One of the exhibits at the “Deep Time” exhibit, currently at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, is called “Your body through time: Your body is the result of more than 3.7 billion years of evolution.”
So we didn’t just come from Mommy and Daddy, our favorite human way to say it; 3.7 billion years has been at work bringing us to where we are, and we’re not the only ones. A vast tree of created beings has come to be in deep time.
The Book of Genesis says in its creation story we come from “the dust of the earth”. All of us. The story we know now is much more complex, and we still don’t know it all .
I’m sure the young children and an adult viewing the exhibit in the photo above went away, like me, wondering at the mystery it presented. “ Too wonderful for me, this knowledge, too high, beyond my reach.” (Psalm 139)
The same can said of St. Paul’s words to the Colossians read today in our liturgy:
“In Jesus Christ, everything in heaven and on earth has been created, things visible and invisible.” (Colossians 1,12-20)
Yet, this knowledge tells us who we are and what we are to do. We need to keep it in mind.
We begin reading the Letter to the Colossians today in our liturgy. Paul never visited this church near Ephesus. Commentators don’t agree about the situation Paul addresses in the letter. It’s not about problems of human behavior and morality as the letters to the Corinthians are. The Colossians have faith in Christ; they love for one another. But some of them here are trying to figure out the cosmos. What’s this world beyond our human world all about?
Don’t leave Jesus Christ out of that larger world, Paul says. He speaks to the Colossians about the Cosmic Christ.
“Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him.He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the Body, the Church.He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he himself might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him, making peace by the Blood of his cross through him, whether those on earth or those in heaven.” (Colossians 1, 15-20)
Last week after a family wedding in southern New Jersey, I went with a cousin of mine to the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, to see an exhibit called “Deep Time” about the 4.5 billion years it took the universe to arrive at where it is now. It’s a wonderful exhibit, but it was really hard to take it all in. No matter how clever the presentations, our minds find it hard to grasp what happened in 4.5 billion years..
It hasn’t been 4.5 billion years without troubles, either. The exhibit made clear that our earth was almost destroyed a number of times, and it offers a strong warning about what might happen as our climate changes now.
The exhibit was about what we know from science; there was no reference to religious knowledge here. But maybe Paul’s letter to the Colossians is a timely message our age needs to hear. Jesus Christ was not just Jesus of Nazareth, rejected by his own people in a little corner of the Middle East long ago. He was not just a teacher who tells us how to get along with one other.
“Jesus is the image of the invisible God…in him were created all things in heaven and on earth.” “He holds all things together” for 4.5 billion years and beyond.. He brings peace through the blood of his cross. He lives and reigns with Father and the Holy Spirit, now and forever.
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