The Life of the World

Grace Church

“Father Jack”, as he is affectionately known, has served the parishioners of Grace Episcopal Church as their rector since 2004.

A world, a universe that overflows, dripping and flooding with God’s glory, the radiant light that fills all things with life.
Is that how we understand the Universe?
We all live in our own little bubbles of how we see the world.
Do we see a vision of God as we live our days?

I have this powerful image that has stuck with me over the years of a canoe trip. I was with an old friend, Edwin Beckham. We were in what was then called The Congaree Swamp National Monument.

We were on this very isolated lake, along one of the creeks in the middle of the Congaree swamp. The only way to get there was to drag a canoe through a lot of swamp mud, scaring up herds of wild hogs. It was a long narrow lake, the water was deep and dark, tall bald cypress knees spiked up along the water’s edge.

So Edwin decided to go fishing. He pulled out this little bitty mini fishing rod by Ronco, as seen on TV straight from 1976. He unfolded it and cast it out into the water. A few minutes later he had a bite, it seemed to be slow and heavy, maybe an old sunken log.

Now it was still fun up to that point. After a bit a very large dark shape rippled the water by our little bitty canoe…
Edwin then gave one last tug and a giant mouth came up out of the water. Well I screamed like a little girl. Edwin plunged the thing back into the water, and then he looked up at me and said, “O my God. What do I do?”

Well this went on for awhile, tugging us around. I would have just thrown in that old relic of the Ronco fish-o-matic, but Edwin held on. Mercifully we were saved by the line breaking. We were the ones that got away. It was probably just a very old, very large catfish, but we were in awe by this miraculous catch out of the depths that almost swallowed us like Jonah.

That image of Edwin suddenly catching a hold of an overwhelming mystery and not letting go, that has stuck with me.

Visions of overwhelming abundance fill scripture, not just a pleasant and joyful abundance, but overwhelming, too much. Miraculous catches. Bursting nets. Overflowing baskets of bread and fish. Sowing and reaping a harvest that is so great, exceeding all available management structures, that people can’t keep track of just who is sowing and who is reaping.

We float along in our little worlds, our little canoes, and then suddenly we are confronted by the depths, too much, and we hold on wondering who has caught whom.

The past few years I have been studying one the earliest Christian theologians, Irenaeus of Lyon from the 2nd century.

He is usually quoted as saying, “The Glory God is a human being fully alive.” He actually said something a little different, “The Glory of God is a living man (meaning Jesus) and the life of humanity consists in beholding God (meaning Jesus).”

Irenaeus had this vision of the Universe as being sustained by the glory God and that glory is revealed in many life sustaining ways. The fullness of that glory is a man named Jesus, and the life of humanity is only fully vivified by fully beholding this vision of glory in the flesh.

Jesus’ flesh is the life of the world.

The questions always follow, “Do we wish to be fully alive? Really? There are no palatable moderate half measures. Will we be overwhelmed by God’s incarnate overabundance?”

Today I am so thankful to be back at Grace Church celebrating our shared ministry. Thank you for the time away.

Our shared ministry is a ministry that is much more than maintaining yet another social institution.
We are here because we are catching and being captured out of the depths by God’s glory in the flesh. We are a community beholding and revealing the glory that raises the dead.
That’s a big deal.
Let’s celebrate that glory, let’s share that glory that the world may live.

How do we see the Universe?
Do we see a vision of God as we walk through our days?