What exactly are the "works of God"? If we were to consider the breadth and depth of the Sacred Scriptures, if we were to survey the Creation from farthest-flung space, if we were to meditate closely upon the Most Holy Words of Jesus .... and then decipher what it all means, what it all comes down to, we must come to one conclusion: the works of God, and only of God, are life, and especially life on His brilliant, one-of-a-kind Masterpiece: our planet Earth.
We may scan the skies ceaselessly looking for it; we may spend a trillion dollars searching and listening for it; we may fill our fantasy entertainments with abundance of it; but be assured of this: God has selected our planet home, and our planet alone, as the favored moment and place when and where He has exercised His dazzling creative powers to the full, and in all their countless varieties and prismatic splendors. It Earth is where He has chosen to unveil His boldest experiment: a living creature formed in His own Image and endowed with that Divine property, Free Will. God has it. The angels have it. We have it.
Sister Mary Anne shared a meditation this morning prompted by the Liturgy's Epistle reading: ".... a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divination ...." (Acts 16:16). "What," Sister said, "is divination?" I said that narrowly it meant that she could see the future. But generally it suggests an aptitude for communing with divine being. And we thought aloud: who or what could these things be? Who lives in the spirit world? Well, there are only two orders of life in the spirit world — God and His spiritual creatures. God is spirit. God alone has created and governs the spirit world .... made of Himself, His angels, and man. Man is part of this Divine world and plan. We know that there are evil spirits: fallen angels and men and women who do evil things. And there are good spirits: the angels of God and men and women who are faithful to God. And that is the spirit world. But, people will protest, what about the pagan gods? What about the animistic beliefs on this island, for example? The Orthodox Church holds that all such figures are fallen angels. The gods of Greek mythology are fallen angels who tricked themselves out with a holy mountain, Mt. Olympus, to stand opposite God's Holy Mountain, Mt. Sinai. That's it. There is nothing more to it.
Though our science fiction might overflow with an abundance of creatures from other planets in movies like Star Trek or Star Wars, this puny canon must fail. For there are no creatures superior to ourselves. And ought to contemplate just how amazing a creation we are. We are far beyond (and always shall be) beyond our ability to make.
It is our beautiful, fragile planet Earth, and God's spirit world, His mysterious god-like creatures, on which He has shed His Divine grace. And nothing could ever hope to rival What-He-has-done.
Or inclination on this subject is to exclaim, "But about elsewhere?" Well, look above you! Since 1958 when we began our search for elsewhere, all we have discovered are dead rocks spinning in a void, which we charitably term "the other planets" ..... and of course these burning balls we call the stars. And they shed light on something we really don't ever say. We give them beguiling names: Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn. But we never say the obvious. What do they all have in common? And let's not forget the moon and asteroids and comets. What do they all have in common? They are dead, vacant, wastelands. We should have named them junkyard1, junkyard2, and so forth. They are so much alike. They lack life.
They no more resemble our planet home than deserts of barren stones resemble our verdant meadows with their profusions of wildflowers; our many-hued valleys with their freshets and cataracts; our pristine, towering forests with their wealth of mammal life; our seas teeming with many-colored, many-shaped, and animate life. The fragrance of these alone is spellbinding. This is our God, and these are His works. And elsewhere is where He has not chosen to work.
The Gospel for today begins its Prologue,
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All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made
that was made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. (Jn 1:1-4) |
In light of our conversation, is this not a depiction of our solar system? The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness (i.e., the lifeless, dumb planets) stares down upon our (we like to say) "pale blue dot" of life, comprehending nothing.
Life belongs to God Alone. The first verb in the Scriptures is "to create" and the last book depicts the culmination of His splendid Earth. And God's eternal act of creation is our subject this morning, declared by none other than God in a series of "I AM" phrases: "I AM in the world" (Jn 9:5). "I AM the light of the world." (Jn 9:5). "I AM He." (Jn 9:9). This last is a repetition of God's once-only identification of Himself. But more on that later.
The phrase "I AM," of course, refers to God's Name: "I AM Who AM" is one English translation of Exodus 3:14. He has endowed His living, breathing creatures with being with free will. Let us pause here, for we have said a mouthful. Being — that mysterious, mind-bending, elusive something. Look out the window: it is everywhere.
We pretend to understand but do not. We do not know where it comes from. We do not know where it goes. And we shall never be able to imitate it. Shakespeare called it that "Promethean heat" which, once we have snuffed it out, can never relume (Othello, 5.2.10-15). We cannot take a little creature, however humble, who has just died and be able to breath life back into it. We shall never be able to do that. We shall never be able to create life.
He has endowed us with life. We have being. But He alone is Being: "I AM Who I AM" — the verb to be joined to itself by the relative pronoun Who in an eternal, sacred and inviolable closure. Do you see? It goes round and round, but nothing may enter it. The Septuagint records this speech-act as
| εγώ ειμι `ο ώnu; / ego eimi `o wn (Exod 3:14) |
translated, "I AM HE Who Is." This is the literal translation from the Greek. Didn't He just say that in the Gospel of John? The subject clearly is far beyond our understanding. But this is our subject. Jesus has announced it. He has insisted upon it.
In the catalogue of Gospel miracles, we sometimes hear a litany of questions-and-answers afterwards explaining what has happened. But this morning the miracle begins with the explanation. For the story of the man-born-blind is not about healing:
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Jesus answered, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents,
but that the works of God might be made manifest in him. We must work the works of Him who sent Me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work. As long as I AM in the world, I AM the light |
We cannot really say that the man-born-blind is healed, for he never had sight in the first place. You cannot repair what was never broken. The more accurate adjective is not blind, but uncompleted. Jesus does not, therefore, utter the command, "Be healed!" as He does elsewhere. Rather, He completes His creature:
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.... He spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle,
and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay ... |
He invokes Genesis 2:7:
| "then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground." |
Or He recalls the Book of Jeremiah:
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Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand,
O house of Israel. |
The onlooking Jews declare, "Since the world began it has been unheard of that anyone opened the eyes of one who was born blind" (Jn 9:32). The reference, of course, is to the Creation. Jesus also makes reference to the Creation. Before approaching the man-born-blind, He tells the disciples "I AM the light of the world" (Jn 9:5) recalling Genesis 1:3 and identifying Himself as the Creator God, the Logos.
How audacious! we might say. Certainly, this bold display — spitting on the ground, making clay, anointing the eyes of the man-born-blind — must have commanded the attention of all. The bumptious disciples we read of in St. Mark's Gospel must have said, "What is He doing? Outlandish!" Certainly, there is nothing remotely similar elsewhere in the Gospels. Therefore, we must conclude, this scene is something else than a miracle. Jesus has decided to commence a drama of God's ongoing act of Creation.
This subject forms the basis of some of our earliest theology: the theology of St. Irenaeus, born perhaps only fifteen years after St. John the Theologian dies. He heard the preaching of Polycarp, St. John's disciple. As far as we know, he is the first to have insisted that all four canonical Gospels are essential to the Christian faith. And I suspect that our Gospel lesson this morning was one to which he returned again and again as a primary inspiration for all of his theology. For Irenaeus proposed that the Incarnation from the beginning to its end was a recapitulation of the Creation, which is to say, God sent His Son into the world — the Logos! — to create the world all over again. Here is an excerpt from his greatest surviving work, Against Heresies:
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Being a Master, therefore, He also possessed the age of a Master, not despising
or evading any condition of humanity, nor setting aside in Himself that law which He had appointed for the human race, but sanctifying every age, by that period corresponding to it which belonged to Himself. For He came to save all through means of Himself — all, I say, who through Him are born again to God — infants, and children, and boys, and youths, and old men. He therefore passed through every age, becoming an infant for infants, thus sanctifying infants; a child for children, thus sanctifying those who are of this age, .... a youth for youths, .... an old man for old men (AH, II, 22.4). |
Irenaeus posited, as we see, that Jesus died as an old man.
| Wherefore also He passed through every stage of life, restoring to all communion with God (AH, III, 18.7). |
Let us pause to notice the profound influence of St. Irenaeus upon St. Athanasius and especially on his On the Incarnation, which argued that our redemption and the renewal of our lifeworld occurred at the Annunciation, the Conception of Jesus.
St. Irenaeus wrote (quite plausibly) that Adam and Eve were created not as mature adults, but as immature children. Their offense was the sin of impatience, rashness we might say, the sin of not trusting God. After all, had they continued to mature, they would have advanced in Theosis receiving everything which the serpent had promised — which was to be like God. But they could not wait. Isn't that the endpoint for all humans. Possessing the heart of innocence and the dignity of Jesus .... that is our goal. Elsewise, we must abandon any hopes of Heaven.
God is our All, our Everything, our Maker, our Provider, our God. He is not a healer, much less a faith healer, as some Christians seem to believe. You do not worship your doctor, or love him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength because he has repaired your knee or removed a deadly cancer. God did not send His Son to live among us because He wanted everyone to be healed. If that were true, then be assured of this: everyone would have been healed.
Not to belabor the obvious, but is Jesus a failed healer? No. God sent His Son to awaken us from our self-absorbed daydreams — our gauzy, hazy world where everything is about us And we only think of God (if we think about Him at all) when we want things or when we reach a point of desperation: "Save me!" This is a "takers" relationship, not a love relationship. At one point, Jesus cries out, "How long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?" (Mt 17:17).
I live and you live in the most intimate relationship imaginable: a life-and-death intimacy with God Whose aim is that we should become One with Him. This is God's design. Like Adam and Eve we have the opportunity to choose for Him-Who-Alone-Is-Life and His marvelous lifeworld, or, like Adam and Eve, to choose for the alternative, the other-than-God, the that-which-is-not-God. which is death .... and eternal death .... the definition of Hell, the absence eternally of God.
My brothers and sisters, are you and I completed? Are we sufficiently unselfish to be declared "Finished!"? Is not unselfishness the unerring mark of the mature human creature? Conversely, is not immaturity revealed in self-centeredness, in headstrong egoism? Consider the counter-example: when we meet with a thoroughly unselfish child, a child whose cares are habitually on those around her, what do we say? "How mature! An old soul!"
The Gospels teach us that we are still in God's care. Jesus enjoins us to call Him "Father." Father is watching us, and His angels are always near. And what is our part in this marvelous loving, familial relationship? To grow up!
God sent His Only-begotten Son into the world to redeem us. And He does that through His Life, literally the Living of His Life — certainly not a bloody trade of His Most Holy Person for our lives, but a re-creation of ourselves and everyone to mature as we ought to. His life is the great Example. St. Athanasius wrote that the portrait of humanity had been defaced by our own hand. It was undecipherable. But who remained to sit for its restoration? God had to send His Son. He would sit for it.
He created us in the greatest act of love we shall ever know. We can't even understand it. And He continues to dote on us, to nurse the highest hopes for us, to encourage us to finish the course, and in the end our journeys in union with Him. For He made us for this One-ness, as the Son and Father are One (Jn 17:22). And a selfish, headstrong, and egotistical man-child (or woman-child) is not fit company for God. Jesus describes one headstrong would-be disciple as unfit for the Kingdom of Heaven (Lu 9:62).
And this is the meaning of Scripture.
We have come to one of the many doors of Scripture,
and
we have unlocked it.
It is this understanding of our creation and our lives
which
is the purpose of the Incarnation:
that none should perish
and all might mature to the dignity and full stature of our Lord and God and Savior,
Jesus Christ.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
Amen.