The Rev. Noah Van Niel
The Chapel of the Cross
Sunday January 2nd, 2022
Christmas II: Jeremiah 31:7-14; Psalm 84:1-8; Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a; Matthew 2:1-12
You very likely missed it, since it happened at 7:20am on Christmas morning. Perhaps you were still sleeping or lingering over your morning coffee. Perhaps you were already knee deep in ripped up wrapping paper, as we were in our house by that point. But after decades of preparation, countless hours of work, billions of dollars, and numerous delays, NASA launched “the most ambitious [space] observatory ever built,” The James Webb Space Telescope.[1] It is meant to replace the long and nobly serving Hubble telescope which, for over 30 years, has provided humanity with the most incredible images of the cosmos we have ever seen. The Webb telescope aims to exceed Hubble in every way. It will go further, see farther, transmit better. And because the speed of light is finite, the further distance we can see means the further back in time we can see, so scientists predict that Webb will allow us to see the first luminous objects ever to appear in our universe. Wow. That is, of course, if it works, which we won’t know until this summer.
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