Colossians 1:15-20
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ADVENT
ADVENT
We are reminded by scientist that our universe is made up of mostly invisible particles. Quarks, as they are called, are the smallest particles detectable by the instruments available.
The next largest invisible particle is the neutrino, which then lead to the basic building blocks of the atom - the neutrons and electrons, and…well it’s all beyond my ability to define.
All these ‘invisible’ particles somehow combine to make the items around us real. Again, I speak well beyond my ability to explain.
Advent simply means ‘arrival, coming.’ We identify the few Sunday’s before Christmas as Advent because we are waiting:
Waiting to celebrate the Messiah’s birth and waiting for His second coming, which is in many ways a re-birth of God’s original plan and purpose for His creation.
We are not a people fond of waiting. Notice the way automobiles creep up at stoplights. Pay attention to the people behind and in front of you in the stores as you - and they- try to urge the line to move just a little more quickly.
For children, Advent is a sweet form of torture. Have you been good this year? Santa knows. Have you been bad? Santa knows. For most kids, including you and I as children, there is always a twinge of doubt…have I been ‘good enough?’
Though Advent wasn’t celebrated till centuries after the NT had taken the shape we know, a thread of the theme of Advent runs through the entire collection of books and letters we call the NT.
To believers gathered in Colossae, a Roman city of some significance because of its geographical location near rivers, Paul seeks to call them back to a pure and unadulterated understanding of who Jesus is.
Part of his call is found in this section - perhaps a popular hymn that was sung - describing for his readers the magnificence and glory of Jesus, whose return these believers eagerly anticipated.
Invisible Made Visible
Invisible Made Visible
“He is the image of the invisible God...” Col 1:15a
Most of the people we share our community with believe in God. They have an innate sense of a power that has created the universe, a power that somehow makes sense of the craziness and randomness we call life.
Yet this God cannot be seen with the eyes. Most of us remember the first Soviet astronaut, Yuri Gagarin saying something like this after his return to earth:’ I looked and looked but I didn’t see God.’ There is some dispute if he really said that, but his words do echo into our community.
People have often commented that, if there is a God, the world certainly shows no indication. Evil triumphs, the bad guys win more often than the good guys, bad things happen - often to the best of people.
God, if He is there, if He exists, in invisible.
Except…
Paul makes an audacious claim: [Jesus] ‘is the image of the invisible God.’
Note what he is not saying: He is not saying that Jesus physically ‘looks’ like God. He is not saying that by recalling the physical features of Jesus we can reconstruct God’s physical appearance.
What he is saying is simply this:
You say God is invisible? I say that God has revealed Himself clearly and fully in His Son, Jesus Christ.
The First-born of Creation
The First-born of Creation
Even in the 21st century the order of birth is an influential issue. For example, the first born of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip is Charles. Regardless of his past, because he is the firstborn son, he will serve as king of Great Britain when his mother dies.
In the world of Paul and the earliest believers, the first-born son was an important and significant role. The Hebrew/Jewish culture in which Christianity was birthed recognized the ‘firstborn’ as the heir, the one who receives the father’s wealth, status, and significance.
Yet the Hebrew Bible provides an alternative description. Abraham, the OT patriarch had two sons by two wives - Ishmael by Hagar and Isaac by Sarah. According to order of birth, Ishmael is first born. Yet Isaac, born second is the one who receives the promises and blessings of his father.
Isaac has twins. Esau and Jacob are born moments apart - but Esau is born first, and should inherit his father’s estate. However, Esau forfeits this right and Jacob becomes the ‘first-born.’
Jacob has twelve sons by two wives and two maids to these wives. The first born is Reuben. Prior to his passing Jacob removes Reuben from the right of inheritance and designates Joseph as the heir. Jacob, just prior to his passing also identifies Jospeh’s second born son as the heir, bypassing the first born son.
Firstborn has become not simply a designation of birth order, but one of importance and priority.
To call Jesus ‘firstborn’ has nothing to do with ‘birth order’ because Jesus is co-equal and co-eternal with God. To call Jesus firstborn is to identify Him as the designated heir, the One to whom priority is given, the One to whom the Father chooses to invest all His fullness - Col 1:19
For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him,
Created ‘by’ Him, ‘through Him, ‘for’ Him
Created ‘by’ Him, ‘through Him, ‘for’ Him
This Jesus, God made visible, the One whom God has identified as the One to whom belongs primacy and priority is part of the creative activity of God Himself.
Three prepositional phrases describe Jesus’ activity in creation.
First, creation is ‘by’ Him. Jesus, as co-eternal and -co-equal with God, was not a bystander to the act of creation. He was an active participant in creation. It is enough for us to say with confidence that all that God did as described in Genesis 1-2 was done with Jesus’ present and active.
Creation is ‘through’ Him. Jesus, equal in power with the Almighty God was active in speaking the words from which all creation springs.
Creation is ‘for’ Him. Paul writes that -
‘all things,’ in heaven - stars, galaxies, all that science is baffled by; ‘things on earth’- the ‘things’ which make up our lives, the world which we see, taste, touch, hear, and smell
‘ the visible and the invisible ‘ Paul spells out what these are:
thrones
dominons,
rulers
authorities
The world in which we lives depends on systems of government, systems of oversight and yes, control. over life.
The words that Paul used to describe these systems - thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities- describe physical manifestations - systems of government and so on.
They also describe a spiritual world of which our age has almost completely lost sight.
CONCLUSION
CONCLUSION
“Each year, Advent begins in the dark.”
Fleming Rutledge, ADVENT: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids, MI.: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2018), 215.
I don’t remember exactly when it happened. There was a point in my life where darkness brought anxiety. Anxiety would often give birth to panic - at times causing me to literally freeze with a psychosomatic paralysis.
For decades I struggled with this irrational fear of dark. Once, as a teenager, home alone I remember turning most every light in our home on trying to relax enough to sleep.
Sleeping with the lights on has never been a problem!
Christmas for many means the opposite of darkness. Christmas lights, bright and uplifting music, a season of ‘good cheer’ are the markers of Christmas.
I doubt Joseph and Mary felt light as they journeyed to Bethlehem. An illegitimate pregnancy in the eyes of their family and community, made theirs a difficult journey for a political purpose beyond their understanding.
Most of the following centuries had little ‘light’ for celebration at ‘Christmas.’ Hampered by persecution, hindered by enmity of family and friends, most early Christians lived with a powerful sense of being cut off from the world with which they were most familiar.
So too we who are Christ-followers in the 21st century need to live.
We are unlike those around us for whom Christmas is defined by Hallmark movies where every crisis is resolved in a two hour block of time. Most of us have experienced the opposite of Hallmark movies - instead of families gathering and love winning the day, we experience separation through death, serious disagreement, and division,
Instead of Christmas as light and bright many know Christmas as just the opposite.
As Advent begins it may be dark.
The promise of the waiting however:
That which is invisible will be made visible as Jesus makes the presence of God real in our lives;
The patterns of the world will be overturned as Jesus proclaims the kingdom of God;
God’s creation which so often seems out of kilter will be reset by it’s Creator as Jesus comes and overcomes the powers threatening us with chaos and confusion. The Creator brings understanding and peace into lives that are divided by chaos and uncertainty.
As we wait for the second coming, we are reminded that at His first coming He begins to set everything right. His second coming will finish what He has begun!