Stick with What You Know

Stick with What You Know
Colossians 2:6-19
July 29, 2007
17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

© 2007 by Christopher D. Drew

Sermon Focus: In this scripture passage, Paul is giving important advice and encouragement to the Christians in Colassae. He wants them to remain steadfast in the apostolic faith that was given to them. He also encourages them to maintain their Christian freedom in the face of those who would pressure them into the prevailing spiritual culture.

Sermon Function: To repeat the proclamation that Jesus is Lord of all, and to ask listeners to reflect on the idols of their lives which function in a similar way to the competing spiritual influences of Colassae, and to encourage listeners to remain steadfast in their Christian faith.

[Click to Show/Hide Sermon Text]

Introduction

Last week, we discussed the spiritual milieu confronting the Christians in Colossae, and related how spiritual temptations and divisions were adversely influencing the faith our early brothers and sisters in Christ. I related the situation in Colossae with our contemporary situation, and I talked about some contemporary influences on the spiritual landscape that continue to distract us from proclaiming the truth about our Lord. This theme continues into our text for this week. Here, Paul becomes more specific about how the church is expected to respond to the situation in which it finds itself. Although he is confident in the faith of the Colossians, he nonetheless wants to be sure they cling to the truth of the Cross, rather than the competing spiritualisms in that area.¹

Listen now for God’s Word.

[Read Scripture - Colossians 2:6-19]

Opening Illustration

A few weeks ago, I drove away from Portland, heading over the causeway and the Harbor Bridge, then onto the Crosstown Expressway, and exiting on South Padre Island Drive near the mall so that I could visit the local AT&T mobile phone retail store. Some of you may have already guessed the reason why I made the trip – I wanted to hold, touch, and try out the fancy new Apple iPhone.

And so I did. I held the sleek device in my hands, impressed with both its workmanship and overall simplicity. Before goofing off with it, I used it to place calls to Sara, my father, and my mother. After confirming that this latest of cool gadgets would actually perform this central task of successfully making a phone call, I moved on to other more interesting things. I checked out the internet web browser, I played with the built-in camera, I “flicked” through the sample music and photos that the AT&T people had helpfully placed on the little device. I wondered that I could watch whatever YouTube video I pleased, streamed directly over the network. Amazing stuff.

I love the latest technology. I get caught up with it. I still suffer the pains of wanting the latest thing. Despite all of my longing, I still don’t have an iPod, let alone an iPhone. But I still feel that need, the need that says – “I must have that thing!” The need gets particularly acute when I read the papers and see someone triumphantly leaving an Apple store, bag held high, with surrounding crowds actually applauding the purchase of this greatest of all telephony devices.

That really says something about us, doesn’t it? Receiving kudos and having one’s picture in the paper is easy – just be one of the first in line to buy the greatest gadget ever created.

Life’s filled with similar such moments. Fame and fortune is just a 30-second video away on YouTube, if you can come up with something really clever. Everybody and their brother and sister creates and publishes podcasts these days – including many churches.

Jesus Christ Is Still Lord

Last week, when we were talking about the spiritual milieu facing the Colossian church, I demonstrated how there is a similar kind of spiritual smorgasbord today. This week, we see that there is even more here than we thought. You see, it’s not just the spiritual influences that affect us and our ability to proclaim the truth of the gospel. It is also the non-spiritual things that detract from our spiritual lives. Our expectations for a successful life, even if we confess to be Christian, are still clouded by our expectations for happy lives filled with the things we like to have, or the things we think we need. They are also governed by the subtle oppressions of a culture that looks with particular suspicion on the faith we share in Jesus Christ.

I’m a staunch capitalist – one who believes that American political and economic institutions give us unprecedented opportunity not just to follow our own dreams but the freedom to obey the will of our Father in Heaven. But the trick is this: We must first stick with what we received - Jesus Christ the Lord, remembering to live our lives in him, as Paul writes in verse 6 of today’s lesson. We are called to “live [our] lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving” (vs. 6-7).

Our lives, says Paul, ought to be governed not by the instant consumer passions we experience, or by our own personal desire to be known by others, or to achieve fame, but by Jesus Christ, the one we proclaim to be Lord of our lives.

We Think We Need More

All of the other trappings of human life and our human institutions can be classified as things that captivate us. We are not satisfied with our lives and the degree of success that we seem to enjoy. So we try to make up the gap in other ways. Sometimes, abiding by the philosophies of our own culture, we put Christ last instead of first.

Tom Sine once wrote in Discipleship Journal that we talk a lot about the Lordship of Jesus Christ in our lives, but we don’t really want any part of it. He says: “I’ve got to get my career underway and well along, my house in the suburbs, our upscale living started first and fast. Then, with whatever time or energy is left, I will follow Jesus.”²

Frank Harrington, late Presbyterian pastor and mentor, commented on this passage, saying, “It sounds good, but it won’t work. When we get all of our things in place, a pattern is set and we have little time or energy for following Jesus.”³

Paul’s amazing letter to the Colossians, written almost two thousand years ago, still shines the light on the human condition even today. He writes, “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ” (Colossians 2:8 NRSV).

[The moral of the story, says Tom Sine, is this: “Pursuing the American Dream with a little Jesus overlay isn't biblical and it will not impact the world around us.”⁴]

Baptism, Death, and New Life

Paul then moves into a discussion of circumcision and baptism. Baptism is, for Paul, a “spiritual circumcision.” Baptism, like circumcision, is a sign of our incorporation into membership in a community of faith. We prefer to think of baptism as a sign of new life in Christ, and it is. But it is also something else – something deadly serious, because in the Sacrament of Baptism “we participate in Jesus’ death and resurrection.”⁵ The waters of baptism, then, say something different for us, because we proclaim through Baptism what Jesus Christ has done for us. That’s the profound message of Baptism, and one of the reasons I like the doctrine of infant Baptism is for the practical reason that baptizing an infant makes this message much more profound, because we take what we consider the most precious, innocent form of human life and, by sprinkling the infant with water, emblematic of the precious blood of our Savior, the infant joins with us in this profound journey where we die to the old ways and cling to Jesus, in whom we place exclusive faith for our ultimate redemption and resurrection.

Baptism is the first step of walking in Christian faith. And that means we are called to remember everything that Christ has done for us, so that we might know him better. Philipp Melanchthon, Martin Luther’s protégé, said, “The knowledge of Christ is to know his benefits.”

What are those benefits? Do you remember what they are? Here are some of the benefits of Christ as citied by Paul:

• Inclusion into the communion of faith in Christ, through the spiritual circumcision we receive in the sacrament of baptism.
• Forgiveness of our trespasses and sins. “God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:13-14 NRSV).
• Liberty from all the “rulers and authorities” that claim ownership over our lives. Paul rights that Christ has “disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it” (Col 2:15 NRSV).

Christian Liberty

Paul concludes this part of his letter with an appeal to hold fast to the liberty we enjoy in Christ. Christ is Lord of all. When we appeal to baser, temporal things, we lose focus on the One in whom everything else subsists, Jesus Christ. Other matters, the food or drink we eat, the festivals we celebrate, the sabbaths we observe, these are just pale substitutes for the fullness we have in 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” (Col 2:18-19 NRSV).

Do not let anyone disqualify you from the body, insisting on worldly satisfactions of the flesh and unhealthy addictions, insisting on clinging to the party line, while dwelling on visions of fame and grandeur and all the other detritus of life, like iPhones, that can separate us from Christ. And moreover, don’t dwell on the things that pass away through death. Believe in Christ, the head of the body.

Friends, our faith is an organic thing. It’s not just pie-in-the-sky hope that ignores our frail and oftentimes tragic human lives. Instead, our faith is grounded in Christ, who is the head of a living organism because he himself lived among us as human being. And I wish I could describe to you the full wonder of this mystery, but we can enjoy a taste of what is coming now, in that joy that we feel when we think of everything Christ has accomplished and will accomplish, so that we might live has faithful servants, finding all fulfillment in Him, while remembering that the Light of the World is coming again.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Given at First Presbyterian Church, Portland, Texas.

¹Martin, Ralph. Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon (Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching). Richmond: John Knox Press, 1991, p. 113. ↩

²Sine, Tom. "A Different Discipleship." Discipleship Journal. January/February 1989, 49:6. ↩

³Harrington, W. Frank. Who Am I? Sermon preached in the fall of 1998 at Peachtree Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, Georgia. ↩

⁴Sine, op. cit. ↩

⁵Presbyterian Church (USA). Book of Order. W-2.3002. ↩

Technorati Tags: Presbyterian Church USA, PCUSA, Sermon, Colossians, Year C

Astronomy, Paul, and Birthdays

One of the major spiritual influences that Paul may have been contending with in his letter to the Colossians was Iranian astrological speculation.

While reflecting on these this possibility, I was suddenly inspired to see what the northern sky might have looked like the morning I was born. As luck would have it, there is a nifty online application at Space.com called Starry Night Online. The configuration options allow you to pick everything from your exactly latitude and longitude to the date and time of your view. I chose July 25, 1969, at 3:15 a.m. (I was born at 3:10 a.m., but this was as close as I could get using the online applet).

Here's the view of the northern sky the morning of my birth, as seen in Salt Lake City, Utah (click the image to enlarge):


With the stars labeled:

Technorati Tags: Birthday, July 25, Astronomy, Paul, Colossians

Clarity from Chaos

Clarity from Chaos
Colossians 1:21-28
July 22, 2007
16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

© 2007 by Christopher D. Drew

Sermon Focus: Paul’s letter is a response to the concerns he has heard about competing spiritual influences in Colossae. We live with a similar spiritual milieu, confronting competing truth claims. The resulting confusion requires a clear statement of what we believe, just as Paul has done in his letter to the Colossians.

Sermon Function: To encourage listeners to take Paul’s technique to heart and to explore more fully what it means, as the Body of Christ assembled in Portland, Texas, to proclaim the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ amidst our own contemporary spiritual milieu.

[Click to Show/Hide Sermon Text]

Introduction

We’re in the middle of a discussion about Paul’s letter to the Christians in Colossae. We talked a little bit about the situation in Colossae, and we spent some time discussion the idea that happiness is a different thing than joy. You might remember that I said that happiness was the product of human circumstance – it is a fleeting, emotional response we experience when things turn our way. Joy, on the other hand, is rooted in Jesus Christ, and has its source in Him. Joy has with is an associated permanence. Joy is also differs from happiness because we can encounter joy even in the midst of sorrows and suffering. Joy can therefore be considered a tremendous gift from our Father in Heaven. I concluded the sermon last week with the great hymn about Christ, verses 15 and following in chapter one, which is really an early confessional statement about the person and nature of Jesus Christ.

This week, we will look at some of the practical implications of our faith in Jesus Christ, and of our suffering, along with Paul, for His sake.

Listen now to God’s word as it comes to us from Paul’s letter to the Colossians.

[Read Scripture - Colossians 1:21-29]

The News this Week

Dominating my thoughts this week were two stories that have recently made the news.

First, there was the rather horrible reporting surrounding the recent document entitled “RESPONSES TO SOME QUESTIONS REGARDING CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE DOCTRINE ON THE CHURCH,"¹ produced by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Vatican City, home base of the gigantic Roman Catholic church. The document was written in a question and answer format. One of the questions had to do with the classification, among other things, of different ecclesiastical bodies with which the Roman Catholic Church maintains varying levels of relationships. Naturally, the claim is made that the only true apostolic succession finds its home in the Roman Catholic Church alone. The Eastern Orthodox churches, while “churches” in the proper sense, are nonetheless unable to enjoy full communion with Rome because of the inability of the eastern churches to acknowledge the primacy of the Roman bishop, the Pope. Other churches, includes those children of the Reformation, because they lack the fundamental apostolic lineage, cannot be referred to, according to the Vatican document, as “churches” in the “proper” sense of the term.

While Pope Benedict XVI approves the release of such documents, the work was a product of the Roman curia, and was not directly written by the pontiff.

The document was quickly labeled by the Associated Press and other news outlets as “controversial.” And I suppose it would be, if the Vatican was saying anything different in this document that it hasn’t been saying since the dawn of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. The fact is that the document says nothing doctrinally new. But the reaction to the document tells us much about our prevailing faith climate. I’ll get back to this in a moment.

The next story that’s been on my find this week is about an Episcopal priest in Seattle, Washington, who for six years was responsible for faith formation in her parish, and who recently announced to the local Seattle paper that she was both “Muslim and Christian.”² This news comes notwithstanding certain obvious theological issues, including the fact that Islam decries the divinity of Christ as idolatry, and views the concept of the Holy Trinity as polytheism. Although until recently working at the Seattle Parish, the priest in question was actually ordained in Rhode Island. The bishop there has temporarily relieved the priest of her duties, inviting her to reflect on Christian doctrine for the next year.

Competing Claims of Truth

Now, why am I bringing all of this up?

I mentioned earlier that these items say something about our prevailing faith culture. In a word, we we’re uncomfortable with competing truth claims. We don’t like it when a group says that they are in possession of the truth, and that we are not. The multitudinous claims about morality, and the various flavors of Christianity, all of these claims are staking out territory in our mind. And in some corners of the Christian world, there is such uncomfortable with the truth of the gospel that faith becomes a muddle, resulting in statements such as the one give by our friend the now inactive Episcopal priest.

Given the nature of our world, and the premium placed on the trading the stock we know as diversity, we can expect to see further stories like these in the press for the foreseeable future. My guess is that they’ll come at us with increasing frequently.

But as I’ve said before, none of this is news. Paul, in fact, is reacting to the muddled world of intermingled and co-mixed spirituality in Colossae. It is likely at the time of writing that Paul’s letter is speaking to a very mixed, poly-ethnic and cosmopolitan crowd. Multiple religious influences were present in this Hellenistic landscape. Three in particular likely proved to be quite influential, even on the fledgling Christian church in the area. You may remember from last week that Paul, when he wrote this letter, had not visited the Colossian church. Instead, he was relying on the account of Epaphras, the minister in their area. Epaphras has likely forwarded on to Paul the situation the largely gentile Christians in the area faced. The triple influences of nature worship, Iranian astrological speculation, and wisdom teaching from the so-called “mystery cults” were adversely impacting the faith of the Colossians.³ Paul had to respond to this emerging crisis.

So, as you can see, the persistence of the human spiritual condition is striking. Whereas Paul is contenting with the spiritual heresies of his day, we also contend with our own. Nature worship remains a force today. I was always astonished to see, during my time as a hospital chaplain in Salt Lake City last summer, the number of people to profess “Wiccan” as their faith. Astrology remains popular, particularly if you’ve ever visited California or Sedona, Arizona. And the mystery religions of the Greeks seems to have been supplanted by the mysterious knowledge offered for sale by our Scientologist friends. The spiritual milieu we find ourselves in is ripe for just the kind of message Paul is sending to the Colossians.

Obedience and Holiness

In our text for today, Paul reiterates the importance of what Christ has done for us through the Crucifixion. He has “reconciled us in his fleshly body through death, so as to present [us] holy and blameless and irreproachable before him” (v. 22). The message here is one of holiness. To be in communion with the holy means we must strive to be holy, but it also means that, because we’re not perfect, we cannot be perfectly holy. The Gospel message is that in our weakness we have been made holy, so that we may stand before God. Definitely good news, particular for this pastor and sinner, who, along with many of you, is always keenly aware of the times when I’ve fallen short of the mark, and despite my best efforts, persistent in my estranged and hostile mind. The road is hard, and thank God we have Christ to save us.

But now notice this next word in the text – “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” (v. 23). This phrase can be a tricky one for the contemporary Christian, because it brings up the old dichotomy of law and grace. Grace, we proclaim, is not contingent upon us doing anything. It is the overflowing grace of God. But that grace can only give us hope when we respond to this grace through our obedience, not to the law, but to Christ, our Lord. It is “Christ in [us]” that gives us “the hope of glory” (v. 27).

The μυστήριον

Paul tells us that he became a servant according to God’s plan, what we read in today’s translation as a “commission … to make the word of God fully known” (v. 25). He then goes on to talk about something which in Greek is pronounced “mysteœrion” – a word commonly translated into the English word “mystery.” But we need to be careful here, because a mystery to us commonly means something that we’ve tried to understand but cannot grasp. That’s not exactly what is meant here. A possible translation might also be “that which was not known before.”⁴ The mystery has been disclosed, and it is this – that Christ is in those who are his saints. Moreover, and this is the really exciting part, this revelation is open to everyone, including, yes, us Gentiles. It is Jesus Christ whom we proclaim as the universal source of all salvation. This is our radical claim amidst the spiritual smorgasbord of our times. And we proclaim this not out of a sense of superiority or self-satisfaction, but out of our earnest and deep concern for our neighbors, which includes the Wiccan, the Scientologist, and, yes, even to our Roman Catholic friends in the faith.

Implications for Our Community

Friends, I actually believe it is a credit to our Roman Catholic friends that they would make the stakes in the discussion so clear with their recent pronouncements about the nature of the church. As reformed Presbyterians, we simply do not accept the theological conclusions about the nature of the church. We adhere to a different doctrine, that of the priesthood invested in all who proclaim Jesus Christ. The need to clearly and distinctly proclaim Christ in our contemporary spiritual environment has always been of paramount importance. The degree to which the proclamation of the gospel has been effective is largely determined not by the Office of the General Assembly, but in each individual community of believers, including this one here in Portland, Texas.

This church, just prior to my arrival, elected a Pastor Nominating Committee to begin the work of identifying the next permanent pastor for this church. A broad cross-section of our community’s membership has been selected to serve on this committee. They will soon be meeting, and one of the first things the PNC will likely consider is the theological characteristics of this congregation – that is, the distinct ways in which this community of Presbyterians proclaims the gospel of Jesus Christ. Only after they have done this will they begin the intense process of identifying candidates who will help our community realize its calling in the community of faith, and its vision for the future.

These are exciting times for this church! If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to look at the “special offering” dollar amount on the back of your bulletin. It now reports over $30,000 of special funds already donated to this church specifically to call its next pastor. If you’ve been keeping track, you will have noticed that the total amount this week has jumped by $10,000. There is excitement and hope building up for this community of faith. And as the PNC soon begins meeting, I invite you to pray for them and for the future of this church, so that we, too, can join in the work of proclamation, “warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ” (v. 28).

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Given at First Presbyterian Church, Portland, Texas.

¹I strongly encourage those who are interested to read the text of this short document, which is available online here. ↩

²See the full article here. ↩

³Martin, Ralph. Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon (Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching). Richmond: John Knox Press, 1991, p. 82. ↩

⁴Louw, J. and Eugene Nida. “μυστήριον.” Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament. Stuttgart: United Bible Societies, 1989. ↩

Technorati Tags: Presbyterian Church USA, PCUSA, Sermon, Colossians, Year C

Spiritual Capitalism

I ran across this Tech Central Station article about a new movie The Call of the Entrepreneur. I'm very intrigued, particularly since Roman Catholic guru theologian and economist Michael Novak, the author of the The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, appears in the trailer. Check it out.

Technorati Tags: Call of the Entrepreneur, Faith, Business, Creation, Creativity, Acton Institute, Capitalism

This Would be Me

The latest Pepper... and Salt.

Technorati Tags: Humor

20 Years

Some of you might be amused to know that the twentieth reunion of the Highland High Rams of 1987 is coming up soon. Here is a fun video montage of what we were up to way back then. You may recognize at least one of the folks in the video.

Technorati Tags: High School Reunion, Video, YouTube

Having Been Transferred...

Having Been Transferred...
Colossians 1:1-14
July 15, 2007
15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

© 2007 by Christopher D. Drew

Sermon Focus: We speak frequently about the Kingdom of God, and we make many pronouncements about life in the kingdom. We sometimes forget, however, that the kingdom has already come, even as we wait for its fulfillment. Paul makes this point explicit in the final few verses of this week’s text.

Sermon Function: To remind listeners that the kingdom of God (who is the source of our joy) is present now, even though there sometimes seems to be little evidence to suggest that this is the case, especially if we use happiness, rather than joy, as our criterion.

[Click to Show/Hide Sermon Text]

Introduction

Having just wrapped up Galatians, we’re going to move into another letter from our beloved apostle, Paul. This is the first of a four-part series on Paul’s letter to the Christians in Colassae.

You may remember that Paul was writing to the Galatians in order to counteract the teaching of certain preachers who where pressuring the Galatians to accept the full obligations of the Jewish law in order to be considered faithful – in good standing with God. The letter to the Colossians seems to have been written for a similar purpose, although the details in this case are different. Whereas Paul himself visited the Galatians on at least two occasions, Paul, to our knowledge, never visited the congregation in Colossae. In today’s reading, you will hear about a man named Epaphras, who Paul mentions as the “faithful minister of Christ” who has been tending the flock of Christians in Colossae. The opening paragraphs of the letter lead up what is known in some corners as the Christ Hymn, a hymn that I will talk further a bit later in the sermon.

Let us listen now to God’s Word.

[Read Scripture - Colossians 1:1-14]

Introductory Illustration

The phrase “out of the frying pan and into the fire” is one we are all familiar with. In a nutshell, the phrase is used to describe when a person believes at first to have gotten out of a particular dilemma, only to find him or herself in a worse predicament than before. This phenomena gets wide play in our popular entertainment, movies and novels play off situations where characters jump from the flames only to find themselves falling into a volcano. The dramatic tension of the Indiana Jones movies were often heightened by placing Indy into situations that routinely go from bad to worse.

We often find ourselves in similar situations, don’t we? Sometimes, our dilemma seems recursive – that is, it repeats itself throughout life. Several of my close friends were at first business colleagues, back in my days as a business and information technology consultant. The demands of our work were notable, and inevitably people left the company to find better opportunities elsewhere. For several of my friends, it seemed that the leap from the consulting frying pan led to yet another frying pan of a different sort. Do you remember the “dot-com” explosion of the 1990s? In the greater San Francisco Bay Area, the dot-coms where the giant sucking sound that we could hear from the confines of our corporate office building. But those companies tended to be frying-pits, not frying pans. Many jumped form company to company, holding out for the big payoff, but finding themselves without stock options and without jobs. This process could repeat itself several times. On several occasions I was approached by my friends to join them in the leap. I declined, for no other reason really than I was scared of losing what little security I had with my existing job. Plus, having seen the multiplying frying pans out there, I was looking for something radically different. At that time, I didn’t realize that that new path would ultimately bring me to Portland, Texas. (It’s kind of hot in here, isn’t it? Just kidding!)

The Kingdom Has Come

I bring all this up because the phrase “out of the frying pan and into the fire” typifies much of American life. Moreover, though, it typifies our humanity. We’re hard-pressed to be content. In our church life, there are those who think we must take on the responsibility for bringing forth the kingdom today, right now. What is interesting about all of that talk is that it frequently misses an element of our faith that is pronounced quite clearly in Paul’s letter to the Colossians. And it is that part of our text that I want to focus on today. Beginning with verse 11, Paul says the following:

“May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:11-14 NRSV).

What is Paul saying here? First off, he’s saying that whatever strength we have must be first credited to God rather than to ourselves. Our very life is a gift from God. Anything we may accomplish in life is really a credit to God, not to ourselves. We do not exist outside of the sovereignty and power of God.

The second thing Paul says here is more profound and more uncomfortable. We are to draw on this strength we receive from God so that we might be “prepared to endure everything with patience” (v. 11). The demands of Christian faith require the character trait of endurance. This is not simply endurance one needs, for example, to win out over an opponent in an athletic competition. No, this word specifically refers to “the endurance to bear up under difficult circumstances.”¹ This is one of the more difficult lessons for Christians to hear, particularly if we’re used to living fairly comfortable lives – in fact, we are not put here on earth simply to be happy. We can anticipate and expect difficulties, hardships, disease, and evil deeds to invade our lives. There are those in our culture that might say that Christians have an “idealistic” view about life now. But the facts say otherwise. Christianity says more about the human condition we are in now than any other faith I can think of. It acknowledges, frankly, the hardships we face. The Reformed faith acknowledges what we know in our bones is true – that we are prone to sin and death.

Happiness Isn't Everything

Stan Guthrie is the Senior Associate Editor of Christianity Today magazine. He suffers from a mild form of cerebral palsy that causes him to walk with a somewhat “erratic gait.” Last week, he wrote an article about his son’s experience at school. While there, his son experienced the taunting of some classmates who had been making fun of Stan’s condition. Stan writes, “I worry about our society’s desire to engineer trials out of existence. Sometimes, even we who decry the health-and-wealth gospel forget that Christian life was never meant to be a cakewalk, that discipleship requires suffering, and that spiritual victory presupposes struggle.” He concludes his article with these words, “Only through suffering, disappointment, and death … are we weaned form the love of this world. There is more to life than happiness.”² A noted pastor I know made what I thought was an incredible statement during his sermon one Sunday. He said, “The pursuit of happiness is non-biblical.” I blanched when I heard that, but on further reflection, I can see what he means. And in fact, if the bible did guarantee us happiness then I think our faith would by largely wasted, because everything we know about human existence says that life isn’t all happiness.

Joy Comes from God

Are we then just destined for a life of depression and futility? The answer to that question is “no.” Living mature Christian faith requires that we distinguish between being happy and having joy. Have you ever stopped to think that joy and happiness are not the same thing? Happiness carries with it temporal, circumstantial implications. If I have all the things I think I need, the job that brings prestige, nice kids, etc., them I’m happy. If any of those things are missing, then I’m unhappy. Joy is something different, something more profound, something that transcends the simple emotions we might take pleasure in. Joy is the product of something eternal. In fact, the gospel of John makes the case quite clearly. In Jesus’ great prayer in John, he says:

“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:9-11 NRSV).

What a remarkable statement: The source of our joy is not in anything we can do in this world, or in any of the possession we have. Instead, our joy is found in Christ. And it is that great power that allows us to have joy in our worship of the Father, even in the midst of trials and suffering and, yes, unhappiness.

In the Father, we also have a “share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.” We have a portion of that heavenly treasure redeemed for us through the blood of Jesus Christ on the Cross. We got there, because we have been “rescued … from the power of darkness” (v. 13). How? We have been “transferred … into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (vss. 13-14). I think the old King James Version states this same text in an interesting way when it says we have been “translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son” (Colossians 1:13 KJV). We have been moved from where we are into the kingdom of the Son.

Did you catch those past tense verbs? “He has rescued us.” He has “transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.” Has. All of this has already occurred.

What does this mean for us? It means this: Having been transferred into the kingdom, we no longer leap out of the frying pan and into the fire. We’re been removed from those flames, thank you very much. Jesus Christ, our crucified Lord, saved us from that next fire that was worse than the last. We need only look to him for guidance, and obey his commands. It becomes easier to do that if you truly believe, in your heart, that he died for us, and that God raised him from the dead, and lifted him into the Kingdom, making him Head of the Church, of which each of you are a dear member of the Body. As you listen to these words, do so in the knowledge that we have already been transferred into the kingdom:

“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.

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. I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel” (Colossians 1:15-23 NRSV).

And may we all become servants of this same gospel.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Sprit. Amen.

Given at First Presbyterian Church, Portland, Texas

¹Louw, J. and Eugene Nida. “ὑπομονη.” Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament. Stuttgart: United Bible Societies, 1989. ↩

²Guthrie, Stan. “Stumbling After Jesus.” Christianity Today (www.christianitytoday.com). July 10, 2007. July 14, 2007. Path: Index; Faith & Thought; Prayer/Spirituality. ↩

Technorati Tags: Presbyterian Church USA, PCUSA, Sermon, Colossians, Year C