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,
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.”
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.
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