Filled
With Love
What to
do as nationalism, secularism and strong-man dictators rise up across the
world? In 1925 Pope Pius XI instituted Christ the King Sunday because he felt,
that with the rising nationalism, secularism, and strong man dictators that
eventually became World War II, a Sunday was necessary to refocus us on why we
are here – to be icons of God’s love in this world. Originally set as the last
Sunday of October, in 1969, another era of social turmoil, Pope Paul VI moved
it to the Last Sunday before Advent and called it, “The Solemnity of our Lord
Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.” Sunday, November 24, 2019 is Christ the
King Sunday, King of the Universe.
Christ
the King is a title that strikes a peculiar tension since any and all
descriptions of Jesus who is called Christ thankfully bear little to no
resemblance to the kinds of earthly leaders and kings Jeremiah condemns in no
uncertain terms: “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my
pasture! says the Lord. Therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel,
concerning the shepherds who shepherd my people: It is you who have scattered
my flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. So, I
will attend to you for your evil doings, says the Lord.” Jesus, he who is called
Christ – anointed, messiah– has none of the trappings of these wicked, evil
shepherds: Christ does not destroy, scatter and divide. Rather, he heals,
restores, gathers and unites every one and every thing.
It is
plain to see that he is like no earthly king at all. And yet. We who will in
another few weeks proclaim the Incarnation of God in the Christ child need be
reminded that the child born of Mary, a young woman from a small town in
Galilee, was, according to the Letter to the Colossians, and the majestic and
profound opening lines of the Gospel of John, present before that first
Incarnation, that first revealing of God’s power and love of every thing, the
Creation of all that is, seen and unseen. This First Incarnation took place
some 13.7 billion years before the Second Incarnation we celebrate in the
arrival of the fullness of God in the Christ child. He did not come into this
world as much as he comes out of an already Christ-soaked world as God’s
presence poured into a single human being so that divinity and humanity can be
seen operating in him.
“He is
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. … 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.”
[Colossians 1:11-20]
Richard
Rohr is quick to point out that it is a leap of faith “trusting that Jesus
together with Christ gave us one human but fully accurate window into the
Eternal Now that we call God…This is a leap of faith that many believe they
have made when they say, ‘Jesus is God!’ But strictly speaking, those words are
not theologically correct. Christ is God, and Jesus is the Christ’s historical
manifestation in time. Jesus is a Third Someone, not just God and not just man,
but God and human together.” [Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ, p18]
Theologians
in the Middle Ages began to see that this Christ is a Cosmic Christ. And that
this is one of the earliest understandings of just who Jesus is as witnessed in
Colossians, John and throughout the New Testament. We say “is” because as John
chapter one puts it, “The true light... was coming into the world.” That is,
the Christ Mystery is not a one-time event, but an ongoing process throughout
time – as constant as the light that fills the universe. We must remember, that
we do not so much as see light but that light enables us to see every thing
there is to see – just as the Cosmic Christ enables us to see both who and what
God is, and therefore who and what we are – Love. “God is love, and he who
abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” [1 John 4:16b]
Consider,
that for the philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages, this Second
Incarnation in the life of Jesus provides divine clues as to the structure and
meaning not only of humanity, but of all life and of the entire universe! Ilia
Delio, in her book The Humility of God, points out that the thirteenth century
philosopher Dun Scotus, focused on such passages as John 1, Colossians 1, and 1
John 4, concludes that “the Incarnation was too great a mystery to simply
remedy a defect. Rather, from all eternity, Christ was willed by God to come in
the highest glory. The reason, according to Scotus, is simply that God is love
and wanted to love a creature who could fully respond in love. Christ would
have come, he said, even if there had been no sin. Christ is the first in God’s
intention to love and it is because of Christ that creation has its meaning.”
[Delio p 50] That is, concludes Delio, in understanding Jesus as the Cosmic
Christ, King of the Universe, Incarnation occurs because of a positive – love –
not a negative – sin. Such an understanding of Christ the King makes all the
difference as to how we are to shape our lives as Christians in this world.
“If love
is the reason for the Incarnation then it is also the reason for God’s humility
because…God’s love is a humble love. It is a love that goes out of itself
toward the other for the sake of the other…Bonaventure captured the core of the
humility of God when he wrote, …’the eternal God has humbly bent down and
lifted the dust of our nature into unity with his own person.’” [Ibid p 51].
God’s love is, writes Delio, a love which bends down to lift us up even when we
are at our worst. Which is why we see God’s humility expressed most vividly in
the cross because God could not bend over any further in love for us and
creation than in the suffering and death of the cross. [Ibid p53] For it is on
the cross where we see the Christ still comforting, healing and reconciling all
to himself as he forgives those who have crucified him and promises the
criminal on the cross nearby, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me
in Paradise." [Luke 23:33-43]
Jesus
comes out of creation to show us that all of creation, all of God, all of every
thing is filled with the presence of the Eternal Now that we call God. And if
it is as John and Colossians says, that all things, every thing, come from this
Cosmic Christ, then every thing, not just people, but every thing, seen and
unseen, visible and invisible, is a “child of God.” The Whole of Creation is
the Beloved Community of God’s Love, not just the Church. Every thing, every
person, is holy ground – as Woody Guthrie once wrote, “every speck of dust is
holy ground.” Every atom, every neutrino, is holy ground. We must seek Christ,
not merely in “all persons,” but in all creatures and in every thing throughout
the created universe, for all things come out of this Christ-filled creation as
an expression of God’s love for all.
We have
been misled by bad shepherds to think that faith consists in our assent to
certain mental beliefs, rather than our calm and hopeful assent to the presence
of the Cosmic Christ in all and in every thing. As St Paul tells us in his hymn
to Love, only three things last, three things that are the essence of the
Christ-filled life: faith, hope and love. And each of these must always include
the other two: faith is always loving and hopeful; hope is always faithful and
loving, and love is always faithful and hopeful. And faith and love and hope
are all things that we do, not things that we say. As Jesus himself says, what
matters is “doing this right,” not “saying this right.” [Luke 6:46] As Richard
Rohr concludes about this Cosmic Christ, “Jesus came to show us how to be human
much more than how to be spiritual, and the process still seems to be in its
early stages!” [Richard Rohr, Ibid pp 22-23]
Whether
Pius XI knew it or not, by calling us annually to reflect on the Cosmic Christ,
King of the Universe, he calls us to come to new understandings of faith, hope
and love: No one religion can ever encompass the depth of such faith. No
ethnicity has a monopoly on such hope. No nationality can control or limit this
flow of such universal love. [Rohr ibid p 22] Just as all creation is filled
with this love, so may our hearts also be filled with this love - a love that
goes out of itself toward the other for the sake of the other.
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