Colossians 1:1-14

01/30/11

Colossians 1:1-14

Hudson UMC

After finishing up the book of John after two and a half years, it is possible that some of you might be worried that we are diving right into another book of the Bible, that of Paul’s letter to the Colossians, but I want to encourage you not to worry.  Colossians is only four chapters, compared to John’s twenty-one.  It is a much shorter book and will not take nearly as long to get through it and, in addition, we will have a nice break in the middle of it for Lent.  I pray that, just as we have learned much from exploring the life and teaching of Christ himself, we will gain just as much from the insights and practical application that Paul brings to the table.

As we begin to explore this new book, some words of introduction are in order.  Perhaps the most pressing question is, “Why do we care what Paul said to the Christian community in Colossae nearly two thousand years ago?  After all, we live in such a radically different time and place, could this letter really have anything to say to us?”  Of course it does.  Just like the words and actions of Christ are incredibly relevant in spite of the huge cultural difference between us and him, Paul’s words are still helpful, even in modern America.

In fact, Colossians is perhaps one of the very most contemporary books in the entire Bible.  Many of the issues that faced the Colossian church face us today.  The contents of the letter to the Colossians are the product of a deeply compassionate and carefully observant pastor and missionary.  Paul fits neatly into neither the traditional Jewish mold nor the traditional Gentile mold.  In spite of his sometimes fiery style, Paul is not one to run quickly into major topics, giving rash advice that is easily shown to be destructive.  Rather, what Paul has said has remarkably remained incredibly contemporary, showing that he had a profound grasp on the human condition and how the good news of Jesus Christ impacts us.

Our passage today doesn’t seem to be all that exciting.  Paul is more or less following the standard form of letter writing in the ancient Roman Empire.  One might say that Paul spends these first fourteen verses saying the equivalent of our modern, “Dear Colossian Christians.  How are you?  I hope you are well.  I met someone you know and I was glad to hear that you are being successful and that is good.  Isn’t God great?”

I say that one might say that because, though there is a nugget of truth to it, because Paul is indeed following some of the standard form for small talk at the beginning of a letter before he really gets into his point, but that is a really simplistic way to talk about it.  In itself, this passage does not tell us all the much.  It does not contain any deep theological arguments, nor does it give us any concrete advice on how to live more authentically as Christians.  If it stood by itself, there would not be much use in preaching a sermon on it.

However, these first fourteen verses indeed do not stand by themselves.  They are only the very beginning of a full-fledged letter to the Colossian Christians that will affirm, teach and challenge them.  Whenever you read one of Paul’s letters, you should look carefully at the first passage in them.  Those early verses almost always tell you something about what is going to come up later in more developed form.  Since we are just at the beginning of this letter, I am not going to try to go into an overly in-depth discussion of every single thing that Paul says, but I want to highlight a few major themes that he briefly indicates here.

The first thing I want to point out that might not be immediately obvious is that Paul did not plant the church in Colossae, though it is extremely likely that one of his close associates did.  This means that Paul is writing this letter to Christians he has never met.  This might seem insignificant but it is actually quite important.  Paul writes, “In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.”  Paul does not seem to hesitate for a moment to affirm and rejoice in churches that he did not found.  He does not have the same kind of denominationalism that we often have in our world.  He does not say that things have to be done his way if they are to be Christian.  He knows that God’s work is far greater than our own particular way of doing things.

What this means is that Paul has much to teach the modern church about ecumenical activity.  We all know that there are differences between different denominations but there are some groups of Christians who simply will not acknowledge other denominations but insist that they, or they and their friends, are the only true church.  I have seen this be a source of tremendous division within communities, when one church is simply denied legitimacy by another.  Paul will have none of this.  The real question that Paul would ask a church is, “Are you reconciled to God through the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit?”  If the answer is “yes,” Paul will be in fellowship with you.

Paul continues on, saying, “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, 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.”  It seems that Paul, though he has not ever met the Colossian Christians, has heard about particular moral looseness that is incompatible with the Gospel.  This really wouldn’t be unusual for him.  His correspondence with the Corinthian church is almost entirely dealing with moral issues and he always spends some time in each of his letter encouraging the people to live lives worthy of God.

The question we need to ask is, “Why does he do this?”  Is it because Paul is, as he is so often portrayed, really a rigid moralist who just wants to make sure that we all live within the narrow confines of what he happens to define as “The Christian Life?”  In spite of the fact that Paul gets talked about this way, as if he had nothing he wanted to do more than tell people what to do and what not to do, it simply isn’t the case.  This is the Paul who was the first Christian leader to really take outreach to the Gentiles seriously.  Every move he made, every church he planted, was under intense scrutiny by both Jews and Gentiles.  If people who claimed to belong to Christ, the Son of God, and empowered by the Holy Spirit and indwelt by the very life of God were immoral people, what would happen?  The Jews would look at it and reject them because they knew the God of their ancestors far too well to acknowledge such immorality as consistent with claims to follow that God.  The Gentiles would look at it and raise the logical question, “You don’t live any differently than the rest of the culture does.  Who cares about your God?”  Paul did not want the behavior of Christians to push people away from Christ.

What is amazing is that these two concerns have not gone away.  There are many branches of the church who consider the mainline churches, of which the United Methodist Church is one, to be morally reprehensible.  In their eyes, mainline Christians don’t seem to realize that our God is a holy God and that we are called to a life of holiness that characterizes everything we do.  Now, it is entirely possible that such branches are equating the holiness of God with their particular culture’s narrow understanding of morality, but the point is that we cannot even begin to have that conversation because the mainline has not exactly always been as holy as we have claimed to be.  On the other side, I think we are faced with the even stronger critique, one that I think is far more widespread and far more serious as we move into an increasingly secular age.  More and more we have people who are growing up without any involvement in the church, who don’t even know the basic convictions of the Christian faith, who only know Jesus from what they see on television, which I must admit, is not often a good representation of what the great tradition of the church has believed.  They ask, “If so many people who claim to follow Christ do so many hurtful things, why should I be one of them?”  The conclusion is often to try to follow Christ without having anything to do with the church or, what is more often the case, avoid Jesus altogether.

What I want to point out here is that we get to see here a key theme in Pauline ethics.  Our knowledge of God in Christ is never isolated from behavior but must permeate every part of it.  People often make the distinction between knowing things with your head and knowing them with your heart.  I completely agree with the point that they are trying to make.  Knowing information is not the same as feeling it deep in the core of your being.  However, Paul does not make that kind of distinction.  Where many people might say that someone knows something with their head but not their heart, Paul simply would say that they do not really know it at all.  Real knowledge of God challenges us and transforms us.  If what we call knowledge of God does not do that, it is simply not real knowledge at all.  Every single time Paul makes a moral exhortation, it is within the context of a larger theological discussion.  When we get to the point in Colossians where he speaks about things like what wives, husbands, children, masters and slaves should do, we must never think that he is making general statements but we need to always remember that they are deeply rooted in what he has said about God and the Gospel and must be understood in that light.

Another major point to bring up here is that Paul is writing this letter not primarily as an authoritarian teacher or even as a theologian, though he is indeed a great theologian.  He is writing this first and foremost as Paul the pastor.  He says, “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 giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.”  Even though Paul is going to challenge the Colossian church and even though there will be points where that challenge comes in a rather pointed manner, his real goal is to build up the body of Christ and glorify God.  He is not the one who founded this church so their success does not point directly back to him.  Paul is, quite simply, passionately concerned about the health of all Christians and Christian communities.

The last few verses of our passage go a long way in giving us a kind of “heads up” to what is coming in the rest of the letter.  “[The Father] has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”  What we will find, especially in the first two chapters of the letter, is that the emphasis in Colossians is overwhelmingly on the centrality of Christ.  This centrality is emphasized in a variety of ways:  critiquing hidden cultural assumptions, ethical practices, the arrangement of Christian households, and prayer.  Every part of the letter is rooted in Paul’s unwavering conviction that Jesus is absolutely central to the Christian life and that any time we allow Christ to be pushed out of his central place by something else, anything else, we are missing the point.

Through studying the letter of Paul to the Colossians, we will be brought face to face with many aspects of our own lives that often remain unexamined.  Again, I think one would be hard pressed to find another book of the Bible that so directly applies to our social and cultural situation than Colossians.  So many of the struggles that were taking place in that time and place are happening here now as well.  If we set ourselves to listening carefully to Paul, it will be a challenging time, but, by God’s grace, we will emerge more firmly grounded in Christ our foundation than ever before.  Let us pray.

AMEN