Colossians 1:15-28
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation;
16 for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible
and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have
been created through him and for him. 17 He himself is before all things, and
in him all things hold together. 18 He is the head of the body, the church; he
is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have
first place in everything. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to
dwell, 20 and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things,
whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
21 And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22 he
has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy
and blameless and irreproachable before him— 23 provided that you continue
securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope
promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every
creature under heaven. I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel. 24 I am now
rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what
is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the
church. 25 I became its servant according to God's commission that was given to
me for you, to make the word of God fully known, 26 the mystery that has been
hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his
saints. 27 To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the
riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
28 It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom,
so that we may present everyone mature in Christ.
I don’t really remember the first
time I did it, but for years now I’ve liked to look up at the sky at night, on
a clear night when you can see the stars shaken across the black curtain of the
cosmos. I can remember coming home from work during that brief season when I
stayed with my dad, walking out in the backyard in my dark-blue uniform, taking
my cap off to crane my neck upward towards the stars. I would just look up for
what seemed like hours as more and more stars, planets, and galaxies would come
into view, their light finally reaching my eyes after traveling for millions of
light-years. Of course, most nights, there’s always one who likes to upstage
the stars, one whose presence can drown out the light from a thousand far-off heavenly
bodies and can even dull the brilliance of the galaxies in Orion’s Belt—the
Moon.
When I was a kid, my stepbrother
Philip would tell me that the Moon looked like E.T., only upside down. A friend
of mine once said that he believed Fred Flintstone lived on the Moon (though I
have no idea where he got such an idea). I was always found of the notion that
it was a battle ground between Bugs Bunny and Marvin the Martian. Of course,
none of those things are true, nor is it true that the Moon is made of green
cheese or that the government has some secret hidden on the far side of the
Moon. The Moon has been a source of speculation and imagination for centuries,
and just fifty years ago yesterday, our imagination and speculation turned to
wonder and awe as the first human being set foot on the lunar surface (Captain
Neil Armstrong, followed by Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, who piloted the
command module in orbit around the Moon to ensure the crew’s safe arrival back
home). We landed on the Moon! People went nuts! This great source of mystery,
this focus of our wonder, became a unifying goal, and we accomplished it.
Of course, there are still things
to learn about the Moon—a great many things, in fact. We haven’t come close to
figuring it all out, and what’s more, our trips to the moon only opened up the
vistas of our own solar system, creating a deeper sense of curiosity for many,
some who would go on to launch telescopes to photograph the rings of Saturn and
put a rover on the surface of Mars. For many, however, the trip to the Moon was
enough; we had quenched just enough of their curiosity and wonder to move on
with their lives. The Moon returned to being the great night light, a thing
conquered and understood enough to not bother with it again. To touch the
surface was enough, there was no need to dig deeper or stretch our
understanding of what we were beginning. There was no need, no desire to know
the whole of the thing. We landed on the surface, and that’s good enough.
I suppose those first Christians
didn’t fully grasp the whole of the thing themselves, the whole of this new,
wonderful, frightening, thing that was breaking into the world. The epistles of
the New Testament are filled with words written by apostles and leaders
attempting to assuage the anxiety that inevitably arises when one has chosen to
follow a crucified messiah, when one puts their trust in the divinity of a man
executed for his teachings of the true nature of love, sin, forgiveness, grace,
and the kingdom of God. For many of those early Christians (especially those
who were Gentiles), I can imagine this drastic change in one’s life brought
with it all kinds of mystery, all sorts of wonder, and all manner of anxiety. Of
course, when these things converge, some folks tend to be less willing to
plunge into the mystery and more willing to hold on to what they believe to be
certain, to tighten their grip on what it is that got them to where they are
without much thought given to what will carry them onward. Other folks allow
the uncertainty to create within them a desire for that which seems more
certain. In other words, the anxiety that comes with uncertainty, with mystery,
can often lead us to make decisions that stunt our spiritual growth or steer us
from the way of Christ. The audience of this letter before us this morning
serves as a clear example.
While we could spend time making
hay over whether or not Paul actually wrote this epistle or if it was Timothy
or another of Paul’s followers, what is clear is that the Colossians are
struggling with this idea that Jesus was and is in fact the fullness of God. In
fact, it seems that there are those within the congregation who believe there
is something “extra” needed in order to fully experience and participate in the
life of faith. The invisible, inexplicable mystery of God in Christ seems too
intangible, perhaps too easy for some of the Colossians, so they gravitate
towards what the writer (we’ll just say Paul from here on out to avoid
confusion) calls in 2:8, “philosophy and empty deceit.”
Furthermore, there are those who want to heap additions on to the faith of
those at Colossae; in 2:16-19 Paul writes, “Therefore do not let
anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new
moons, or sabbaths. These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the
substance belongs to Christ. Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on
self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without
cause by a human way of thinking, and not holding fast to the head, from whom
the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows
with a growth that is from God.”
What seems to be happening in
Colossae is that believers are struggling to place their complete faith
in Christ, to trust in Jesus as the fullness of God. There’s a surface-level
connection, a desire to claim Christ in order to reap the benefits that come
with such a claim (eternal life, a ready-made community, etc.), but the mystery
that comes with claiming Christ as Lord only created anxiety for some. They
needed something to do, something to claim, some practice, explanation, or
apologetics to point to in order to have some sense of certainty about this
whole Jesus/Kingdom of God thing, so they cling to dogmatic practices about
food and drink, they make it a point to observe festivals, holy days, and
observe the sabbath to the letter. They are attracted to practices that
purposefully fill them with a sense of self-righteousness, religious sounding actions
like angel worship and the proclamation of visions.
At first, we may want to condemn them for such behavior, but the truth is
we are just as likely—perhaps just as guilty—as those Christians at Colossae.
After all, when the invisibility and apparent silence of God only intensifies
our pain or increases our anxiety, who among us hasn’t thought about reaching
out for something tangible, something to give us a visible, physical place to
land?
I remember when my maternal grandfather, Pa, died back in 1994. Ma and
Pa’s modest little house had wood paneled walls decorated with pictures of
family, a few collectable plates, and a rather large wood-cutting of the Last
Supper Pa apparently picked up during his time in Korea, but after Pa’s
passing, Ma was hanging pictures of angels everywhere—little fat cherubs; tall,
elegant, blond angels with broad, bleached-white wings; ghostly figures
hovering over scenes of children playing and the like. She was reading books
about angels, clipping articles from those crazy newsprint magazines like the National
Enquirer and Weekly World News. Ma (along with my mom and aunt)
somehow found some comfort in these pictures, these ideas about angelic beings
that may very well be watching over her. It didn’t matter if the pictures were
kitschy, the books written by hacks, or the articles clearly concocted stories
published to catch the attention of those stuck in the checkout line at
Winn-Dixie: Ma used these “angels” to cope, to have a handhold for her grief in
a world suddenly so very different.
Then, when my stepmother died a couple of years ago, I accompanied my dad
to the funeral home to make the arrangements. Now, my dad isn’t exactly a
deeply religious person, but he insisted on having that familiar image of
“praying hands” on the funeral programs and in the details of my stepmother’s
casket. Dad says he saw Paula raise her hands up just before she died, like she
was reaching towards heaven, so he wanted those hands to remind him. When God
is just a bit too invisible, when God’s voice is just a bit too silent, we look
for signs and we hold on to that which gives us some place to stand.
We’re no different from those Colossians who were tempted towards the
worship of angels and self-righteous humility to make themselves feel holier,
closer to what they believed the expectations and requirements were for the
kingdom of God. Of course, when we give in to these temptations, when our
anxieties and uncertainties overtake us, it is often because we’ve been too
afraid to wrestle with the great mystery of God in Christ, because these other distractions
are, frankly, easier. It’s easier to indulge in self-righteous humility, to
lose ourselves in the rigid practice of rituals, to cling to rules, laws, and
dogma, believing that these things will ground us, that our faith will be made
more complete by our actions.
Because these Colossians were holding on to these very ideas, Paul opens
our text, the whole epistle really, with words that were most likely sung as a
hymn among those early Christians: “He
is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him
all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created
through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things
hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the
firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in
everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through
him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in
heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” You see, right out
of the gate, Paul wants these Colossians to know that while these other,
attractive, grounded practices and ideas do not bring one closer to God, that
this life of faith in following Christ needs no supplemental activities! Christ
Jesus is the fullness of God, there’s nothing
else one needs but Jesus!
Now,
Paul doesn’t just write those words and leave them hanging around for folks to just
pick up and put in the back pocket like some cheap ticket to ride. Not at all,
for he continues on, “And you who were once estranged and hostile
in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through
death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before
him—provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith,
without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has
been proclaimed to every creature under heaven.” In other words,
Jesus is the fullness of God, who has reconciled the whole of creation to God’s
self through the death of Christ, and that is not something to take lightly!
This is why Paul says, “provided that you continue securely established and
steadfast in the faith…” It will always seem easier to stray towards those
things we can touch, to cling to those practices that make us feel righteous,
to hold tightly to doctrines that explain things in nice, little, anacronyms. It
will always be easier to hold on to those things than to plumb the depths of
the great mystery of God’s fullness found in Christ, the one who came to die,
to shed his blood upon a cross in order to reconcile you, me, and every
creature to God. It will always be easier to want to believe there’s more to
it, that we have to be more than we are, that we’re not good enough, that the
lies we believe about ourselves, lies that others have told us about ourselves
are true. It will always be easier to look for God in places where we are
comfortable, in practices, ideologies, and groups that make us feel safe and
secure, even if those places are inherently evil.
It
will always be easier to gaze up at the Moon and simply say, “we touched it,”
than to return again and again to discover new realities and even more
questions. In the same way, it will always be easier to bow your head and say,
“I have it all figured out,” than to return again and again to the Great
Mystery of God in Christ, to seek to know Jesus as the fullness of God, to
strive to live in the way of faith that calls us to be reconciled to God and
each other. It will always be easier, but we’re not called to that which is
easier. We are called to a life exemplified in a cross—a cross upon which the
fullness of God died, so that we may live. Amen.
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