for humanity) are the bounds which are apparent to us.

In the lectionary, this passage is linked with Matthew’s story of Jesus birth. Jesus’ arrival denied that the people of his day had a good survey of God’s boundaries. As Christians, we understand Jesus’ ministry as a new covenant, a change in the previously immutable relationship between God and humanity.

“New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth.” (J.R. Lowell) Christians are legatees of the greatest of new occasions. Did we learn the new duties Christmas teaches? Christian understanding subsequently became as inflexible as the priesthood of Jesus’ day. Just as the religious establishment then refused to accept Jesus’ new teaching, modern Christians reject God’s revelations through the science of our day. Following the path of theological ancestors who persecuted Galileo and Copernicus, today we choke on evolution, the Big Bang theory, and the expanding universe.

We commit these errors because we think our old familiar boundaries are God’s posts and markers. We presume to know the limits of God’s mind. We fear and hate those who question the accuracy of our presumption. While we sing of the wideness of God’s mercy, we struggle to assure ourselves that mercy’s scope does not encompass those whose temerity threatens to break open the dark little tomb in which we store our God.

The world is far larger than Jesus knew. It circles the sun in the company of planets whose existence was unknown to humanity 2,000 years ago. The universe is incomprehensibly larger than the earthly Jesus understood it to be. If we do not allow Christianity to pass the boundaries which Jesus’ temporal limits implied for it, Christianity cannot have a fruitful future.

"For humanity sweeps onward; where today the martyr stands, the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands, while the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return, to gather up the martyr’s ashes into History’s golden urn." (James Russell Lowell, The Present Crisis)