Earlier this summer, Mary Ellen watched The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe for the first time. As a result, she has developed a keen interest in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series and Ken has been reading to her from the series almost every night. Mary Ellen has asked me several times which Narnia book is my favorite, and I always answer the same, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. She hasn’t gotten to that book yet, but I look forward to reading it with her when she does. There happens to be a scene in that book that illustrates well the idea being expressed by the writer in this passage from Colossians.
In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C. S. Lewis tells of how a young boy named Eustace becomes a dragon—a very unhappy dragon at that. Eustace steals a gold armband and puts it on, only to find that his greed turns him into a dragon. And the armband is excruciatingly tight on his dragon foot.
One night, in the midst of his pain and frustration, Eustace encounters a huge lion who tells the boy to follow it to a high mountain well. Eustace longs to bathe his aching foot in the cool water, but the lion tells him he must undress first. It seems silly to Eustace because dragons don't wear clothes, but then he remembers that dragons, like snakes, cast their skins.
So Eustace scratches his skin, and the scales begin falling off—and soon his whole skin peels away. But when he puts his foot in the water, he sees that it is just as rough and scaly as before. He continues scratching at the second dragon skin and realizes there is yet another underneath.
Finally the lion says, "You will have to let me undress you." Eustace is afraid of the lion's claws but desperate to get in the water. The first tear is painfully deep as the lion begins to peel away the skin. Surely death will follow, Eustace believes. With the gnarled mess of dragon skin now cut away, the lion holds Eustace and throws him into the water.
Initially, the water stings, but soon it is perfectly delicious. Eustace swims without pain, for he's a boy again.
Many of you are aware of C.S. Lewis’ work and the fact that his Narnia series is in many ways a metaphor for biblical truths. And indeed, with this story of Eustace, we have a very vivid (if imaginative) description of the sort of change that takes place when we allow Christ to reign as Lord of our lives. Clearly, it’s no easy process. We have to shed the “old” and take on the “new.” It’s slow, maybe sometimes agonizingly slow. It’s painful, as we have to let go of the identity that has shaped us for so long. But if we can bear it, just like Eustace, we will emerge as the people who God made us to be—his beautiful, pure, creation.
Just as we heard last week, the writer of Colossians is stressing again the salvation that has been accomplished by Christ. This time, though, he does so by reminding his readers of the significance of their baptism; a dying and rising with Christ that breaks the power of sin and incorporates us into the kingdom of God. We get yet another view of the vast work of Christ’s salvation in this passage because now, the author wants to emphasize not so much Christ’s atoning sacrifice, but our incorporation into a new reality, the body of Christ. This is about a completely new way of life, but not just any life. It’s more than a life free from the enslaving powers of this world; this new life actually anticipates the ultimate future, when God’s kingdom will come in all of its glory.
I don’t know if there’s any way I can stress how immensely important this is. We talked last week about the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ. And what we see this week is that that salvation is only complete when our lives are changed, completely changed, because of our relationship with Christ. I’m not talking about we just start going to church every week, and then live the rest of our lives the same way we always did. I mean things CHANGE! That’s why the author has laid out this list of vices and virtues. Put to death are all things earthly: “sexual immorality, moral corruption, lust, evil desire, greed,” and lying. No longer can we be consumed by “anger, rage, malice, slander, and obscene language.” Instead, we must be filled with “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.” We must be tolerant and forgiving, and loving. In short, as the writer says, we must put on the image of the one who created us.
Did you catch that? Our lives must conform to the image of Christ. We must look like Jesus. We have to act like Jesus and live like Jesus. But most of us don’t really do that so well, do we? And we even make excuses about why we can’t. We justify our actions (or inaction) by saying things like, “Well, I’m not a healer, and there aren’t any lepers, so I can’t heal lepers like Jesus did.” Or “I just can’t invite the tax collector or the criminal over to my house for dinner because that’s just too dangerous; you know, having strangers in your house and all.” But here’s the thing, the gospel is clear: salvation results in a changed life, a life that reflects the very life of Christ himself. And indeed, we live in a very different world than the one Christ inhabited, but often we just hide behind our excuses so we don’t have to face the truth that stares us in the face.
And this is where the critical thinking comes in; this is where we have to begin to tear away at the rough exterior that hides who we really are. This is where we have to make ourselves vulnerable as we read, study, and understand the gospel for the truths that lie behind it, not the stories that make it up. Christ touched the lepers; maybe we should offer our shower to the homeless. Christ forgave the prostitute; maybe we should forgive the adulterer or even the addict. Jesus told the rich young ruler to go and sell all his possessions and to give everything to the poor; maybe we need to send the same message to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, and maybe even to each other. Jesus welcomed tax collectors and sinners and ate with them in their homes; maybe we need to welcome illegal aliens or those from the LGBT community. Jesus rebuked Peter and told him to put away his sword; perhaps we need to stop focusing so much on gun rights and just put the weapons away.
As we consider to the gift of Christ’s salvation and its impact in our lives, we need to be asking ourselves regularly: Are we honest in our study of Scripture, truthfully seeking its wisdom? Or do we use Scripture only to confirm what we already believe? What would it mean to be honest about the role of our Christian forebears who blessed military conquest, justified slavery, and supported the vicious slaughter of Jews? What does it mean to be honest about living conditions in Third-World nations as compared to our comfortable affluence? Do we really want the truth about climate change and our modern wars? As those baptized into the body of Christ, as those who are transformed by his salvation, we are talking more than just the occasional “honest-speak,” we are talking about a WAY OF LIFE that frees us to see reality, even our own reality, for what it truly is.
I imagine that I’m probably making some of you mad, or at least a little uncomfortable. I have to be honest in saying I’m a bit uncomfortable saying these things. But that’s the feeling of those scales falling off, as Jesus peels away our rough exterior. It’s not easy, it’s painful even; and it makes us terribly uncomfortable. But Jesus made people mad and uncomfortable by the way he lived and the things he taught, didn’t he? That’s why he was killed, because people didn’t like what he was saying; they didn’t agree with the way he was acting!
Now, I don’t pretend to have all the answers about what it means to be transformed by Christ. I don’t know exactly what it looks like to be formed in the image of the one who created us. But I can pretty honestly say that if we feel comfortable with who we are, we’re probably not fully conformed to the image of Christ. Because the truth of the matter is, when we allow ourselves to be transformed by Christ and conformed to his image, we will no longer look the way the world wants us to look. We won’t be comfortable in this world because we will no longer stand for the things of this world—all the anger, and rage, and malice, and slander, that is so much a part of how we relate to one another anymore will be gone; consumed by the image of Christ living within us.
But here’s the thing about salvation in Jesus Christ; it doesn’t just change us, it changes the whole world. Christ has broken down all those barriers—racial, ethnic, and economic—that divide society. “In this image there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all things and in all people.” And this is a challenge that remains for all of us. Just as our lives must conform to the image of Christ, so must the church conform as the body of Christ. The church itself is rife with division; division that stands in opposition to everything that Christ was about. We have to begin here—even in this very room—to rebuild the relationships that have been torn, the congregations that have been rent asunder, and the many communities that have been divided by the ways of this world. With Christ living in us, we have to be the ones to begin to tear down these walls within ourselves and within our congregations!
And there’s no better place to begin than the Lord’s Table. This is the place where we remember Christ’s sacrifice. This is the place where we experience God’s grace in a special way. This is the place where we are incorporated into God’s mighty acts of salvation, and where Christ begins to strip away those rough scales, changing us into the people we were made to be. As you receive this holy meal this morning, may you begin to feel Christ’s transformation in your life; as your are formed more and more each day into his image. May it be so.
