Feast of Christ in all

November 17             NOTES FOR REFLECTION             Feast of Christ in all Creation

Texts*: Genesis 1:26-2:3; Romans 8:18-27; John 1:1-14

[* I have chosen this Feast for this week's notes because I believe it is far too important (and far too often ignored) to be overlooked entirely, or sort of subsumed in next week's Feast of Christ the King.  It is inexplicable to me that this Feast is "offered" in The Lectionary as a sort of off-course substitute for last Sunday (Remembrance Sunday), this Sunday (where it faces no specific competition – it is simply the 33^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time), or next Sunday.  It offers no readings for the observance of this feast, whenever we might decide to have it.  The Prayer Book is no better.  Fortunately, a very good resource is to be found on the Diocesan website – go to www.calledsouth.org/downloads/liturgicalresources.  These texts are listed there.  You will also find some beautiful prayers and helpful suggestions for hymns and songs – as well as some beautiful contributions from Joy Cowley, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Patricia Scott.  Well worth a visit even if you are not charged with designing a service for this Feast.]

Introduction.  One of the reasons why I have chosen to advocate for this Feast is that it forms, with the Feast of Christ the King, a powerful two-fold conclusion to the liturgical year – and therefore to God's story – and a very helpful link to one of the major themes of the Season of Advent, Christ's "return in glory".  [More about that later.]  We start with either the longer or the shorter passage from our first creation story in the Book of Genesis, the shorter version being primarily concerned with the creation of humankind as the final act of the whole drama.  Then we have one of St Paul's major "cosmic texts", which tends to suffer with the others a sort of benign neglect.  (Simple test: when was the last time you heard a preacher describe St Paul as "a pioneer in the field of cosmology", or words to that effect?)  And finally we have the magnificent Prologue to the Fourth Gospel, believed to be a Christian meditation on the Genesis creation stories.

Background.  Two things to get off my chest first.  First, so fearful has the Church been over the centuries of the power of Pan that it has gone to the opposite extreme in its teaching, and thereby inadvertently built the foundations on which the modern heresy of scientism has been joyously erected by Richard Dawkins et al.  Pantheism ranks alongside Pelagianism as the mother and father of all heresies; so all too often we have been presented with, and in turn have presented to others, a picture of Christianity as a search for a God who is much too transcendent, holy and pure to come anywhere near the dust of the earth and who will, if we are faithful to him, pluck us to safety from the stain of a anything physical or material.

Secondly, we have wasted far too much breath in pointless arguments over creationism and evolution, and in trying to distance ourselves at least intellectually from the Genesis creation stories, without realising just how astonishingly accurate those stories are in the light of modern science.  We have far less to apologise for than we often seem ready to concede!  And we have no excuse, particularly if we are in the practice of regularly reciting the Nicene Creed.

Students of Church history will tell us that the creed, which only finally appeared in its present form at the Council of Constantinople in 461, was the fruit of a hard-fought battle over the true nature of Christ; and so we tend to think that the most important part of the Creed is the assertion that Jesus Christ is "the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father".  We perhaps don't notice the assertion that immediately precedes, and that which immediately follows, those statements.  The Creed opens, of course, with our belief in God "the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen".  And that, of course, reflects our first creation story in Genesis, which starts "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth".    Now, leave aside for a moment the faith claim made here (that God created everything) and focus on the even more fundamental assertion that is being made here.  The Universe had a beginning.  That's now accepted by science as a fact – but how on earth did our faith ancestors know that?

Now, come back to the Creed.   We begin by asserting of God the Father that he is "the maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen."  Do we ever notice that in this way we have placed creation at the centre of who God is?  There are many other things that we could have declared about God the Father, aren't there?  In the Hebrew Scriptures God is identified as "God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob", or "the one who brought you out of Egypt".  Drawing on the New Testament, we could have agreed to begin the Creed with something along these lines: "We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, who is both Spirit and Love, and whose nature is always to have mercy."    True – just as true as anything that we do affirm in the Creed – yet it did not make the cut.  The Ecumenical Councils chose out of all possible options God's creative power as the identifying mark of the God in whom we believe.

And there's one more thing we say in the Creed without perhaps paying it too much attention. When the Councils turned their focus from the Father to the Son they dealt first with his nature and then with his work; and before saying anything about his birth, death, resurrection, ascension or final return they said this: "through him all things were made".  There's a pattern here, surely: the first thing we affirm about God the Father is that he is the creator of all things: the first thing we affirm about the work of God the Son is that he is the medium through which God the Father created all things.

Where did they get this extraordinary idea from?  Well, most obviously from our gospel passage for this week, the Prologue to the Gospel of John: see especially verses 3 and 10.  But St Paul, in one of his other "cosmic texts", takes it further: he affirms that all things were created through, in and for Christ: Colossians 1:16.  But wait – there's more!  Oh, yes, much, much wonderfully more!  Scroll down to verse 20 of that chapter and you will find this: "through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross."  You see?  One of the things that was nailed to the cross was anthropocentric theology!  Christ died for the whole of creation – through him God reconciled to himself ALL THINGS.

And when you've got your head around that, have a look at Ephesians 1:9-10 where the divine plan is to "gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth".  All things were created through Christ; all things have been redeemed through Christ; and all things are being gathered up in Christ.  This is not pantheism: this is orthodox Christology!  And we ought to be proclaiming it and celebrating it this Sunday with gusto!

Genesis.  There is one more curious feature of this creation story that ought to gladden the heart of any scientist.  One of the key ideas in evolutionary biology these days is the concept of "emergence".  When the evolutionary process reaches a certain point something wholly new suddenly emerges.  The classic example is life itself.  For millions of years particles had come together to form atoms, atoms had come together to form molecules, and molecules became ever more complex – until suddenly life emerged.  Now look at verses 20 and 24; "Let the waters bring forth..."; and "Let the earth bring forth".  There's the biblical version of emergence.  The arrival of the human being, in our present form, sometimes called Homo sapiens sapiens (because we know we know) is another example of emergence: in us, self-awareness or self-consciousness was something entirely new.  And a feature of that was an awareness of the Divine.  The Biblical version of that is that for the first time a creature was created in the image and likeness of God: biologists tell us that it was our ability to plan, to think ahead, to foresee and to strategise, that enabled our species to survive against predators, and to capture prey, which were stronger and/or faster than us.  And there's another thing.  If it is true that our ancestors were vegetarian before we became carnivorous or omnivorous, verse 29 might be spot on!

Taking It Personally.

• Read through the longer version (2:1-:2:4) slowly, remembering that some consider it to be in the form of a hymn of praise.  What new thoughts strike you? 
• This passage has often been said to "justify" the exploitation of the earth, rather than the care of the earth?  What do you make of that?  Have you seen or heard mining company executives, for example, pleading this passage in defence of their commercial operations?
•  Does this story support or contradict the view that the human species is as much a part of creation as any other species?
• Go to your bathroom mirror, look yourself in the eye and say: "I am made in the image and likeness of God.  I am a unique manifestation of God's creative love."  Repeat until you believe what you have just said.
• God saw that everything he had made was very good, and he blessed it.  Spend some time pondering your own view of the world.  How would you describe it? 

Romans.  This is perhaps the best known of St Paul's "cosmic texts": my impression is that it turns up regularly in our Sunday readings.  But do we really attempt to wrestle our way into its deeper meaning, or do we tend to treat it as a typical flourish of rhetorical hyperbole?  What are we to make of this claim that the whole of creation is waiting "with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God"?  It seems that every form of life known to us is infused with a desire to go on living – a will to live – so why not a will to have life to the fullest extent possible for that species?  [John 10:10]  At the very least, could it not be that when our species is fully redeemed all other species will be set free from the threat we pose to their well-being?

 

Taking It Personally.

 

• Spend time in slow, prayerful reading of this passage.  Do you agree that it points to the redemption of the whole of creation?  What does that do to your understanding of heaven or of life after death?
• Richard Rohr says: "The material world is the hiding place of God".  What do you make of that?
• Thomas Keating says: "The Ascension is Christ's return to the centre of all creation where he dwells now in his glorified humanity.  The mystery of his Presence is hidden throughout creation and in every part of it."  Does that help?  Think about that in relation to the consecrated elements of the Eucharist.  Is there a sense in which every aspect of creation can be said to be "consecrated"?

 

John.  It is good to have this week's passage from Genesis and this passage from the Fourth Gospel side by side, so to speak.  Although it is written as a Prologue it reads more like a one page summary of the whole gospel, a final summing up by the author in one last attempt to say what he means, or rather what has been revealed to him in some sort of mystical state as he pondered the mystery of Christ in the light of the creation story in Genesis 1.  As noted above, the key verses for present purposes are verses 3 and 10; but we make a huge mistake if we try to study this passage as a theological tract.  It is a passage of adoration, to be listened to by the ears of our heart.

 

Taking It Personally.

 

• This is sometimes described as John's version of the Nativity narratives in Matthew and Luke, but at a much deeper level.  Do you find that idea helpful?
• Ponder verse 3, particularly the words "what has come into being in him was life".  What do you make of that?
• Notice the association of "life and light".  Reflect on the importance of photosynthesis in the evolution of life.
• End in prayers of praise and thanksgiving for Christ in All Creation.