Monday, January 9, 2012 — Week of 1 Epiphany
Julia Chester Emery, Missionary, 1922
Today’s Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p 943)
Psalms 1, 2, 3 (morning) 4, 7 (evening)
Genesis 2:4-9(10-15)16-25
Hebrews 1:1-14
John 1:1-18
Beginnings. Today’s readings initiate our next few weeks of successive readings in Genesis, Hebrews, and the gospel of John. All three open with words of beginnings.
The Genesis reading begins our great myth of creation and fall. God takes up “dust from the ground” (adamah in Hebrew), breaths the “breath” (ruach, spirit) of life into it, and it becomes a man (adam in Hebrew). Or, trying to retain the Hebrew linguistics in the English — God forms from the Earth, “Earthling” and breathes the life of spirit into his being; or God forms from Humus, and breathes “Human” into being.
The gospel of John and the epistle to the Hebrews are concerned to proclaim that we are in relationship with this beginning through our life in Christ (who elsewhere will be called the second Adam, the second “Earthling.”) John says, “In the beginning was the Word,” (the Logos), the actualization of God’s activity within creation. Hebrews is eager to connect this originating work with the “Son, …the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.”
Through the Word, God’s Spirit breathes into Mother Earth and creates a new life that can be conscious of God. The rest of history is the dance of the love story between God and humanity, a story of unrequited love and betrayal from the creatures, and steadfast love and compassion from the Creator.
Today, I want to live in that creative Trinity. I want be conscious of God, breathing me and the whole of Earth into being. I want to be awake to the never ending activity of the Word whom we name Jesus, constantly forming being from the dust of the ground. Today may my words, my breath, and my being be one with the divine consciousness for which I was breathed into life. May I be fully Human; a Spirit-breathing Earthling, awake to the ever-present Son which dwells within me, “the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, [sustaining] all things by his powerful word.”