Colossians 1:15-20 page 1
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Colossians 1:15-20 page 1 |
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Albert Einstein walks into a party. He approaches a man and says, "What's your IQ?" "180," comes the reply. "Oh good," says Einstein, "Let's have a conversation about subatomic particle physics." And they do. Then Einstein moves on and talks to a woman. "What's your IQ?", he asks her. "160," she says. "Oh that's very good," he says, "Let's talk about international politics." Next, Einstein finds another man and asks him the same question: "What's your IQ?" "Duh ... 40," he says. "Oh," says Einstein, "Are Arsenal doing well this season?" I guess you can only tell a joke like that in Spurs territory! It's good to be back home. But in another sense, as the song goes, you can never go back home. It will have changed and not be as you remembered it. This church building has changed since I went off to college in 1986 and began in the ministry in 1992. I wasn't able to return for the reopening, and it's great to see it today. Other things have changed, not always for the good. When Debbie and I were engaged I brought her to Edmonton one day to show her the place where I grew up. I took her to Edmonton Green, but the place had deteriorated terribly. It was a depressing experience. But there are wider ways in which all of us can never go back home. We long for things to be as they once were. Not only does our home town and church building change appearance, our society changes - not only outwardly, but also in terms of the values it cherishes. Or for some of us, this never was home, and the values of this place are deeply alien to the ones we grew up with. I think that describes much of what it is like to be a Christian in the West today. The broadly Christian values that many of us grew up with and which had some degree of common acceptance in our society are gone. It is no longer normal to be a Christian. In fact it is pretty abnormal. Worse than that, our convictions are sometimes almost heretical or even treasonous. The Colossian Christians to whom Paul wrote were in a similar situation. Although Gentiles, their Christian faith had grown out of Jewish soil, but Judaism now regarded them as heretical. They were living in the Roman Empire, and - as we shall see - many deep Gospel convictions about Jesus put them at odds with Rome. The whole letter - including the passage we read - can become a clue for how we live as the Christian Church in a land where we can no longer go back home. For those of you who want to follow this up more deeply, I should add that I have been inspired in my thinking by a book called 'Colossians Remixed'. It's quite a heavy read, but very rewarding. But what I'm going to do this morning is take three of the things Paul says about Jesus in this poem and apply them to our discipleship today.
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Copyright © David D Faulkner, 2006 except where other sources are attributed or noted as inspiration. |
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