“So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17).
The Big Bang theory posits that the universe began with an explosion of energy, of heat and light, that expanded rapidly and eventually resulted in atoms, elements, suns, and planets. It was a singular event: a singularity as scientists call it, where the usual rules break down and something new happens. Our universe, and all life, derives from this hypothetical event.
The biblical account in Genesis turns this beginning into creation: the purposive act of the Creator, who makes all things. Creation implies intentionality. “Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light” (Gen. 1:3), as the text says. Genesis is an orderly account of God’s ordering of the universe: not a scientific tract, though the priests who produced the first chapter were concerned that it reflect the world as they saw it. Most importantly, they wanted to convey that the universe had a beginning, and that God was the actor behind it.
The biblical account also appeals to a moral order that is not random or eccentric. “God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness” (Gen. 1:4). “And God saw that it was good” recurs over and over again in the first chapter of Genesis: not only light and darkness, but dry land and water, sun and moon and stars as well; plants and animals, and human beings themselves. Things that exist are good. By describing the world in this way, the ancient text provided a moral frame that went far beyond any merely scientific account. “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31), as the first chapter draws to a close.
Genesis gives us God, who acts to bring good into the world, but you all know the rest of the story. Adam and Eve, the crowning act of creation on the sixth day, end up disobeying God. Mislead by the serpent, they eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, breaking the moral frame that had held them in place. Their attempt to be like God explodes in their face: a big bang of a different sort. Sin and death enter the world, as the creation project begins to unravel. Yet God is good, preserving the created order, and casting a new vision for the human race.
St. Paul in our second reading posits a “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17), God’s action in reformulating the universe. As Paul says, this new creation takes place “in Christ” (2 Cor. 5:17), who provides a new beginning. To be “in Christ” is to put on Christ’s character, to put on his life, to be like him. In the letter to the Galatians, St. Paul says, “As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” (Gal. 3:27). “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Rom. 13:14), as Paul writes in Romans.
There’s a moral frame to the new creation. Just a few verses before our reading today, Paul tells the Christians in Corinth, “For all of us must appear before the judgement seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Cor. 5:10). This gives an urgency to our being clothed with Christ, so that God will see the new creation when we appear before the throne. As St. Paul says in the Letter to the Philippians, to yet another group of Christians, he hopes “to be found in him [Christ], not having a righteousness of my own… but one that comes through faith in Christ” (Phil. 3:9).
Like the Big Bang theory, new life in Christ is an explosion of light and heat that expands and recasts the universe, including ourselves. Like the original creation in Genesis, there is a goodness that is deep set in our midst. As we put on Christ, we are conformed to the original pattern by which the universe was made. As we say in the Creed, “by him all things were made,” and now in Christ all things are remade.
In the laying on of hands in Confirmation and Reception today, the Holy Spirit will also be at work in our midst, just as surely as God’s spirit swept over the face of the water on the first day of creation. Two baptized members of the Church will reaffirm their vows to follow Christ in the context of this community, and will receive the grace they need for living this new life. All of us will have the chance to renew our own baptismal vows, and to recommit ourselves to the new life we have in Christ, through the power of the Spirit.
We too are a part of the new creation. We too have been remade in Jesus Christ and have been filled with the Holy Spirit. Lent offers us a new beginning! “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17).