COLOSSIANS  – A Letter to All Saints
Preacher: The Rev. Stephen Arpee

July 15, 2007

Deuteronomy 30:9-14
Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37

The following is a summary, not a verbatim transcript.

MAY THE WORDS OF MY MOUTH AND THE MEDITATION OF OUR HEARTS BE ACCEPTABLE IN YOUR SIGHT, O LORD, OUR STRENGTH AND OUR REDEEMER.

This is the first time for me to stand in this pulpit since Janet and I have returned to All Saints, so we want to say how pleased we are to be back with you all.  We are eager to greet old friends and to get acquainted with those of you who have arrived since we were here last, ten years ago.

That was also a time of transition, after the departure of one rector and the beginning of your search for his successor.  This is such a time of transition, but even more so.  Not only is this congregation in transition, but so also is the Episcopal Church, and indeed, the global Anglican Communion.

Some observers describe this era in the life of the Church as the Second Reformation, a time of change, challenge, and great opportunity for the expansion of the mission of the Church.  Events are moving rapidly, and the scene is sometimes confusing.  It is all the more important that we be clear in our understanding of what is the Good News of Jesus, so that we can play our part, and be in action together.

Two major forces in contemporary culture oppose our ability to understand the Good News – secularism and relativism.  Secularism is the assumption that “religion” is irrelevant or even harmful to modern life, and should be left to the ignorant and the weak.  Relativism, very popular among some Christians these days, is the belief that Truth is personal and private, so much so that in effect, the existence of any objective, independent Truth is denied.  “One religion is as true as another.  The highest value is tolerance.”

In the Anglican Communion, these forces have taken the shape of “local autonomy,” as The Episcopal Church has apparently chosen to “walk apart” from the majority of the Anglican family, ordaining a man as bishop whom the rest of the Communion can not recognize as suitable for that office, precipitating a crisis of authority which the leaders of the Communion now wish to address by writing a Covenant which is to define the boundaries for participation in the Anglican Communion.  The Chairman of the drafting committee is Drexel Gomez, Archbishop of the West Indies.  He is to be the primary speaker at a one-day conference here in Washington at the end of this month, at St. Luke’s Church, in Bladensburg.  I hope many of us will attend.  History is being made right here on our doorstep.

And history is being made right here in this congregation, just as it was in the house churches of the first century to whom Paul addressed his letters of encouragement and exhortation.  Today’s second reading is such a letter.  It is just as timely now as when it was first read aloud in Colossae. The key verses are: 

"May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from [the Lord’s] 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. He 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."

This is not just religious poetry.  Paul is applying the paradigm of Exodus and Promised Land to what God has done for all humanity in Jesus’ death and resurrection – the Second Exodus.  The Exodus-event is God’s victory over evil, the forgiveness of sins, which he has accomplished through Jesus, with effects that ripple down through the centuries, with both personal and political consequences.

For ancient Israel, the realm of darkness was imperial Egypt.  Other examples are closer to us, whether Hitler’s Third Reich, or Bin Laden’s dream of a global Muslim Caliphate.  The darkness is ruled by a false god, and brings violence and spiritual and physical death.

“The saints in the light” are us (All Saints Church, to be sure, but more), the whole people of God;  and our “inheritance” is not what we get when someone dies, but it is the New Creation, which has already begun to come into existence in this world through Jesus’ resurrection.  So, our ability to understand and to communicate the Good News depends upon our answer to this basic question:  Who is Jesus?

Paul outlines the answer given by the first-century church in Colossians 1: 15-20, under five points:

1) Jesus is the image (ikon) of God, Yahweh personally present with us.  We can glimpse the power and the intelligence of the Creator of the universe by observing nature; but we can not know his character, or come into personal relationship with him.  Jesus is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the one true God, meeting us gently, face to face.

2) Jesus embodies the purpose and design of the whole creation: Torah and Sophia, Law and Wisdom.  For Judaism, the Law is much more than a set of rules for personal and public life.  It is God’s very design for all of human life.  Sophisticated first century Greeks held much the same view of Wisdom, the divine pattern shaping all the visible world.  Paul and his fellow apostles declared that Jesus was indeed the bearer of God’s Law and Wisdom.

3) Jesus is the leader of the Church.  We have bishops and councils, and human organizations that come and go, and they have their uses; but there is only one head of the Holy Catholic Church, and he is Jesus himself, known to us through Scripture and the work of the Spirit.

4) Jesus is the beginning of the Resurrection of the whole creation.  The transformation of this present material world has already begun with the resurrection of Jesus, and can be seen to be continuing to take place, through miracles of healing, and positive changes in the personal life of individuals and the political life of nations.

5) Supremely, Jesus is the one who has overcome evil by his own death – this is the victory of God.  The center of the Good News is that the great victory has been won, the divine invasion, and the struggles we now encounter are just part of the “mopping up campaign.”

Therefore, “Joyfully, [give] thanks to the Father” (verses 11b-12), because of who Jesus is.  Thanksgiving is the mark of the people of God, not a superficial, frivolous attitude, but a posture of deep appreciation for all that Jesus is, “at all times and in all places.”  With this attitude, and this clarity, we can face with confidence the future that the Lord has in store for us.  Amen.