I’ve always enjoyed, and at times been fascinated by wildlife documentaries on television.  Not only is nature beautiful to observe but also the skill and clarity of the photography can be quite stunning.

Perhaps, of all forms of wildlife, we humans are most fascinated by the behaviour of monkeys and chimpanzee.  We always feel they act in almost human ways.  Even in the simple search for food monkeys show amazing resourcefulness and problem solving abilities.  Some species have even developed rudimentary tools to help them in the search for food.

All species of monkeys have a social system and some species have very complex and dogmatic systems indeed.  No social transgressions are tolerated, and a very harsh class system is operated by some, in which those of low birth are often rejected by the rest of the tribe.

Most species use a primitive language, in which they use a variety of different sounds to warn each other of various predators or to tell each other about different types of food.

We might be forgiven for suggesting that monkeys are made in the image of human beings.  They don't necessary look much like human beings physically, but their behaviour seems to have quite a lot in common with the behaviour of human beings. 

Human beings are made in the image of God, although we may not look much like God physically.  So how do we resemble God? That's a much easier question to answer now than it was in ancient times, for now we have the advantage of being able to look at Jesus Christ. 

We don't know what Jesus looked like physically, although we can make a few assumptions since we know he was a middle-Eastern Jew.  But it doesn't matter what he looked like, for we know what sort of a person he was, and that's what matters.

In today's reading from Colossians we're told that Jesus is the image of the invisible God, just as we are, but that he is also the firstborn over all creation.  Paul sees that by Christ all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.  He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Paul had no access to the gospels, which were written later than his letters; indeed Paul had been put to death before the Gospels were written.  It is hardly surprising then that he makes no reference to them but at the same time there are echoes of things.  This passage from Colossians, which was read this morning, echoes the introduction to John's gospel where John describes Jesus as the "Word" who was with God from the beginning and who was therefore divine.  This may be because the passage is based on an early Christian hymn in which Christ is seen as present with God at Creation.

In early Israel, Wisdom was thought of as a person, in much the way that the Holy Spirit may be thought of as a person today.  Both John, in the opening of his gospel, and Paul in his letter to the Colossians, identify Christ with Wisdom, as that part of the Godhead, which was present at Creation.  Both the letter and the gospel were written before there was any developed understanding of the Holy Spirit, but Christ is already recognised not only as divine, but also as so important that he was somehow "with" God from the beginnings of the world.

Paul goes further than this still.  He sees Christ as the mediator of both Creation and Redemption.  Christ creates with God the creator, then somehow holds the unity of creation in his hands, and then was the first to rise from the dead. 

But there is some difficulty in all of this, for Jesus of Nazareth was a human being and no human being was present with God at the beginning of Creation.  The man, Jesus, was on earth for around thirty-three years, was crucified and died, but was seen again alive by many of his friends.  He was seen again alive in a very different way, for his body, which was so damaged that he died from his wounds, was fit enough after death to walk the seven miles to Emmaus.  And at the same time, he was seen in Jerusalem by those gathered in the Upper Room.  And almost everybody, who saw him after his death, failed to recognise him until he gave some sort of sign.

Clearly, Jesus the man had changed through his death.  He was certainly alive again, but he was alive in a very different way and it seems obvious that he was living in some different dimension, which we call Heaven, or the Kingdom of God.  Although there had been very strong hints throughout his life that he was the Messiah - through his incredible healing powers and his immense love for all human beings - it was after his death and resurrection that people began to realise that he was indeed the promised Christ, the saviour, the one who had been chosen by God to rescue the world from evil.

It was this new Christ in a different dimension who was with God at the beginning of time, not Jesus the man.  Christ the divine was Jesus the man while he was on earth for thirty-three years, but before and after those thirty-three years his essence was entirely divine.  He was fully human on earth and showed us how the God within human beings can grow and develop to entirely fill human beings if only human beings listen to and follow the guidance of that God within.

We know and love him as Jesus the Christ, but it was his essence, the real "him", which was with God both before his birth and after his death.

And maybe it's the same for us.  Maybe we too have come from God and are going back to God.  Certainly it's our essence, the real "us" which goes on to a new kind of life after death in which we are no longer troubled by damaged bodies or damaged minds.  Meanwhile, we are the Church, the body and arms and legs of Christ on earth.