Untitled Sermon

The New Revised Standard Version Salutation

1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,

2 To the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father.

Paul Thanks God for the Colossians

3 In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 4 for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, 5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel 6 that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God. 7 This you learned from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, 8 and he has made known to us your love in the Spirit.

9 For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. 11 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 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. 13 He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Where do you get your news these days?

Rhetorical question, don’t need to answer.

TV, radio, newspaper, internet, magazines?

Every news source has an angle they’re trying to articulate. The words we use, the way we write, speak, tell stories — it’s all a matter of slant, angle, shaped by our cultural and social lens. A newspaper tells a certain story a certain way because of the way the people who back the paper see the world.

This isn’t new information, right?

I remember a couple of conversations about censorship in both my high school and at Western, in college, related to the school’s newspapers. It’s especially interesting to think about the perspective, the angle, of a school newspaper. Inspired young writers, cutting their teeth on print journalism, trying to say something as they figure out their voice and open up their ability to name what they understand to be true. Contrast this with educational systems that have to protect the identity and perspectives of a diverse and complex group of people. Especially in the case of my public high school, the administrators had to make sure that the paper didn’t offend our diverse population because it was a public school, all people were to be represented fairly there.

But the freedom of the press has always pushed us up against this question — how do we tell the truth while also remaining open to diversity of opinions and perspectives? Put another way, how do we seek out answers while not privileging one group who has access or resources to direct and slant the stories we hear?

News is truth told in slant. Truth aligned.

So again, I want us to consider, where do we get our news? And it’s not just a question of our news — let’s ask the bigger question: how is our truth, our understanding of the world, being formed? To whom do you listen?

We gather together here on Sunday mornings and you hear me and others attempt to articulate truth, to move toward an understanding of who God is and what our place is in the story. I tell the truth in slant too — don’t I? Let’s just be honest, I have an angle, a story, a perspective that I want to bring to things, shaped by my background, my context, my, as we say in theological and academic circles, my hermeneutic.

This is ok. News told with slant is ok. A story with an agenda is ok. A preacher who believes something and wants to share it, it’s ok. It is the way things are.

Why all of this? Isn’t the scripture passage today about how please Paul is with Colossian church? Isn’t this about bearing good fruit in the world, living a life worthy of the Lord, pleasing to him? Being rescued from the power of darkness and welcomed into the kingdom of the light of Christ?

Yes. It is.

And they way we get there is by being made aware that we are all distracted, offered other stories, other truths, shaded accounts that vie for our love, our allegiance, our honor.

To a world that tells the truth in slant, Colossians plays right along. The letter to the Colossian church uses the devices of its world to tell the truth, not in slant, but in its most beautiful, liberating form.

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The city of Colossea was a rich, celebrated city in Phrygia, part of Asia Minor, in what is now modern day Turkey. It was a center of culture and art, a hub of life along the trade routes between Rome and the Holy Lands. Colossians were Roman citizens, loyal to Caesar and accountable to his laws and beneficiaries of Rome’s powerful might and wealth.

The opening chapters of this letter to the Church in Colossea are a powerful statement of truth told in slant — a slant that is not a slant, but the ultimate truth of Jesus Christ as Lord. And the letter is written in a way that aligns it very closely with the messaging and news and political narrative of Rome, but with a subversive, propagandist angle.

We’ll hear more about this next week, when we encounter Colossian’s more famous text, “Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation...” But for now, let’s consider this example:

In the days of Rome, when your city and region came under Roman authority, you were asked to submit to Roman occupation and receive the “Pax Romana”, the Peace of Rome. Pax Romana was basically a way of understanding that through Roman rule and might and military power, there would be a guarantee of security and stability and relative peace in your land — so long as you obeyed the laws and paid your taxes to Caesar. Pax Romana extended beyond protections from outsider criminals or warring tribes — it meant that your region would get roads, aqueducts, development and wealth. Colossea was at the heart of this all.

And beyond this material and societal development, there was a sense that the protections of Pax Romana, the peace of Rome would be leading all people to a place of flourishing, that civilization was on an upward trajectory because of all that Rome’s might would provide.

I’ll pause here to just note that there are parallels with many historic empires that we can hear in this letter. And I’ll let you make connections to the contemporary parallels yourself.

So — Colossians and the Pax Romana.

And what about that whole sense of propaganda?

To a culture, to a people, to a city where the Peace of Rome was offered as a top down political method for security and stability, we get the opening of this letter which subtly, provocatively opens up a whole new way of thinking.

Listen again to the opening verses and consider the direction of movement they explore. Is it top down power or is it bubbling up from under?

The New Revised Standard Version Salutation

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,

2 To the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father.

Paul Thanks God for the Colossians

3 In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 4 for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, 5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel 6 that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God.

In this verses, the action comes from below. The movement comes from the saints, from God lifting them up, from their action and engagement and hearing of the word of truth.

And its an encouragement to keep up with this method, to keep on leading lives full of wisdom and understanding that they might continue to rise up and be worthy of the word truth given them.

The passage goes on to pray that these people, these insignificant church goers who are muddling through life on the ground, in the city, with each other — that they might be empowered and given strength, prepared to endure everything “with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father who was enabled [them] to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.”

The little ones, average people, are empowered at the outset of this letter and celebrated for their living in response to that empowerment.

So, why is this subversive?

Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome, was something imposed upon people. It was a method, a structure, a military power that came in and told people who to live, what tribute to give, what laws to obey. It was incredibly effective — so long as you played by the rules and followed along properly. Pax Romana was top down leadership at its best.

This text offers Christian listeners a glimpse at another, deeper, more excellent way that does not impose a top down structure upon them. Instead, it positions God as the one who is lifting up from below and that the gifts of the people rise up as they grow in God’s power and knowledge. The life, the fruit, the goodness of the Kingdom is what bubbles up from within us. Its our sharing in common life together that celebrates differences and listens well to one another.

The newspaper wants to tell us a story, in slant, sometimes in a pretty heavy handed way that wants us to believe what they are imposing.

The truth, the fruitful, life-giving, good news truth of the Gospel, on the other hand, bubbles up like laughter, like water, like a fountain, not imposing but arising from among us.

Here, Paul and Timothy are celebrating what is rising up. They’re proud of this little church for how it is, even in the face of the heavy handed empire, still finding ways for their love and faithfulness and discipleship to each other to something the bears fruit.

We’ll talk more about how this letter is provocative and subversive as it calls us into the Christian life in the next couple of weeks, but today I want to close with a reminder about what it means to bear fruit.

The letter gives us words like patience, endurance, joy, sharing, hope, growth.

To bear fruit seems to be something about letting that goodness, which bubbles up in us, take form, be acted upon. To bear fruit means to let love become something actionable, something lived out.

The love that bears fruit is connected to faith. Lots of things in this life bring progress and change and transition. That’s not what we’re talking about here. It is rather the awareness that a faith in God’s loving, uplifting, power-from-underneath-and-not-imposed-from-above is something we make our sole focus and center. That we place our whole allegiance in that way, not in the way of the imposition, the empire. And because of that faith, our hearts are formed unto a different way of engaging people in our day to day lives.

An example that I hope hits to the heart of the Christian life for many of us and speaks to bearing fruit.

Christ tells me to love my enemy and pray for those who persecute me.

As a top-down, Pax Romana kind of command, that’s a really pain. It’s draining. I don’t like my enemies and they don’t like me and I don’t really want to love them. It takes work.

But in the life of faith which bears fruit through the power of Christ in me, its different. Instead of being imposed, I’m actually lifted up by my faith in Christ. First, before I love my enemy, my love of and faith in Christ gives me strength, resources, love beyond my own capacity. We become more through our faith in Christ. And so, I can enter into relationship with my enemy, to turn to them in love, not because I have to, but because I’m lifted up and able to. I’m made stronger and have greater capacity for love. It’s easier.

And it bears fruit in that I grow, I awaken more, I expand and have capacity for greater love of others, my enemy and beyond. This is the pleasing, fruit bearing work.

For us, here at St. James — doesn’t this look like placing our faith in Christ so that we might wrestle with the struggles that truly are beyond our capacity? We want to care for creation, but the world is falling apart — isn’t it the faith in Christ that we need in order to do what seems impossible, to actually make a difference? What if faith in Christ and love you encounter there might equip you to also open up your life a bit more to the people around you here, the people you interact with each day, the strangers and the enemies and the neighbors you share this world with.

We are invited to subvert the powers that would impose upon us. We obey, we comply, but may they never own our hearts. Instead, our hope and our heart is Christ’s, our faith — or another word I like more sometimes, our allegiance — is to Christ. And through that faith, that allegiance, we are brought out of darkness and given light, light enough to see, to celebrate, to love and receive forgiveness and redemption and restoration and hope.

It is in the love and charity of Christ that we begin and from within us, our faith rises up to love the world.

Let’s pray.