Seventh Sunday of Easter: “…they are in the world, while I am coming to you ...”
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Seventh Sunday in Eastertide
2020Parish of Holy Cross—St. John the Baptist
Midtown Manhattan
“…they are in the world, while I am coming to you ...”
These days the world looks like a different place.
Quite literally.
Perhaps you’ve seen some of the photos from around the globe, like these, in which members of the animal kingdom currently roam in places heretofore dominated by humans. Possibly you’ve noticed those snapshots capturing the remarkable reduction in airborne pollution levels over the past few weeks. Or you might have read those reports detailing a quantifiable drop in seismic activity under the earth’s surface. So long as a good many of us have extra time on our hands these days, we do well to reflect a bit more expansively on our creaturely life. As a gift from the Creator, humanity’s location in this vast cosmos.
The gospel passage proclaimed on this seventh Sunday in Eastertide is a portion of Jesus’ farewell discourse from the gospel of John. He prays passionately for his disciples that they be granted a share of divine protection, a share of his glory, the glory of the Triune G-D. The G-D of creation and covenant. The G-D he was revealing in life, death and resurrection. He does not pray that they be saved from the world. Rather he prays they be saved in the world. Saved with and in the world. Creation brought to completion and perfection. Fulfillment of Creation.
Theologian James Alison has articulated this relationship between creation and salvation broadly and boldly:
[H]ere is the central point: we understand creation starting from and through Jesus. God’s graciousness which brings what is not into existence from nothing is exactly the same thing as Jesus’ death-less self-giving out of love which enables him to break the human culture of death, and is a self-giving which is entirely fixed on bringing into being a radiantly living and exuberant culture. It is not as though creation were a different act, something which happened alongside the salvation worked by Jesus, but rather that the salvation which Jesus was working was, at the same time, the fulfillment of creation.¹
Admittedly, that is a dense, provocative passage. But I would like to suggest that it is well worth your while to ponder. Pause. Pray. Perceive.
In this endeavor, a second theologian, Elizabeth Johnson, might aid us in our perception:
As the first fruit of an abundant harvest, the Risen Jesus Christ pledges a future for all the dead, not only the dead of the human species but of all species. In Jesus crucified and risen, God who graciously gives life to the dead and brings into being the things that do not exist will redeem the whole cosmos. As Ambrose of Milan in the fourth century preached, “In Christ’s resurrection the earth itself rose.”
The reasoning runs like this. This person, Jesus of Nazareth, Wisdom incarnate, was composed of star stuff and earth stuff; his life formed a genuine part of the historical and biological community of Earth; his body existed in a network of relationships drawing from and extending to the whole physical universe. As a child of the earth he died, and the earth claimed him back in a grave. In the resurrection his flesh was called to life again in transformed glory. Risen from the dead, Jesus has been reborn as a child of the earth, radiantly transfigured … The evolving world of life, all of matter in its endless permutations, will not be left behind but will be transfigured by the resurrecting action of the Creator God².
Deep Incarnation.
Now is an opportune time to rethink our place in the world, to reimagine our cosmic abode in the grasp of the G-D revealed in Jesus Christ. In 2015, Pope Francis issued a robust encyclical urging us, exhorting us to be transformed – mind, imagination, heart and will – in our lives as creatures of the living G-D: Laudate Si’. With all the time presently on our hands due to sheltering policies, why not give it a generous read? Francis opens his tome thus:
“LAUDATO SI’, mi’ Signore” – “Praise be to you, my Lord”. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. “Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs”.
This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she “groans in travail” (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters. (1-2).
As Capuchin Franciscan friars serving on the parish staff here at Holy Cross—St. John the Baptist, Francis, John Baptist, Sal, Basil, and myself stand in this long tradition of Franciscan reverence for all creation. We take pride in the pope’s reliance upon Francis of Assisi to structure his own thoughts, as well as his admiration for the poetic prowess on display in our founder’s Canticle of Creatures. Francis of Assisi did indeed possess the soul and imagination of a poet. And yet, his vision was beyond poetic. It was and is the vision of a mystic. Someone who enjoys entrée to the divine gaze of the One who creates and saves.Annually, on October 4th, the feast of Francis of Assisi, Franciscans around the world celebrate the rite of the blessing of animals. Here in New York City, the gathering rounds up house pets of all shapes and sizes: dogs, cats, birds, fish and the like. In rural regions, the blessing is offered for livestock and such. If we were to step more fully into the mystical vision of Francis, we’d extend blessing to waterways and grain fields, the stars and planets of the heavens, as well as the hidden atoms that comprise the core of every creature on earth and in the heavens.
Leaving behind the poetic, returning to prosaic, scientific terminology: we dwell within a massive, intricate ecosystem that sustains all life on this planet. To the extent it is healthy, so are we. To the extent it is in peril, so are we.
Ponder. Pause. Pray. Perceive.
Bring to mind the picture of our planet taken from the moon. There it is, a beautiful blue marble spinning against the black background of space. Now imagine that under its shielding atmosphere there exists a network of living creatures ranging in size from wee microorganisms to giant sequoias and massive blue whales, including humans toward the larger end of the scale, all interacting with the land, water and air of their different ecosystems. In scientific terms this enveloping skein of life is called the biosphere. In faith terms, it is called the community of creation. Picture yourself as an indigenous member of this community.
The basis for this sense of community is, of course, the belief that the whole world comes from the hand of the one gracious God who created everything out of love. Not only that, but throughout time every creature with its relationships is held in existence by the same vivifying Giver of Life. At the end, all will be gathered into a new heaven and a new earth by the same divine, ineffable love. Such is the doctrine of creation in its threefold fullness.³
Deep Incarnation. New Heaven. New Earth.
These days the world looks like a different place.
“ …they are in the world, while I am coming to you …”
¹James Alison, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination, New York: Crossroads, 1996, 49-56.
²Elizabeth Johnson, Creation and the Cross: The Mercy of God for a Planet in Peril. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2018, 190-191.
³Johnson, Creation and Cross, 199.
