"Jesus turned toward the world is God's wisdom and power in action; but Jesus turned toward the Father is the embodiment of a sort of divine response to divine generosity, the Son turned towards the Father. The life of God is not only the outpouring gift, it's a life in which our own response of selfless gratitude and response is also foreshadowed for ever. Jesus is divine responding embodied in our nature and our world; he responds freely and totally to the gift of the Father, and that response is no less divine than the gift - a perfect response that is both human and more than human...These ruminations on God's being as giver and receiver, lover and lover, are frightening, exciting and entirely awe-inspiring. But perhaps more frightening, exciting and awe-inspiring than that is the fact that by baptism into Christ's death and resurrection, we become part of this dynamic love play that is God. As the Holy Spirit filled body of Christ, God asks us to be His representatives to the world (as the Father sent me, so I send you). He then brings us back to Himself in our lives as reconciled people.
And if you turn to St Paul, you find there, less economically expressed, both the idea of Christ as the one who gathers up all things that the Father has made and brings them home to the Father through the work of an eternal love that has worked itself out in time and space (compare chapter 1 and chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians). Jesus Christ, the anointed monarch of God's people, stands at the heart of the twofold movement, of God's life towards the world and the world's journey to reconciliation with God."- Rowan Williams, Tokens of Trust, pp. 66-67
This "twofold movement" of which Williams speaks us crystallized in our celebration of the Eucharist, the ultimate sacrifice of God for the world, and the ultimate self-offering of Jesus to His Father. We are caught up in this fluid motion, realizing that not only Christ, but our very lives as baptized people, are broken for the world and for God. And then we receive the giving and receiving life that is Jesus into us.
May Christ bring to pass by his Spirit and for His Father the goal to which we all strive, the perfect imitation of this divine reality of love.
