create and restore

For this morning Xmas2C (keep the Xpistos in Xmas) the lectionary gives us the option of three gospels, and in our parish it’s preacher’s choice. Not having the sermon today, I don’t know which one we’re reading or what hymns we are singing, but the collect is this:

Second Sunday after Christmas Day

O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully

restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may

share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share

our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns

with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever

and ever. Amen. 

As usual but not necessarily always, the collect begins with an address to God which is a theological assertion about God, and one could say this one is addressed to God the Father. So, I’ll ramble about that without pretending to anything scholarly, it’s just sort of picking at, eh. 

“O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature.” There’s a comma after God, so we’re not choosing among gods, we’re speaking to the One God, and we’re asserting that God created the dignity of human nature. I reckon that’s meant to be the same as creating humans, which we can point to Genesis 1:26-27 and Genesis 2:7, where in one story the Word creates us in God’s image and in the other story God personally himself creates us earthlings out of dust, both cases, with God’s word and hand involved. That's about as dignified as possible: in creating us God imbued us with God’s very dignity itself. 

And then, the collect being sophisticated enough to not lead us like a pet on a leash but rather to leave us to — “assume” is the wrong word, maybe it’s more to “see” in the sense of the word ἴδωσιν at Mark 9:1, to perceive, discern, understand — to see, to work it out for ourselves, that the word "restore" means God’s restoration of human dignity through the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection of God the Son, God’s own self stepping in as one of us, dignifying us again, not only by lowering God to become what we are; but more in raising us to resume our place as what God is, again, through God’s incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection in God's own human nature of God the Son. This morning that’s how I’m understanding the collect’s theological assertion, the way the commas are arranged. 

Of course, if one moves the commas around, the theological statement becomes other, and I’d have to start all over and see it differently. In any event, I like that word ἴδωσιν (3rd person plural aorist subjunctive active), which I’ve used in sermons any number of times over the years and, as I understand it, its root word ὁράω, I see, experience, understand, discern with my mind, inwardly, even spiritually. When all is said and done and we finish wandering around the word, we even get optical, optician, synoptic out of it. It’s really fun scooting down these paths, tunnels; sort of like a prairie dog, you never know where you’ll pop out. 

Anyway …