08 Christ the King Dream of Strength Colossians 1.9-20
My friends, I greet you today in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Our lesson comes to us from Paul’s letter to the Colossians, the first chapter.
What a day today is, I mean there is a lot going on. Today is Christ the King Sunday. We have just completed Thanksgiving, Advent is right around the corner, and our sermon series on dare to dream is wrapping up. There is so much stuff to cover here, that this sermon could end up taking several hours. But don’t worry it won’t, or at least it shouldn’t.
When you hear the word strength, what comes to mind? Is it muscles or superheroes? Is it emotional strength and the ability to not be rattled by the things going on around you? Is it the ability to be able to do what needs to be done when it is not being done? Or is it the ability to do what you know is right, even when no one else around you seems to be doing it? In a word, yes. And with the exception of muscles and superheroes, we will be talking about the other different aspects of “strength” today.
As this series was being planned out, we felt that it was a good fit to have strength on the day that we celebrate Christ the King. Because Christ the King proclaims the great strength of our Lord as victor over all, especially sin, death and the devil, and asks that his kingdom, which comes even without our prayers, that his kingdom would come among us as well. And so we come before our Lord to praise and worship him, and to receive the gifts and blessings that he pours out into our lives and then to be sent in the world to do the work which our King has given us to do.
So what does it mean to dare to dream the dream of strength? For some help in this let’s look at our lesson from Colossians. The book of Colossians is actually a letter written by St. Paul to the saints, to the faithful brothers and sisters who lived in Colossae. It had nothing to do with how big they were.
The town of Colossae was in what is today the country of Turkey. Rather appropriate for the weekend after Thanksgiving. It was on a major trade route that ran between the Aegean Sea in the West and the Euphrates river in the East. Back in the day Colosse was a leading city on this route, but by the time we get to our letter it has become little more than a 2nd rate market town that sits under the shadows of it’s neighbors Laodi-Wal-Mart, and Hierapo-Target.
As a result of Paul’s ministry in Ephesis, the Holy Spirit worked faith in a dude named Epaphras. He carried this Good News to our town of Colossae. There the gospel took root and believes began to gather. But then they were hit with some false teachers. Now we don’t know exactly what the false teachers were teaching, but it was basically this. They called into question the sufficiency of Jesus. That is they called into question whether Jesus’ death and resurrection were enough for our salvation, and they said that we needed to add something to that. There was most likely an emphasis on ceremonialism, asceticism, angel worship, secret knowledge and a reliance on human wisdom and tradition.
Now, this is a good time to take a look at ourselves. Do we see these things in our lives? No one here questions the sufficiency of Jesus. We know that his death and resurrection is all that was needed for our salvation. But do these things show up as we begin to talk about mission and doing the work that God has given us to do? We may not see all of them, but do we see some of them? What about an emphasis on ceremonialism or reliance on human wisdom and tradition? Are these things that have crept into our own lives? And if they are, what effect have they had? These are things that are always much easier to point out in other congregations then they are in our own. And yet, for the sake of the mission, we cannot allow them to control us and the way that we do things.
What I’m talking about here is a mindset. It is a mindset that does not see the church as existing for the sake of herself. That is we are not here for ourselves, and to make ourselves happy and content, so that we sit in our pews, go to our Bible study and then head home for another week. But it is a mindset that says, what happens here, gives us the strength to carry out God’s work for the upcoming week. That here in this place people meet God. And that we will do everything that we possible can to make sure that they can hear that Good News of God’s Love in Jesus from us. So that as we plan and do things, we always have in mind, not ourselves, but our neighbors. It is not about us, but it is about them. It is about communicating to them in their language and connecting with them genuinely. They are important to us, because they are important to our God.
Now as in all good theology there is a paradox here. There is a tension that exists for us as believers. Because we are not to be of the world. We are not to do things the way they do, and our values better be different, but at the same time we are to be in the world. We are to be salt and light so that through us God’s love would be made known. All you have to do is to look at how Christians are portrayed in movies and on the television. We don’t exactly have the best of reputations. But I think that is because it is easy to spend so much time on what we want and need. And can you blame us, in the consumeristic culture that we live in?
This tension that we find is living together as Christians in community with one another. Living together as people who love and care for one another. People who worship together and pray together. People who study God’s word together and go and do awesome things like mission trips to Mexico and servant events to Wisconsin. People who are very generous in supplying gifts and angle trees, thanksgiving baskets, mops supplies, back-packs and jelly. People who in the lives that they live, show to one another God’s love. People who live life differently than the rest of the world, and in the way that they live, proclaim loud and clear who God is and what it means to be his own dear sons and daughters. These things are important, we walk together in community with one another. But as good as these things are, and as much as they are to be celebrated, if we think that this is all there is to outreach, and connecting with our neighbors and building relationships with them so that the Gospel can be proclaimed, if we think this is all there is, we are wrong. Because we are to go and make disciples, not to just sit and wait for them to come to us.
And while our legs are walking together through this life, supporting, caring for, encouraging one another in genuine community, our arms need to be reaching out to our neighbors. Our arms need to be serving and communicating, and bearing witness to the King who gave his life so that we might have life everlasting.
If you think about it, this is really a cool thing, and not only that, but a tremendous privilege. I think it is kind of funny that we can often find ourselves longing to find ourselves in the days of the great saints of old. I mean they saw things that we can only imagine, it must have been awesome, yet they were looking forward to our day, because in our day the Holy Spirit has been poured out as never before in history. In our day we not only know that our King is present, but we receive his body and blood in with and under the bread and wine of Holy Communion. This is an amazing day and age that we live in. And God has chosen you and me to do his work in this place. So we can’t get stuck in the trap of thinking only of ourselves as we plan and do ministry.
Are you uncomfortable yet? Feeling a little awkward? Does this seem more like me up here daring, and less like I’m daring to dream? The strength comes from God’s word, from prayer, and there is one and the same in our lesson for today, but allow me to jump back and read the previous two verses, because this thing will make much more sense then.
“So we have not stopped praying for you since we first heard about you. We ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding. 10 Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit. All the while, you will grow as you learn to know God better and better.
11 We also pray that you will be strengthened with all his glorious power so you will have all the endurance and patience you need. May you be filled with joy, 12 always thanking the Father. He has enabled you to share in the inheritance that belongs to his people, who live in the light. 13 For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, 14 who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins.”
The strength that we need, to do the work that our God has given us to do, comes from him. It is a strength that is constantly and continually being given. And because that constant source of strength will never end, we can always be confident that it will be there, and that we will be able to do what needs to be done. Not because of us, but because this is something that comes from our God. After all, if he has the strength to defeat sin, death and the devil, to rescue us from our sins, and give to us eternal life. If he has the strength to do these things, he certainly has the strength to give to us, so that we can do what needs to be done.
So where do we go from here? I want to challenge you to dream with me of strength, especially as it relates to serving our neighbors. When you see someone you don’t know welcome them, show them that love binds us together and holds us together. Take part in the different comities at Our Father. Because they do very important work in this place. Now we joke about committees, but nothing that happens here, happens outside of a committees, and so it is the way to get things done. But one downfall of a committee is that it is easy to be more focused on getting something done, than on getting something done right. So we always hold before one another the mission.
We are not Christians who live in a Christian world. But we are missionaries who live in a foreign culture. We need to speak that gospel to that culture, to be in the world and not of the world, so join me in this, knowing that our strength comes from our God, and always asking that his will would be done among us.
The prayer of the day in our celebrate inserts sums this whole thing up very nicely. Let’s pray again together this prayer. Please stand.