A Colossal Proposition

Colossians 3:16-17; John 1:1-5; Colossians 1:15-20

Robert M Watkins

October 21, 2007

As Paul writes to the Colossians, he makes a proposition--

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly…

It is a loaded statement on a variety of levels. As our other passages indicate, understanding the “Word” is no small task. As John opens his gospel, he reveals the power of the word. The Word is with God and is God. To allow that Word to dwell within us is an invitation to allow God to dwell within us, to conform our lives to the life of Christ, and to transform who and what we are into something else entirely. It is “Extreme Makeover--the Theology Episode.”

It is also something far removed from the way we typically approach our lives and manner in which we deal with the details of those lives.

As we heard the words of Paul from the opening of his letter, we are struck by the high poetry of the text. This is a hymn, a song of faith, a statement of an essential set of beliefs about Jesus for the church to ponder and contemplate. But what has it do with going to the grocery store or sitting in the pick-up line at school or going to work?

Even a cursory glance at the letters of Paul reveals that he believes firmly that the gospel of Christ is a practical statement of faith, i.e., a rule by which to live. Paul sees opportunities to serve Christ in even the most mundane of human circumstances. He will go on within this letter to outline life at home, work, and in the community based on the admonitions found in Christ’s call to live by love as Christ defined it. He will instruct folks on marriage, child rearing, community service, and so on, all based on Christ’s teaching.

What makes this remarkable is that Christ himself was rarely so specific in his own words. Rather, Christ would encounter normal human situations and then use those to make general comments about life in the presence of God or ethical demands made by the interaction of human beings. For example, the parable of the Good Samaritan takes the everyday moment of encountering a stranger in distress, but turns it into a transcendental moment of defining the love of one’s neighbor.

Paul, though, approaches such stories as a Pharisee--somewhere in there is a specific rule for life to be followed by the faithful. Taken through Paul’s eyes, the Good Samaritan is a command to not pass by the stranger in the road in every case. That is the rule--do not pass by.

But that makes faithful living nearly impossible, doesn’t it?

If we are simply making the faith into a set of rules, then we are lost. There is a new book out written by A.J. Jacobs, an editor with Esquire magazine--The Year of Living Biblically--in which he recounts an attempt to actually live by the codes found in the Old Testament. It is a funny and quick read that also proves insightful into the struggle to live faithful lives. One of my favorite anecdotes is his attempt to live by the Levitical admonition to stone an adulterer. Mr. Jacobs encounters a crusty old man in a park who comments crudely on Mr. Jacobs’ strange clothing--all of unmixed fibers, sandals, and wild hair and beard. Mr. Jacobs also finds out the man is unrepentant about his adultery, but threatens to sock the editor in the nose should he try to enforce the stoning rule whereupon Mr. Jacobs pelts him with tiny pebbles from the dirt path of the park. He then runs for his life from the old man. He winds up unsure as to whether or not he has succeeded in keeping this rule of faith.

Jesus, in his generalities, makes things easier, or at least easier to hear and accept as guidelines, though one still is left to wonder at the possibility of doing so. Living by love is hard work. It is hard to love the human beings we are confronted with daily, let alone to love ourselves as Christ instructs us to do--we simply get in our own way too often.

Here is where Paul suggests an alternative that actually helps us to live by the rules and to fully embrace the teaching of Christ of the way to live.

First, acknowledge who Christ is. That wondrous hymn from the opening of the Colossian letter spells everything out clearly and succinctly. Christ is the Lord of life, all life, because God reveals himself through Christ, eradicating the barriers between ourselves and God that sin sets before us. We cannot live by the rules--never have, never will. We will do all right with most of them in our lives, but we cannot achieve perfect obedience. It is simply not in us to do so. God has taken care of that. In Christ, God accepts Christ’s own obedience as ours, in our stead, allowing Christ in his life, death, and resurrection to bring us fully in line with God’s presence and expectations. In other words, in Christ, we are saved by grace.

Second, allow this word of hope to dwell within us. This is the proposition found in thinking of Jesus as a Word from God--an action, but specifically a spoken word. In Christ, God spoke. Allow those words to take root within our souls. Meditate on them, repeat them, look at them--everything you can do with words, do with the story of Christ. Allow Christ into your consciousness through the story itself. Pick a key statement or verse and stick with it until it becomes part of yourself. Maybe on a particular day, it might be good and appropriate to think over one admonition--love your enemy--and stay with it. What does it mean? What is Christ really saying? How do I do this?

The idea then becomes to free oneself from binding specificity, but to allow yourself to become generally specific.

Huh?

Love your enemy. Think of someone hard to love. Begin to think about them not as a specific person, but as a human being formed by God. They, too, are a child of God. They, too, are unique within creation, a specific act of God. Then think on what it is that divides you. What would it take to get from the division to the commonality found in God’s creative work in both of you?

Think about what might happen.

Love is still hard, extremely so, but as we allow ourselves to actually spend time with it, it dwells within us.

We say God is love, and that Christ is the revelation of the love that is God. That love is a word--it can be spoken, it can be taken in, it can be lived.

Amen.