(Psalm 19.1-6 & Colossians 1.15-20) Creation 4 – Cosmos Sunday
22 September 2019 – © Neil Millar
How can Christianity call itself catholic if the universe itself is left out? wrote French philosopher and teacher Simone Weil (1959:116) some 7o years ago. And for Weil, catholic spelt with a small ‘c’ meant universal. In other words, how can Christianity claim to be all-embracing and inclusive of the whole of existence, if it speaks only to the private interests of certain people – middle class white folks, for example? If it only concerns limited dimensions of life and morality. Weil was troubled that the Christianity of her time had become narrow, self-interested and parochial. For Christianity to be truly catholic it must embrace the universe in its scope, the entire cosmos? On what basis, did Weil say this? Well, for a start, there was scripture, and in the two passages we’ve just heard, some seriously universal claims are being made.
In Psalm 19, the psalmist proclaims that the world is a direct expression of God’s creativity, a reflection of divine handiwork and glory. ‘The heavens are telling the glory of God’, she writes, ‘and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.’ For the psalmist, the natural world and its rhythm bears testimony to God. Not in the language of words and sentences, but with a ‘visible voice’ – no actual words are heard, ‘yet their voice goes out … to the end of the world’. Wind and storm, sun and star, ocean and earth – their beauty and complexity and connectedness – all ‘speak’, glorify, testifiy to the existence of a Creator God. Of course, the psalmist, knew only a fraction of the picture as she beheld the might of thunderstorms, the light of sun and the shimmering Milky Way. Today, heavenly glory includes such wonders as the icy rings of Saturn, Neptune’s mysterious satellites, the captivating blue of Earth as seen from space, ultra-energetic quasars, explosive supernovas and vast black holes. And, even then, we’re just getting started in terms of cosmic wonder (see Kelly, The Catholic Imagination).
In Colossians, in a mindboggling piece from the apostle Paul, the claims about God as Creator and glory of the cosmos are linked directly to Jesus of Nazareth. ‘He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God,’ Paul writes, ‘… in him all things in heaven and on earth were created…’ This is a mind-bending claim. In effect, what Paul is saying is that a single human person born at a particular historical time in a dusty town in Palestine is source of it all – the pre-existing foundation of the very creation into which he himself was born. And, not only source, but also motivation, meaning and integrity: ‘all things have been created through him and for him’ and ‘in him all things hold together’. Think about it too much and it does your head in!! What can it possibly mean to claim that a human being within the cosmos is also the beginning and end of it? How can a brief human happening in the 13.7 billion-year history of the universe – the life and death of Jesus on planet earth – have anything to do with the integrity of the entire cosmos?
Well, for Paul, it all has to do with Jesus’s paradoxical nature. He is a fully-fledged human being, constituted from gas and elements of star dust, just like the rest of us. And at the same time, he is fully-fledged divinity: ‘In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell’. As a human being, Jesus experienced life just as we do – as wonderful and transitory, joyous and difficult …He loved, laughed, learnt and grew, wept and hoped, just like we do. And he died, just like we will, though not of natural causes or by accident. He was a powerful teacher, an exemplar of the good life. But if that was all, Paul would not be writing as he does here. For Paul, for the early church, the ‘ground breaking’ event was the resurrection. ‘He is the beginning, the first born from the dead’ (1.18), and, for Paul, this is the mystery that reveals his divinity. Jesus proved himself to be God,and in his way of living, dying and returning in forgiveness he showed us what God is like, what God is doing. ‘In him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 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’ (19-20). Paul’s claim is that reconciling love is the source and meaning of the cosmos – Jesus enacted this love in our midst, and invites us now to participate in God’s project of reconciliation.
Well – it sounds amazing, extraordinary, hopeful … but how are we to square this promise of all things reconciled with what we experience and observe – the travail of creation? Think of nature, for example, ‘red in tooth and claw’, and of what looks like the outrageous waste and violence intrinsic to the process of natural selection, or think of the explosive history of the universe. How does this fit with the claim that God, in Christ, is bringing all things into a ‘peaceable kingdom’?
Well, at one level, it’s not easily discerned in the midst of the turmoil. Stars are still blowing up, species are going extinct, there are dire concerns about our climate. Reconciliation is not the first word that comes to mind when you focus on all this. Which brings me again to the need for prayer and the importance of faith. This vision of reconciling love as source and fulfilment of the cosmos is essentially a mystical vision. It can’t be grasped by intellect alone. We come to know it, it’s received, as we make ourselves vulnerable in prayer, and know ourselves loved. It’s true, there’s a lot happening that’s troubling. To say that Christ is Alpha and Omega, cosmic reconciler, doesn’t mean denying the reality of division, violence and threat. Nor blindly believing that ‘she’ll be right’, no matter what we do or fail to do. It is, though, daring to trust that an energy of reconciling love is operative in the world, and is, through it all, drawing everything into communion.
Contemplative prayer, being quiet, still, and open before God is how we put ourselves in the way of this love, this movement; letting go of distractions, letting down protective barriers, undergoing God. And, as the history of saints at prayer testifies, the more we trust this way of surrender, the more we also participate in the realization of Christ’s love in our bit of creation, and become witnesses to its truth.
Now, you or me practising this kind of radical prayer and responsiveness can seem an insignificant thing when you think of the cosmos and the magnitude of forces at play, and in one sense it is. Then again, think of the power contained within a seed; or of the impact caused by splitting sub-atomic nuclei. Size isn’t everything – and in human affairs, purity of intention channels, focuses the power of God.
In August 2018, after a month of unprecedented temperatures and as wildfires raged across her country, Greta Thunberg, a fifteen-year-old pigtailed Swedish girl on the autism spectrum, decided not to attend school one Friday. Instead, she chose to sit outside the Swedish parliament, with a sign that read: School Strike for Climate.
It didn’t seem like much in the scheme of things, but someone noticed and shared what they saw. And other students started doing it too. A movement called Fridays for Future was seeded. A few months later, Thunberg was invited to address the United Nations Climate Change Conference. Last Friday, (one year later), over 4 million people rallied in cities around the globe calling for action on climate. In Canberra, 15,000 people gathered, including a bunch from St Ninian’s. Wow, could Greta have possibly imagined what her stand would unleash? Recently, she published a little book, and I couldn’t help but smile when I read its title: No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference.
Well, it’s an inspiring thought, and there’s truth in it; from little things big things can and do grow. But there’s more going on here than meets the eye. This isn’t just about Greta and her conviction. In the context of the world, let alone the cosmos, she is small, as are all who attended rallies. Not nothing, but certainly not the sustaining energy in this. Something else is at play – a spark, a spirit – and it’s bigger than all of us. You know what I think it is? The Spirit of the reconciling Christ. In him, all the fullness of God dwells, Paul wrote all those years ago. And, in him, the cosmic Christ, God is reconciling all things.
As catholic Christians, we’re called to participate in this reconciling work – to pray and respond. In the scheme of things, in the face of the challenges our part may seem small, even futile, but thank God, in this vast cosmos there’s more going on than meets the eye, and that means all the difference in the world.
References
Kelly, The Catholic Imagination, (https://resource.acu.edu.au/ankelly/Kelly_Catholic_Imagination.htm, sighted 20.09.2019).
Weil, S (1959) Waiting for God, Fontana, London.