In philosophy, especially that of Aristotle, "the golden mean" is the desirable middle between two extremes, one of excess and the other of deficiency.  Buddhism’s name for this doctrine is "The Middle Way."  Confucious called it "the mean."  There is no comparable term for it in the Bible, but the doctrine is occasionally communicated through particular texts.  For example, we sometimes use an offertory sentence from the book of Proverbs that reads: …give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread.  Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, `Who is the Lord?’  Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God (Proverbs 30:8-9).

More commonly the Bible warns against particular extremes which, if not balanced by the larger biblical witness, can often seem confusing or even contradictory.  Again for example, in one place we are told to Rejoice in the Lord always (Philippians 4:4), but in another we are admonished to Grieve, mourn and wail.  Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom (James 4:9).  Which is it?  The answer depends upon the circumstances.  As parents, we want generally our children to be happy.  But if they misbehave, we hope to see some sorrow and a more repentant attitude.  God expects the same from his children, who have potential for being either naughty or nice.

Many seeming biblical contradictions find their resolution in this balancing act between two extremes on the same continuum.  On the continuum of eating we can eat too much and become obese, or we can eat too little and become anorexic.  Either extreme can be dangerous to our health.  A good nutritionist will caution against both extremes, and will not be contradictory giving advice to one that is diametrically opposed to advice given to another.  So it is in the Bible.  Sometimes it warns against one extreme, and other times it warns against the opposite extreme.  A balanced view of the larger biblical witness finds no contradiction in this.

Occasionally we have texts like ours for this morning that offer a balanced view between two extremes in one neat little package.  The title of our message is "Little Big Man" borrowed from a Dustin Hoffman movie by the same title.  That is as far as we are going to delve into the movie, which I have never seen.  But the title is useful for our purposes.  It sounds contradictory.  Is man big or little in the grand scheme of things?  Is he fearfully and wonderfully made as the psalmist puts it (Psalm 139:14), or is he merely a maggot or worm as Job puts it (Job 25:6)?

Albert Einstein might say that it is all relative.  Albert Einstein was in yesterday’s news by the way.  Apparently a handy sum has been fetched for one of his letters dismissing religion.  I think we all dismiss religion to the extent it is not consistent with our own.  It is important to balance an isolated writing by other writings from the same source to get a fuller picture of a person’s beliefs.  It is instructive in this regard to recall another quote by Einstein: "Science without religion is lame.  Religion without science is blind."

Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity provide a theoretical framework for understanding the really big—relative to us--as opposed to quantum theory which provides a theoretical framework for understanding the really small—again relative to us.  The really big would include such things as planets and moons, stars and galaxies, and the universe or universes as the case may be.  But Einstein was not the only one who pondered the really big.

King David was a star-gazer as evidenced by our text for this morning, where he praises God saying: When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? (Verses 3-4).  David may not have had the benefit of telescopes or modern-day scientific understanding, but he could tell with his own two eyes that the universe beyond this world was a mighty big place.

We now know that the moon is 238,000 miles from planet earth (give or take because of a slightly elliptical orbit), and that the average distance to the sun is nearly 93,000,000 miles.  Given the later distance and the speed of light (186,000 miles per second), it takes the light of the sun just over 8 minutes to reach planet earth.  If the sun is 8 light minutes away from the earth, the next closest star, Proxima Centauri, is over 4 light years away from us.  Not light days or weeks or months, light years.  And that is to our closest star.

By comparison our home Galaxy--the Milky Way Galaxy—composed of about 300-400 billion stars, is 100,000 light years in diameter.  The next closest galaxy to our own,--the Andromeda Galaxy--is 2.2 million light years away, and is the furthest thing in the universe which can be seen with the unaided eye (not counting supernovas).  I know right where to look for it and, on a dark, moonless night can see it quite clearly even though it is very dim.  If it was not so dim, we would see a band of light that is the width of 6 of our moons in the night sky.  Meet me some night and I will show you this 2.2 million year old image through a pair of binoculars.

Extrapolating for the whole sky what The Hubble space telescope has already surveyed in a small portion, it has been estimated that there are 130 billion galaxies in the observable universe.  Some of the larger galaxies boast up to 100 trillion stars each.  Our sun is one such star, and we are one planet of many in our solar system.  In short, we are a speck on a speck on a speck on a speck.  Are you feeling small yet?  Just a minute, we are not finished.

On the scale of geologic time, not astronomic time mind you, we are not only a speck but a blink.  If we were to compress the earth’s 4.5 billion year history into one single year, plant life would have begun around August, the dinosaurs around December 21 and modern man would not have appeared on the face of the earth until 11:36 PM on December 31.  Now granted that creationists might have a different opinion than modern scientists about such things, but all of us can surely relate to the words of the psalmist: When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?

When we consider our place in the great grand scheme of things, we are a speck and a blink and next to nothing.  This is one understanding our text wants us to have about ourselves lest we puff ourselves up beyond measure.  But lest we diminish ourselves beyond measure, our text also wants us to realize what elegant creations we are.  The psalmist continues, You made him (humankind) a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor (Verse 5).

Human beings have the ability to comprehend creation like no other creature.  So far as we know, no other creature looks up at the stars and ponders how big big is, or looks at dust and ponders how small small is.  Albert Einstein once said, "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible."  It is comprehensible because of our intricately complex brains.  It has been estimated that the average human brain contains over 100 billion neurons connected by 1 quadrillion synapses (read: 1,000 trillion).  And we have not yet descended to the atomic, much less subatomic, levels.

In short, there is a universe in here (the cranium) that is every bit as complex as the universe out there, and God expects us to use what’s in here to manage what’s out there.  You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas (Verses 6-7).  No other creature has the mental equipment that humankind has to impact the earth for good or ill.

There are some things beyond our ability to control.  An asteroid the size of Mt. Everest on an impact course with earth could elude our monitoring system.  Traveling the typical speed it would take less than 4 hours to reach us from the distance of the moon.  The merciful thing is that we would never know what hit us.  Or a super volcanic eruption the size of which created Yellowstone Park could wipe out much of North American life.  Or a lethal airborne virus could confound containment efforts and do the same worldwide.  I don’t know that we can control that kind of stuff.

But we can use our ingenuity to reign in population growth, or slow climate changes already set in motion by human action, or clean up the air we breathe and the water we drink.  We could probably develop clean energy sources if we put our best and brightest minds to work on it.  There is a lot we could do to manage this planet entrusted to our care so that we could bequeath a better environment to our children and grandchildren and so that we could preserve this fragile Garden of Eden which is so unlike anything else we have yet detected in the universe.