Friday Nudge: Who Are We In the Cosmos - Advent 3
Continuing our Advent Meditation
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Advent Reflection
Advent 3: Who Are We in the Cosmos?
Be at peace among yourselves. 14 And we urge you, beloved, to admonish the idlers, encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them. 15 See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all. 16 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not despise the words of prophets, 21 but test everything; hold fast to what is good; 22 abstain from every form of evil.
23 May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.
(1 Thessalonians 5:13b-24 NRSV)
We have been following the story of the universe over the last couple of weeks of Advent. We have been learning about deep time and deep waiting, holy waiting, within a cosmic context. The cosmos waits with us this Advent.
But who are we who wait? Who are we human beings, Earth creatures, “all [who] are from the dust, and all [who] turn to dust again” (Ecclesiastes 3:20)? What is our place within the cosmos, within God’s good creation?
The story of the universe, the story of its emergence from a single moment 13.8 years ago: this is our origin story. The story of who we are begins all the way back, to so long ago. We began in the world when time and space burst forth, moving outward into ever-expanding creativity, complexity, life, and wonder. We began in deep time, when the elements that were needed to create the cosmic and planetary conditions for our life to emerge came into being.
This is our origin story. This is our creation story, universal for all of humanity, and unique to us as Christians, as we interpret it through the lens of God known in Jesus Christ.
This is what is universal: that we are part of evolution, of cosmic evolution from stardust and supernovas to planets and life on Earth. We are a living dimension of evolution. Since all is connected from that single point of the Big Bang (or Flaring Forth), then everything is a dimension of the universe itself. This is universal for all of life on Earth.
And what is universal to all humans, yet unique to us as human beings, is that we are the only species in the Earth community that has the capacity for self-reflective consciousness. That means that we humans, and humans alone, have the ability to reflect on who we are and what it all means. What that means, then, since every single part of the universe is a dimension of the universe itself, is that we humans, in our capacity for self-reflective consciousness, are the universe reflecting upon itself. Through us, within us, as part of our very being, we are the universe reflecting about who it is, and what it all means. This is more than poetry or metaphor; this is cosmology! This is science. How incredible is that? This insight has the power to truly transform our worldviews, and our ways of understanding who we are, what the world is, where we’ve been, and where we are going.
Who are we, then, as human beings, when we have this capacity for self-reflective consciousness? When we are the universe reflecting upon itself? When we are the universe looking into the tiny through microscopes, and into the far through telescopes? When we are reaching for words through poetry and prose, and seeking silence in meditation and prayer?
And who is Jesus, the one we are waiting to be born at Christmas? Who is Emmanuel, which means God-With-Us, when Jesus, too, is the universe reflecting upon itself? Jesus, the one given to us by God, born into the world through Mary, fully human and fully divine? What do we learn, about who Jesus is, as well as who we are, when we think about Jesus as the universe reflecting upon itself?
As we wait this Advent, we reflect. As we wait, we wait with and as part of the universe itself. As we reflect, we reflect with and as part of the universe itself. As you wait and reflect, I invite you to consider this question: What does it mean, for who we are as human beings, to have this self-reflective consciousness, in this time of Advent? What does it mean, when we wait for the birth of God into the world, in anticipation of when God will return again, in the fullness of the reign of God? Who are we in our waiting?
Who are we in our waiting? Who are YOU in your waiting?
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