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John 6:41-51
Colossians 1:15
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Today is the fourth and final Sunday in our Season of Creation.
In our worship together we have been focusing on the wonders of creation, celebrating
God’s gift of creation, and tackling the challenges of our duty of care for the well-being of creation.
Far from ignoring Christ, we have emphasised that Christ is at the heart of our celebrations of creation.
Would we usually associate Christ with creation?
I don’t think this is a straightforward and obvious matter of our Christian faith, and so I want today to offer some teaching on Christ and creation.
In other words, how do we understand creation Christologically ?
In the previous few weeks we have acknowledged the importance of the Incarnation of
Christ.
We have said (among other things) “The incarnate Christ connects us with Earth.”
This means that in being born as one of us into creation itself, God shows us a total commitment to the creatio n and to humanity’s place within creation.
This commitment by God to creation is so profound.
The incarnation of Christ shows us so much about God; what God has done, is doing and wants still to do.
Those who recognise and put their faith in this revelation of God see the incarnation of Christ as something that changes the world.
And what the incarnation means for the world is blessing, rescue and reconciliation.
When I say ‘those who recognise’, I say so deliberately.
For in today’s Gospel reading we hear about some ‘complainers’.
They were some of Jesus’ contemporaries.
And what were they complaining about?
They were complaining that Jesus was saying ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’
(v41)
They were saying, ‘Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?
How can he now say, “I have come down from heaven”?
This is perhaps a very understandable complaint.
Talk about coming down from heaven makes little sense in the c ontext of Jesus’ contemporaries; these people who know Jesus and his family.
Yet a full understanding of the Christ of faith insists there is much more to Jesus’ identity.
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In the New Testament we hear proclamations about the Cosmic Christ:
Ephesians Chapter 1
Hebrews Chapter 1
1 John Chapter 1
John ’s Gospel Chapter 1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God.”
It is significant that these New Testament references are all at the start of the various books and letters.
The Cosmic Christ is the Christ who existed from all eternity.
How can this be true of the man who stood among his contemporaries as one of them; he and his family part of the local community?
This man who had a life span of around thirty years and can be placed in human history around two thousand years ago?
Wow! We’re talking about two realities here!
Today’s other reading, from Colossians, Chapter 1, claims the same thing about the identity of the Cosmic Christ:
“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, ...all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He himself is before all things...” (vv15-17)
This theological understanding of the eternal identity of Christ is of course at the heart of
Trinitarian theology.
Christ (as the eternal second person of the Trinity who was born in a stable in Bethlehem) reveals to us that God is both transcendent and imminent; transcendent over and before creation, and imminent within creation.
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It’s been said that the Cosmic Christ is the beauty in the visible and the hope in the invisible.
An important claim of Christian faith; part of the revelation of Christ’s life on earth (that points to the eternal reality of the Cosmic Christ) is the Resurrection.
The Resu rrection further reveals God’s commitment to creation.
The resurrection of Christ releases the new life at the centre of creation, energising the purposes of God toward culmination.
And the culminating event the New Testament speaks of is the Second Coming of Christ; w here Christ will return to complete God’s creative purposes.
1 Both aspects of Christ’s identity are vital for faith. Collapsing Christ’s identity to just a man misses the revelation of his unique divine cosmic transcendence. And elevating Christ’s identity to only eternal and transcendent removes him from all relevance and significance in identifying with our human situation and remaining committed to us. Christian faith does not give us the option to reject either truth of Christ’s identity.
Various suggestions to try and do so in church history were vehemently rejected as heresies – both any rejection of Christ’s particular humanity and Christ’s eternal divinity.
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Jurgen Moltmann describes the resurrection as having cosmic scope:
“it is the first preliminary radiance of the imminent dawn of God’s new creation.” 2
The resurrection of Christ d emonstrates God’s commitment not only to the future of humanity alone, but the event that inaugurates the coming of God’s gift of life for all creation.
Our Cosmic Christ is found in both realities – the now and not yet.
Christ can be found everywhere.
Always able to surprise us.
And this full identity of Christ in eternity, found throughout creation, may well expand our appreciation for all God is, and enrich our worship.
American Lutheran theologian Joseph Sittler said that if we limit grace to the forgiveness of sins, the grace of God that is already present in the gift of life is neglected.
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So where do we sense the grace of Christ in our world?
In what places and situations and people might we expect to glimpse the grace of Christ?
Jesus said to his contemporaries “I am the bread of life.”
What I offer is as extraordinary as eternal life; and as ordinary as ...bread.
And so Christians ever since have identified themselves around the identity of the Cosmic
Christ who promises to satisfy our deep est human hunger: “Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
The bread of Christ’s Body, the Communion bread, is found for each of us in one place, and in all places!
After a thousand eatings we realise we are what we eat – the Body of Christ.
“Here’s who you are; be reminded of who you are.”
Christ’s eternal identity means he is eternally everywhere. And our faith must embrace this
Jesus (as well as the Jesus of Nazareth).
An d here’s the warning: if we don’t worship Christ in eternity, who is found throughout creation, we are more susceptible to racism, war, and neglect of the environment.
Don’t forget, it was Jesus who said: “When you do it to them, you do it to me” (Matthew 25)
We can see then Christ has revealed his commitment to creation as
Christ the Lord of all Creation
Christ the teacher (and humble servant)
Christ the Saviour (rescuer and reconciler)
2 Quoted in Migliore, p196.
3 Quoted in Faith Seeking Understanding, Daniel Migliore, p 108.
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and Christ the Resurrected One (who restores, and will come again to complete the new creation)
It’s easy to confine ourselves to our small worlds and busy ourselves tending only to the needs of daily life, imagining a very small God – who’s probably quite similar to ourselves.
Today, God’s Word reminds us that God’s gracious purposes have been present in and through Christ from all eternity.
Therefore creation is not merely a mechanistic, disenchanted material reality – but infused with the life and wonder of God’s presence in Christ.
Creation is a taonga (a treasure) in which we live, find life in its fullness, and discover our connection to God and to each other.
All creation pulses with the life given from God – each star and planet was created to praise
God as was each mountain, tree, and animal on earth. The beauty of the earth reflects
God’s goodness.
And we are drawn into an eternal song of praise, fuelled by resurrection power present in the
Cosmic Christ, who is committed to us and to be present to us – forever.
Let us have some quiet reflection as we lis ten to John Rutter’s ‘For the Beauty of the Earth’...
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