Br. Curtis Almquist

Colossians 1:15-28

If I were to ask you “Who is Jesus to you?” you could probably say something right on the spot. You might not be ready to publish… however, there is something you could readily name about Jesus’ identity or your relationship to Jesus that you could express. That’s my hunch. “Who is Jesus to you?” You might speak of Jesus’ miraculous birth; or perhaps to his being Savior of the world; or to his miracles past and present; or to his being crucified, resurrected, ascended; or perhaps to his Real Presence in Holy Communion. However, my hunch is that you would not make reference to a particular phrase which appears in the Nicene Creed, which comes momentarily.[i] The phrase you will probably not use in your brief description of Jesus is, “Through him all things were made.”

That phrase first appears not in the Nicene Creed, but in Saint Paul’s Letter to the Colossians, the passage we just heard read, which is called “The Creation Hymn.” The phrase – “through him all things were made” – hugely enlarges the picture of “God the Son,” whom we know in earthly life as Jesus. Here is Saint Paul’s attention grabber: Jesus, who is God the Son, is the agent of creation. It is through the Son that “all things were made.” Trace your memory back to the beginning of the Book of Genesis, the creation story. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…” God the Son. “And God saw everything he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” [ii] God the Son is the agent of creation. All that has been created for evermore in this world and in the worlds of interstellar space and the galaxies of the universe has been created by the Son of God. Saint Paul continues, saying that the Son of God humbled himself to take on earthly life.[iii] The Creator became the creature.

The Welsh poet and priest, R. S. Thomas, wrote an apocalyptic poem entitled, “The Coming.” The poem describes what had gone awry on earth with the appalling suffering and the desiccated hopelessness and despair. In the poem, we witness the Trinity: God the Son conferring with the Father and the Spirit. The Son, as he looks down upon earth, says, “Let me go there.”[iv] And God the Son, the Creator, is born a human being among us. This is Jesus. Saint Paul describes Jesus as “the image of the invisible God.”[v] The English word “image” is the translation of the Greek word “icon.” Jesus is the icon of the invisible God. In Jesus we can see, and hear, and feel, and know, and name the eternal, invisible, seemingly-distant God. Jesus entered the world to redeem world and to restore it to life.

In The Narnia Chronicles, C. S. Lewis captures a scene in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” where everything in Narnia is trapped in a 100-year-old winter night. This frozen lifelessness has happened because of collusion with the evil White Witch who has cast the icy spell. And then a miracle begins to happen. The great lion Aslan – who is the Christ figure – appears “on the move” in Narnia. Everything begins to thaw and springtime begins. “The mist turned from white to gold…. Shafts of delicious sunlight struck down onto the forest floor and overhead you could see a blue sky between the tree-tops.” Aslan comes as the rescuer and redeemer of the lost world.

In Jesus, God the Son comes into our world not just for the “spiritual salvation” of people. There is much more. Jesus comes to us because “God so loved the whole world.”[vi] The Greek word used for the “world” is cosmos. Jesus is the Savior of the cosmos.[vii] The breadth of Jesus’ saving intervention of love includes everything that has been created: people, to be sure, created in the very image of God, as well everything else that has been created and that suffers. Jesus is the “Savior of the cosmos.”

What is our personal calling, our vocation? Saint Paul calls us “ambassadors of Christ.”[viii] We are emissaries of God’s light, and life, and love. We are missionaries both to people and to the rest of creation which Saint Paul says “groans” in its suffering and estrangement.[ix] With so much suffering that surrounds us now, we live in a very opportune, crucial time to be God’s ambassadors. None of us has a global outreach; however all of us are within arm’s reach of some practice of restoration, or renewal, or adoption. We are all within reach some act of justice-making on behalf of God’s creatures – people, as well as earth, sky, and water; flowers and plants and trees; animals of the earth; birds in the sky; fish of the sea, these voiceless creatures who suffer so much devastation from our hands through things we have done, and things we have left undone, and things done on our behalf.

Where can we give our voice and muscle on behalf of some constituent part of creation that suffers injustice, discrimination, abuse, or neglect? To what people and for what other members of God’s creation can you and I take a stand? That is God’s invitation and God’s request. When I hear Jesus say, “as you have done to the least of these my brethren, you have done to me,”[x] I am thinking about people… but more than just people: about the whole of creation. We have duty!

God the Son, whom we know as Christ Jesus, has a vested interest in being Savior of the world, the whole cosmos. God the Son is the Creator of everything that has been, is now, and shall be. We believe that in our baptism Christ comes to live within us. And he instills in us the vocation and the power to co-operate in his work of saving the world. We must be on with it!

[i] The Nicene Creed attests: “…We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made…” The Book of Common Prayer (1979), p. 358.

[ii] Genesis 1:1-31.

[iii] Philippians 2:5-7.

[iv] R. S. Thomas (1913-2000) in “The Coming”:

And God held in his hand

                      On a bare

[v] “Image” = εἰκὼν (icon): Colossians 1:15.

[vi] John 3:16.

[vii] Jesus is “the Savior of the world κόσμου”: John 4:42.

[viii] 2 Corinthians 5:20.

[ix] Romans 8:22-24.

[x] Matthew 25:40-45.