Easter VII

So, a small reflection on cosmic things, for tomorrow:

The tradition has long pondered: just what is all this action of God (in Jesus) for?

Incarnation, living and teaching and healing, cruel and shameful political death at the the hands of Empire, strange and mysterious resurrection... and then what we come to today (or, this past Thursday): 'ascension' to the fuller presence of the divine. In John's Gospel, there is the sense of 'returning' back from whence he had come, and where 'he' had been present as part of the divine since the Big Bang! From the beginning of all things, through all things, creating all things. John's Gospel's vision is grand, and on a cosmic scale. Surely it all means something, this movement of the power and presence of God, this direction?

Irenaeus of Lyon, the leader (call him a bishop!) of a scrappy little church-community in a far-flung corner of the Roman Empire (c. 130-200), used this basic sense of the movement of God to link it all together: loosely put, "He became hum an that we might become divine." Sounds a lot like the sanctification/divinization conversation from last week. Yes, and for the school of Irenaeus (and others like him throughout the centuries), that was why some Gospel stories placed Jesus back 'up' where he had come from... after being fully human. This, for Irenaeus, is the whole point: God-is-Love puts on human flesh fully, and thus the human person can learn to put on God, fully. For the early Church Mothers and Fathers, this looked like this human person, post-mysterious-resurrection, fully going where God 'is' (in the geo-cosmology of the era). Irenaeus phrased it, in the late 2nd century, perhaps only a century after the time of Jesus, that he "...become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself."

So, there's motion in this -- divine motion and energy, renewing the face of the earth and all creatures, like that energy in the Genesis mythologies, where the Spirit moves over the face of the deep, and like the voice in the garden at the end of time (in John's apocalyptic vision), "...making all things new."

So, what does this have to do with the price of bread? What's it for? And, what's it for during a time of great ecological and public health and economic crisis?

What is the motion of divine presence now? Today? Where do you see it? For me, and for my friend Irenaeus, the life and living, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus were a pattern to use to understand the world. A lens, a frame. And, yes, a template for us to follow. Jesus in John's gospel today talks about how he abices in God, and we abide in him, and thus we abide in God and God abides in us. All this gives us a pattern.

Wise ones tell us that we all live in some sort of narrative. The narrative in our own minds, family narratives of meaning-making, cultural stories of permission giving and denial. We all live within a story. What story would you like to live within? What story is a pattern for finding not only life, but what Jesus calls 'abundant life?' And, not 'eternal life' as some sort of reward for punching your ticket-of-belief in a some particular dry way, but eternal life as a stepping even now out of the sometimes ridiculous narratives of our age and a stepping into the Life that is Eternal, even now. Abundant life, where we abide in God, always present, like plants rooted in cosmic soil, daily growing in grace and compassion no matter how long or short our life.

As our eyes grow adjusted to seeing this pattern in the world, we begin to resemble what this is a pattern of: Love. Which is one of the names Jesus gives to God.

What would an epidemic look like, or an ecological crisis look like, if viewed primarily through the lens of love? Who are the least among us, the most vulnerable? Pope Francis reminds us that the Earth, itself, is a most vulnerable fellow creature of God. What would it look like for our cultural and national life to be founded from the ground up, asking, 'what are the needs of the least among us,' and building an economy from that point onward?

For, this pattern of Jesus is still the pattern we can discern in the world today. In John's Gospel, Jesus says, "...unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains a single grain. But, if it dies, it produces much fruit." He is talking about himself. He is talking about us.

What fruit is born from this season in our life together depends on many things -- many beyond our immediate control. Yet, apply yourself to the pattern. To becoming the pattern, over time. What awaits? Nothing less or more than a stepping into the things that Really Matter. Into Life Eternal, beginning now. And, now, ever now. What fruit may grow?

Paul writes that the fruit of the Spirit - present in us - is, among other things, "... love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." He adds in acerbic, encouraging fashion: '...there is no law against these things." And, these things transform the world. Truth spoken to power, motivated by these fruits -- this transforms things as we know them. Among other things, they are the gifts of apply ourselves to this pattern, this template of Jesus.

"He became human, that we might become divine," as Irenaeus put it. Let's start with a little goodness and self-control.