Nature as the First Bible
The First Idea in the Mind of God
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Creation is the primary and most perfect revelation of the Divine. –Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274)
The first Incarnation of God did not happen in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago. That is just when it became human and personal for us, and many people started taking divine embodiment seriously. The initial Incarnation actually happened around 14 billion years ago with “The Big Bang.” That is what we call the moment when God decided to materialize and self-expose, at least in this universe. The first “idea” in the mind of God was to make Divine Formlessness into physical form, so that everything visible is a further revelation of what has been going on secretly inside of God from all eternity. Love always outpours! God spoke the Eternal Word/Idea called Christ, “and so it was!” (Genesis 1:9).
Two thousand years ago was the human incarnation of God in Jesus, but before that there was the incarnation through light, water, land, sun, moon, stars, plants, trees, fruit, birds, serpents, cattle, fish, and “every kind of wild beast” according to the Genesis creation story (1:3-25). This is the “Cosmic Christ” through which God has “let us know the mystery of his [sic] purpose, the hidden plan he so kindly made from the beginning in Christ” (Ephesians 1:9). Christ is not Jesus’ last name, but the title for his life’s purpose. Christ is our word for what Jesus came to personally reveal and validate—which is true all the time and everywhere.
Most of Christian history has heard little or nothing about this timeless mystery, and we settled for a small tribal God instead. We put Jesus in competition with other religions instead of allowing him to ground the universal search for God in the material world itself, in nature, cosmos, and history—from the very beginnings of time. In other words, all creatures were capable of knowing and loving God long before the world religions formalized their doctrines and rituals (Romans 1:20). Were the first centuries of human beings just trial runs and throwaways for a very inefficient God? That cannot be! Infinite Love would never operate that way. “The Christ Mystery” proclaims that there is universal and equal access to God for all who have ever wanted love and union since the primal birth of humanity.
As Colossians puts it: “[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation” (1:15); he is the one glorious icon that names and reveals the entire glorious meaning of history. “The fullness is founded in him … everything in heaven and everything on earth” (Colossians 1:19-20). It gets better: God has never stopped thinking, dreaming, and creating the Christ, as this one mystery continues to unfold and evolve in time (Romans 8:19-25).
Gateway to Silence:
Let all the earth bless the Lord.
References:
Adapted from “Creation as the Body of God,” Radical Grace, Vol. 23, No. 2, April-June 2010, pp. 3, 22;
The Cosmic Christ (CD, MP3 download);
and In the Footsteps of Francis: Awakening to Creation (CD, MP3 download)
