Mt. Thom, Chilliwack, BC, July 2017

Seeking Reconciliation One Moment at a Time

David R. Clements

Chair, Department of Geography and Environment

Professor of Biology

Trinity Western University

¹⁵ The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. ¹⁶ For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸ And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.¹⁹ For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, ²⁰ and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Colossians 1:15-20

One of my mentors in this field of creation care is Cal De Witt, who was the founding director of the Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies. Cal tells a story of one time when he was preaching a message on Colossians 1:15-20 to a Latin American audience through a translator. But the real translator in the story was the Holy Spirit. The repetition of “all things” in the passage became obvious to the audience who wound up in something of a frenzy chanting the Greek “ta panta!” Maybe this audience can give the chant a try…

Why is Paul emphasizing ta panta so much? How should that speak to us today? Ever since the beginning we’ve had a separation problem. We put everything we don’t think is important at arm’s length. Are not the beautiful flowers important to God? What about the spiders? Or the snakes? Wait you say – I like nature but I don’t like those particular creatures. But then what happens to ta panta? And do we put God’s creation in a little box – a television, a computer screen for looking up the parts of nature we like on google? A phone screen where we “like” a particular photo from a hike that a “friend” of ours took? Do we make God’s creation a mere backdrop for the drama of God’s salvation of people? Or is our Savior the cosmic Christ who died for ta panta? Is doing some activity in nature a recreational activity in the sense of merely a “hobby” that some people like to do, or is “re-creation” essential to being human as part of the great reconciliation that God is accomplishing?