Past, Present, and Future Glory.

[Paul points to] Christ as the ruler of all creation and the church as Christ’s body—not two entities but one—God’s chosen instrument for the reconciliation of the world. The church shall be a colony of heaven on earth, Paul says, the divine gene pool from which the world shall be recreated in God’s image. From the heart of Christ’s body shall flow all the transforming love of God—bestowing hope, Paul says, bestowing riches, immeasurable greatness. As God is to Christ, so shall the church be to the world—the means of filling the whole cosmos with the glory of God.

Imagine a four-tiered fountain, if you will, in which God’s glory spills over into Christ, and Christ’s glory pours into the church, and the church’s glory drenches the whole universe. That is what Paul can see, as clear as day—the perfection of creation through the agency of the church. I have been using the future tense out of sheer disbelief, but Paul does not. He uses the past and present tense: “And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”

Paul can see it, although as best anyone can tell he wrote this letter from a jail cell, the only light coming from a small square window above his head. His life was coming to a violent end, which he may also have seen, but none of that diminished his sense of God’s providence, or of God’s confidence in the church. Paul’s own experience did not count—at least not the hecklings, the beatings, the arrests. All that counted was the power he felt billowing through his body when he spoke of Christ—the things he said, which surprised even him; the things that happened to those who heard him and believed. In the grip of that power, which turned him into a bolt of God’s own lightning, Paul had no doubt about God’s ultimate success. God would succeed. God had already succeeded. The world was simply slow to catch on.

Barbara Brown Taylor, Home By Another Way. Taken from Give Us This Day.

Barbara Brown Taylor is a best-selling author, professor, and Episcopal priest.