Primordial elements swim in a plasma soup:  

could it be the mind of God?

Scientists call the initial instant of creation, Singularity.  And, all the present universe that is, was contained in that singular, unimaginable, brilliant flash.  Theoretically, we can take a snap shot of the first billionth of a second when primordial elements swam in a plasma soup and the first matter producing particles were cooked over a fire with temperatures in excess of 3000 billions of degrees.

Now, for those progressives, particularly Christians, who are interested in John the Evangelist, John, in quite different images and terms, describes how the world began.

John says that “in the beginning,” in those initial instants, wisdom was active; intelligence was at work. The mind of God was ordering all things. 

Clearly the John tradition takes great interest in what was present when the world began.  The John tradition makes the startling claim that no thing was created outside of the intelligence and the wisdom of the one who formed it.

The eminent biblical scholar, Gerhard Von Raad, has said that one very good way to understand what God meant when God told Moses that his name is “I am that I am,” would be to translate it to mean, “I who cause to be.” We might improvise with the scholar’s translation and expand it to, “I am the one who makes everything that is.”

Just as the Bible can be said to be the weaving together of a tapestry of divergent traditions, we can weave Biblical and scientific traditions together to produce a compelling interpretation of John’s powerful image of Jesus as the Incarnation

of this ancient wisdom.

“In the beginning was the Word,

and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God.” John 1:1

For the first century Jew who understood Hellenistic Greek, “Word” would be reminiscent of the ancient Hebrew term, “Wisdom.” And this “Wisdom” would have been understood as having been present with God from the beginning of creation.  John’s message is clear.  The intelligence of God was active in the creation of the world from the beginning.

You might say that, for John, God was in God’s right mind when the world

was made.  Possibly the writers of John also wants us to see that Jesus, whom he knows to be the Christ, is connected to and expressive of the very wisdom and intelligence of God that has been dynamically active from the very beginning, perhaps before the world

was formed, depending on one’s understanding of God.

It is a delicious idea, isn’t it? That God took the time to figure out what God wanted to do

in the formation and creation of the world? And it is an exquisite idea to think that Jesus of Nazareth, as we see him portrayed in the Gospels, is possibly, for progressive Christians, and those less progressive, the human embodiment of the mind and the heart of the one who created everything that is.

“And the Word became flesh

and lived among us,

and we have seen his glory,

the glory as of a father’s only son,

full of grace and truth.”  John 1:14

John Dominic Crossan, widely regarded as the leading authority on the words and life of Jesus of Nazareth,  says that if you want to see the face of God living on the planet, look at Jesus.  Jesus, we might say, was full of the stuff of God. 

In the first century, if you want to venerate the relationship between God and God’s people, what more lovely and graceful image could you paint or describe

than “an only son.” (It goes without saying for progressive Christians, that graceful image would be “an only daughter” or “an only son” or “all one’s daughters” and  “all one’s sons.”)

But, back to the first century.  Imagine for a moment, a king; a king full of grace and truth.  And imagine, just for a moment, the king’s court, where the King presides over the court and affairs of state.and there is a lot going on.  Suddenly, you see that the king is distracted; and, when you look at the source of this distraction, you see that the King’s “only son,” in whom the king takes great pleasure, has entered the room.

You can see in the eyes of the King the great satisfaction and admiration of the youthful presence, full of light, full of light’s energy, full of the very kind of wisdom that the King holds within the King’s very heart.

The image is compelling, isn’t it? The child is born, full of the grace and truth that emanates from God, the Father, from God, the Mother, and now, from God the Child.

In Jesus, whom Christians call the Christ, is seen the true nature of the relationship between God the Father, God the Mother, and God the child.  And, we understand in that way, that grace follows upon grace.

Let me share a personal story with you.

I must have been 5, or maybe 6 years old. 

On Sunday mornings, during the Eucharist,

I would stand on the kneeler next to my Father as he knelt. 

I would watch him.

His head would be bowed;

his hands would be folded over the pew in front of him;

his eyes would be closed. 

Then I would lean towards his ear and whisper,

“Is it almost over?” 

Keeping his posture of eyes closed and head bowed,

he would simply put his arm around me,

not saying a word. 

I wondered what he was doing. 

Holding on to the pew in front of me,

I would lean around in front of Dad,

trying to see what he was doing! 

Then, I would squat down and pear up;

Peering from such a dimly lit space

between the dark wood floors

and dark pine pews; peering up at Dad from below.

I wondered what he could possibly be doing! 

Why was he so quiet and still? 

I knew that he knew I was there, next to him,

wiggling and peaking and wondering. 

I remember thinking,

“Is he praying?”

“Is this how we pray?” 

And even,

“Why is Dad praying?”

Now, many years later,

I know that it was through prayer,

that my Dad was in relationship with God. 

And, in those moments of squirming, and peaking,

held in Dad’s gentle embrace,

I learned for myself

something of what it means to

acknowledge my own mysterious

relationship with a Creator, a Life-Giver, God.

It seems that humans were created with the capacity for relationship with God-self.  Like a child squirming about, playing peek-a-boo with her Dad’s prayers, the child recognizes the possibility of developing her own focused, meaningful, and mysterious relationship with mystery itself.