Intro
The
place is Rome, the year is 60 AD and Nero is in
the 6th year of his reign as emperor of Rome
and just four years away from the fire that destroyed most of Rome and set eventually lead to intense
persecution of minority groups most notably of which were the Christians. Into this city of cities has come an older
partially blind Jewish rabbi, citizen of Rome
and not too recent converted to the belief that Jesus of Nazareth was in fact
the long awaited Messiah. This man,
whose name had been Saul and was now Paul, had spent the previous fifteen years
traveling about the known world by foot and ship spreading the good news
(gospel) of Jesus, welcoming new believers and forming them into groups of
‘called out ones’ which is ekklesia in Greek, Kirk in Scottish and church to
us.
As the saying goes ‘no good deed
goes unpunished’ and perhaps the same is true for good news. After three journey’s Paul is now imprisoned,
under house arrest, in Rome
awaiting trial for disrupting the Peace of Rome and subversion of the
government. While under house arrest a
man named Epaphras arrives from the province
of Asia Minor. Paul was likely very encouraged to see
Epaphras because they had worked together sharing the gospel and forming
churches in cities such as Heiropolis, Laodicea
and Colosse. Epaphras came to support
Paul and offer him an update on the churches in these cities. After hearing of their situations, Paul,
unable to write himself because of poor eyesight invites his friend and scribe
Timothy to take up the pen and write what he speaks. Listen now to what he says. Listen now to what our brothers and sisters and
we proclaim as “the word of the Lord.”
Colossians 1:1-8
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, 2 To the holy and faithful brothers in Christ at Colosse: Grace and peace to you from God our Father. 3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4 because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints-- 5 the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven and that you have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel 6 that has come to you. All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God's grace in all its truth. 7 You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, 8 and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.
The way in…
Once
upon a time there was a city located upon water below a large mountain. This city had its own arena and
identity. Many of her residents worked
industrial type jobs and eventually even had a product named after her. This city was founded and grew as a result of
its location upon a significant a route that carried goods and people from the
east to the west. However as time
passed, the route changed to include a city to the north. The northern city, which was also located on
the water grew by leaps and bounds while at first known for her agricultural
and industrial capacity, this larger city eventually came to be known more for
its culture, its technology and its medical value. As the newer city grew, the older shrunk both
in population and in significance.
Does anyone know the names of these
two cities? You might think I was
talking about Tacoma and Seattle, but of course the cities I’m talking about
are the ancient cities Colosse and Laodicea which were located in Asia Minor
what is now modern day Turkey.
Colosse was to Laodicea
as Tacoma is to Seattle.
To further the metaphor, there is a third city in the area called
Hieropolis which you could think of sort of like Bellevue.
Laodicea
and Hieropolis were the big cities in the region and ones that Paul himself had
visited. Though once very significant,
Colosse had seen its power fade and was no longer seen as all that
important. Despite its ‘irrelevance’ people
like Epaphras felt called to it where they preached to the Jews and the Gentiles
which eventually led to a church forming that would meet, we will later learn,
in the house a lady named Nympha. Though
Paul had never visited this church, it was to this church that he wrote the
letter. It is this letter, now called
Colossians, which we are going to read over this Fall season.
Instead of attempting to tell you
every reason Paul wrote this letter and everything about the setting, theology,
etc, what I would rather do is briefly look at this opening passage as a way to
whet your appetite for the rest of the letter.
What at first might seem like the ‘boring opening stuff’ that are in all
letters is, upon further exploration, a rich appetizer for the meal to
come. Let’s start near the beginning.
Grace and Peace
“Paul,
an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the
holy and faithful brothers (and sisters) in Christ at Colosse. Grace and Peace to you from God our Father.” Paul
begins the letter in a fashion similar to how he begins most other
letters. He states who he is, who is his
partner, Timothy, he then names the recipients, who in this case are called
holy and faithful or even ‘faithful saints.’
This is an encouraging start.
Paul then goes on to greet them with his standard, “grace and peace to
you…”
How
many times have we heard the greeting grace and peace? I often end my letters this way and haven’t
thought much about it. What we tend to
do with these introductory formalities is to skip right on past them, but in so
doing we are prone to miss some good things for even in this simple greeting
Paul is not only greeting, but he is gathering.
In France they say Bonjour, in
Hawaii it is Aloha, in England it is cheers and in America what used to be
Hello, became Hey and then Sup until it is now just a little nod of the
head. In customs of Paul’s day, the
greeting would have been cairein (Acts 15:23, 23:26 and James 1:1)
which when translated means “greetings.”
Paul, or perhaps someone else first, perhaps recognizing the root of
this word changed it slightly to the word caris
which of course is
translated as ‘grace.’ In so doing, Paul
was carrying on a pattern of the Christians to take things common to the
culture and steal them. They did this we
ekklesia, which was originally a word for public meetings and
became the word for church; with the word eugangelion, which originally was a word for
the edicts from the emperor and became the gospel or good news; and with the
lesser used Greek word agape, which of course means love. In a similar way, cairein
became caris and greetings became grace.
It is only fitting that Paul leads
with grace because this could be said to be the key word of his ministry. It is the grace of God which created us,
sustains us, redeems us and will resurrect us.
Grace. Our reformed for-parents
hold grace as key which we hear in the reformed motto, ‘grace alone, faith
alone, scripture alone.’ Paul leads
with the Greek grace but doesn’t stop there, he returns to the Jews.
In Judges 19:20 we hear a stranger
welcomed with the words, “shalom lahak” which means “Peace to you.” Peace, shalom, is a major OT theme and an
echo of the kingdom of heaven which Jesus would proclaim and embody. And so Paul not only greets with grace, but
he also greets with peace. We hear the
combination in the Levite blessing found in Numbers 6 “be gracious to you and
give you peace.” Paul takes the Greek
and the Hebrew and puts them together and in some small way, he is hinting at
the reconciliation which God has brought about in Christ where there is no
longer ‘Jew nor Greek…” Not only that,
he is perhaps even making a theological claim that by their order saying that
it is because of grace that we are able to have peace.
Already,
right here in the second verse we get a hint of the richness that is to come.
Eucharist and prayer
Paul goes on to write, “We always thank God the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, when we pray for you.”
Here a couple of more tasty tidbits emerge. The word for ‘thanks’ is eucharisto from
which we get one of the words for communion, the eucharist. Here again we hear the word charis, grace,
preceeded by eu which means good.
Therefore eucharist means ‘good grace.’
This thankfulness is expressed in the great Christian practice of
prayer. Paul let’s them know, as we
often do for on another, that they are praying for them. This challenged me a bit for I have to ask,
when is the last time I prayed for brothers and sisters at another church? How often do we do this?
Thanks for what we’ve heard (Theological
Virtues)
Paul goes on to state the reason
they are so thankful for the Colossians when he says, that “we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have
for all the saints – the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored
up for you in heaven…” If
you’ve been at a wedding recently then three of these words might sound
familiar to you for they appear in another one of Paul’s writings, 1
Corinthians 13 which is read, rightly so, at almost every wedding I go to. At the end of the chapter Paul writes, “And
now these three remain: faith, hope and love.
But the greatest of these is love.”
The philosophers of ancient Rome advocated a virtuous
society that was based upon what were called the cardinal virtues. These cardinal virtues were prudence,
justice, temperance (restraint) and fortitude (courage). The church, at some point along the way,
claimed its own set of virtues which came to be known as the theological
virtues and they are of course, ‘faith, hope and love.’ Right here in the opening of the letter to
the Colossians we see these virtues whetting our appetite for the rest of the
letter.
Thanks for what you’ve heard (The
Gospel)
The reason for Paul’s encouragement
is of course another great theme of the letter and all of the New
Testament. In fact, the first four books
of the New Testament bear its name. Paul
writes, “you have already heard about the
word of truth, the gospel that has come to you…” Gospel is another one of those words re-appropriated
from the common culture. From time to
time the emperor would issue edicts which would be called euangallion, or a
good message. Of course most times this
good news from the government was something like, “good news, you’re son has
just been enscripted into the army” or “good news, you all get the privilege of
paying more taxes to support the conquering of foreign lands.”
So the Christians take this ‘good
message’ and use to describe their message.
As a little aside a study by the Barna group in 2007 revealed that only
3% of respondents aged 16-29 had a favorable opinion of evangelicals.[1] When given a list of 10 positive and 10
negative traits to describe the church, 9 out of the top 12 were negative and
the top trait? 91% of young non-Christians said that the ‘church is anti
homosexual.’ Now no matter what you
believe about same sex relationships you have to admit that a people whose
identity is shaped around ‘good news’ have an image problem when all we are
known for is ‘bad news.’
To bring it back to Colossians, the
author Paul is also held with some skepticism for his apparent views on the
role of women and slaves in society. My
encouragement for reading Paul is the same as that for those skeptical of the
church, spend time with it. Read Paul
and get to know the church and just see if perhaps there is good news
there.
God’s grace, minister of Christ,
love in the Spirit (Trinity)
Already in the opening we have grace and peace, we
have faith-hope-love, we have the eucharist and prayer, we have the gospel and
of course verses 6 and 7 give us the Trinity.
“…since the day you heard it and
understood God’s grace in all its
truth. You learned it from Epaphras, our
dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.” God
the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit right here in the opening of
the letter, just another appetizer for the meal to come.
Learned it from Epaphras (Imitate)
And finally, we have what may be my
favorite appetizer, that of Epaphras. In
verse seven Paul states that the Colossians learned all of this grace and
peace, eucharist, prayer, faith, hope and love, the gospel and the trinity from
the fellow servant, fellow slave, Epaphras.
This learning highlights another great theme of our faith and that is
discipleship. What you don’t know from
the English is that when Paul says ‘you learned it’ the Greek is emaqete, Does this word sound like an English
word? Emathete, imatete, imitate. To learn from Epaphras, the Colossians
imitated him. This shouldn’t come as any
surprise, what did Jesus say? “Follow
me.” What is following if not imitating
you leader’s path? In school we call it
education and in the church we call it discipleship. Either way it is God’s way of welcoming
humanity into his kingdom. We live into
the kingdom of heaven by imitating Jesus and we learn to imitate Jesus by
imitating people who imitate Jesus. This
is what Paul did and what Epaphras did and what we are invited to do. Which leads me to my invitation for
imitation.
The invitation
Underneath your pews you’ll find
letters. Please find one and open
it. Inside the letter you’ll find three
things; a letter to the Colossians in English, a letter in Greek and a note
card. My challenge to you this week is
to read this letter every day. Highlight
it, mark it up do whatever you want to it, just read it (in English or
Greek). At the end of the week take your
note card and on one side write a question.
You may have many questions, but I encourage you to narrow it down to
one or two, but three at the most. The
question may be specifically about something in the passage or it may be a
question about life that the passage instigated. On the other side of the card I want you to
write a word or phrase. As you read
through the letter this week, which word or phrase grabbed your attention the
most? It’s okay if you don’t know why it
stuck out to you, write it anyway. Like
with the questions, there may be many words or verses that stuck out to you,
but I encourage you to narrow it down to one or two but three at the most.
Next Sunday this card will be one of
your offerings. Bring it on Sunday. You don’t need to sign your name, but you can
if you want. Just bring it.
Now, why am I doing this? Two reasons.
First, it is good for me. Hearing
your questions and connections with the passage will help me as I prepare the
message each week. If a lot of people
have questions about one section, then I’ll do my best to address that section
in a bit more depth. Or, if that is not
possible, we’ll talk about it in Sunday School.
And if that is not enough, I may attempt to list some of these questions
and answer them on-line or in the newsletter.
In short, it helps me, help you.
The second reason I encourage you to do this is that it is good for
you.
If
we really believe that this is God’s word to and for us, then we need to take
time to read it. The very reason we have
these letters is because the churches to whom they were written read them in
their gatherings. And when they were
done, they made a copy of the letter (not on Xerox, but by hand) and passed it
on to the neighboring churches in Laodicea or Hierapolis. Most of these letters were lost, but a few
remain. It is the ones that remain which
have continued to be read in congregations for almost 2000 years. Over and over the church has reaffirmed that
these are not just the words of Paul, but God’s word through Paul to us and the
world.
The way out…
Scott wasn’t good at a lot of
things, but he could draw. He’d spend
all his class-time doodling and sketching things. Eventually he decided to create a comic
strip. He sent off some sketches to
several publications all of which were rejected. At least one of the editors wrote back to say
they liked his stuff but it just didn’t work for them. Scott shrugged and went back to being a bank
teller and working at a low grade tech job and other basic bland business world
things. He pretty much gave up. A year or so later he gets a letter in the
mail and it is from the same editor who’d written him before. In that letter was not an acceptance of his
comic strip, rather it simply said, “Hey, I just wanted to write you to make
sure that you hadn’t given up.”
Scott Adams decided to try again and
not too long later would get published and now his comic strip is in every
newspaper in the country. Does anyone
know the name? Dilbert.
Brothers and sisters, I hope that
this book will be for you what it was to the Colossians in the first century
and what that editor’s letter was to Scott Adams; encouragement on the journey
to become who God wants you to be. (Preached on September 9, 2012)
[1]
http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/16-teensnext-gen/94-a-new-generation-expresses-its-skepticism-and-frustration-with-christianity
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