One common way people think about God is to think of him as the creator of the world who is pretty much not present in today's world.  My students often think of God in this way: the facts and knowledge that they're learning in college tells them nothing about God (they think).  For them, God makes himself known to us only in miracles, so if we don't see any miracles, God either is not interested in our world any more, OR - God simply doesn't exist.

 Another common way people think about God is to think of God mostly as a large, loving friend.  We talk to God as we might talk to any of our friends, chatting about daily issues, concerns, happy moments.  That is one of my most frequent ways of praying, in fact: I dash off little mini-prayers throughout my day, talking to God as though he were right there in the room.  But that means sometimes I think I'm too familiar with God - and I don't see all the unexpected places God might be leading me, because I simply take God for granted as a friend.

 

The first way of thinking about God is pretty thoroughly problematic; the second way can be too.  But today's scriptures offer a vision that not only counters these common views of God, but that is ultimately even better "Good News" about who God is for us.

 

In the first reading (Colossians 1:15-20), we see first that Jesus is the "firstborn of all creation" but then later that he is also "firstborn from the dead."  When Paul writes that Jesus "holds all things together" he means that Jesus holds together all that happened before God came to earth in Jesus (the "old" creation), AND that he holds together the "new creation", that is, all that is happening after the resurrection.  Another way to put it is: there is no time when God, made known to us in Jesus, does not intimately care for us and our world.  All things are created for Jesus; all things are reconciled to Jesus.  We are loved, utterly.  So there's God's response to the first common way of thinking about who God is.

 

Today's second passage also emphasizes the old and the new (Luke 5:33-39).  You can't put old wine in new wineskins because they will burst.  Yet at the same time, Jesus acknowledges that his disciples partly have to learn how to live both with the old and the new.  Jesus does not say to get rid of the old cloak or the old wine, but that the new cloak and the new wine are added into everything.

 

To treat Jesus as too familiar is to make him out to be one of those "old" familiar things - but Jesus wants us to anticipate the new as well.   In other words, even as we go about living our everyday lives, there should always be room for the possibility that God will ask us to do the unexpected and the new thing that may seem crazy at first!

 

Today, let us pray for the grace to be open to God as the friend who loves us utterly, but who also calls us to a new way of life.

 

- Jana M. Bennett