Colossians 1:15-20, John 1.1-14
Second Sunday before Lent, 7 February 2021
What’s the story of creation? There’s a question to chew over today. You’ll probably say straightaway, well it’s obvious, it’s the one where God made the world and everything in it out of nothing, in seven days, taking the last day off for a rest. It’s right there in Genesis. We say that because we Christians are ‘people of the book’, a book which begins with that very tale.
It’s worth asking the question, though, because if we’d been born, say, into a Native American culture then our story of creation would be the Earth Mother giving birth; or if we came from Northern Europe then we’d recount those Norse myths about the world emerging through an act of primal violence when the Sky and the Earth got ripped apart. Wow. It makes ‘our’ creation story seem quite gentle by comparison. Some, of course, believe in a ‘big bang’ and the evolution of nature and humankind, or in a mixture of these tales.
It’s good to stop and think about the story of creation from time to time, because our life story is part of the life story of creation itself. Yes, wake up to this wonderful notion - that your humble life story is an integral and essential part of the life story of creation which we comprehend through the Word of God in the bible and the life of Jesus Christ.
You know, the suffering we’re all feeling in this pandemic crisis, we could call it existential suffering - the isolation is compounded by that sense that we are created to live in relationship with one another, and social distancing prevents those relationships flourishing; the fear of the virus is tied in with our fear of the forces of nature to which we are bound, and which our human behaviour affects, but which are beyond our understanding and out of our control. So we need some assurance, to help re-set ourselves in these days. And meditating on our creation story may just help.
Here’s a different perspective on creation for you - straight from the letter of Paul to the Colossians. That as Christians our creation story begins not with that formless void and darkness over the deep; rather, Paul teaches that for us, creation begins with the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Yes, the earliest Christians understood creation through the resurrection. For them, that event, above all other events in history, was the pivotal one, the one through which everything else came together. The Resurrection of Jesus, his defeat of death itself, made sense of everything that had so far happened, and shaped everything which was to follow.The letter to the Colossians is one of the earliest pieces of Christian writing we have, written sixty years after the resurrection, before the gospels, so it gives us great insight into what the very first believers believed. Let us listen again to how they saw Christ: as ‘the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation’;
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. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 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. For in him all 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. [2]
This is the central point of the first Christians’ belief: that creation begins with Jesus.
This changes our understanding of God as Creator from someone who once did something long long ago and then left us to get on with it, to someone who is doing something through Jesus. With the Father he was in on Creation from the beginning, but Creation only fully begins after Jesus dies, in a completely new way, in the garden on the first day of the week.
Creation starts from and through Jesus. Where God, through his graciousness brought existence out of nothing, Jesus' gracious self-giving out of love enabled him to break the human culture of death, and bring into being a radiantly living and exuberant culture. From this we learn that creation and salvation aren’t two different things, but rather that the salvation which Jesus was working was, at the same time, the fulfilment of creation.
Through Jesus' works and words and signs the Creator brings his work to completion. The act of creation was revealed for what it really is: the bringing to existence and the making possible of all things living together on this earth in ways which do not know death; and Jesus was in on this from the beginning: creating by the overcoming of death. [3]
Now you might justifiably ask, but where is this overcoming of death? Our world is full of death; creation itself is dying, we are told. Many ask the hard question which Stephen Fry recently voiced, "Why should I respect a God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?” [4].
Our Colossians reading today tells us that ‘in Jesus all things hold together’. It explains that ‘through Jesus, God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.’
As a result of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, Creation is in the process of leaving death behind. Creation is in the process of being reconciled. Note that Creation is not changed instantly by the Resurrection. It is a work in progress. So death is in the process of being defeated; the principalities and powers of this world are in the process of being reconciled to God. Can you see that in the way that the world’s industrial corporations are slowly turning away from destructive fossil-fuel use to sustainable energy? In just the same way, we are created and being re-created constantly - becoming a good person is the slow work of a lifetime.
When we embrace the meaning of the Cross and accept the power of the Resurrection into our lives, we become part of God’s work of reconciling Creation. If we pray each day to play our part in this work we’ll discover ways to live it out. Whether by tending the garden or helping the grandchildren with their schoolwork, whether by phoning the partner of the hospitalised or by making ethical investments, we play our part in reconciling Creation in the Resurrection way.
This is what it means to become God’s children. The moment of our creation is the moment we decide to embrace Jesus Christ, as John put it sometime after Paul,
To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. [5]
Notes
[1] This is a rewrite (in the time of the coronavirus) of my Reconciling Creation, preached in Somerset, 2015.
[2] Colossians 1:15-20.
[3] James Alison, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination, pp.55-56. Altered. Referenced in Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Lectionary: Creation in Christ. See also Girardian Lectionary, Resources on Colossians 1:15-28, PROPER 11C.
[4] Samuel Osborne, Stephen Fry was asked what he would say to God if they met. His answer is being investigated by police. Independent, 7 May 2017
[5] John 1.12-13.
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