Christ is all, and is in all (Col. 3:1-15)

The last few weeks the lectionary has taken readings from Paul’s letter to the Colossians. We’ve been focusing on what he has to say about the Body of Christ. The theme the first week was “Christ in you (that is, the church), the hope of glory.” Last week the theme was “you have been given fullness in Christ,” The church has been given the fullness of who Christ is, and we saw that in the way fours aspects of the church or four spiritual streams, reveal to us the fullness of Christ. This final week, in chapter 3, Paul gets down to specifics of how we are to live together as Christ’s body. Our theme today is “Christ is all, and is in all.”

You have been given fullness in Christ (Col. 2:6-19)

The past couple of weeks we have been looking at Paul’s letter to the Colossians. Last week we were in chapter 1 and our theme was “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” We talked about how as a church we need to have on our spiritual 3D glasses. They correct our vision so that we can see Christ all around us—in the creation that he made in love and sustains in love, and in one another. With our spiritual glasses we see the world with God’s gaze of love.

 Our theme today is, “You have been given fullness in Christ.” Paul opens this passage with an exhortation to the Colossians. He says, “just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thanksgiving.” Paul is concerned because it seems that the Colossians, in verse 8, have been struggling with some false teaching in their midst, based on human philosophies and ideas that are not the true gospel of Christ. This false teaching diminishes who Christ is. So Paul affirms strongly in verse 9, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.” God dwells in completeness in Jesus.  Then Paul adds in verse 10, “and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority.” This means that the church, the Body of Christ, has completeness or wholeness in him. If the church has completeness in Christ, what more can these false teachers add to that? The question we want to answer then is “what does it mean that the church has fullness in Christ?”

Christ in you, the hope of glory (Col. 1:15-28)

As I was preparing to come home from a few weeks in Italy and take up the role of Interim Rector, I was excited to see that the lectionary epistle readings take us through Paul’s letter to the Colossians. I’m excited because this letter wonderfully teaches us about who Christ is, from all eternity, and what it means that our identity as a church is the Body of Christ. That is who we are. The theme for my sermon today is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Next week the message will be “You have been given fullness in Christ.” And the third week is, “Christ is all in all.”

 Our passage begins at verse 15, “He [Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Notice how many times Paul says “all things.”

Giving God the Right of Way

A few months ago my husband John needed to take the 7:00AM train from Newburyport, and needed me to drop him off at the station a little before 7:00. So he woke me up, I pulled on some clothes, and drove him the three minutes from our house to the Newburyport station. The station is right near a traffic circle at the end of where there is a Dunkin’ Donuts, a Dominoes Pizza and a car wash. I dropped John at the station and was leaving and entered the traffic circle. Suddenly I looked to my left out my driver window and there was a police car right next to me and a little behind! Somehow I hadn’t seen the police car and here I had cut off a police officer as he was heading to Dunkin Donuts! Sure enough, he moved in behind me and his flashing light went on. So I pulled over.

Hope in the Midst of Catastrophe

If you pay attention to the news at all, you are aware that much of it is stories about disasters happening in places around the world. Some of them are natural disasters—volcanoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, recording breaking heat waves. We’ve heard about all of these things around the world just in recent months. And those are just the natural disasters. There are manmade disasters also—wars and terrorist plots, and genocides. Not to mention large-scale economic disasters with stock markets plummeting, huge multinational companies and banks folding, governments on the verge of bankruptcy, and high unemployment.

"Do not be afraid, little flock."

This past week was hot! It meant that all the windows were open at our house. And as I was preparing this sermon, there was a crew of painters at the house across the street with a boom box tuned to an oldies radio station. They had the volume up and were singing along off-key to everything from the Rolling Stones and Jefferson Airplane to the Doors and U2.  Then pretty soon I found myself singing along off-key. It was hard to concentrate. Then it occurred to me that this was a metaphor for the Christian life: trying to stay focused on the things of God with a lot of noise and distraction around us, pulling us away.

Love and St.Valentine's Day

What you know about St. Valentine has to be very little because there is little to know. There is a record of a priest named Valentinus who was martyred in Rome in 270 during the persecution of Claudius II.  Two other martyred Valentinuses lived a couple of centuries later in towns north of Rome. One of them was a bishop who was put to death by the barbarian King Totila in the fifth century. And that’s about all we know. The connection of St. Valentine and romantic love seems to date back to a poem Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in fourteenth century England about romantic love where he mentions St. Valentine’s Day as well as Cupid and Venus.  After that it became a tradition to write love poetry on St. Valentine’s Day. By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, St. Paul also wrote his own poetic passage about love in chapter 13 of his letter to the church at Corinth that continues to resonate in so many hearts 2000 years later.

Stewardship and the Materialist Trap

A young man I know is completing his Master's degree as a fisheries biologist. This past summer he spent several weeks with one of his professors on the Colorado River at the bottom of the Grand Canyon studying an endangered fish called the Humpback Chub. This species of fish has a very localized natural habitat, the swift flowing waters of the Colorado River and its tributaries. But because of the number of dams that have been built on the river and the dumping of mining and other waste into the river, the flow and temperature of the Colorado River has been dramatically changed.

Spiritual Formation of Children

In the life of a healthy Church, the spiritual formation of children is Indispensable, Integrated and Invitational. It is indispensable because the future of the church is our children, without them there is no future church. It is integrated, meaning it works holistically, integrating body, mind and spirit. And it is invitational. It invites our children into a life-long loving relationship with God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

         About 15 years ago the British murder mystery writer P.D. James stepped outside of her usual genre to write a science fiction novel called, The Children of Men. A couple of years ago the book was made into a movie which I did not see, but I did read the book. It’s a very interesting and perhaps somewhat timely plot in which it suddenly occurs across the whole world that women no longer become pregnant, the human species is