Pastor’s Pen
The sum of creation is the Theatrum mundi, “The theater of God’s glory.” Praise is both a human and cosmic impulse that results in transformative relationships with the divine. In nature, the songs of the birds and the whispers of the trees share a common story. The towering mountains and great plains witness common glory. The lowly beetles and soaring eagles share an everyday delight. These animate and inanimate creatures deliberately share a common desire that echoes in and through the living world. Divine praise is a performance of desire knitted into the very fabric of the cosmos. The contemplation of God’s beauty in nature’s great stage is a performance that absorbs the whole of creation.
Despite the beauty and allure of this prevenient grace, God wished for a deeper relationship with the world. The incarnation of Jesus Christ is the definitive moment in history. In the incarnation, the transcendent Creator God, who brings the world into being and sustains it at every moment, freely chooses to join that world in the flesh to become a part of God’s divine history. The Colossians hymn reiterates this point. Colossians 1:15-20 reveals that Jesus of Nazareth is nothing less than God, in whom the very universe is held in existence.[1] Christ is the image of the invisible God who has taken on flesh “so that he might come to have first place in everything.”[2] By becoming incarnate, Christ participates and acquires a genuine time and history. His own life and death are a part of the cosmic ethos. Christ is the beginning, middle, and end of all. The climax of salvation history is not detachment but a permanent indwelling with the material world. God, in loving freedom, chose to be God for us. The living God is found to be present in a way that would not have been possible otherwise. In Christ, God was pleased to reconcile all things, whether on earth or in heaven.[3]
The One who created the sun, moon, and stars above so loved creation that the Creator realized our being. The story of our lives is marked by our relationship with this Creator. We are justified by the knowledge of God, but our journey of faith goes deeper. God’s goodness invites the Church to delight in God afresh. Jesus Christ, who took on the same material that ushered the universe into motion, challenges us to become deeply involved with the most vulnerable and at the greatest risk in our neighborhood. Our “yes” to Christ informs our “no” to discriminatory systems, predatory business practices, and unchecked consumption. In praising the name of Jesus, we find that we are a part of the cosmic symphony of praise in heaven and on earth. In the incarnate Christ, we find the glory of God, who came “for us and for our salvation.” In the child born in a manger, we find the glory of God revealed in power that is made perfect in weakness. Participating in this whimsical divine dance of grace, we become ambassadors who might make earth as it is in heaven. We become those whose light shines with hope, love, peace, and joy! Let's laugh, dance, and sing this Christmas as we praise the Lord our God.
[1] For more on the cosmology of the Colossians hymn (Col. 1:15-20) see Vincent A. Pizzuto, A Cosmic Leap of Faith: An Authorial, Structural, and Theological Investigation of the Cosmic Christology in Col 1:15-20, (Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2006).
[2] Colossians 1:18.
[3] Colossians 1:20.
