Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 11, Year C)
Rooted & Rising series, Week 2
In 1919, just after the end of the first World War, the Irish poet W.B. Yeats penned the following lines:
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
Yeats was lamenting the spirit of his own time, when crowns, creeds, and customs seemed to be drowning in the rising tide of modern advancement. Yeats expressed concern about what new thing would rise to take the place of traditional social values. As it turned out, his concern was justified.
The years following the composition of this poem saw the rise of Communism in Russia, where the Soviets overthrew one iron-fisted regime, only to replace it with another that was just as oppressive. In Germany and Italy, fascist dictators seized power and manipulated their citizens into committing unspeakable acts of genocide. Even W.B. Yeats himself flirted with similar authoritarian movements in his own native Ireland.
When things seem to be falling apart, it is only natural to want to grab onto some source of comfort that promises to maintain a sense of normalcy. The temptation to watch out for in such moments is the temptation to force solutions through the exercise of raw power.
Strongmen take that opportunity to exert their will over the people by scapegoating those who dissent or differ from familiar norms. They claim that, by electing their party to office, impeaching the president, deporting immigrants, and somehow stopping people from being gay or trans, they can lead the country back into some imaginary golden age that never really existed.
The Stalinist purges of Soviet Russia and the book burnings of Nazi Germany have this faith in common. Hitler came to power by promising to protect Germany from the threat of Communism. Stalin came to power by claiming to save Russia from Fascism. This should tell us that the problem is not “right vs. left” and the solution will not be some kind of Satanic compromise between Hitler and Stalin. The problem is much deeper and simpler than that.
What these dangerous ideologies have in common is a shared faith in the power of power itself. They both claim that the solution to the problem of social disintegration is more control over people. The epistle to the Colossians disagrees with that conclusion.
Today’s epistle reading forms the theological core of the book of Colossians. Biblical scholars sometimes refer to this passage as “The Hymn of the Cosmic Christ.” In this passage, the author is talking about Jesus, but not the carpenter from Nazareth who started a grassroots movement on the back roads of Galilee. The Jesus that this passage talks about is Jesus as the early Church began to see him in the years after his death. In the eyes of these first Christians, Jesus was more than just a man who started a movement; he was an icon of the meaning of life itself.
The text says:
“[Jesus Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers, all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
Colossians 1:15-17
The Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, one of my personal heroes, takes this passage very seriously. He says that Christ, when looked at through the lens of faith, is the Ground, Guide, and Goal of the entire universe. In the New Testament book of Revelation, the Cosmic Christ says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 21:6). Therefore, the solution to the problem of disintegration is not an increase of control, but an increase of connection. This flies in the face of every partisan ideology that human beings have thus far conceived. In continuity with the historical Jesus of Nazareth, the Cosmic Christ says that the answer is not to “get rid of those people,” but to “love your neighbor as yourself.”
So, I’ll say it again: the solution is not more control, but more connection.
To illustrate this solution, I’d like to take you into the forest, beneath the apparently separate existence of individual trees. Underneath the surface, scientists have discovered something that stretches between the root systems of these individual trees. It’s called the mycelium.
The mycelium is a vast communication network of fungus that connects the trees to one another. Through it, trees are able to share information and resources with one another. Older trees send nutrients to younger trees through the mycelium. Trees infected by parasites send warnings to their neighbors about the infection. What’s even more amazing is that this network is even able to send messages between trees of different species. For this reason, scientists have begun referring to the mycelium as the “Wood Wide Web.”
If you go walking in the forest today, you probably won’t be able to see it with your eyes. It lives beneath the surface of the ground. The most you might be able to see is the fruit of the Wood Wide Web, which takes the form of mushrooms, but these are not the web itself; they are but the fruit of it.
In the same way, humans cannot directly see the Cosmic Christ “in whom all things hold together,” but we can see the fruit of the Spirit, which is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). Millennia before the invention of computers, these moral principles kept human beings connected to each other around the world. It’s amazing to realize that modern technology is still trying to catch up to what the Holy Spirit revealed centuries ago.
The Cosmic Christ has always existed. Today’s epistle reading calls the Christ, “the firstborn of all creation,” that existed, “before all things.” Spiritual author Richard Rohr writes, “Christ is not Jesus’ last name.” He describes “Christ” as “another name for every thing.”
Christianity is not the first or the only spiritual tradition to recognize this all-pervasive presence in the universe. Greek philosophers talked about the Logos as the organizing principle of the cosmos (in fact, that’s where we get the word logic from). Similarly, Chinese philosophers spoke of the Tao as the un-nameable flow of nature. Hindus and Buddhists refer to this mystery as Dharma. For our Jewish neighbors, the Torah is not just the first books of the Hebrew Bible, but the divine Teaching that has been woven into the very fabric of creation.
Logos, Tao, Dharma, Torah, Christ. One song, with different lyrics, but the same music.
For Christians, the ineffable mystery of the Cosmic Christ is revealed through the historical Jesus of Nazareth and the traditions that rose up around him. Most notably, we encounter the presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. In this mystery, the fruits of the Earth, which have been shaped by human labor into bread and wine, are received by the priest, consecrated as the Body and Blood of Christ, and then given back to the people, who receive the Body of Christ into their own bodies. It’s like the dieticians are always fond of telling us: “You are what you eat!” In this case, you are the Body of Christ.
The grace of this Sacrament has profound implications for how we are to live our common life, as members of the Body of Christ in this fragmented world, where things so often fall apart. To us is given the faith that “all things hold together” in Christ, not by the force of human will, but by the grace of God’s all-inclusive love.
When you, the members of the Church, come down the center aisle to receive Communion each Sunday, I know the particular struggles that many of you bring with you. Most of the time, they are questions to which I don’t know the answer and problems to which I don’t have the solution, but I choose to believe that the moment I look you in the eye and place the Body of Christ into your hand is an important starting point, from which we can begin to form those answers and solutions together.
W.B. Yeats wrote, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,” but we, the members of Christ’s Body, dare to defy Mr. Yeats by proclaiming that the center does hold. The center holds, not by forcing control, but by receiving Communion with God and each other. We need not rely on the empty promises of self-proclaimed saviors of any political party because the truth is that we already have a Savior who has promised to give us all things necessary as we “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:33).
Kindred in Christ, our Communion is our connection. Beginning with the Sacrament, it extends outward to small and large acts of mutual aid between ourselves and our neighbors.
The offer of free childcare to a single mother, the ride to the doctor for a cancer patient, the quick phone call to check in with an elderly shut-in, and the shoulder to cry on for a grieving widow are all powerful acts of love that have the power to change the world. Not all at once, but slowly and surely.
These things don’t make for good television or headlines. They won’t win elections or solve the big problems of the world, but they still matter. They matter in the eyes of God. And I know, for a fact, that they also matter in the eyes of those for whom you care.
Last week, I made reference to the words of Samwise Gamgee from the Lord of the Rings films, based on the books by J.R.R. Tolkien. Today, I would like to do the same thing again, quoting this time from the wizard Gandalf. Once again, this line comes from the movies, but does not actually appear in the books.
Gandalf says, “Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”
Friends, I invite you to go out into the world this week, looking not for self-proclaimed saviors from the right or the left, who promise in vain to exert their control over the world and hold it together by force, but looking for the already-present Christ, in whom everything holds together by the gentle power of love.
As Christians, we do not place our faith in the empty promises of any politician, party, or platform; we accept Jesus Christ as our only Lord and Savior, and it is to Christ that we will be faithful unto death and beyond.
Amen.
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 