Spring Reflections On Christology – In Conversation With Ellen Leonard
“In Christ’s Resurrection, the earth itself arose,” declared St. Ambrose of Milan.[1] We take the opportunity of this time of reflecting on the salvific moment of Christ’s resurrection to re-think our Christology. As before, we turn to the work of Elizabeth Johnson. There we learn to re-position our human story within the enlarging horizon of planetary and cosmic history and recognize that there are far reaching implications for our faith lives. As Johnson relates:
It rearranges the landscape of our imagination to know that human connection to nature is so deep that we cannot properly define our identity without including the great sweep of cosmic and biological evolution.[2]
Within this perspective of a new landscape, we realize that we exist symbiotically – and that our very existence depends upon the natural world of God’s entire creation. In fact our creation issues forth from and is entirely dependent upon all the beings and elements of earth and universe. It is the perspective of a new humility. The sarxor “flesh”of Jesus’ incarnation in John 1:14 indicates for us that Jesus, the incarnate One, was inseparable from earth. Thus born, the genetic material of his body was kin to the grasses, fish and whole community of earthly life birthed in ancient seas. The “flesh” of John reaches beyond Jesus to encompass the whole biological world of living creatures and stardust of the universe. As ourselves, Jesus carried within his being the “signature of the supernovas and the geology and life history of the Earth.”[3]
Re-situating our faith story in this epic landscape has significant implications. The earthly finitude was embraced by our God and thus inestimably blessed and good. It is the perspective of a “deep incarnation” and has considerable moral and ecological implications for the contemporary living of our faith.[4] This Jesus embodies the hope of “all creation groaning into fulfillment” (Romans 8). As Schillebeeckx insists, the church, the community of disciples is “the only real reliquary of Jesus.”[5]
The final transformation is the stuff of our very lives bringing the kin-dom of inclusivity and justice to all the beings of earth. This body of Christ, this reliquary, is found in present time, in our lives as we call one another to a deeper justice, knowing that all is interconnected and interwoven. It is no surprise to realize that the places of deepest degradation of Earth are the places of deepest degradation of humans. The poor live near the ash heaps of our consumer society, the women and children suffer at the edges of polluted rivers and fields. Justice for one is justice for the other. All is connected. All bodies matter to God, that is the message of “deep incarnation” that our emerging theologies of this new landscape beckon us to understand. Social justice, repair of unjust structures and ecological justice, reconciliation of relationship of all bodies merge into a call for integrity of all creation, the peace of the universe. We are called to embody the community of Jesus, the community of Earth in a new and just way for all creation.
[1] Anthony Kelly, Eschatology and Hope, ( Maryknoll:Orbis, 2006), 177.
[2] Elizabeth A. Johnson, “An Earthy Christology,” America April 13(2009), 4.
[3] Sean McDonagh, To Care for the Earth, (Sante Fe: Bear, 1986), 118-119.
[4] Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ: the Experience of Jesus as Lord, (New York: Seabury Press, 1980), 641.
[5] Elizabeth A. Johnson, “Deep Christology: Ecological Soundings,” in From Logos to Christos: Essays in Christology in Honourof Joanne McWilliam, eds. Ellen Leonard and Kate Merriman, (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010), 170Ibid., 165.
