Today’s author is Prince of Peace member, Carol Swanson.

In Acts 17:28, the apostle Paul quotes Greek philosophers while speaking to the Athenians about God: “For ‘In him we live and move and have our being.’”  Panentheism: All is in God, God is in all.  God is not the universe; God is more than the universe. But “What if we dared to think of our planet and indeed the entire universe as the body of God?” Sallie McFague challenges us to think about this metaphor in her book (available in our PoP library), The Body of God: An Ecological Theology (p 19). I share a series of quotes.

In her preface she states that her “essay…is a highly focused, limited project: it attempts to look at everything through one lens, the model of the universe or world as God’s body. …What would it mean, for instance, to understand sin as the refusal to share the basic necessities of survival with other bodies? to see Jesus of Nazareth as paradigmatic of God’s love for bodies? to interpret creation as all the myriad forms of matter bodied forth from God and empowered with the breath of life, the spirit of God? to consider ourselves as inspirited bodies profoundly interrelated with all other such bodies and yet having the special responsibility with God for the well-being of our planet? Such a focus causes us to see differently, to see dimensions of the relation of God and the world that we have not seen before” (pp vii-viii).

There is also “the common creation story,” the one shared around the world in the 21^st century. Here McFague quotes Ian Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science, vol 1, 1990. “Cosmology joins evolutionary biology, molecular biology, and ecology in showing the interdependence of all things. We are part of an ongoing community of being: we are kin to all creatures, past and present. From astrophysics we know our indebtedness to a common legacy of physical elements. The chemical elements in your hand and brain were forged in the furnaces of the stars. The cosmos is all of one piece. It is multi-leveled; each new higher level was built on lower levels from the past. Humanity is the most advanced form of life of which we know, but it is fully a part of a wider process in space and time” (pp 27-28).

In her book McFague also refers several times to Psalm 8:5, “Yet you have made them a little lower than the angels” (angels from the Greek Septuagint and used in the KJV and NIV,“…a little lower than God” from the Hebrew Elohim used in NRSV). What does that phrase mean to you? for our relationship to creation?

 “…[O]ne crucial difference that separates human beings from all other life-forms, and it may be the difference that makes all the difference: we are, to our knowledge, the only creatures on our planet who know the common creation story, the only creatures who not only participate in it but know they do. We know a great deal about who we are in the scheme of things, of what our proper place ought to be, of how deeply and thoroughly we depend on all that is “beneath” us. We have, then, a choice: we can choose to be at home on our planet, learn to follow its house rules, value its fragility and beauty, share its limited resources with other human beings and other life-forms. We may decide not to do so, but we will not be able to say ‘If only we had known.’ We do know” (p 60).

“Christian reflection on human existence has been ‘docetic’: human beings coming off as a little lower than the angels—not fully human. We have not seen ourselves as mundane, as being of this world, of the earth, earthy. We have defined our duties primarily in relationship to God (First Great Commandment) and secondarily in relationship to other human beings (Second Great Commandment), but seldom in relationship to the earth, its creatures and its care. A first, sobering step, therefore, is to look at ourselves from the earth up, rather than from the sky down.” (pp103-104)

“One of the advances of starting our reflections on human existence with our possibilities and limitations as seen in light of the common creation story is that it keeps them from being overstated or spiritualized. In this story we are not a little lower than the angels, nor the only creatures made in the image of God: our particular form of grandeur is in relation to the earth and derived from it—we are the self-conscious, responsible creatures. Likewise, in the common creation story, we are not sinners because we rebel against God or are unable to be sufficiently spiritual: our particular failing (closely related to our peculiar form of grandeur) is our unwillingness to stay in our place, to accept our proper limits so that other individuals of our species as well as other species can also have needed space. From the perspective of the common creation story, we gain a sober, realistic, mundane picture of ourselves: our grandeur is our role as responsible partners helping our planet prosper, and our sin is plain old selfishness—wanting to have everything for ourselves” ((p113-114).

“If we are not the center of things, then other beings do not exist for our benefit—even for our spiritual growth as ways to God. They exist within the vast, intricate web of life in the cosmos, of which they and we are all interdependent parts, and each and every part has both utilitarian and intrinsic value. Within our model of the world as God’s body, all of us, human beings included, exist as parts of the whole. Some parts are not merely means for the purposes of other parts, for all parts are valued by God and hence should be valued by us. We do have a distinctive role in this body, but it is not as the ones who use the rest as a ladder to God; rather, it is as the ones who have emerged as the caretakers of the rest.” (p185)

“The suffering of creation—undoubtedly the greater reality for most creatures, human as well as nonhuman—is addressed by the scope of the body or the cosmic Christ. Whatever happens, says our model, happens to God also and not just to us. The body of God, shaped by the Christic paradigm, is also the cosmic Christ—the loving, compassionate God on the side of those who suffer, especially the vulnerable and excluded. All are included, not only in their liberation and healing, but also in their defeat and despair. Even as the life-giving breath extends to all bodies in the universe, so also does the liberating, healing and suffering love of God. The resurrected Christ is the cosmic Christ, the Christ freed from the body of Jesus of Nazareth, to be present in and to all bodies” (p 179).

“In the vision of the new creation, we human beings have a special vocation. We are the stewards of life’s continuity on earth and partners with God in solidarity with the oppressed. It is an awesome vocation, a far higher status than being a little lower than the angels, subjects of a divine king, or even the goal of evolutionary history” (p 201).

As Christ teaches us to pray:

Eternal Spirit,
Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:
The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the earth!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on earth.
With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.
For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and for ever.
Amen.
––From the New Zealand/Maori Anglican liturgy
(McFague, p 158)