Week 3: The Season of Creation - The Cosmic Christ
John 1:1-5, 14, 16-18
Colossians 1:15-20
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“The Cosmic Christ”
May the words I offer be words that are needed today and may we be open to the movement of the Spirit around us and within us. Amen.
First of all, I want to share with you that I attended a School Climate Strike at City Hall in Burlington on Friday morning. There were probably 60-70 of us and I left early, but it felt good to be a part of a group that is trying to speak out about the crisis on this planet that we are experiencing and how we need to stop ignoring it. Carolyn went to the one in Toronto.
If you are interested, there is one happening in Oakville this Friday at 8am in front of Oakville Town Hall. Carolyn and I are unable to be there, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if there is a group of you who would like to go together and represent St. Pauls. If you want to go, meet in the narthex, between the staircases, after worship. Also, this week, pay attention to the UN Climate Action Summit which is happening at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, tomorrow.
In the past little while, amidst sermons based on your suggestions this summer and for the past two weeks on creation, I realized that I haven’t done much preaching on Jesus. So, this week I wondered how I might be able to talk about Jesus amidst all this talk about creation. Was Jesus an environmentalist? Did he or would he have said or done anything about the destruction of our planet? Hoes does Christ connect with creation?
In recent years, people have been talking about the “Cosmic Christ.” If you google “Cosmic Christ,” you get 17,000,000 hits, with Father Richard Rohr and his Centre for Action and Contemplation, being near the top of the list. Richard Rohr is one of my heroes. He has written many books on faith and spirituality that resonate with my own faith journey. His most recent book is called “The Universal Christ” which I haven’t yet read, but it’s at the top of my list of books to read this year. I’m going to show you a video. The video uses language from this new book and expresses this idea of the Cosmic Christ.
Many of us begin with an image of Jesus when we think about Christ. One of Rohr’s goals is that we might rediscover Jesus and learn to experience Christ in every one and every thing, not just in the man who lived 2000 years ago. In the United Church, we talk a lot about Jesus and his ministry; we study and explore his miracles and parables and how he advocated for justice and mercy for the oppressed and marginalized, but we don’t tend to talk about Christ and how Christ is with us now and a part of us and all life, at all times. This is how some people interpret the resurrection. This matters when we’re talking about our care of creation and our care for each other. As quoted in this video, “God loves things by becoming them…By taking on physicality, the body of Christ is not somewhere out there; it’s in you, it’s in me, here and now.”
Those who wrote about Jesus after his death struggled with how to define Jesus the Christ, wanting to expand on the man and connect with the divine, exploring how Christ is still with us and has always been with us. The author of John’s gospel tries to articulate this in the first few lines of his writing. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word was present in the beginning with God. Through the Word, all things came into being and apart from the Word nothing came into being.” In other words, Christ Jesus was always there. When we read Genesis and read about the creation of the world, we read that “the Word” or Christ was present and that Christ was active in the creating. The author of John continues. “And the Word became flesh and stayed for a little while among us; we saw the Word’s glory.” God became one of us and this is how God is made known to us. When we learn about Jesus, when we pray and meditate and let Jesus into our lives, God continues to be made known. This is all part of the great cosmic mystery that is Christ.
When I think about the Cosmic Christ, I think about the universe. I think about the stars, galaxies, and planets and the possibility of life, outside of this planet, in this ever-expanding universe. I think about the billions of years it took to get us to this point and I wonder what a billion more years might look like. I think about the astronomical odds against life beginning on this planet or any celestial body in the universe and I am in awe of the simplicity and the complexity in that life. The cosmic Christ has been in it from the beginning, from the very first big bang. Christ continues to be in all of it, in each new spring, in each moon and asteroid, in the wideness of this world, and in each new breath, and, of course, when breath ceases. When we begin to see Christ in it all, in the “blueprint of all of reality,” everything becomes divine, everything becomes a gift, everything has value and importance, and everything is one, a “unifying heartbeat.” As we heard in the video. “Christ is wherever ordinary matter and spirit meet. Christ is wherever the divine meets with the human. To be Christian, to be one with Christ, is to see Christ in everything.”
I’d like to try something with our reading from Colossians. This is one of the letters attributed to the apostle Paul but most likely not written by him. It was probably written about 50 years after Jesus’ death. What I’d like to do today is fill in the reading with some of our own words. So, I’m going to read verses 15 and part of 16 and then I want to you to continue to list all the things, visible and invisible in our created world, those things that are important to you, in our universe. And then I’ll close with the the rest of verse 16 and verse 17.
“15 Christ is the image of the unseen God, the firstborn of all creation; 16 for in Christ were created all things in heaven and on earth, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers….”
Or…
…all things have been created through Christ and for Christ. 17 Before anything was created, Christ existed, and all things hold together in Christ.”
May Creator God be with all life as we learn to care for this planet.
May Christ be seen in all creation, on earth, in the cosmos, in you, and in me.
May the Spirit stir our hearts, our minds, and our bodies to act now towards the survival of this planet, to live with compassion for all life, and to be one with the cosmic Christ.
Amen.
John 1:1-5, 14, 16-18
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 He was in the beginning with God.
3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being
4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.
17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
Colossians 1:15-20
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation;
16 for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him.
17 He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
18 He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.
19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,
20 and 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.