“He is the image of the invisible God,…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 1:15-20 NRSV
Who is Jesus Christ, what does he do, and what does that matter to us, our neighbors and the world?
Who is he? What does he do? What does it matter?
These are some questions that people might ask, somewhere in their mind and body and heart. And we might be open to how this scripture lifts up these questions and offers answers. It’s less an intellectual exercise, and much more a matter of living guidance, and listening and looking for leadings from God. These living questions open the eyes of our hearts more and more to certain things. The image of the invisible God, the fullness, the fullness of the creative word, its energies and stillness pleased to dwell with us: who is Jesus Christ. Who reconciles all things to God, making peace, rendering whole and healed: what Jesus does. The head of the body, the church, all those called out of old habits of looking and listening and called into looking and listening for God’s leadings in our lives and the wider world.
Maybe a scripture like is trying to help us gain the ability to see certain things. I knew someone who saw sandhill cranes fly over his house. This man loved wilderness and knew it pretty well. Sharing this sight with a biologist, he was told quite certainly that there were no sandhill cranes in Washington. Any of you out there who have also seen sandhill cranes in SW Washington might appreciate that knowledge among other things can gets in the way of seeing. Thoughts, assumptions, emotional pressures. Sometimes we need someone to help us learn to see. A child is out on a walk in the woods with a grandmother, and the grandmother says ‘let’s slow down a bit and look for a deer. Oh look, did you see that? No? there is one right there! Look for the ear to flick. Now you see it!’ Or the child says, ‘I see a squiggly brown cat!’, and grandfather disbelieving what he hears, or maybe caught up worrying about money or health, stops, looks up, and says ‘yes!, you do see! Let me help you know what to call that living thing you see- a mink.
I went for a walk last Sunday when I was here, joining two of you, and meeting another you on the trail too. I was so grateful for the walk, and its sights, and for the guidance about where I might continue the path. At one moment, and more, I was so taken with the fullness of the view, across the water, of the clear water near shore and the glacial gravel I could see through it. The hillside leading down to the water, and the sun shining overall. As I walked up through the old gravel pit, I watched two ravens jump around and then take off flying. And so much I missed seeing or was hidden. Evidently that was a patch of land had provided gravel and had been reserved from further gravel mining. It is also land that bears the harms of the industrial economy that benefits us, toxins hidden in the soil. Those wounds and illness in a patch of ground don’t go away easily. Maybe there is some kind of mushroom that will evolve that renders arsenic into a benign form. But that day I could see these within a sight of the sun, the waters, the gravel deposited here thousands of years ago, people of all ages walking and enjoying the earth and each other’s company. Such is the fullness, the cosmic landscape embraced by God’s loving-kindness and peace.
In Christ Jesus we might learn to look and see the fullness of life that bypasses all the things that obscure our hearts seeing God. And seeing him, we want to be with him, in his friendship, company after a long hard walk, resting, sharing food and conversation and stillness. We see and receive something of the fullness of life in a person, who walked, and shared common life with friends and strangers, and died on a cross amidst ridicule of unjust powers and even those condemned by them. And yet, we hear about a person crucified beside Jesus who heart’s sight remains unobscured by the madness of the judges, crowds and condemned. This person looks and sees truly. Looking at the cross, looking upon Jesus, this person saw whole being this was the one in whom all the fullness was pleased to dwell. And to him Jesus says yes, you see the life that is here, yes, today you will be with me.
Fr. Evan Clendenin