First Sunday after Christmas
12/29/2024
Welcome back friends. We have arrived at the first Sunday after Christmas. Buckle in because today we are going to be exploring a vast topic. We are going to start to dig a little deeper into our discussion of the nature of God, and try and understand a little more what is being referred to when we talk about the Trinity. But we are also going to be introducing some terms and ideas that come from outside the western, Christian way of thinking. My hope at the end of today's reading to have successfully introduced what I think the Bible teaches about the nature of God and about the universe, His creation.
As always you can find a link to all of today's readings at the bottom of the post. Today we are going to be focusing on the Gospel reading, John 1:1-18. We will also refer back to Deuteronomy (not part of this week's reading) as I try to expand on the message in the Gospel reading.
The Gospel of John starts out much differently than the other 3 Gospels. Instead of recounting Jesus' lineage or reviewing a prophecy about Jesus or his cousin John, the 4th Gospel tackles a much deeper and richer aspect of History. It starts with "In the Beginning was the word." However, John is not talking about the beginning of his Gospel, he is talking about the beginning of the Universe. He is speaking about the beginning of time, as we understand and live it, when all of the universe was created. And when John says "the Word" he is referring to Jesus himself. Jesus, the man who John followed for about 3 years until he was crucified by the Roman authority, was the Word, and he was there "in the beginning".
The second sentence of the opening verse pushes our understanding even further. The rest of verse one says "The word was with God, and the Word was God." So here we are deep in the discussion of who or what is God and what does it mean when we say that God is a Trinity. Because here in the opening verse of the Gospel of John we are faced with the Word, who is Jesus, was with God, and was God. So there is a God, let's say "the Father", who Jesus was with. But also, don't forget, Jesus is himself God. So there we have individual 1 and 2 of the Trinity. Where is the third "person"?
Let's take a quick look at verse 3, and then a look at Genesis 1:2. Verse 3 says "All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being." Now if we have a look back at Genesis, we see who was at work carrying out the words being spoken by God. It reads "And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters". Right there in the second verse of the first book of the Bible we are introduced to the third aspect of God, the Holy Spirit. The Word, Jesus, God the Almighty, and the Spirit of God were all there at the creation and all being recounted here in John's Gospel. The stage is being set for us to grapple with the very Nature of God, while at the same time we are being given a deep look at Jesus, the incarnate, so we can come to understand our salvation.
Now I am going to put a pin in this topic, the Trinity, and introduce some ideas from a different religious tradition. I am going to introduce 3 different words and try and give a general definition for each. It is very important to state that I am not trying to create a 1 to 1 mapping between the 3 aspects of God that we find in the Trinity and these 3 terms. In my opinion they are related concepts, and I do not think the number 3 is an accident, but they are not equivalent concepts. The 3 concepts are Prana, Akasha and Prakriti. These words come from the Sanskrit language and are key terms in Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, although each teaching has its unique take for each term.
First let's look at Prana. Prana can be translated to "life Force", "Vital energy", or "breath". The simplest way to think of Prana is to think of it as the very breath that you breath, without which you could not survive. On a deeper and more spiritual level Prana is the vital element that animates and sustains all life.
Next we will look at Akasha. Akasha is also a Sanskrit word that is often translated at "ether" or "sky". It is a vast expanse of the universe as well as the essence of all everything. Akasha is also considered to be the origin of sound. The Akasha is the subtle, fine medium that allows for the existence p of all things.
So that brings us to the third term. Prakriti is the fundamental substance from which the universe is formed. Prakriti is thought to be in constant change. It is in permanent flux, always in motion is the space provided by Akasha, guided and powered by the Prana.
So these two things Prana and Akasha I would like to present to you as aspects of God. Akasha is the vast space that God holds. Prana is the divine power of God. It is the Prana, moving in and through the Akasha that gives rise to all the forms of Prakriti that we experience. The Power of Prana expands and animates the invisible material and makes it visible to us. We may want to think of the Akasha as everything that we find in an atom and as Prana as the force that pulls those atoms together. The result is the world we see, the ever changing Prakriti.
So how is Prana, Akasha and Prakriti in any way related to the Trinity. The answer that I would give you is they both give us a picture to use to struggle with to understand the nature of God. God is no more an atom than he is a father or a burning bush. These are words we use to capture some aspect or characteristic of God when we want to try and provide a label that we can understand. But when we are speaking in Christian terms we always have to come back to the truth that God is beyond our ability to understand. Just as a vast divine ether empowered by breath is beyond our ability to understand. But we can view these different pictures to try and grasp God.
And why would we do that? Why do we need to understand anything about God? Because we are called to be in relationship with Him. Our highest and deepest calling is to know the one who created us. Each of us will find that after all the fun, all the work, all the rewards, and all the suffering we can experience we still just have a simple longing. A longer that we may not be able to describe or understand. That longing is the longing to connect with God. God is the source of all creation. If we consider God to be Akasha and the Prana, then he is not only the source, but also the material essence and sustaining power behind and within all creation. And we long to relate to that creator.
In the future we are going to look more at the idea of God, being the material substance that makes up all of his creation. And if that is true then what does that mean about each of us, and about all the other living and non-living things in the universe around us. But that is for another day.
For today I will close by taking us back to the Gospel of John, verse 4 "in him was life, and the life was the light of all people." We are all looking for the light. The light that will lead us in the right direction. The light that gives us the strength and motivation to continue. It is the light that helps us move forward even when we fear that the darkness of the world may be closing in around us and be too great for us to endure. The Light of the world has arrived. He shines for us. He shines in us. He is the power that sustains us, our very breath. All we have to do is reach out and take hold of even the faintest light that we can see, and the power we need will be there.
Thanks for reading.
David
Want to know why I am writing these articles? Look here.
You can find all of the readings for today at this link.
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