Hurricane Katrina as a natural disaster show is just as 9, 11, 12 years ago this very morning this very moment at this very moment buildings were collapsing in New York City They can show that Christianity is something which rises above The spiritual did you hear what I said? It rises above the spiritual How can anything be higher than the spiritual and yet in the cosmology of the Apostle Paul that I'm about ready to explain to you from this amazing passage that we're going to read in a minute Paul has said that the highest of the highest has become the lowest of the lowest And that when that has happened he is called every one of us to enter in to this in-car nation this Indwelling of the flesh where the highest Becomes the lowest Where the spiritual Understands its high tone Because it becomes So low That my friend is the theme of the book of Colossians as we've seen in the last weeks And as if God is giving to us a visible demonstration of its truth this hurricane can only be understood in that way That the highest that God is Is entering into the lowest of the human needs in our world And the question for skip Ryan and For you is Where are you in this? And hear me I'm going to put it in an odd way Are you too spiritual? Are you too heavenly minded? Are you praying too much
And doing too little Because the meaning of this passage that we're about ready to read tells us that that is not an option The reading this morning comes from the book of Colossians chapter 1 verse 15 which is written in your bulletin I would like to ask you to read it along with me from the bulletin because I have Taken some liberties in outlining it in a poetic form And I have done so because I believe this was a poem or a creed or a hymn Which the church used in the time of Paul and he actually picked it up and put it into the middle of his letter I don't know if it was exactly in this form But I have broken it out in a way that makes clear the distinctions That are in this poem. I want you to see as I read it two major sections Verse 15 he is the image of the invisible God Verse 18 he is the head of the body the church In both cases he is the first born We need to ask what that means The first born of all creation And the first born from the dead Would you stand for the reading of God's word please He meaning Jesus Christ of course is the image of the invisible God the first born of all creation For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth Visible and invisible whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities All things were created through him and for him and he is before all things and in him all things hold together And he is the head of the body the church He is the beginning the first born from the dead That in everything he might be preeminent for in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell And through him to reconcile to himself all things whether on earth or in heaven making peace by the blood of his cross This is the word of the Lord Thanks be to God please be seated Let me tell you something There are thousands of churches across this country that this morning are speaking about Hurricane Katrina And I'm not going to declare to you that I'm speaking to about it to you any better than they are But I will tell you that two sentimental poems and one point is not the answer You must understand your place in the economy of God's work in history If you were to know what it is you were to do and how you are to do it And I can think in the course of going through Colossians this is a passage for this morning I didn't move it around it's right here in order And this is the passage that will give you an understanding of your place in God's redemptive history in this moment And the question is whether you and I are going to seize the moment and where we're going to see what we are to be about This was as I already said probably a hymn probably sung before Paul's time in the early church We agreed spoken like we spoke to Nicene Creed this morning The language of the hymn where the poem sounds grand But to stomp some ears it sounds a bit stiff and formal doesn't it? I mean the honest with me it's kind of formal language not sure you understand what it means when you first read it But actually if you were in Paul's time words like image and first born Would actually be not stiff and informal but they would be relational and personal words that you would immediately understand For example if I said my son is a spitting image of his mother That would be a way in which I would be complimenting him I believe I would It's funny he's supposed to laugh at that Or if I said my first born daughter is the most precious thing to me That would be a very personal thing I would be saying about my daughter The words image and first born are not abstract they're very personal They're family language Colossians again and again and again in this little epistle speaks about the importance of relationships as the legitimizer of truth In other words it says you can believe the Creed You can believe you're going to heaven you can believe the truth But if your life does not demonstrate that reality in some way like Jesus Christ's life demonstrated that reality Then there is reason to question the credibility of your profession of faith Your affirmation of faith must always be accompanying by a living out of that faith And relationships are always the legitimizer of that truth Think of the hardest person you know how to relate to Those difficult person in your life to relate to Who is it? Come on get the picture in your mind What are you doing with that person? If you're doing nothing but playing hardball with them just because you don't want to relate to them Then you're not understanding the incarnation of Jesus Christ You're not understanding what it means for God to become man and you're not understanding for what he did when he identified with us And guess who was tough to relate to for him The guidelines that are in this book are always in relational terms as we'll see in chapters 3 and 4 especially They have to do with the way we care for one another The way we treat one another in kindness, humility, patience The way we treat children, parents, masters, slaves, so much of the truth of the Christian faith is born out right now This is why someone told me, man I respect on the phone the other day, said this is the greatest moment This is perhaps even greater than 9-11, 12 years ago As a moment in which the church can be the church I have no political agenda in saying what I'm about ready to say None, it appears that local, national and federal governments have failed us It appears they are laid on the scene, they didn't get it The people of God have stepped up and you see it in the pages of our newspaper That is perhaps the most fabulous thing that has happened in the history of the church So far in our short century, this is what we need to be and this passage shows us how Remember, probably him or a creed, that's what I said It's broken out in your bulletin, two sections, both sections one and two begin the same way He is, in one case, the image of the invisible God in the second case, the head of his body, the church In other words, Christ is the Lord of creation and the Lord of the renewed creation That's what it's saying Lord of creation and Lord of renewed creation Look at these for just a moment, Lord of creation Jesus has made the invisible Creator God visible He is the visible image of the invisible God This is a way in which Paul is taking a jab at the classical Greek division of the scene and unseen There exists in this book of Colossians which I've already heard two in the last few weeks Some of these people in Colossians are stuck on Plato And you remember what I said about Plato three weeks ago? Plato believed in it upstairs, that which you don't see And downstairs, that which you see And Paul is not saying This part of God you can't see, that's the real part of God, that's the part of God that's really holy and really spiritual And this part of God you can see like in Jesus That would be platonic dualism, it would not be Christianity It would be like Oz, the great and terrible behind the curtain in the emerald city And that is not what he is doing His point is that the unseen invisible God is perfectly imaged, perfectly represented with hair, with eyes, with kneecaps, with feet at the football game the other night That my whole family went to on Friday night here in town I had a camera built into my phone Of course I am so low tech that I didn't even know I had a digital camera in my phone But my two college age children who were home because they came home to see each other and see each other in six months And they both decided to come home this weekend in order to be together We're showing me how to take pictures of them with my digital camera And it was a lot of fun, we took picture and stopped and froze And then oh we laughed at that one, didn't like it, then we took another one And then we took another one And finally I got one and it's the wallpaper now on my phone You open it up right here and there it is, picture my son and daughter right there, a snapshot of them Very good, very cute, I'll keep it for months That is not what we get when Jesus Christ became the image of the invisible God By the way my phone is on silent just in case you want to know I don't get a snapshot of Jesus Christ We get the full complete image As the writer of Hebrews put it, we get the exact imprint of his nature, the radiance of his glory As John puts it, the only begotten son who is at the father's side He has made him known, that is the only thing, the only person Of which that is said in the whole of the Bible This is why Paul says, and he dares to say it so bluntly People are blind until the gospel of the glory of Christ Who is the image of God dawns upon them And you've had that experience many of you You were blind, you thought you know who God is You thought you know what God was like You read about God, you even read the Bible And then something happened in your heart And Jesus was revealed in your heart And then you said, now I know God Somebody go tell Bill Lambert to turn his microphone off People cannot see God until they look at Jesus That's the point He is saying, all you need to see You wanna know about the glory of God? You ever wanna know what God is like? You even wanna know what God in all of his glory and splendor is like? Don't read the Da Vinci Code Don't read Dan Brown Don't read about what really is a modern day in those books Version of the spiritual emanations and gnostic spiritual portrayals of Colossians It's all it is, it's all the Da Vinci Code is Don't read about that You will not learn about God You will learn about God when you look into the face of Jesus Christ in His Word So Paul says, the God who is the creator called light to shine forth from the darkness And has shown that light into our hearts That's the miracle, that's the spiritual power In our hearts to give a light of the knowledge of the glory of God Where in the face of Jesus Look at the face of Jesus through His Word See who Jesus is He's the first born of all creation If image shows us that He's who Christ is in relation to God Then first born of all creation designates His relationship to creation It means that He's unique He's a unique being distinguished from all creation He means that Christ is the master craftsman of all creation He says all things in heaven and earth visible and invisible He leaves nothing out, we're made for and through Him Jesus was there from the beginning Everything was made for Jesus All things created for Him and through Him Like a skilled professional craftsman who builds a home Many of you have built homes One of my favorite home builders in our church is Arlo Bueller He builds one home at a time and he lovingly does it He lovingly cares about every piece of wood He takes a long time If you're in a hurry to get your home built, don't go to Arlo Bueller Because he takes a long time to build his home very carefully Very full of fine quality He is excellent in his craft Jesus made everything as the master craftsman Thrones, Dominions, rulers, authorities Again, a reference to all the good and bad, nostic powers All of the kind of spiritual elitism that some people were saying You've got to go through angels You've got to go through these spiritual emanations or these saints You've got to go through this kind of idealistic utopian idea of spirituality He said look, if I can put it to you like a plain old Pentecostal preacher All you need is Jesus All you need is Jesus The is the one who will reveal to you who God is He is before all things, that means one, he's a priority in time Before anything visible or invisible was created He was there He was there One of the greatest heretics of the ancient world was a man named Areas And he said there was once a time when he was not meeting Christ And he believed that when it said that Jesus was the first born of creation It actually meant he was the first one created That's not what Paul means By first born of creation he means he's the priority, the top The leading cause, the leading enterprise of all of creation He was not created And secondly he is primary in status, he's first He's not only a priority but he's first he's the Lord of the universe He's the Lord of all of the authorities All of the real authorities and the false authorities All of the fake authorities made up by Gnostic Browns or Mormons or Tom Cruise or Dan Brown He's ahead of them all And third it means he has the power to keep them all together This is his sustaining activity Here's the most amazing thought in the world The baby Jesus, born, held at his mother's breast Nursing at his mother's breast for nourishment Helpless baby At that very moment that he is a helpless baby He is holding together the molecules of the universe That's who he was Now it's verse 18 there's a shift from Christ's creator to Christ's redeemer So in verse 18 what we read there is that he became, as it says, the first born of the new creation The first born from the dead, the head and the Lord of a new people of God The leader he was in control over the head of his body over the church Like the head dictates to the body And we're going to do very present tense terms The head of the body of Christ in Dallas, Texas, in Park cities, Presbyterian church is giving orders right now to the body Are we hearing those orders? Are we understanding what we're supposed to do? The head is speaking Secondly he's a sustainer, he sustains all creation He particularly sustains his body, the church, he holds us together as a family We are dependent on him I visited a man last night in an old assisted living kind of home This is a dear man that I've thought of and known for years And he hasn't been able to come to church for a month And I just said, Jim, we miss you, your family misses you The body of Christ misses you, you belong to a community And that's the community that Jesus controls The head of the body, the sustainer, he's the first born from the dead And what that really means here is that Jesus is the first born of the new creation, the new life that the resurrection gives us My friends, we are talking about spiritual power and reality It isn't ordinary, it isn't the way it was The resurrection age has burst forth upon those who were falling asleep We are the first fruits of those who guarantee the resurrection of others That's why Paul calls him preeminent And preeminent means two things All the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in him Foleness is a big word for the Gnostic bad guys in Colossae The overly spiritual people These people who were too spiritually minded to care about hurricanes That's what it would mean If you were in Colossae and you were into a pletonic ideal of spirituality You would say, God is above hurricanes, God is above hungry people God is above displaced people, God doesn't care about those things That's really what you'd say But what is really being said here is that the fullness of spiritual reality Is placed in flesh Just as it was in Jesus In carne, in flesh, that's what carne means You and I are the arms and legs of Jesus Christ And he takes over this idea of fullness with God and he fills it with Bible content Can a man hide himself, Jeremiah 23 says, in secret places so that I cannot see him declares the Lord Do I not fill heaven and earth? That's what the Gnostic are trying to do That's what's super spiritual trying people try and do Try and hide themselves in the spiritual Oh, I was going to go pray No, that's not what we're called to do He is the one mediator between the world and God So the Colossians don't need to fear angels and demons and neither do you You don't need to fear whether David Brown is right in the Da Vinci code Whether you need to be overly concerned about all those mysterious and intriguing things That's what the Colossians were concerned about God in all of his divine essence and power has taken up his residence in Christ No Christ, you know God Secondly, he's the reconciler of all things to himself That's what it means to be preeminent Paul hasn't said it yet but it's obvious in this passage There has been a considerable dislocation even a rupture in the unity and harmony of the cosmos Reconciliation is a word that Paul frequently uses to describe Christ's saving work on behalf of his people Something has gone wrong The world is out of joint Eve and Adam with her made a big big mistake And the rest of us follow in the train of that mistake If they had not made that mistake I challenge you with a candleizing idea, would hurricanes ever happen? Would natural disasters ever happen? Would terrorist attacks ever happen? It's somewhat speculative but I think it's arguable that you see the world is so out of joint because of sin That God must now be about the business of reconciling all things to himself Jesus came to defeat sin in the territory that it had made its own in this world And the only way he could do it was the becoming flesh and blood In order for there to be a redemption, there has to be an incarnation In order for there to be a reconciliation, God has to enter in Hear me now This means that he who made himself everything He was everything He was everything First born of all creation Invisible God before all time He who was made everything made himself nothing in order to reconcile everything to himself This is the drama you and I are a part of This is the drama of history that we are a part of Redemption, fall, excuse me, creation, fall, redemption This is what we are a part of Creation, something went wrong, fall, something is being made right, redemption This is why he who made everything had to become nothing And become one who suffered on a cross on a garbage dump outside of Jerusalem Jesus stepped down into history In order to bring everything back to where it belongs Christ who was preeminent made himself nothing He was humiliated in his cross He did not step down in order to step up again He stepped down in order that we could rise up again In a certain sense Jesus stayed stepped down What I mean by this is that when you see him in heaven he's going to have nail marks in his hands Those nail marks show that he stepped down into history He is still serving us even as he sits at the right hand of power He who is hid in the cross he hid out in an ugly place He wasn't seen the cross obscure off the beat, small city, distant province garbage dump outside the city Why do you know that the fullness of what he has done has not yet been revealed But do you know that on that day when it is revealed the seemingly defeated will be preeminent And the first born of creation will become the new creation Here's my question and here's the point and here's the end If there's a first born of creation are there others born of creation This is the point of the word image in this passage It's not only a reference to Christ as the image of God But it's a reference to us who are made in the image of God or his Son We are little Christ We bear the wounds of sin, don't we? Don't we? We bear the heartache of sin We bear the tragedy of sin in our lives The nail marked hands as it were and yet we like Christ enter into a world Are you prepared to step down like Christ? Like Paul? Are you prepared to be hidden like Christ? Dying and rising with Christ means status reversal I have no other way to say it Look, I'm glad we live in a wealthy community I'm glad we live in a happy place I'm glad we live in a place where Texas beat Ohio last night But I want to tell you those are not the deepest secrets of your life Those are not the most true things of your existence Dying and rising with Christ is a status reversal And the question is whether we are willing to step down To a Christian, this is W.H. Auden, famous poet To a Christian, the God-like man is not the hero who does extraordinary things But the holy man or woman who does good deeds But Auden goes on to say the gospel defines a good deed as one done in secret Hidden, hidden with Christ so far as it is possible Even from the doer and for bids private for bids Private prayer and fasting in public We are to be hidden about this And Auden goes on to this very interesting explanation For why he as a poet and an author believes that no human being should ever portray Jesus Christ on a stage And it's not because it's blaspheming It's simply because he says it's impossible to represent Christ Who is so infinitely more interesting And infinitely more compassionate And infinitely more beautiful than any portrayal we humans could ever make of him And Auden suggests this generates an interesting tension in the Christian life Knowing when to speak and when to keep silent When to hide your good deed and when to let it be known I have a very good friend who is quite close to David Brooks the New York Times columnist that many of you read every Sunday He emailed me this week he said, I've heard about what your church is doing for Hurricane Katrina I want to give the information to David Brooks because I know he's going to want to do something with it in his articles I was so torn about whether to respond to that email Is it better to be hidden or are there times when we let our light shine? I don't have a simple answer for that but I will tell you this There are ten things that God will not ask you in that day, I'll make them seven to be a little shorter Seven things God will not ask you when Hurricane Katrina is all over, okay? Seven things One, he won't ask what kind of car you drove He'll ask how many people you drove who didn't have transportation He won't ask the square footage of your house, he will ask how many people you welcomed into your home Third, he will not ask about the clothes you had in your closet, he will ask how many people you helped the clothes Fourth, he will not ask you how high your salary was, he will ask you if you compromised your character to get it God won't ask you what your job title was, he will ask you if you performed your job to the best of your ability God won't ask you how many friends you had, he'll ask you how many people to whom you were a friend And finally, God won't ask you what neighborhood you lived in, he will ask how you treated your neighbors He uses you, as he uses a restored yet fallen humanity, it's part of his big plan, the biggest plan of all And so the question my dear friends is, not whether or not you can dance well The question is whether you get up and dance