The Thread of the Cosmic Christ

For a few weeks, several of us have been reading and discussing Richard Rohr’s book, The Universal Christ. Richard Rohr is a Franciscan priest and a very popular spiritual teacher. In this book, The Universal Christ, Rohr highlights and develops one particular strand in Christian thought. He presents it as The Truth, but I think that he would be the first to say that the fullness of God is something that is beyond our ken. Rather than thinking that there is one ‘truth’, I find it more helpful to see the strands of Christian thought as a beautiful and intricate tapestry in which many different ideas and knowings and experiences come together.

Lenny talked about interpretation in her homily last week, reminding us that our faith tradition goes back thousands of years and so we have to interpret ancient scriptures to see how they are relevant to us today. And it’s not just scripture but we also get to interpret the writings of Christians who have come before us - prophets and mystics and teachers.

The great formula of Anglican theology is that we interpret scripture in the light of tradition and reason. The Christian tradition outside of scripture was already developing and being written down years before the last book included in the New Testament was written. So, in addition to scripture, we have over 2000 years of Christian tradition. 2000 years to create a rich tapestry of different teachings, ideas and experiences.

The Universal or Cosmic Christ is one of the strands in the tapestry, once which we hear clear and loud in the New Testament reading today from Colossians.

Christ Jesus 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. 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.

This is a very different picture of Jesus Christ than the one we get from the gospels, like todays’ gospel where Jesus has dinner in the home of Mary and Martha.

There’s a similar contrast between the cosmic and the earthly at the very beginning of the four gospels. Mark jumps straight to Jesus’ baptism, Matthew gives us magi and Luke shepherds, but John comes swooping in with a cosmic view, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” The first three tell us what was happening on earth but John gives us a cosmic perspective.

So when we tease out of the great tapestry the thread of the Cosmic Christ we need to remember that it is but one thread, however magnificent, which must be balanced against the lived experience of Christ incarnate in Jesus. The Jesus who would eat and drink with anyone and who loved to talk late into the night with his friends, the Jesus who healed those who came to him with compassion and love; the Jesus who sweated blood before he was betrayed and crucified.
 
In 1968, on Christmas Eve, the Apollo 8 space crew passed behind the moon for the first time and took a photo of our planet, Earth, hanging over a bleak lunar landscape. That photo, known as Earthrise, together with the iconic Blue Marble photo taken four years later, also on Christmas Eve have transformed our understanding of the world. And when we add in the astonishing images that have come from telescopes and satellites, it is not surprising that human awareness of our planet, the solar system and the worlds beyond has completely changed within the lifetime of most of us sitting here.

And when human consciousness takes such a great leap, our tradition must be revisited and mined to help us understand these new ideas within the context of our knowledge of God and of God’s ways. So it is not surprising that Christian theologians and scientists are currently rediscovering the cosmic Christ who is present in the creation of the cosmos and in whom as our reading this morning said, all things hold together. In this amazing expanding universe, it is the Christ who holds all things together.

In my own spiritual evolution, I have found and continue to find, the cosmic Christ to be a huge inspiration. The idea that Christ is in all creation and is constantly drawing the universe to its highest potential, and that we get to play a role in that creation, that we are indeed co-creators with God, blows my mind.

And it has expanded my vision of God from the childhood ‘Father’ who punishes you when you’ve been bad and treats when he feels like it, all because he really loves you, to a generous and unconditionally loving God who is as close to me as the neutrons, protons and electrons within the atoms which make up my body. The cosmic Christ is also the quantum Christ in whom all things live and move and have their being; the one through whom and for whom all things were created.

This strand in the grand tapestry of scripture and tradition challenges and stands in tension with other strands which have seen God and creation as distinctly separate. Those strands argue that the Creator God  created the world as a separate creation which is not God and that through human disobedience it became even more separate so it was necessary for the Christ to incarnate as Jesus and to suffer and die because humanity had sinned. (That’s a simplistic description which we could unpack for a long time, but it’s good enough for now.)

People for whom that strand is deeply meaningful are concerned that the vision of the cosmic Christ subtracts from the importance of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. But look at how the writer to the Colossians ties the two together: “in him [that is, in Christ Jesus] 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.”

The cosmic Christ is also Jesus Christ who died on the cross. Through him God made peace, reconciling us and all things to himself. Now this writer doesn’t concern him or herself with why reconciliation was necessary, but God was pleased, yes God was pleased “to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of Jesus’ cross.”

All things – the whole cosmos – reconciled to God through the cross. Isn’t that the good news? The gospel? We don’t have to do anything, we don’t have to lift a finger. It is all grace. There is nothing we need do to have peace with God because the cosmic Christ already sorted that one in his incarnation as Christ Jesus.

So when you wake up in the night and are flooded with guilt, when you feel that you just aren’t good enough, when you feel inadequate, when you look at the world around us and you shudder, remember this: God has already sorted it, and God was pleased to do so. From the perspective of the divine there is nothing we need do because it has all been brought into glorious and generous completion in the cosmic Christ - 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. Including you and me, with all our flaws.
And, my friends, God is pleased.
the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall