Link to a service sheet HERE.
The readings are below (to read them, go HERE):
Proverbs 8: 1, 22-31
Psalm 104: 26-37
Colossians 1: 15-20
John 1: 1-14
Collect for the Day:
Almighty God,
you have created the heavens and the earth
and made us in your own image:
Teach us to discern your hand in all your works
and your likeness in all your children;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who with you and the Holy Spirit
reigns supreme over all things, now and for ever.
One of the things I hear from many people I talk to these days is what strange times we are living in. “Strange.” “Surreal.” “Peculiar.” These are the words people use to describe our Covid-19 era.
And something that makes these times so strange to us is that our ways of viewing the world are being flipped. Let me explain. We were used to taking a view of the world that was wide but short — that means wide in space, but short in time. And instead, now we are being asked to take a long view in time. And in space the view we must take is very narrow in some ways but far wider than we are used to in other ways. And what’s really required of us is to take a long, wide, and high view — a view that comes to us only through God. We’ll get to that.
Before Covid-19, we had a wide and short view. Wide because we could pretty much go where we liked: we could socialise with others, drive off to Dublin if we wanted, fly off to Spain for a bit of sun. In the Diocese, people from Kerry might spend an entire day driving up to Limerick for a meeting or two and then driving back. We could get on a ferry or a plane and go to the United Kingdom. If we had the money for such trips, there were few other constraints imposed on us other than personal ones, such as family obligations or other demands on our time.
And we had a short view. We might plan for the future a little bit. Set aside money in savings, perhaps, for some future reward. Plan for a holiday next summer. But if we wanted and were so inclined, we could do things on the spur of the moment. If we wanted a drink or a meal out, we could go to a pub or a restaurant. It’s called instant gratification. Mostly, we could have it.
Now, in the midst of this pandemic, our view is both much narrower and much wider. You can guess why it is narrow. Our view of the world is basically confined to the following things: our homes and a two-kilometre radius around them for exercise; grocery stores, pharmacies, and other places where we can buy items essential for living; a computer or a phone where we can see someone we know in a little square on a screen, via Zoom or something like it. No travel, no getting on a plane, no socialising. It’s a very narrow world in which we each live.
And at the same time, our view has to be much wider than we are used to. We wear masks and practice social distancing in large part out of courtesy to others. Yes, we are trying not to get sick, but we are making sure that others around us, even people we do not know, do not get sick from us and are not uncomfortable and nervous because we are not wearing a mask. We cannot travel, in part to protect ourselves, but also to protect those people who live in some other part of the world. We wait to get vaccinated so that the people who are more vulnerable than we are, or more at risk, can be vaccinated first. We are being forced to recognize that we truly are part of an entire human race, and that all of us are dependent on each other, even those people we do not know and never would have cared about before.
And now our view also has to be longer than we are used to. There is no instant gratification anymore. “Wait” is the word of the day. We look ahead to the future without knowing when we will get a vaccine, when we can travel, when we can socialise, when businesses can reopen, and much more. We are being asked to take a long view of life.
Our readings today take a very long view. They go all the way back to the beginning of creation. And they also take a very wide view, to encompass not only the whole earth, but all of heaven as well. And yes, this matters to us, who are being asked to take a long view in our strangely narrow but also wide world.
In the first reading, from Proverbs, we hear the voice of wisdom, speaking of having been created by God at the very beginning of all things, when there was as yet no earth and no water. And we hear of God making even the first bits of soil, and the springs of water, and the sea, and marking out the foundations of the earth.
Continuing the theme in Psalm 104, we hear a very wide view of all the earth, for it is full of creatures that God has made, and “the sea, spread far and wide,” filled with creatures and even the sea monster Leviathan, “which you have made to play in the deep.” And God is over all of it, giving food, sometimes hiding his face, and sending forth God’s Spirit to renew the face of the earth.
And then, in the second two readings, from the Letter to the Colossians and in John’s Gospel, we hear that all this creative power, all this wisdom, is embodied in Christ. As Colossians says, “He 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.”
Now I know this is hard to wrap one’s head around. Christ is Jesus, right? And Jesus was a human being, right? So how could Jesus have existed from the beginning of time, with all things being made through him?
Instead, flip it around. It means that there is this creative power of God, this eternal wisdom of God, this life of God, that became fully expressed in the person of Jesus. As John’s Gospel says,
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”
All that creative power of God, God’s Spirit, God’s wisdom, was expressed in Jesus, and when that happened, he brought light and life to all people.
This is a long view — back to the beginning of time, to the beginning of creation, and forward into the far-distant future, even to eternity. That is the scope of time for God, and it is expressed in Jesus.
And it is a wide view. For it encompasses all of creation, all people. God’s Spirit, God’s wisdom, fills the whole creation, even wider than this world on which we live.
And this view has one more dimension. It is a high view. It goes beyond, it transcends all the woes and all the troubles of our time, the boredom and the anxiety, the strife and the worry, of this pandemic. It does not ignore all this we deal with, for Jesus may have come to earth as the full embodiment of all the wisdom and the wonder of God. But he also came as a human being, fully aware of all the troubles, all the woes, that we suffer. But he takes them to himself and transforms them. As John’s Gospel tells us, the light that he brought to us “shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” And as Colossians tells us, all the fullness of God dwells in Christ, and through him God reconciled all things to himself — brought them together in peace.
In these strange and surreal times in which we live, we are being asked to take a long view. It is a time of waiting, recognising that all the details of the future are uncertain.
And we are being asked to take a wide view. Even as we sit confined to our homes — most of us — we are being asked to recognise that we truly are part of the whole human race, and what we do matters to all.
And what helps us take a long and wide view is to take a high view, in two ways: First, to see that we what we do and how we live matters not just to the human race, but also to eternity. It is eternally important. And second, to accept the grace and the truth, and life and the light of God, embodied in Christ Jesus, to throw ourselves on his mercy and let him guide us through these strange times, so that with him, we might transcend all the troubles and be transformed by him.