As most of you know, for a dozen years I worked on the support staff at a school. For about half of that time, one of my jobs was arranging for substitute teachers.
Parts of sub
booking were fun-ish, but for the most part it stunk, because sub booking was
the first thing I did in the morning, and the last thing before winding down
and getting ready for bed. When my alarm
went at 6:40 AM, the first thing I did was dial in to the sub line to check if
any teachers had phoned in sick overnight.
If they had, I started phoning subs asap. And at night, I would check the sub line up
to 9:30 PM – even if I was out at something -
to see if there were any calls saying, “oh boy, I can’t imagine being
well enough to come in to work tomorrow.”
If a sub was needed, I started calling right then and would keep calling
well past 10 PM, because it is fifty times easier finding a sub the night
before than at ten to seven the next
morning, and if I left it till the morning, it was yours truly who would pay
the consequences.
Without
intending to, I had allowed sub booking to become the Alpha and Omega of my
days, eroding my sense of self one school day at a time. Eventually I developed some new, helpful
habits that brought God into that start and finish of the day, but it took a
long time to get that straightened out in my spirit.
A lot of
people in the throes of addiction could likely relate to this “daily Alpha and
Omega” stuff. Regardless of your drug of
choice, getting high with that drug is likely the first thought you have in the
morning, and last thought – or at least the last thought you can recall - at
night. With addiction, the whole day is
a series of Alphas and Omegas: acting out with your substance of choice,
experiencing whatever “high” it is, feeling profound remorse or a huge chemical
crash, while simultaneously seeking the thrill of the next high. Before this
drink is even finished, the next one is being craved; winning the jackpot has a
short-lived thrill because there are other jackpots to be won right now. Whether it’s the next drink of alcohol, the
next hit of drugs, the next sexual tryst, or the next VLT jackpot, people
living with addictions are well-acquainted with something taking over and
becoming the Alpha and Omega of their days.
And Alpha and Omega it shall remain, unless he or she seeks help to
break the cycle.
I have a bag
full of paraphernalia of a much more gentle nature. (Unload an entire bag of Saskatchewan
Roughrider fan-wear). Now, I’m a
reasonably well-adjusted sports fan, which is a good thing given that my team
played its last game of the year two weeks ago… but I can tell you, for some of
my watermelon-wearing compatriots, there’s nothing “well-adjusted” about
it. I know countless people whose entire
week is absolutely ruined if the boys in green lose on the weekend, and you’ve
likely heard of the disgusting treatment of former Rider heroes if they end up
playing someplace else and even hint that they’re happy to be gone from
Regina. But us “green fans” are
certainly not alone in letting our cheers get the better of us. Think of the
rioting in Vancouver, or the LA Dodger fan who beat a SF Giants fan senseless
after a baseball game a couple of seasons ago, not to mention worldwide soccer
fan hooliganism. Whether it’s an
out-of-control connection to a sports team, or a hobby that has taken on a life
of its own, or a fondness for shopping that has morphed into hoarding, there
are all kinds of recreation activities that can cross the line from “fun aspect
of my life” to “domineering presence which I allow to control my activities and
my actions.” Happily waving the team
banner can turn into Alpha and Omega before we know it.
Today is
Reign of Christ Sunday – the final Sunday of the Christian year, before we
embark on the season of Advent.
Formerly known as “Christ the King” Sunday, it is a time to examine the
larger and sometimes unsettling consequences of Christ: the eternal meaning of Christ, afterlife and
second coming. In the spirit of that deep examination, one
line of one of the scriptures kept calling out to me this week: Revelation 1: 8,
“’I am the Alpha and Omega’ says the Lord God Almighty, who is, who was, and who
is to come.” Alpha and Omega: the first
and last letters of the Greek alphabet, the beginning and the end, our Present…
our past… our future. That is a mighty big
claim on God’s part!
This idea of
the Alpha and Omega is something that is extremely personal, but is also
something huge, on which the entirety of the universe depends. There are the little Alphas and Omegas: how
we organize our days, what we give our time and attention to, what we choose to
be foundational in our moments and our days.
Let’s call that our Daily Alpha and Omega. But let’s go one size bigger
than that.
Think not of
how you spend a moment, or a day, but how you frame the span of your earthly
life. Here again, we hear the word of
the Lord saying, “I am the Alpha and Omega, who is, and was, and is to come.” This we might call, our Lifespan Alpha and
Omega.
A number of
religious traditions speak of a Divine “source and destination.” In Buddhism’s
Tibetan Book of the Dead, or Hinduism’s Bhagavad Gita, there is the sense of
Karma and reincarnation, in which the cycle of life is repeated on a higher or
lower scale as a consequence of our actions.
That repeated life-cycle functions as both source and destination for
the life now being lived. Or if we look
back 12 or 13 centuries to Celtic Christian symbolism, we see the repeated use
of circles and knots, which adorn the cross as symbols of infinity or eternity. The idea of there being a unified source and
destination of our souls is widespread across the religions of the world; for
us as Christians, we articulate this as it was put in the 1st
chapter of Revelation: God, or Christ,
is “the one who is, who was, and who is to come”.
Over the
years, it has been a blessing to spend time with a number of people who were in
the later stages of palliative care.
They were nearing death, and they knew it. Something that has struck me, time and again,
is how peaceful the process tends to be, especially for people of faith. If life has revealed for them a sense that
God was around long before they came into being, and will be there eternally
thereafter, the transition is so much easier than if they’re functioning from a
worldview that sees life as purely linear, with a beginning, and an end, and
that’s that. Being in the presence of people with such sure
and confident faith as death approaches, is one of the true gifts of life and
ministry in Christian community.
But
accepting God as the Alpha and Omega of one’s days is not just something that
can change the way we approach death; it
can have a profound affect on how we approach life. Twenty-five years ago, on a
hot, dusty road on the island of Mindoro, a young Filipino pastor told me the
story of his life with Christ. He was
doing tremendously dangerous work, organizing tribal people to move forward in
their lives, in spite of relentless pressure and threats from the local
corporate landowners. Pastor Rey was literally
in the line of fire, but when I asked him if that scared him, he knew what to
say: “I have already died to sin and have been risen with Christ. I gave my life to Jesus, so who can take my
life from me?” And trust me, for pastor
Rey these were no mere words. Christ was
his Alpha and Omega, the one who is, and was, and is to come, as he brought the
powerful, disruptive love of Christ to the life challenges of the Mangyan
tribal people.
On the small
scale, our daily Alpha and Omega does matter: how we organize our day, the
things we give power to. On the larger
scale, our lifespan Alpha and Omega also clearly matters: whether we have embraced a sense that God is
there from birth, to beyond death. There is at least one more sense I would
like to explore, this one WAY larger than our lifespan: what we might call the
cosmic Alpha and Omega.
From the
writings of ancient mystics, to the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin in the mid
1950s, to the popular theology of Matthew Fox in the 1980s, the idea of the
“Cosmic Christ” challenges us to view God or, in this case, the Christ, as a
sort of pre-Alpha and post-Omega. To be
honest, I have had a hard time wrapping my mind around much of the concept, but
recently came across a video interview with Father Richard Rohr which I found
very helpful (and I’ll share the link on the Church blog).
Basically,
the idea of the Cosmic Christ is that Christ existed from all eternity. If
that sounds familiar, it should: in the first chapter of John’s gospel we read
“Before the world was created, the Word already existed; the Word was with God,
and was the same as God. From the very
beginning the Word was with God… [then] The Word became flesh and, full of
grace and truth, lived among us. We saw
his glory, the glory which he received as the Father’s only Son.” (John 1: 1, 14). This same idea shows up in Colossians
1:15-16, “Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God…. Through him God
created everything in heaven and on earth”, and again in Ephesians 1:4, “Even before the world was made, God had
already chosen us to be his through our union with Christ.”
Christ,
then, is seen as an aspect of or close companion to God’s own eternal
existence. Jesus Christ is the human
revelation of this eternal reality. To
use the words of Richard Rohr, “the Christ is ‘born’ the moment that God
decides to show himself, the moment God decides to materialize. Now, modern science would call that the Big
Bang. The Big Bang is the birth of the
Christ, 14.5 billion years ago – and this material manifestation has been
revealing the glory of God, the nature of God, for at least 14.5 billion
years. That’s the cosmic Christ. (4.34)
In a moment of time, [2000 years ago] this cosmic Christ is revealed for us in
a human person, that we could see and touch and hear and listen to and fall in
love with.”
This Cosmic
Christ, he says, (5.20) gives us “a much
more immense understanding of salvation, of how God is revealing and loving
through everything that is; … salvation isn’t just a human concept, it’s a
historical concept, it’s a global concept, God is liberating and loving through
everything that God created… “
Elsewhere, Rohr states that Christ didn’t come to earth to save or fix
something that was broken; Christ came
to earth in human form to embody the process of love that moves all life
forward.
One of my
favourite quotes from the Rohr video is when he says (10.30) “if there’s one
God, one truth, one reality, religion and science have to end up saying the
same thing.” Citing light, then, as the
only constant in the universe, he posits that “light” may very well be another
word for “Spirit”. (13.18) “The cosmic Christ, [then] is the light that fills all things since the
beginning of time… [the Cosmic Christ] invites
us into bigger worlds by love, by something bigger, more beautiful, more
attractive…and that’s the function of beauty, that’s the function of truth, and
it’s the function of all goodness.”
I have to
say that Rohr’s presentation of the Cosmic Christ has whetted my appetite for
more. I have long struggled to find a
way to make sense of an infinite, eternal God alongside an earthly existence which
had a beginning and will have an end, and the idea of an eternal Christ who has
revealed God to us ever since God separated light from darkness, makes a lot of
sense to me. This notion of a Divine source
and revealer of Life and Love, eternally present before and after what we could
call “time”, moves us one giant step bigger in our understanding of the Holy
One as Alpha and Omega.
No two of us
come here with the same precise needs this morning. Some of us may be frustrated by addictions,
or misaligned aspects of daily life; some of us likely brought fears about what
happens to us when we die; some of us may have strong understandings of the
cosmos and are seeking ways to articulate that.
With that diversity of needs in our midst, I leave you this morning with
these three entry points to examining and embracing the Alpha and Omega nature of
God. Whether you’re at the point of
developing healthy habits to bring you closer to God; or are searching for some
deeper understanding of your lifespan relative to God; or are spurred forward
by the academically challenging notion of the cosmic Christ; I trust that your
journey will be one of great interest and new discovery. Most definitely, as you delve in, however you
choose to do that, you will be doing so with the loving, caring, supporting
love of God, our source and our destination.
Amen.
Video
link: Fr. Richard Rohr, in conversation with
Msgr. Walter Nolan, “The Catholic Corner” – posted Jan 2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LYQQO5uFtA
For
an interesting United Church “WonderCafe” discussion on the Cosmic Christ, http://www.wondercafe.ca/discussion/religion-and-faith/cosmic-christ-would-someone-explain-concept
And,
for more on reincarnation,
http://www.gita-society.com/bhagavad-gita-section4/4_reincarnation.htm#5
© 2012 Rev. Greg Wooley, Ralph Connor Memorial United Church, Canmore AB
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