In our gospel lesson today, we find Jesus in the Jerusalem temple surrounded by a questioning crowd. In his response to them, he announces, “The Father and I are one.” That’s the truth of the Incarnation; Christ Jesus is both human and divine. That is what he came to reveal and model to us earthlings, that we, each and all, are called to incarnate God’s love here and now. But too often we continue to ignore, or avoid, or struggle with that reality.

We can’t imagine that we are like Christ Jesus. He is the Son of God! Yet so are we all, daughters and sons of the Holy One, created in the image of God from the beginning, no matter how hard that is for us to accept. God dwells within each and all, constantly working to transform us into the imago dei we were created to be. As we are transformed into Love, at one with one another and all creation, our hearts are opened to receive and pass on God’s abundant grace as we follow in the way of Christ Jesus in the world around us.

Separation is an illusion of time and space. As the apostle Paul puts it: “ . . .neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”(Rom.8:38-39) And elsewhere, “In [God] we live and move and have our being.”(Acts 17:28a) All creation is held in the heart of God, who is the Source and Essence of all. “All things exist in Him, and they are One.” (The Tripartite Tractate, quoted in The Essential Mystics, Poets, Saints, and Sages: A Wisdom Treasury, p.106)