Greetings, everyone!  As part of our new website, we’re going to have blogs from staff members.  I’m going to start the ball rolling here with several reflections I’ve written on various topics.  Some are very formational; some are me thinking too much, as I tend to do, but please check them out and comment all you want!

Enjoy!
Paul

For a while now, I have been intrigued—emotionally touched in a mysterious way—by emptiness.  Whether it’s an empty room in a house, just a floor and walls and a window to let light in, an empty field on the side of the road, unplowed, untouched, or white space on a page, emptiness speaks to me.

Those of you who have seen my office know that there isn’t much in it.  I like my desk clear, and the tables around me empty of papers and things.  In all honesty, I have trouble thinking when there’s clutter around.  It’s freeing, isn’t it, to be unconfined by things and thoughts?  To be free to dream.

Just the other day, Cindy Bernardin shared with me a story about an empty room in her former house, dubbed it “the room with no furniture.”  It was a room of pure potential.  When Cindy threw a party, the room became the party room.  When her kids’ friends came over to play, the  absence of “stuff” in the room let their imaginations run wild.  The room had the potential to be anything—to become whatever they dreamt it to be.  And when the family of Joel, a friend of Cindy’s son—also a Biblical prophet—was remodeling their house, Joel told his parents that he, too, wanted a “room with no furniture.”

I think this sense of childlike wonder—this dream of what can be—lies at the heart of my own fascination with emptiness.  Perhaps there’s something very sacramental about emptiness.  Perhaps emptiness is a window through which we can discover something about who God is, and—since we are created in God’s image and likeness—who we are.  God is the very essence of potential.  Everything that can be is fulfilled in its truest form in God.  And that includes us.  This window to seeing God allows us to reflect on our own lives, to consider how we can fulfill the humanity into which we are created.

Perhaps emptiness is also a window to seeing how God sees—not a bunch of fallen, broken people who can’t seem to get their lives together (though we might certainly feel that way at times!)—but a people of potential, a people ready to be filled with what we really need—with grace.  With love.

This season of Lent is about self-emptying.  It’s about potential.  It’s about change.  It’s about letting go of all those things that clutter our hearts and minds and letting God’s transformative grace fill us.  Lent is about becoming radicals—revolutionaries—people who give without counting cost, fight for goodness heedless of wounds, who labor for the kingdom without thought of reward!

This whole self-emptying idea has been around a long time.  Since the time of St. Paul, theologians use the Greek word kenosis to talk about it.  Kenosis begins with Christ, alone and wandering through the desert for 40 days, giving all he had to the people he loved, dying on the cross for the forgiveness of sins, in fulfillment of his potential—in fulfillment of God’s plan.  Likewise, our Lenten fast is about kenosis—about really reflecting—really fasting from those things that fill our lives (probably not chocolate, potato chips, or coke!)—so that we can be filled with God’s grace, transformed by God’s love, and fulfilled in our humanity.

Lent is the time to find that empty room.  To climb to the mountaintop and leave this world behind, so that we can see what can be—a world transfigured and renewed.  And to do that, we’ve got to give it away.

It’s Advent.

Supposedly a time of peace and hope, it’s also the time when the media bombards us with consumerist propaganda—“Buy this! You need this!” they say. These voices remind of one of my favorite lines from Assassin’s Creed II, a video game that I just finished playing. In the background of the gameplay, shopkeepers shout something like, “I have things you don’t even know you need!” This, among many other lines, humorously and sarcastically captures an element of contemporary culture that pervades the Advent experience—and simultaneously contradicts everything that Advent is all about.

What is this season about? We hear things all the time—watch…wait…be prepared…the light is coming…prepare the way of the Lord…make room for Jesus in your heart—but what do these things mean? At tonight’s liturgy—the liturgy of the Second Sunday of Advent—two elements of the readings struck me hard.

The first, from the fifth chapter of the Prophet Baruch, reads: “For God has commanded that every lofty mountain be made low, and that the age-old depths and gorges be filled to level ground, that Israel may advance secure in the glory of God.”

The second passage from third chapter of Luke quotes Isaiah: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The winding roads shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

So what is this season about? The standard messages of Advent, to watch and wait, to prepare and make room for Christ’s coming are all fine, but the fail to capture one vital element because they are all about us. These notions are about what we do. But if Advent is about Christ’s coming, then it must also be about what God is doing for and in and among us.

To me, these Scriptures define Christ as the Great Equalizer, the one who comes to make all things equal—to make all things ONE—to flatten mountains and fill in valleys, to straighten crooked roads and make the rough places smooth. To make all things equal. To make all things ONE.

So often, I think we think of these words as mere literary jargon, beautiful images—but just images—that describe the God’s power. But it can’t stop there if Scripture is truly the inspired word of God. For, God is the very essence of perfect self-giving, and the essence of self-gift cannot merely seek its own glory. What is implicit in these images is a call for each of us, a command that we must take to heart and live on this Advent journey and beyond.

For, the passage from Baruch says, “God has commanded” that the mountains be made low. Who’s going to do the making? Who’s going to fill the valleys? As I said, this isn’t all literary mumbo jumbo. Scripture itself is sacramental, and the command of God is revelatory; it tells us what we must work toward. Christ came to Equalize all things, to level all people, to “raise up the poor and tear down the mighty” as Mary says in the Magnificat, not because might is in itself flawed or evil, but because we are all called to this profound oneness, this profound Equalization—this unity in Christ Jesus.

As the hymn says, “In Christ there is no east or west / In him no south or north.” There is only Equalization—there is only oneness. So, we must participate in this Great Equalization that God has commanded—we must make the rough places plain; we must give up the mountains of certainty, wealth, power, and conviction on which we stand.

Even when we’re right, if what we believe keeps us from loving, from living in full union with all our brothers and sisters—whether rich or poor, whether they live in mansions or have no homes at all, whether they smell bad or are gay or straight or have had abortions or believe in God or not—we are not participating in this Great Equalization for which this Advent calls. We are the ones who by God’s grace reveal—in our LOVE—the “salvation of God.”

Why must we watch? Why must we wait? Why must we prepare? Because to do so is to change our own hearts and lives so that we may more fully serve God, that we may more fully make all things and all people ONE.

And why do this? Baruch tells us that it is so “Israel may advance secure in the glory of God.” If we as Christians to advance in God’s glory—in an Irenaean sense, to be fully human, to fulfill our humanity, to live in the glorious divine image in which we were created.

In practical terms, it’s easier to walk a straight, flat path than it is to try descending the steep paths into valleys—which might include rough ground, deadly dropoffs, and slick descents—and climb mountains—where we run the risk of being pinned beneath avalanches, falling off cliffs, or not receiving enough oxygen to our brains!

This symbolic language, then, provides a very real challenge for each of us. We who can walk the valleys and scale the mountains must raise the valleys, bring down the mountains, and straighten the paths, that all people—whether in the throes or anxiety, depression, sin, shame, guilt, glory, power, or selfishness—may be able to dwell together in full Communion with God and the fullness of life in Christ Jesus, who came that “we may have life, and have it to the fullest!” (John 10).

So what’s it going to take to get us there? It seems to me that emptiness is a place to start. We are often a people—in the midst of the voices of advertisers telling us what we need, commercials showing images of families that are perfectly happy all the time (beyond what’s really possible!), and the noise of malls and Christmas songs in our ears—who fear emptiness, fear spiritual and material poverty, fear silence, and fear being left alone. Yet those things are integral parts of Advent, integral parts of creating a world of unity, light, peace, and Equalization.

For the great kenosis, the great emptying of Christ, who took on the role of slave to Equalize all things (free us from sin, for sin is of excess), is the model we must follow, the straight path is that leads to emptiness, so that we may have the fullness of life in Christ, who makes all things ONE, who makes all things equal, who brings to fulfillment the plan of God that unfolds before our eyes each moment.

Let us watch. Let us wait. Let us give it away, tearing down the mountains, raising the valleys and straightening the paths that lead us to the fullness of life.

As Rory Cooney wrote, “When we stand together / to stand against hell / the name of this people / is Emmanuel.”

Remember. God IS with us. So hope. Trust. Live. Love.

Seriously. Bear with me, now.

Meet Sluggo the Slug. One night, Sluggo packs his slug suitcase and decides to go on a slug journey across the back patio. Being a slug, he thinks it’s quite the expedition, but really it’s just a quick jaunt across the pavement.

Sluggo has a point of origin, from which he begins his journey. And he has a point of arrival, where his journey ends. Everywhere in between, he leaves a trail of thick slime—sticky, gooey stuff—the evidence of Sluggo’s very existence, the telltale sign that “Sluggo Wuz Here,” which he secretes as he goes from his origin to his destination.

And that’s where Sluggo is like God.

Just as Sluggo had his point of origin, in God there is the Origin, the Alpha, the Creator, God the Father, who made all that has been, all that is, and all that will be. And at the end of the journey lies our destination—the Firstborn of Creation—the Omega, the Christ, the Redeemer, God the Son, who in the fullness of time will retrace Sluggo’s slug trail and bring all of Creation back to its Origin. And the thick, gooey slime, the trail left behind when Sluggo moved from Point A to Point B is the very stuff of Creation; it’s the trail—better said the sacrament—the sign left behind as God moves through our universe and penetrates our experience.

We dwell in the slime. But the slime isn’t a bad place. It’s not icky slime. The slime itself is a gift.

Still, in the dark, the slime is just slime, just gross goop on the patio. But when light hits the slime, it changes. It glimmers; it shimmers. And that sparkle in the slime, that glitter in the goop is the Holy Spirit, the light of the resurrection, the indwelling of God in Creation, the abiding presence of the Creator and the Redeemer in our very experience. The light is God’s transcendent, universal Love, and when Love is present, Creation shines.

As the light moves and the slime glitters, so God moves in the eternal perichoresis—the dance of love—and when God moves in us, the slime that is our experience twinkles with God’s presence, shines radiantly as we engender unity, as we cultivate peace, as we bound beyond boundaries and let Love—that is the essence of God—transform us.

Delving Into Full Humanity
It’s easy to forget that Jesus was human. Really human. Fully human. Movies so often portray Jesus as a stoic, serious, overly dramatic man who stands apart from the rest of humanity, a sort of ultra-non-conformist who has little to do with the real experience of human life. These cinematic portrayals present a Jesus who is more a divine being in human form—someone ultimately conscious of his own divinity—than someone who actually lived the hurts, sorrows, fears, temptations, joys, and intimate moments that we experience. As we approach the great liturgies of the Triduum, which extensively celebrate the fullness of the Paschal Mystery, it occurs to me that the truest, deepest understanding of the Paschal Mystery lies in first understanding—as much as we can—that Jesus was indeed fully human and fully divine.

Although it might seem like a ridiculous point of departure, don’t forget: Jesus pooped. Jesus threw up. Jesus bled. Jesus wept. Jesus faced temptations, not only in a desert encounter with Satan, but in everyday life. Jesus probably had the flu, coughs, sneezes, diarrhea, you name it. Jesus might’ve broken a bone (he didn’t have magic Messiah bone tissue). Jesus walked around barefoot or in rough sandals through hot sand. He probably had blisters on his feet. And he probably smelled bad. He probably didn’t comb his hair. He did not have blond hair and blue eyes; he looked like a middle-Easterner. He suffered, not only the agony of Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ (double entendre, perhaps), but suffered the loss of friends to death, the betrayal of Judas, followers who didn’t “get it”—like Peter, whom he called both “Satan” and “Rock”—and much more. He drank and ate with his friends. Others accused him of being a drunkard. If we’ve experienced it, Jesus probably did, too. That’s full humanity. If we are going to enter fully into the Paschal Mystery, we have to start there.

And at the end of his life, in the fullness of fullness, Jesus died. Not a “natural death.” Not a painless death. Jesus was executed—it’s capital punishment. Jesus died at another man’s command and at another man’s hand, because of “crimes” he supposedly committed. We humans subjected an innocent man—our Savior—to capital punishment through a “system of justice,” and somehow, we have found the ability to turn a blind eye to the fact that we still do the very same thing when we execute others today. We might say, “Oh, at least lethal injection is more humane than crucifixion.”

But the underlying reality is that we do to others what we did to Jesus. How many other innocent lives have ended in the same way? And if the person is guilty, does it really make any difference? When we consider that we have one command: to LOVE, the act of intentionally ending of another’s life in punishment seems quite out of place. Condemnation is the enemy of love, for as John 3:17 says, Christ did not come to condemn, but to save. Now, before anyone argues that this article is really a rant against capital punishment, I’ll get back on track, but I felt compelled to mention this correlation, one that’s easy to overlook in our climate of politicized religion, one in which being Christian too often means belonging to a particular party or set of ideas (some of which might actually contradict everything we believe!). The important point here is that Jesus’ full humanity led to death, because if Christ had not died as we all will die, he could not have been fully human.

Christ, then, existed fully in the world, but he was not of the world. It’s what my friend Robert Feduccia has said so many times: “The glory of God is man fully alive” and “Jesus could only redeem what he took on.” Christ was “fully alive” in his full humanity, but he did not give in to sin. Why?

A Channel of God’s Love
So, what about the other part of Jesus’ nature? What about being fully divine? What does that mean? I don’t have the answer, but I do have a few ideas on what Christ’s divinity is all about—like everything I write, these are only ideas; they aren’t even necessarily what I think (most of the time, I don’t know what I think, I just think).

Anyhow, understanding Christ’s divinity is necessary if we are to understand the fullness of the Paschal Mystery we celebrate in the Triduum. For about a year now, I have been very interested in the question of Messianic Consciousness or Divine Awareness, the question of whether Jesus actually knew that he was the Messiah. Consider that for a minute. Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe, in spite of all the healings and works, words and wonders, he didn’t know that he was the Messiah.

But how could Jesus be the Messiah without knowing it? As the Son of God, perhaps Christ’s divinity manifested in one simple way: through loving surrender. “Surrender” is a popular word in modern Christianity; often, we talk of “surrendering” or “conforming” our will to God’s will. But often, this idea shows up when we talk about accepting things that we don’t want to accept. Like sudden death or national tragedy. “I guess it was just God’s will,” we say, as if God’s will is somewhere “out there” where we can grasp it, or as if God “lets things happen” so that we know him. Quite the contrary, God’s will is clear. Jesus told us what it is: to LOVE. We encounter God really and truly present in our midst every day, in love shared, in conversations, in creation, in the fullness of life. And when we experience that, we encounter what might be the very “stuff” of Christ’s divinity.

Because Jesus is Christ, the Son of God, perhaps the state of “surrender” in which he lived was not something he thought much about. Perhaps the nature of Christ’s divinity is that Christ dwelled in that state of full accord with God’s will of LOVE for our world. In such a state, temptation has no power; sin has no hold, for always choosing love means never choosing sin. Thus, Christ could dwell in the fullness of human experience but always choose God-love—without thinking about it, for he was what he was created to be! In short, he existed in love and called us to do the same.

This line of thinking could explain the so-called “miracles” of Christ, too. Jesus was not a magician. He was not a “miracle worker.” He didn’t say “poof! You’re healed!” Rather, Jesus says, “Your faith has saved you (or healed you)” or “Your sins are forgiven.” It is by the faith of those he encountered that miracles transpired; it is by the acknowledgment of the presence of God so truly in their midst that God was able to “break in” to human experience, to venture beyond the realms of what is rationally “possible” and allow the unexplainable to occur. This is important to consider, because we—as a product of God’s freely given love—have free will. Christ, in his surrender, always spoke and acted in love. But it is only when others could sacrifice their will and humbly and honestly say, “I need you. I want to be well, and I recognize God in you” that it could happen. God is all around us; Christ is the channel by which God breaks in; when we humbly say that we need God, we unite ourselves to God through Christ; perhaps that logical train of ideas explains how Christ’s miracles could have occurred.

By existing in oneness (full surrender) with the perfect love of God, Jesus carried that transforming love everywhere he went; when others recognized it and believed, God entered into our world and worked wonders. And maybe that’s what canonized saints—although sinners—sometimes encountered. Perhaps through their moments of total surrender, they allowed God to “break in” and transform human experience in inexplicable ways. They, for a moment, were as Christ—perfect channels of God’s grace in our world.

Sin, of course, is the antithesis of full surrender, the rejection of God’s will (choosing things other than love) and leads to separation, to anger, to anxiety, to fear, and to all those things that prevent us from living fully as Christ lived fully. When we sin, we create a barrier between ourselves and God, a barrier that prevents God from being able to “break in” as God broke in through Christ. This is the inevitable sin that I’ve written of before, the sin that is a natural byproduct of free will, which is a natural byproduct of love freely given.

And That’s the Paschal Mystery
So, then, Christ was fully human and fully divine, a person who lived as a human but by his divinity possessed the propensity to be sinless, for he lived always in the perfect love in which we were created. Jesus suffered. Jesus died. And he rose again to free us from our sins, to give us access to the sinless divinity in which he was born; he restored us to oneness with God, but our human propensity to sin obstructs that oneness. By subjugating that propensity, we—like so many before us—can become true channels of God’s love; we can be, and indeed we are, the means by which God continually breaks into our world.

The liturgies of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday celebrate in absolute fullness the entirety of this, the Mystery of our Faith—the Paschal Mystery. At every Eucharist, the bread and wine—the fruit of the earth and work of our hands—along with our offerings of time, talent, and treasure, are not simply symbols. They are the very “stuff” of human experience. They are the work we do every day. They are the gifts that God has given us.

And when we return those gifts to God and pray over them, when those gifts become the Body and Blood of Christ, we consecrate not bread and wine but our very beings to life in the service of God and all of humanity. We dedicate ourselves to being channels of God’s perfect love.

In the last note, I theorized that if God is love and love inherently creates, creation is the inevitable product God’s perfect love. If the very existence of God/love makes creation inevitable and “true love” is love freely given (no strings attached), sin is an inevitable eventuality. And since God desires nothing but the perfect union (all things being subjected to him and returning to the state of perfect love in which they were created per Corinthians), the existence of the Christ is also inevitable.

Some might say that I’m on the edge of Arianism here, that calling the Christ “inevitable” means that Christ did not exist with the Father and Spirit in the beginning. But this isn’t what I’m saying. For, all of these events “happened,” which isn’t the right word (but I don’t think there is a word that describes what I mean) “simultaneously.”

So, as God was, Creation was, as were the propensity for sin and the necessity of the Christ. I can’t quite articulate that concept, since it requires me to do something I can’t – to think outside time (baffled again!), but the idea here is that the eternal existence of the Trinity “simultaneously” gives birth to and seeks to redeem the universe, necessitating each aspect (creation, redemption, indwelling) of the expression of one shared nature, one essence: namely, love.

In our conversation, my friend stated that he often has great difficulty seeing the Trinity as anything more than a polytheistic trio of gods.

But the three aspects of the Trinity share one essence: the perfect, creating love in which the universe was born. God the Father is the first, the alpha, the lover, the perfect love by which creation was born. Christ the Son is the omega, the last, the beloved, the element necessary for the universe to exist again in perfect love. The Holy Spirit, the love expressed between alpha and omega, between beginning and end, is the unifying force of love that lies in the dark spaces of the universe, the essence of God present in the expression of love (agape) between members of a common human race, the very force that brings unity and peace into our experience.

Together, these three aspects, united in essence, comprise the Trinity. In essence, each is God/love, but each has a specific purpose in God’s plan of creation, salvation, and the expression of love we experience in life.

Barbara Brown Taylor, an episcopal priest, described this three-fold existence beautifully in a sermon she gave on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, 2009.

“The first time I came here (to the Washington National Cathedral), a docent told me that you could bring the Washington Monument in here, right down the central aisle, and it would fit inside with just fifteen feet hanging out at the end…until the base is resting outside, underneath that incredible carving of creation on the porch, and the point would be pointing right up there at that vision of heaven over the high altar. That way, you could not miss the fact that every thing between those two points, everything between God’s first word and last word is in this place…” Taylor then lists numerous things: birth, death, creation, apocalypse, wood, stone, water, light, people, and more…that are contained between the two.

Just as the Washington Monument, when placed on its side in a cathedral, stretches from creation to apocalypse and is joined by human experience, the Godhead exists as one essence, beginning with the love that birthed creation and extended to the end of time, existence, and consciousness, to the point at which the beloved, the Christ, waits for the moment when creation can return again to the state of perfect love in which it first existed. Joined by the Holy Spirit, this love is extended but never separated, outstretched but never broken, as the point and base and body of the Washington Monument are all part of one structure that spans the length of creation, from alpha to omega, beginning to end.

The Trinity, then, persists in its perfect, unbroken love, ever interacting with humanity in the eternal dance named perichoresis, with each aspect mutually indwelling the others and penetrating our experience in the movement of eternal love.

When we share love, we share God. In our expressions of love, in the sacramental experience of daily life and the ritual experience of the sacraments, we participate in the dance; we glimpse the perfection from which we were created and for which we are destined. We encounter the living, loving Trinity in our very midst.

Today, I had a very interesting conversation with a friend and colleague about the three-fold Creationism-Intelligent Design-Evolutionism debate. We discussed the two sides at some length, and at one point he asked me, “So, if you believe God was involved in creation but don’t call yourself a Creationist, what do you believe?” It took me a few minutes to really process the question and formulate a response, but I eventually reached a conclusion that is perhaps a “both-and” reply to the question of God’s role as creator and the validity of scientific discovery, both of which I think are wholly valid.

To say that God “created the heavens and the earth” per the Book of Genesis limits God to so great a degree that God hardly seems Supreme at all. To say that God “spoke the word” of Creation and “made it so” is to entrap the mind of God in a box so small it could easily hold the scientific understanding present 6,000 years ago. If God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, God transcends even the deepest or most brilliant mind, and so to put God “in a box” or acknowledge that there even is a box (even Scripture) is to deny God’s transcendence – for God and the working of the Holy Spirit, there is no box, no specific framework. Once, in regard to the issue of creation, my cousin Todd said to me, “I want to be baffled by God.” I want to be—and am—baffled, too. God should be baffling. To interpret the story of creation literally is to limit the unlimited, to confine that which cannot be confined.

In response to this point, my friend pointed out, “Some theologians might argue that if you are going to say that the stories of Creation present in Genesis are false, you should just discount the entire Bible.” Admittedly, no theologians that I have studied have argued such a thing, but if someone were to argue this stance, I’d respond that to disregard the entire Bible because you disregard the stories of creation is just like saying, “Because the Greek myths aren’t true, there’s no validity to anything Aristotle wrote, either.” For, to argue that the Book of Genesis is fact flies in the face of centuries of research on the Bible, much of which has been dedicated to analyzing the Bible as a literary work and a spiritual work, one born of God and of human cultures. In teaching Scripture, I’m always surprised by how many people are unaware that there are two stories of creation that stand side-by-side in the book of Genesis, although numerous commentaries mention this literary fact. Because Genesis was created from four literary and cultural traditions of the ancient world, the “final” version of Genesis contains some duplication.

The first story of creation is the “seven day” creation story, in which God speaks the word and creation springs into being. God says, “Trees!” and there are trees, “Boids,” and there are birds, and “Fishies!” and there are fish. One commentary (in a Bible) states, “According to the highly artificial literary structure of Genesis 1:1-2:4a, God’s creative activity is divided into six days to teach the sacredness of the sabbath rest on the seventh day in the Israelite religion (Genesis 2:2-3).” Note the words “highly artificial” here. This story is clearly not meant to be interpreted literally; rather, it is an etiological myth explaining how we got here and instituting the Sabbath as a day of rest. Notably, Adam and Eve are nowhere to be found in this story.

The second story of creation, which research states is much older than the first, focuses on the creation of humanity and features Adam and Eve as its primary characters. In this story, God somewhat humorously attempts to make a “suitable partner” for Adam and fails repeatedly before putting Adam to sleep and creating Eve from his rib.

So often are these two stories conflated that it’s no wonder so few people know that Genesis presents two distinct stories from two different time periods and born of two different cultural traditions. This alone discounts the use of Genesis’ creation stories as fact.

At this point, my Creationist friends who are reading this are probably ready to string me up and call me an atheist. But as I said earlier, I firmly believe in God’s involvement in creation, but my faith in God and God’s love tells me that the truth is bigger than anything a several-thousand-years-old, culturally rooted, divinely-inspired (see below for an explanation of that) etiological myth can present.

What about Intelligent Design, then? Can we argue that certain aspects of creation (or perhaps all of creation) were made by some intelligent force (a.k.a. God)? To do so is to argue something only slightly different from a purely Creationist view. Numerous scientific watchdog groups have termed the Intelligent Design theory “pseudoscience,” an excuse for teaching Creationism. According to Wikipedia, The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has stated that “creationism, intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species are not science because they are not testable by the methods of science.”

So, where do we go from here? We’ve pitched the Genesis-is-fact argument out the window and briefly mentioned Intelligent Design. With what does that leave us? Simple evolutionism? The Big Bang Theory? Creation as an accident? Or is there a “both-and” viewpoint in which God is involved in and responsible for everything that science has revealed to be true?

Consider this: God is love. (1 Jn. 4:16)

No, really think about it: God is love. (Thanks, Robert, for emphasizing that.)

What is the intrinsic effect and nature of love? To create. Love creates unity, peace, joy, relationship. In an entirely transcendent and baffling way, love creates.

Visual artists create because of a transcendent love for interpreting the world in some medium. Composers compose because of a transcendent love of music and desire to create. Authors seek to capture human experience and emotion out of something transcendent. Two people join their lives and bear children out of the expression of their love. We’re not talking about saccharine, Valentine’s Day love here. We’re talking about something transcendent, something baffling, something that drives humanity to desires beyond words—we’re talking about love that is not of God but that is God most truly present.

Therefore, if God is love and the nature of this transcendent God-love is to create, then God’s very existence makes creation inevitable. God did not need to desire creation or plan it; the universe is simply born of this transcendent love that I believe is the true fabric of human existence, what Dan Simmons called the “Void Which Binds,” that which solely remains when all of creation is stripped away. Although many theologians would say that the trinity could have simply existed in perfect love, perhaps God could not have chosen not to create. For, to say that God “chose” to create or “acted” in creating is to deny the inherent creative nature of love.

When I envision what this “moment of creation” looked like, I do not think of God “doing” anything or “saying” anything. Rather, my mind goes back to what was one of the most important lessons I learned while studying conducting with Seb Bonaiuto. Seb taught me that stance and posture are more important than nearly anything else. “If a conductor holds his arms near his body, he looks guarded. If a conductor holds his arms out to the side, he looks defenseless or uncertain. But if a conductor raises his arms before him, as if to embrace the ensemble, he expresses love. He says, ‘I welcome your music. I love your music. Let’s share this love.’” And this is how I picture God, too. God did not “say” or “do” but opened his “arms” and “smiled” in a conductor’s embrace, and creation simply “was.”

If “Love creates” = “God creates,” creation is an inevitability.

Within this argument, there is no need to argue whether the Big Bang was true or false, accidental or planned. It was simply inevitable. Some might attribute this to chance, to the unpredictable primordial chaos that was; but before anything was, love was. And love is. The true nature of God-love transcends all things, all theories, all books, even the books that reveal God to us.

And so it is with Christ, the redeemer (person of the trinity). God’s perfect love cannot remain perfect, because love in its essential form is love given away. And if love is freely given, with no “strings” attached, free will and therefore sin are both also inevitable. Just as a painter’s perfect vision is never realized on canvas or a composer’s perfect symphony is never perfectly written or performed, creation, although the inevitable result of God’s love, cannot remain perfect, but God’s will for creation remains: that creation returns to the perfect love that created it. So, the Christ, not Jesus the Incarnation, but Christ the plan of salvation, God’s plan for total unity, total love, total peace is another inevitable byproduct of God’s existence. For, in order for creation to achieve again the fullest communion with God—to dwell once more in perfect love—creation must be redeemed, and so the Christ is necessary.

St. Paul saw this clearly when he wrote 1 Corinthians 15:25-28:

“For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death, for “he subjected everything under his feet.” But when it says that everything has been subjected, it is clear that it excludes the one who subjected everything to him. When everything is subjected to him, then the Son himself will (also) be subjected to the one who subjected everything to him, so that God may be all in all.”

This is one of my favorite passages of scripture, for I believe it encapsulates Teilhard de Chardin’s “Omega Point,” the point at which the universe’s complexity and consciousness evolves to the point at which it returns to the point from which it originated, to the love from which it was created. Once death is destroyed by the Christ, the Christ (again, not Jesus the Man but the spiritual-sacramental entity) will be subjected “to the one who subjected it…”—God—so that God may be all in all, so that in fact nothing exists except God-love, that which creates and redeems out of inevitability, that we may be joined in true harmony and true unity with the Creator.

Christ taught that to follow him fully is to relinquish one’s self for the good of all. Perhaps, then, the fullness of human existence is the non-existence of the self, existing as Christ did, in perfect union and surrender to God.

Today is the Wednesday after Epiphany. In the daily Mass readings this week, we have heard stories of Jesus’ manifestation as the Christ, the Messiah. Yesterday, we heard Mark’s account of the feeding of the 5,000; today’s Gospel begins where yesterday’s ended and details the familiar story of Jesus walking on water. I’ve read and heard this story—even this account of the story—many times before, but it has never struck me as it did tonight.

Mark’s version of the story contains some details that Matthew and John lack (and lacks some details that the others contain). It was these details, found in two characteristically concise Markan sentences, which struck me tonight. The passage begins, “After the five thousand had eaten and were satisfied, Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and precede him to the other side toward Bethsaida…” Alone, Jesus dismisses the crowd and prays on a nearby mountain. The standard setup. Then, strong winds toss the disciples’ boat about, and Jesus walks toward them on the water. The standard plot.

Then, Mark’s version continues, “About the fourth watch of the night, he came toward them walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them.” Wait. He meant to pass by them? If that’s the case, what was Jesus doing out there on the sea? Was he just out for a little stroll on the waves? These six words seem to indicate that Jesus did not intend his disciples to see him. Now, some might say that here “meant to pass by them” means that he intended meant to pass close to them so that they would see him. However, coupled with the following phrase, “But when they saw him…,” it seems clear that Jesus did not intend to be seen. He meant to pass by them. What is the significance of these words?

Both Matthew and John lack this sentence or anything like it. In Matthew’s account, Jesus beckons to Peter, and Peter, too, walks briefly on the water (and promptly sinks). John’s account is much shorter, and in it Jesus identifies himself, after which the apostles are mysteriously teleported “to the shore to which they were heading.”

But let’s get back to Mark. Why didn’t Jesus intend to be seen? Is it, perhaps, that his being seen—and therefore the very act of walking on water—is somehow immaterial, unimportant? After all, at the end of this passage, Mark writes, “He got into the boat with them and the wind died down. They were (completely) astounded. They had not understood the incident of the loaves. On the contrary, their hearts were hardened.” Here, Mark utilizes a phrase he typically uses to describe the “villains” in his account of Christ’s passion. So, even though Jesus had—by his faith and prayer—multiplied a meager amount of food into an abundance so great that basketfuls remained after thousands had eaten their fill, walked on water, and mysteriously caused a storm to end, the apostles simply didn’t “get it.”

Is it possible that there is something deeper here, something akin to Christ’s words to Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed?” Maybe the apostles’ inability to recognize Jesus as Christ by his miracles not only reveals their stubbornness and “hardness of heart” but also calls into question the importance of miracles at large.

If so, perhaps Jesus meant to pass by them because miracles are in fact somewhat inconsequential in our journey of faith. So often, God speaks to us in the smallest ways, in the little signs, in the “whispering sounds” like the one Elijah heard in 1 Kings 19. But so often we look for grand miracles, for “lightning bolt” experiences more akin to the work of Zeus than that of a God who has given his people the gift of free will.

Last summer, my aunt Cheryl—a woman of tremendous faith and love who with her husband raised eight children that I proudly call my cousins and closest friends—died from cancer at the age of 61. At her funeral, one of my cousins said to me, “You know, I really thought with all the prayers we said that God would give us a miracle, that he’d heal her and let her live…”

At that moment, I recalled the numerous prayers that I had offered for her at daily Mass, the prayers of our parish community at weekend Eucharist, where lectors had week after week pronounced her name aloud with the names of other sick and suffering people. I recalled the infinite support, hope, and affection that others had offered our family, and in my heart, I wanted nothing more than for her to live once again, to walk and talk and laugh and smile her incomparable smile once more. But that simply wasn’t possible.

I’ve often heard people say, “Well, I guess that just wasn’t God’s plan…,” but I think this phrase trivializes the magnitude of God’s goodness and to an extent misses completely the point of our faith. Is the point of faith to “get something” from God (even salvation)? Is the point of prayer to “get” what we ask for? Or is prayer in its most authentic form an expression of faith and trust in God’s love, an expression of our communion with the source and end from which and to which all things flow? God’s love, which we ritually celebrate in the Eucharist, is all around us. In every interaction, in every moment of joy, hope, and sorrow, God’s love is there. Even in moments of despair, God’s love remains.

After sharing all this with those at the Communion service at which I presided today, my thoughts turned to today’s first reading, 1 John 4:11-18. The passage reads, “No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us.” Here, John states that while we have not seen God, God is present in our love for each other, that we are the vehicle by which God’s love is perfected. Later in this reading, we find the famous line, “God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him.” In short, love is the truest manifestation of God in our midst.

Why, then, do we look for miracles? Why do seek loaves and fishes, walking on water, or miraculous healings? If love is the indicator of God’s presence among us, then faith is the belief that love is true and present in our hearts. Faith believes that in each shining moment when we express love, Christ is truly present. We find these manifestations, these “epiphanies” of the Lord in each shimmer of joy, each sparkle of hope, in small moments every day. Of course Jesus meant to pass by them; he knew he did not need to be seen. For he showed love beyond measure, and in expressing that love, he revealed God to the world. It is through that love, not through miracles, that Christ’s first disciples would come to know him, as we know him today, in simple gifts of bread and the wine, in each glimmer love shared, in the memory of a aunt’s smile.