Sermons on the Ecumenical Creed of 381 AD “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ … through him all things were made.”

The Lordâs Supper Scripture Readings: Eph. 1:3-10; Col. 1:15-20; John 1:1-14

The eucharistic elements

As we celebrate the Lordâs Supper, we shall eat bread, made from grain, born and nourished in the soil of the earth, and we shall drink from the fruit of the vine. Bread and juice are the products of nature. The are food and drink. They are the stuff that sustains our life.

But for us this morning they are vehicles that bring Jesus Christ to us. Jesus Christ, the true vine and the bread of life. The products of nature witness to the mystery that nature is creation. They become witnesses that nature is more than you see. They tell us in tangible, tastable form, that Jesus Christ invested his life to heal the brokenness of our life and of our world; to build bridges of reconciliation where we build walls of estrangement.

But nature does not only contain the mystery of grace. The grain from which the bread was made, may have grown in a soil that was poisoned by the pollution coming from a society of plenty. The grapes from which the juice was produced were probably sprayed with pesticides that were washed off and became part of natureâs cycle.

Faith in Christ and Nature

Not many days ago we have been confronted by the powers of nature. An earthquake produces a tidal wave which wipes out whole villages who lived on the bank between the ocean and the inland lagoon. And we know that such earthquakes happen all the time in Afghanistan, in Turkey, in Armenia, in San Francisco and in China. They spell doom, destruction and death to the people. In China streets turn into rivers as they deal with the greatest floods since the 1950âs. Annually, floods spell tragedy, homelessness, and sickness to millions in Bangladesh and in other countries. What is happening in Sydney these days with the water that cannot be drunk unless it is boiled for at least one minute is also part of nature. Medical journals tell us about the thinning of the ozone layer and the subsequent increase of skin cancer. Famines bring hunger and death to women, men and children, as well as to their life stock. Sirens sound in the big cities to warn people that the air pollution is such that they must now wear masks.

Those shocks from nature are neither pleasant nor convenient, but they are effective reminders of the reality that we, we humans, are intimately woven into nature. How much of our many illnesses are caused by air and water pollution? Every fish and every leaf of lettuce that we eat may contain poisonous elements that may effect our health. For good or for ill, we are part of nature. Nature’s future is our future, Nature’s ãNo-Futureä is our “No-Futureä. The ecology crisis is therefore not merely a crisis of nature. It is also an intensely personal crisis. It effects us and our future. It determines the future of our children.

Does this have anything to do with our faith in Jesus Christ? If not, then there would be areas and aspects of our life which are removed from our faith in Christ. We canât withdraw from nature. We are part of nature. If Christ is the central determining reality that covers all of our life, then Christ must have something to do with nature. And indeed, that is the message of the resurrection of Christ.

The ãmoreä of Christ

For centuries we have been blind. We have been so preoccupied with ourselves, with the church, with mission, with historical conquest that we have overlooked a very important aspect of Christ. By raising Jesus from the dead God drew the whole cosmos into the saving work of Christ. Christ is not only Lord of history, but he is Lord of the cosmos. That is the theme song which was born in the hearts of the early Christians:

ã… Jesus Christ … being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.ä (Phil 2:5-11).

The biblical texts

We are not surprised, therefore, that the biblical texts confess Jesus Christ not only as “Son of God” and as “Saviour” but also as the “mediator of creation”. In 1 Corinthians 8:6 Paul says: “… for us there is … one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.” In Ephesians 1:9f. we hear of Jesus Christ that in him “all things … things in heaven and things on earth” are to be united. The Letter to the Colossians contains a beautiful early Christian hymn in which Jesus Christ is not only praised as the “image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation,” but he is also designated as the One “in whom all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible ….” (1:15-20) The Gospel of John speaks about the Word of God that has become Flesh in Jesus Christ; about this Word it is said: “all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” (1:1.3.14) And the Call to Worship this morning reminded us that in the Letter to the Hebrews the Son, through whom God spoke to the world, is also the One “through whom … he created the world.” (1:2.10)

So, you see, from all corners of the earliest churches, there came the confession that Jesus Christ is the mediator of creation. What does that mean? Why was it felt that it was not enough to say that they believe in God as the “maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen”? Does the reference to Jesus Christ add anything to the general reference of God as creator?

Our God is the Creator

To confess Jesus Christ as mediator of creation, means, first of all, that the God whom we have come to know through our faith in Jesus Christ is no other than the creator of heaven and earth. God is God. He cannot be divided. There is not one God for our salvation, one God for history and one God for creation, but the God who has spoken and come to us in the story of Jesus is the same who has created the world and all that is in it. Both the threat of nature and our responsibility for nature is covered by our faith in Christ. Therefore our partnership with nature, our concern for nature is an integral part of our life, just as prayer to God and love for each other is. There is no realm of our life which is not covered by the salvation that God has provided for us in Christ. And there is no realm of our life where Godâs demand to care for his creation does not reach us.

God as personal God

To speak of Jesus Christ with reference to creation means secondly, that the creator of heaven and earth is not an abstract creating principle or an uncaused first cause, but that God is a personal God. The God who is creator of heaven and earth is a God with a human face.

Saying this we do not come into conflict with the scientist. The scientist can investigate and tell us how the world evolved and how it functions. The scientists – as one of them once said to Napoleon – do not need the hypothesis “God” for their work. And they will not find God in their investigation, just as the best of surgeons will not find the human conscience!

But faith sees what reason cannot see, that God is the secret ground of all that is. And this God is a personal God.

This is sometimes difficult to understand when we see the tragedy following the earthquake and flood wave in Papua New Guinea, or the floods in Bangladesh, or the famines in Africa. Some of these are caused by natural constellation which the geologist can investigate. Some of them are the result of human action caused by great need or great greed. It is simply a fact that if you cut down the mangroves that protect the land from floods then the floods will flow into the land and destroy human life. If you cut down trees and forests at the wrong place then you increase the deserts and make human life difficult. In all of this it is often the most vulnerable and the innocent – think of the children! – who die.

But there are many tragedies that we can not explain. Yet, our faith in the Christ who is ãmediator of creationä assures us, firstly, that God will never leave us nor forsake us. In all the tragedies of life, he will be our guide and our comfort. And secondly, we are challenged to do all we can do to understand the workings of nature and try to prevent tragedies to happen. The thinning of the ozone layer is obviously the result of our action. The felling of the rain forest is not being done by blind fate; it is the result of human action. The pollution of air and water does not just happen.

The passion of God

But we need to go a step further. With the story of Jesus God tells us – and that is our third point – that God is not a divine being who lives in splendid isolation somewhere “out there”, but that he is a personal God who has revealed his nature of love by becoming part of human history and taking the agony of humanity into his own being. God is involved in our attempts to make and keep human life human. He is not dissolved into nature and history, but he is active as the liberating and creating reality who in cooperation with humanity is shaping the future of the world.

Jesus Christ and evolution

A fourth point. When scientists try to understand the process of nature, they speak of evolution. And there have also been famous theologians, like Teilhard de Chardin, who were fascinated with the evolution of nature. Indeed they saw Christ as the principle and the peak of the evolutionary process.

Whatever the scientific theories of evolution may say, let us not forget, that evolution, like most things in life, also has a shadow side! On the human scale you can see it in China now. After decades of socialism, the free market economy makes its way. Some entrepreneurs become millionaires in days and many more become poor and unemployed. Is it not a fact of life that where there are winners, there are also losers – and who takes care of the losers? We have sophisticated space programs and military technology. With part of the money half of the worlds 12 million children under the age of 5 who die every year a result of hunger, thirst, and disease could be saved tomorrow. Nuclear technology has produced nuclear bombs, which many praised as noble achievements of the human spirit, but who remembers and who looks after the victims of August 6, 1945 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Jesus Christ is not the peak of evolution but he is the saviour of those who are forgotten in the evolutionary process. He makes us sensitive to those who are cast aside in the process of evolution. Is this not our role in society today? We canât change our economic and political system. We are globally bound into it. It is the system of evolution which according to Darwin will reward the strong and fit, and punish the weak and frail. We have to play the game if we want to survive! But, and this is the challenge to those who have heard a distant music, we can modify it. That is what we call culture. A cultured people will modify evolution to create space for those whom the process of evolution casts aside, which in our society is the aged, the disabled, the single mothers, the orphans, the unemployed, the Aboriginal people, and you can add to the list.

Jesus Christ – Lord of the World

And finally, by confessing Jesus Christ to be the “mediator of creation”, the church has resisted any sectarian claim to Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ the believer and the community of believers is woven into the fabric of creation, so that every human being becomes a brother and sister, the stewardship of nature is affirmed, and responsibility for the future is given.

Invitation

We have seen again that the Creed speaks into our life situation. It gathers up the biblical emphasis that in Jesus Christ our hearts are not only opened to God, but also toward each other and toward the world and nature around us. We have been graced. God has shared his rich life with us. Let us answer in thanksgiving and let us use wisely what God has entrusted to us. There are no parts and no aspects of our life that our outside the salvation and the liberating claim of Christ upon our life.

Thorvald Lorenzen: Canberra