Inarboration: The Word made Tree
Walking in Black Wood this morning, it is cold but bright. I hear the looping, trilling, interweaving lines of birdsong. I can smell earth and bark, hear the shifting of leaf mulch under my feet and the rustling passages of birds and squirrels above me. I see a wagtail, robin, great tits, a pair of treecreepers. A squirrel eyes me before making off up the long smooth trunk of a beech.
I am a small part of a web, here, tracing paths that gently thread a world which is not mine.
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When God creates the first human beings in the book of Genesis, it marks a high point of the work of creation. They are made in God’s likeness, responsive to God and bearing responsibility for the rest of creation. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, human beings are the ‘summit’ of creation. It is in Christ that the full dignity of humanity is revealed, as the Word assumes a human nature in order to heal us all.
For me, the incarnation has always been the compelling heart of Christian faith, so I have no problem with this account of human being. But.
Often, we confuse our stewardship and ‘dominion’ with control and exploitation. We make creation and salvation all about us. Everything else is just stuff – things, not persons. It can seem as if our destiny is to subdue creation and then be plucked out of it to fulfil our destiny.
We can recognise the destructiveness of this vision of humanity when taken to the extremes we have taken it in our own day.
Deep in our scripture and tradition, other possibilities scurry and sing. On the front page of this website, I have a favourite quotation from Maximus the Confessor: ‘The Word of God, who is God, wills always and in all things to work the mystery of his embodiment’. Notice that: ‘in all things’. It echoes the repetition of ‘all things’ in the cosmic hymn of redemption on Colossians 1: ‘in him all things were created’, ‘through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven’. Maximus’s own vision is a cosmic one: the saving action of God enfolds everything in a liturgy of praise and return and fulfilment.
Can we understand God as embodied in creation, then? This is obviously not a new thought. Sallie McFague gave it now classic expression in her work The Body of God. She was criticised for downplaying the distinction between God and creation, or creating a new dualism between God as soul and nature as God’s body.
I think these criticisms missed the promise of what she is doing. Think again of the story of creation. First: human beings exist in and with creation. They are placed in the mythical garden, a place where there is no violence between humans and animals. Our separation from nature is our fall. We are created and saved in and with all other creatures. Second: we know that the dust of which we are created is the same matter from which stars, planets, plants and animals were made for billions of years before our arrival. This is not just New Age fancy: it is the stuff we are. If God assumes our flesh, takes the flesh made and given by Mary, God also takes the ‘flesh’ of the world, inorganic and organic. Third: the end of creation is not the sixth day – us – but the seventh. It is Sabbath. God rests. God sees everything is very good. This is the peace of creation, all of it, in all its multitudes, expressing the nature and love of God.
We are nervous saying creation is God’s body, because it diminishes God, or it empties out creation’s own worth. But we do not apply that logic to the Word assuming our flesh. God’s self-emptying does not make God less; our becoming-divine (or living the life of Christ in us) does not make us less ourselves, quite the opposite. At the very least, God is expressed in and through the myriad of created things, in a way which affirms their own being and the unconditioned infinity of God. For God is not a competitive ego, struggling with us and the world for space and recognition.
I am prepared to think more about the mystery of God’s embodiment, of God feeling the wind in her leaves. For one thing, if our salvation is to come from our victim, we must also recognise the face of Christ in the despoiled earth.