In yesterday’s reading from Ephesians, we saw that God had chosen us for himself from “before the foundation of the world.” The fulfillment of humankind in Christ is not represented in this text as separate from the fate of the rest of creation, but is spoken of in the context of the consummation of “all things.”
In the gospel reading for today, Christ rides a young donkey into the city, hailed as King by the multitudes. The Pharisees rebuke Jesus for allowing their acclamations. Clearly, they do not see what the disciples see, or know what the disciples know. Yet humans are fickle. We know that later in the week, Jesus will be derided and abandoned. And doubtless, many in the crowd may simply have been carried along by the mass feeling.
But while human opinion, human recognition of truth and falsehood is demonstrably feeble and fickle, nature itself is not. The nonhuman world, in this gospel account, the nonsentient world itself recognizes the presence of God: “If these were silent, the stones would shout out.”
What is Jesus saying? It is surely a figure of speech (or has become one). But might it point to even more than that? Is the mineral world somehow wedded to our own?
We live as though we are the only beings whose inner life is significant. Thus, we discount or ignore the inconvenient needs or feelings of other animals. We almost unanimously disregard the survival rights of the plant world—except (and usually under duress) insofar as they affect the survival or well being of certain animate creatures—and we are discovering that that list of creatures becomes longer and longer. Even today, many people are not yet convinced that we disregard the mutual wellbeing of plant and animal life to own peril. What role does the mineral world play in the web of life? Does it have a significance of its own?
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