The Rev. Noah Van Niel

May 26^th, 2019

The Chapel of the Cross

Easter 6 (C): Acts 16:9-15; Psalm 67; Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5, John 5:1-9

What are we going to do about Memorial Day? Every year, as we mark the most solemn of our national holidays, I am equal parts grateful and enraged. I am grateful for the over 1 million men and women since the civil war who were selfless enough to give of their lives in protection of the freedoms I enjoy or so that others may enjoy similar ones. And yet I am also enraged that for some reason, the human species just can’t seem to stop killing each other. If we look back across human history it is littered with bodies, millions and millions of bodies; lives cut short because we just can’t figure out how to live together on a grand scale. Continue reading →

The Rev. Noah Van Niel

The Chapel of the Cross

April 28^th, 2019

Easter II (C): Acts 5:27-32; Psalm 150; Revelation 1:4-8; John 20:19-31

66 million years ago the Earth was struck by a meteor the size of Mt. Everest. It was traveling about 67,000 miles per hour and hit just off the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico where there now sits a crater that is over 100 miles wide. It’s impact sent 25 trillion metric tons of debris into the air, some of it escaping the gravitational pull of the Earth and floating all the way to Mars and the moons of Saturn. The debris that didn’t escape fell back to earth, super-heating on the way down such that it was literally raining fire, setting 70% of the world’s forests ablaze. Computer models estimate that the energy released was more than a billion Hiroshima bombs. The collision sent shock waves through the earth’s crust-creating undulating earthquakes and turning the ground into a trampoline. Winds at the impact site were upwards of 600 mph and were accompanied by sonic booms louder than anything ever heard on earth before. Tsunamis twice as tall as the empire state building tore inland hundreds of miles and volcanoes were sent into overdrive. But the damage was only just beginning. The dust from the impact and the soot from the fires prevented sunlight from reaching the earth’s surface for years. Starved of sun, plant life—both on land and in the oceans—shut down, causing the collapse of almost all major food chains and reducing the amount of oxygen in the air to almost nothing. After the fires died down, the Earth was plunged into a nuclear winter. Scientists estimate, that over the next thousand years about seventy-five per cent of all species went extinct including, most famously, the dinosaurs who had ruled the earth for over 150 million years. In total more than 99.9 percent of all the living organisms on the Earth died. Those not killed by the impact and resulting catastrophes either starved or were poisoned by the toxic water and air, because when the meteor struck it released a trillion tons of carbon dioxide, ten billion tons of methane, a billion tons of carbon monoxide and ten trillion tons of sulfur compounds into the atmosphere. The sulfur combined with water to form sulfuric acid, which then fell as acid rain.  And the release of those powerful greenhouse gasses meant that when the sun finally did poke through the clouds the earth went from deep freeze to global oven. In short, 66 million years ago life on Earth almost came to an abrupt end. For hundreds, maybe even a thousand years after the impact the only living things to be found were algae and fungus, maybe some ferns, a very few minor reptiles and mammals, and some lucky marine creatures.[1] Earth was a post-apocalyptic wasteland. According to paleontologist and author of the recent best-seller, “The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs,” Steve Brusatte, “It was the worst day in the history of our planet.”[2] Continue reading →

The Rev. Noah Van Niel

April 20^th, 2019

The Chapel of the Cross

The Great Vigil of Easter (C)

Do y’all know who Ron Popeil is? Ron was the king of the infomercial for decades, hawking such infamous kitchen items as the Chop-O-Matic, the Veg-O-Matic, the Mince-O matic, the Dial-O Matic, and the Whip-O-Matic. He’s the one who brought us the Showtime Rotisserie & BBQ which allowed him to coin the phrase, “Set it and forget it!”

Ron was an outsized personality but an undeniably effective salesman. He sold millions of products making himself millions of dollars and chances are, at some point, you too submitted to his insistent charm and bought that machine you just couldn’t live without. Even though, as some wise person once said: “If the best things in life are free; the worst things in life are $19.95.”

Now whenever I watch an infomercial, the relentless absurdity of the whole thing makes me a little sick to my stomach. But I am indebted to Ron Popeil for one thing (and no it’s not “hair in a can” another one of his infamous items). It’s the way he would always say, just when you were ready to switch the channel, or give up on calling in to order, “But wait…there’s more!” And suddenly the price would drop or the product would double, or they’d throw in some extra doodad that broke your last line of defense against wasteful spending. “But wait…there’s more!” Continue reading →