Several years ago, my extended family took a

big family vacation to Ireland, the place of the

ancestors (or at least some of them), a place that

my grandmother had dreamt of visiting for many,

many years.

In hindsight, it was an amazing vacation, but a few

days into it, after our large, intergenerational group

had spent a couple of nights in Dublin in a badly

chosen hotel perched above a pub and meandered

our way across the country on cliffside roads,

where many of us mused over fish and chips, “it is

unfathomable we don’t hear about more of those tour

buses falling off of them,” we arrived at our “home

base” for the duration of the vacation. We arrived jet

lagged, motion sick, newly aware of our new fear of

heights, and mostly having already lost our filters.

And it was raining, and it was chilly. We were a rather

curmudgeonly group.

So, while the menfolk stayed at home, researching

biking and hiking excursions that we wouldn’t take

(because grandma), the womenfolk stomped around

town in their rain boots, trying to get acquainted.

Most of us were in baseball caps having already given

up on our hair, eyes and heads cast down, looking no

more than a few feet in front of us, bickering about

silly things and still moaning about the clouds and the

rain, wondering why we didn’t go to Italy or the south

of France instead.

And then with a stroke of luck—or providence

perhaps—my teenage cousin, Anna, caught sight of a

little cottage-like shop just a ways off the beaten trail,

and we made our way down this little cobble road

to what turned out to be a little art gallery. Peering

in, we saw the painter and her easel, both covered

in paint, mostly blues and purples and blacks. It was

set up in the corner. One more step inside and we

were immersed in brightness. Bright, white walls

full of vivid painting after painting after painting of

water: shallow water, deep water, calm water, raging

water. All the colors water could possibly reflect from

sunrise to high noon to dusk to sunset and in any

given season.

We were transfixed. Our gazes softer. Our tongues

softer. Our feet softer. It was a place you were

compelled to move about slowly, sort of suspended

in time. We had spread out, each of us taking our

own path around this room, our attention captured

by different paintings, but our hearts captured by the

totality of the space and the way that it transported us

somewhere else.

When my aunt and I bumped into each other, her

shaky voice betrayed her as she struggled to name

the surprise and the embarrassment that she felt at

being so deeply moved. “I don’t know what is going

on here, Sara, but I feel like I’m going to cry.”

Moments later we were deep in conversation with

the artist, Carol, whose warmth and ease and depth

reflected her paintings. She was native to Dingle,

Ireland, and had spent many years abroad painting

landscapes, but the water itself kept calling her back

until she submitted to its claim.

We probably lingered for an hour in that gallery

and only peeled away after promising Carol that we

each planned to have one of her paintings hanging

above our fireplaces just as soon as we pay off the

trip to Ireland itself. For now, she would need to

accept payment in the form of our accolades and a

few self-conscious tears.

Transported as we were in that space, the biggest

blessing was found as we moved on. The paintings

that were so transcendent in fact were paintings

of the waters that physically surrounded us. So,

as we moved out of the gallery and back into “the

real world,” we did so with a shifted perspective.

The images of water pointed beyond the water and

beyond the moment of beholding the image. The

paintings captured a measure of the beauty that

surrounded us. Beauty that our sulking, bickering

group was apparently worthy of. We left with a new

lens. It’s a lens that the author of Colossians offers to

us as a gift, if we would receive it.

Often, we read lofty scriptural language of the type

we encounter this morning with a deep breath,

prepared to do some real mental gymnastics as

we parse the theology and the philosophy and the

ecclesiology—all of the ologies—of the text. And

we exhale once we have figured out exactly what it

means. (Or we just never exhale.)

The irony is that a text like this one wasn’t meant

to function that way, at least not primarily. It was a

hymn of the early church—or at least it was a liturgy—

known in the bones of the people and sung or

spoken not as a theological treatise to intellectually

master and repeat, but more as a piece of art to

behold and to be moved by. Old Testament Scholar

Walter Brueggeman, oft quoted from this pulpit, has

said that while doctrine closes and closes, biblical

poetry opens and opens, which we all so desperately

need. We need to “relish the images; make them our

framework of life and faith.”

The text we encounter in Colossians gives us such

an image by offering up the supreme one: “He is

the image of the invisible God. The firstborn of all

creation…” It’s known as a Christ Hymn. With the

others in Philippians, Romans, Ephesians, John,

Hebrews, and Revelation, it paints a picture of Christ

that is expansive, even universal. Timeless, even

eternal. A picture that takes us beyond the Jesus of

history—the man that some could touch—and to a time

before him and a time after him. Echoing the Gospel of

John which begins with the Word—which was with God

and was God long before it ever became incarnate in

the baby born in Bethlehem—the author of Colossians

also points to the Christ who existed beyond and

before, who exists beyond and before time. Today we

come to the end of our journey through “Scripture’s

Greatest Hits,” and we do so appropriately with a song

and a text that takes us right back to the beginning.

Christ, the firstborn of all creation. Christ, the one

in whom all things in heaven and on earth were

created. Christ, the one who is before all things and

the one in whom all things hold together. Christ, the

firstborn from the dead. Christ, the head. Christ, the

one in whom the fullness of God is pleased to dwell.

Christ, the one in whom God reconciles to God’s

self all things. Christ, the beginning, and Christ, the

end. The Word of God by which we were created,

redeemed, and are now sustained in the hope

that we might become co-creators in creating and

redeeming and sustaining. If this language sounds

even a little bit funny to you, it’s because the Western

Church has a long history of neglecting The Cosmic

Christ that is witnessed to over and over in scripture

but not bound by it. Writing in 1988, Theologian

and educator Matthew Fox said that “theologians

responded to the enlightenment by putting aside

the concept of the Cosmic Christ, and with it most

other attempts to see the world and faith in nonanthropocentric ways.” Indeed, theology “went in

search of the historic Jesus,” not a meaningless quest

in and of itself, but it was undertaken at the expense

of the Cosmic Christ. Father Richard Rohr put it a

little more starkly when he told an interviewer, “We

kind of overdid the Jesus thing.” “We” being the

Church. We might know a little more about the world

that Jesus of Nazareth lived in. We might know a

little more about such-and-such parable and how

it has been misused and misunderstood, not at all

based on the context in which it was told. We might

claim Jesus as “my Lord and my Savior.” But we can

scarcely conceive of the Christ that permeates all

things—visible and invisible, inside the church and

outside the church, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

“I believe,” Fox said, “the issue today for the third

millennium of Christianity—if the earth is to survive

into the next century—is the quest not for the

historical Jesus but for the Cosmic Christ.”

Can we recover, I hear him asking, a Christian faith

that moves us beyond the intellectual ascription?

Beyond the ethical imperative? Beyond the

therapeutic? Beyond the possession of Jesus?

Can we recover a Christian faith that seeks, finds,

and celebrates Christ in all things? Not so we can

arrogantly claim a monopoly on the truth but for

the sake of joy planted and beauty beheld and love

known? A Christian faith that is cosmic in scope?

Where do we begin? I think it has to do with the way

that we see. He is the image of the invisible God. While

the author of Colossians uses the metaphor of an

image, Jesus himself used a similar one, claiming the

title “Light.” I am the Light of the world.

But while we tend to imagine the candle shining

in the darkness, as if the light itself is the thing to

behold, Richard Rohr says, “Remember, light is not so

much what you directly see as that by which you see

everything else.”

So, maybe we begin by training our eyes to see

both God and the world around us through Christ.

Christ, the image of God, and a snapshot of

ourselves in any given moment; the good, the bad,

the ugly, the redeemable. Christ, the light by which

we see everything.

For all of its seemingly esoteric language, the letter to

the Colossians is actually quite practical. The Cosmic

Christ is always and at the same time drawing us out

of ourselves by illuminating the particularities of our

days. All those thrones and dominions and powers.

We’re drawn out in order to go back in as more faithful

versions of ourselves. If Christ is our image of God,

our light, our lens through which all is seen, how then

do we live?

I’ve been carrying around an image with me for

about ten years now. It’s of two men whose names I

do not know but whose faces are forever etched on

the backs of my eyelids. When I lived in New York

City for a year following seminary, I loved to go to the

diners—the ones that are like the one on Seinfeld.

I actually went to that one on Broadway and 110th

many a time. While they are of course open to anyone

who happens to be passing through, they tend to be a

microcosm of the neighborhood in which they reside.

Fewer tourists, more 22-year-old actresses just trying

to make it, and families sitting down for a quick bite

to eat as they juggle their careers and soccer practice

and ballet, and a lot of 80-year-old men that sit for

hours, drinking coffee and eating cake, thanking God

for rent-controlled apartments and flipping through

The New York Times.

On this particular day, I was sitting at the counter,

probably inhaling a turkey sandwich on my way

to the gym, my mind already on the next thing,

when an interaction a couple of seats down from

me caught my attention. I hadn’t noticed him until

then, but there was a man—clearly homeless—who

had just been handed a standard breakfast plate

from behind the counter: eggs, sausage, toast, hash

browns, the works. He didn’t say anything, but his

eyes bespoke gratitude.

And then in a moment imperceivable to me, the

waiter behind the counter picked up on something,

some inkling of disappointment in his recipient, and

he asked, “Is there a different way that you prefer

your eggs?” The receiver of the meal just waved him

off, but the waiter persisted. “It’s really an easy thing

for us to redo them. It’ll only take a moment. Overeasy? Sunny side up? Poached?” The man didn’t

understand these terms, and he didn’t talk much,

so this interaction went on for a bit as the waiter

described what each label meant. “Kinda runny.

Really runny. Not runny at all.” Together, they came

to the conclusion, and the waiter took the scrambled

egg plate away. And minutes later, he emerged

with a new one with eggs that were sunny side up.

Runny. And a smile spread across the receiver’s face

in recognition.

This was a diner that was known for its hospitality.

It frequently let houseless folks inside to use the

restrooms. It let them linger as they sipped on their

house coffee. The man a couple seats down from me

may have been sitting there for an hour already, just

resting his feet in the air conditioning.

But this exchange was new to me. I couldn’t recall

ever seeing one like it before—at this diner or at any

restaurant, or anywhere. It really was an easy thing

to do, as the waiter insisted. It wasn’t like a ribeye

steak was being sent back. And it may have been

an easy fix, but the moment was more about what it

communicated: I see you. You matter. As an individual.

As someone who has preferences. As someone who

probably has childhood memories around food. As

someone whose mouth waters when certain foods

are presented and whose stomach heaves when

others are, no matter how hungry you are. And we

want to get this right for you.

The man who liked his eggs sunny side up probably

received a thousand paper cuts a day from people

who only saw dirt. And laziness. And ingratitude.

People who thought they knew everything they would

ever need to know about him—except that they would

never know how he liked his eggs. The waiter must

have been using a different lens.

When Christ is Cosmic, and not just “my” Christ, or

the Christ of comfort, or the Christ of culture, but

when Christ is most truly the image of the invisible

God—the light by which we see, the lens through

which we filter it all—I believe our God rejoices.

Whether the lens adjusts our eyes and our hearts

to the beauty of the world and its creator—like the

paintings in a gallery— or enables us to see “the least

of these” as the fully human beings that they are, or

moves us to work for a world that better reflects the

God who made it, I believe our God sings. And we are

invited to join that song. Amen.