No Dishonor

Colossians 1:1–14 NRSV

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. 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.

The last few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about departures and what it looks like to maintain relationships over distance and time apart.

As we know, today we get to celebrate and send our Music Director, Luke Arnold, as he takes up the next adventure of graduate school in Houston. Last week, we blessed and sent on another beloved member of our congregation, Bill Butler, as he moves to California to be closer to family.

In the past months, we have also said goodbye to longtime pillars of our congregation, as they have passed on into glory.

Backing up even further, we see that over these past years, we’ve watched our community dwindle and then rebuild, losing many members and welcoming in many more through the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is the ebb and flow of life together — we have opportunities to bless and send on, opportunities to say goodbye, and opportunities to maintain and even reconnect as we remember we are all still members of the body of Christ together.

A final thing that has brought this give and take of departures and reconnections to mind is that this coming weekend, I get to attend my 21st high school reunion. Delayed by a year because of the pandemic, this coming Saturday will be an opportunity to reconnect and see folks that I haven’t seen since leaving Edmonds 21 years ago.

Now, I’ll be honest, I’m not always great at maintaining long distance connections with folks. I wonder at whether friendships fade or how I and we might perceive each other after such time away and apart. Is who we have become going to be honoring to the relationships of the past, can we still remain connected to people over great times and distances?

And there’s also this cultural pull, to believe that when we grow distant from another person, that this means the kinship with them is somehow severed, somehow not enough any more.

Paul, with Timothy, opens the book of Colossians with a reassurance of his faith in the Colossian church and the way they are living out their calling to be Jesus’ people amidst the Roman Empire. Where there may have been doubt or disconnection, Paul writes with great certainty at the goodness and honor with which the people of the Colossian church are living out their faith.

How are we being faithful to our calling, as we are people sent out by our forebears, our families, our co-workers, to be a blessing to the world? Are we seeking to grow in our faith in Christ, to develop as people maturing in wisdom and righteousness?

This is what Paul hopes for the Colossian church.

Conflict

And, from this opening greeting to the church, it seems clear that Paul’s words speak against another way, a way of dishonor and dissolution of relationship.

When we have such great distance from the ones we once loved so intimately, how could you not have doubts about and concerns for their well-being?

Maybe the members of the church had become concerned with growth and prominence in their community, over and above being formed as disciples of Jesus who joyfully practice and live our the good news, the gospel of truth, that they have received. Maybe it’s just become a bunch of social programs that neglect the central work of Jesus in this community.

So Paul’s words address any potential conflict or division or dishonor that could potentially exist. He reminds the Colossians who they are, and praises them for their faithfulness unto this way of being.

Paul points to how the Colossians are bearing fruit in their faithfulness to Christ’s way among them. They ARE living it out in their world, they ARE reaping a harvest of the good life among themselves and with the communities they participate in.

We can assume that there is a kind of dissonance written into this text. Perhaps Paul harbors some concern that the good works of the Colossian church will one day be jeopardized by the power of the empire or other competing ideas, drawing them away from the hope they had once found. So he’s seemingly preemptively encouraging them, even as they are only in process of fully realizing the good that they have been sent to do. He names his hope for them, hope not only in what is, but also hope for what will be.

When we send people on into the next steps of God’s call for their lives, we send them in hope. We trust in God’s faithfulness to them thus far and anticipate that faithfulness, in all hope and expectation, to continue and open up as they journey on.

Complications

The funny thing about a high school reunion or sending someone on to a new city and chapter of life or saying goodbye to a dear friend is that we somehow assume that they, and we, will remain static, fixed as we are, not growing or maturing or developing in our sense of God’s purpose from this point forward.

I suppose I can name a little anxiety about seeing people after 20+ years because of this: I know I have changed and grown and matured and am in many ways a new person in comparison to who I was when I left home for college. Do we revert, are we to go back to how things were? No! Certainly not.

And this both complicates and reinforces Paul’s word the the Colossian church. He praises them for continuing on, for maturing, and for living out their faith in new and inspired ways in their context. They get it! And in seeing how they get it, we can also see the reality that this doesn’t always happen. We know in other letters Paul writes to the churches, there are divisions and conflict that betray the hope he had for them to live out the gospel of Jesus. The people go back to their old ways or depart and turn to something new that is shiny and different.

Living out the way of Jesus does not always seem like the cool thing to do. Spiritual discipline, prayerfulness, worship, and the outcomes of service and collaboration — these don’t always help us get ahead, make us more popular, secure our financial stability. We can see how it would be easy for a community to fall into dishonor, denial of who they are, and the despair of disconnection that is so easily found in the world today.

The joy we hear in this text is that the people of the Colossian church have chosen the way of faithfulness, living out what they have encountered in Jesus even to this day.

This is a text of great encouragement.

In a world where we expect dissolution and disconnection, dishonor and division, we find an example of faithfulness that runs counter to such things.

Practically for us, how can we encourage those who go on from us to trust that we have their backs, that we are championing them, that we will support them as they carry out God’s calling elsewhere? I know that as I look at all the friends and loved ones I’ve known who have gone away, I hold a tender, deep hope for their wellbeing and God’s providence in their every step. I hope it, deep in my bones, hope that we can bless and encourage even those far off to keep remembering God’s goodness, remembering Christ’s presence, remembering that they are held up in the wind of the Spirit’s love.

I can only imagine now what it will be like in about a decade when we prepare to send our son Asher off to school. There will certainly be hope, but also great fear as to what may happen along his journey. And that fear is reasonable: the world is littered with challenges and wicked problems. We hope for the best for the ones we love as they leave us — and we fearfully approach God, longing that God will keep showing up to them, making them aware they are beloved and seen.

Sudden Shift

God’s rescue from the powers of darkness — pulling us up out of our struggle and setting us among a people to grow and thrive alongside.

And here’s the shift — When we depart from one another, when we are far off, when we send each other on, we can either leave the other’s wellbeing up to the fates, to chance, to “come what may” OR… we pray.

The shift is that the people of God do not send each other on into nothing. No, we send each other on and faithfully pray, unceasingly, for God’s providence in the journey.

Think about this contrast this way: Paul and Timothy are entrepreneurs who started up a new church in many cities around the Mediterranean. And any good start up business person knows, some will thrive and some will fail. So, count the successes and move on from the losses, right?

Well, that’s not how it works when we’re talking about sending on the saints to do God’s work. We don’t just plant a church and move on, saying, “good luck!”

No. We maintain relationship through prayer. We pray, we lift our voices to God and ask for God to keep being faithful to those we love.

This is the shift — a shift out of the ways of disconnection and dishonor that will often befall us when we are forced to let someone or something go. A shift towards long, steady love, even from great distance, prayerfully asking that God continue to provide for the ones we love, continue to spur on our journeying member into new and passionate ways to live out their faith in their new context.

Let’s hear Paul’s prayer for the Colossian church again, and as we hear it, consider it as a prayer for those we send on, blessing them in the next part of their journey.

Praying for them as he responds to the good news of their faithfulness, Paul says:

Colossians 1:9–14 NRSV

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.

Unfolding

So, how does this unfold and take shape with us?

Friends, our work together is to welcome the people of God in to community, to be discipled and formed together in this place, this context, to see the love of Christ lived out here and now together. AND THEN, we send each other on.

We are not meant to stay static. We’re not meant to stay the same.

Back to my anxieties about the upcoming high school reunion. Honestly, I’m excited. But I’ve only been excited after I’ve been able to say: look, people change. You have changed. And that’s ok. Be excited to see what people are up to now, what they’re doing with their lives, what their families are like. Don’t look back — look forward to what God has called each person to, not where they were.

So when we send people on into the unfolding work of God for their lives, we should expect and champion their growth and the hope of purpose for their lives God has.

So, to those who must depart from us, we bless you.

And, even those of us to remain here, together, for the long, stable journey: Even us, let us encourage each other, in the hope of Christ, to keep growing, to mature and deepen in our discipleship and commitment to the work God call us to.

In the 5 years I have been at St. James, we’ve said many goodbyes and many hellos. And, we’ve watched each other grow, face challenges, lose heart, struggle, and keep fighting. I’ve watched so many of you navigate incredibly difficult challenges and keep stepping up, keep leaning on each other, keep maturing and nurturing that faith of Christ within us.

This is the good, long work of faith.

To those who go on, we entrust you into God’s hands. We hold hope in how you will continue to live out God’s way. We expect it and will encourage you in whatever way we can, even when we are apart.

And, finally, the good news of the gospel is this: God will be with us until we meet again. And on that day, we will sing of all the good God has done in and through us, in and through each other. We meet at Jesus’ feet, from all points and all places and all time and we sing praises for the honor and glory of Christ that we have lived along the journey.

May God’s word light our path, may Christ’s compassion live in us, and may the Spirit’s wind blow us like wild leaves to places we cannot yet see, trusting that God goes with each of us.

You are sent, to be strong, to bear the light of Christ, to give thanks, be patient, and to live joyfully. Aren’t you excited to see where God takes us?

Amen.