Title: Colossal Christ
Text: Colossians 1:15-20
Thesis: When we make Christ the center of our world we discover the unfathomable largeness of God’s power and passion for people!
Preface Thoughts:
I have chosen “colossal” as the word I will use to describe Jesus Christ today. I have chosen it for two reasons:
1. Our text today is lifted from the book of Colossians which was written by the Apostle Paul to the Christians in the Church at Colossae. Colossae is a derivative of the word colossal. The word Colossae is rarely used as a noun… it is generally used as an adjective to describe something as colossal. Colossae, used as a noun, implies something spatial as in a large city or metropolis or a large, densely populated urban center. Ironically, it was not. Tradition says Colossae was reduced to ruins following an earthquake and never rebuilt and has never been excavated.
2. And second, though colossal does not fully capture the fullness of Christ, we understand that things colossal are something of giant size and proportions. When we think colossal we think bulk or an extent of power that suggests the stupendous, the incredible, the exceptional, the astonishing or enormous.
A more theologically accurate way of thinking today would be to understand my use of colossal in light of the Latin word “Omnis” meaning “ ALL” as in omnipotent as in all-powerful or omniscient as in all-knowing or omnipresent as in everywhere present. When I speak of a Colossal Christ it is in the Omni-Colossal sense.
Introduction
In 1843 a Medieval European Map of the World was discovered in a convent in Ebstorf, Germany. The map was enormous measuring 12’by 12’. It was a canvas made of 30 goatskins sewn together. The map was a painting of the world in which Jerusalem was the center. At the top of the map was the head of Christ. On either side were the hands of Christ. And on the bottom were the feet of Christ. It may be that the artist placed Jerusalem at the center of our world but it is clear that it is Christ who encompasses and holds the world in his hands and near to his heart.
Our text speaks of a God who created all things by Christ, holds all things together in Christ and who reconciles all things to himself through Christ. The Ebstorf Map visually puts Christ at the center of our world… and hopefully of our lives.
Our text introduces us to the largeness of who Christ really is. Christ is…
I. Colossal in Essence
Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation. Colossians 1:15
The Gospel of John begins, “In the beginning the Word [Jesus Christ] already existed. The Word [Jesus Christ] was with God, and the Word [Jesus Christ] was God.” John 1:1
Colossians 2:9 teaches us that in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body.
II Corinthians 4:6 says, “We have the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” That means that when you see the face of Jesus, you see the face of God”.
A. Christ is the visible image of God
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego produced a study showing that people and their dogs often look alike. In the study, a panel of student judges was able to match 16 out of 25 purebred dogs to their owners. The reason for this, researchers say, is because dog owners tend to choose a pet bearing their resemblance in some way.
The study identified similarities between pets and people as physical characteristics or personality traits or both. So what does that suggest about those whose pet is a tail-wagger or a ferocious guard dog of a cuddly little lap dog. They say, happy, outgoing, and affectionate dogs tend to be owned by warm and friendly people. So what of those who own hairless, yippy, pop-eyed, pooches are… you get the idea. I don’t know if shameless begging or dog odors are also a reflection of owner of a particular dog.
That aside, I wonder if I stood with a group of people from all religious faiths and belief systems… I wonder if a panel of judges would match me up with Jesus? Do I look like my Master? (John Beukema, Western Springs, Illinois (3-31-04); source: Jim Ritter, "Dog Owners See Themselves in Their Pets," Chicago Sun-Times)
When the Bible speaks of Jesus Christ being the visible image of the invisible God it does not mean Jesus resembles God. Nor does it mean that Jesus Christ is a copy or reproduction of God.
Matt Woodley commented in his sermon, “Jesus, Lord of Creation,” that a copy is not the same as an image. Our text states that Jesus Christ is the visible image of God, not a copy. A copy is not the real thing. Jesus is not a very nicely done reproduction of God that is barely discernible from the original. In describing Jesus as the image of God he was saying that Jesus is the same as the original and in fact is the original. Jesus is God.
The Gospel of John begins, “In the beginning the Word [Jesus Christ] already existed. The Word [Jesus Christ] was with God, and the Word [Jesus Christ] was God. He existed in the beginning with God. God created everything through him and nothing was created except through him.” John 1:1-3
In our text day the Scripture states: “For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ.” Colossians 1:19
As essences go there is nothing more colossal than being the visible image of the invisible God.
Christ is not only Colossal in Essence but Colossal in Creation.
II. Colossal in Creation
For through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth… everything we can see and things we can’t see. Colossians 1:16-17
The Word of God states…
A. Christ is the Creator of creation
The Word of God begins with these words: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1
Initially, Earth was believed to be the center of the universe, which consisted only of those planets visible to the naked eye and an outlying sphere of fixed stars. We have since come to understand that Earth is one planet within one galaxy among billions of galaxies in an expanding universe. In other words there is no way of knowing just how colossal the universe is because we don’t know where the edge is. We only know that for us… the earth is our reference point for observing the universe.
In 1990 the Voyager 1 space probe, having completed its mission was just about to leave our solar system. At a distance of 3.7 billion miles from Earth Carl Sagan asked NASA to turn the probes camera around and take a photograph of Earth across the expanse of space. That photo is now known as the Pale Blue Dot.
It was Carl Sagan who wrote a stunning narrative about the Pale Blue Dot that is our Earth.
Of that Pale Blue Dot he said, “Look at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. On it, everyone you love, everyone you have known, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” (Carl Sagan, the Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space)
Of this Pale Blue Dot suspended on a sunbeam, one dot of all the dots dotting billions of galaxies Isaiah wrote, “God sits above the circle of the earth. The people below seem like grasshoppers to him! He spread out the heavens like a curtain and makes his tent from them… look up into the heavens. Who created all the stars? He brings them out like an army, one after another, calling each by its name. Because of his great power and incomparable strength, not a single one is missing. Oh, how can you say the Lord does not see your troubles? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the Earth. He never grows weak or weary. No one can measure the depths of his understanding. Isaiah 40:22-28
A few minutes ago I quoted from the Gospel of John, “In the beginning the Word [Jesus Christ] already existed. The Word [Jesus Christ] was with God, and the Word [Jesus Christ] was God. He existed in the beginning with God. God created everything through him and nothing was created except through him.” John 1:1-3
Our text today states powerfully and poetically, “For through him [Jesus Christ] God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth… He made everything we can see and things we can’t see. Colossians 1:16-17
Christ is the Creator of creation and it works with everything in sync.
Did you know that a piano has two-hundred-thirty “odd” steel strands or wires stretched on average between 150 – 200 pounds of tension? Did you know the average piano with its iron plate and heavy wooden framing carries a strain totaling from 18 – 20 tons of tension.
Apparently temperature and barometric pressure key to keeping a piano in tune. If the wooden sound board swells with humidity or shrinks from the lack of humidity it either tightens or loosens the piano wires resulting in a rise or drop in pitch. So pianos typically must be tuned with the changes of the seasons. The pros say a piano should actually be tuned every month and truth be told… the pitch varies from one day to the next.
The piano is a beautifully crafted precision musical instrument but the best of pianos need fine tuning.
It is not a perfect analogy or even at best an adequate way of looking at this truth but Christ may be thought of as something of a fine-tuner of creation.
B. Christ is the Sustainer of creation; in him all things hold together.
He existed before anything else and he holds creation together. Colossians 1:17
Interesting, humans can mess with creation making life impossible by creating an environment in which it can no longer sustain life.
The big deal about nuclear power plant accidents like Chernobyl in 1986 and the Exxon Valdez Tanker Spill in 1989 and the Gulf Oil Spill in 2010 is that a finely tuned creation can become a chaotic mess incapable of sustaining life. God has entrusted this finely tuned creation created and sustained by Jesus Christ to our care… that’s why we care when Suncor Refinery spills or leaks crude into Sand Creek and the South Platte River. That’s why we care when fertilizer and herbicides run-off farm fields into creeks and streams and even into the ground water table. That’s why we worry about the ozone layer and the shrinking Arctic Ice Cap and global warming. That’s why we are concerned about over-fishing the ocean.
Yet despite our lack of diligence we must marvel at how resilient creation is… how despite the consequences of our worst blunders, creation has a certain resilience and where we create conditions for Great Dust Bowls and Super-Storms… creation recovers. Somehow Jesus Christ built into his creation the power to renew and recover.
If we think tuning a piano takes some doing… imagine keeping the universe fine-tuned.
I read a comment this week to the effect that, “Jesus is the principle of cohesion; he is the glue that makes the universe a cosmos instead of chaos.” Jesus Christ is the Omni-Colossal Creator and Sustainer of the Universe.
Christ is Colossal in Essence. Christ is Colossal in Creation. And Christ is Colossal Reconciliation.
III. Colossal in Reconciliation
In him was all the fullness of God was pleased to live and through him God reconciled everything to himself… Colossians 1:18-20
The reconcile means to restore. If something needs to be reconciled then something must be out-of-whack. If an accountant’s books do not balance then that accountant has to reconcile the books so everything balances. If a relationship is broken then it becomes necessary that something be done to reconcile their differences so the relationship may be restored.
In Christianity we believe humans became estranged from God through what we call original sin. As human beings we are in our natural state identified with Adam. The Bible says that because we are all in Adam, we have all sinned.
In I Peter 2:9ff speaks of how we were once in darkness but God has called us out of that darkness into his wonderful light. “Once you had no identity as a people; now you are God’s people. Once you received no mercy; now you have received God’s mercy.”
One of my favorite verses in Scripture is I Peter 3:18 where we learn that Christ died for all the sin of all mankind of all time in order to bring us safely home to God. We were lost in sin. We were lost in darkness. We were separated from God because of our sin but then, “when we were utterly helpless, Christ came… God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. [Now] our friendship with God has been restored by the death of his Son while we were still enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. So now we rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because Christ has made us friends of God.” Romans 5:6-11
Earlier I spoke of Carl Sagan’s reference to the Pale Blue Dot that is us… of our Pale Blue Dot Earth he mused, “Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”
It is as if given the vastness of the universe and the obscurity of planet described as a Pale Blue Dot and as insignificant as its inhabitants, it is irrational to believe that there is anything or anyone colossal enough, much less caring enough, to give us a second glance… think grasshopper people.
The Population Reference Bureau in Washington, D.C. published an article written by Carl Haub posing the question: “How Many People Have Ever Lived On Earth?” It is an interesting article in which they conclude that as of 2011, 107,602,707,791 (107 billion, 602 million, 707 thousand and 791) people have lived on earth. There are currently 6,987,000,000 people living on Earth today.
If we were to amass all the sins of all the people who have ever lived and placed them on a balancing scale… the weight of those sins would be mind boggling. Then if we were to place the Cross of Christ on the other side of the balancing scale we would see that Christ’s death weighed heavily enough in the mind and heart of God to balance the scale and make things right between us and God.
Theologian N.T. Wright wrote, “The death of an obscure Jew [Jesus] on a seemingly God-forsaken hill in a backwater of the Roman Empire attracted no notice from the historians of the era, but it was the event that reconciles heaven and earth and us to God.” That is one Colossal Cross!
In the mind of Carl Sagan the Pale Blue Dot and all the people on the Pale Blue Dot are lost in the vastness of the universe and on their own. In the mind of God, the Pale Blue Dot and all the people on the Pale Blue Dot are loved by an Omni-Colossal Christ.
Conclusion
So what to do with this text on Christ the King Sunday? What do we do with this Colossal Theological Truth? What do we do with the Colossal Christ who is in Essence, God? What do we do with this Colossal Christ of Creation? What do we do with this Colossal Christ of Reconciliation?
Certainly our text is about God’s power. But it is also about the largeness of God’s passion.
Obviously we are humbled before Almighty God and marvel at the Omni-Colossal nature and activity of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. This is Christ the King Sunday in the life of the Church. But this morning I want you to think about the Pale Blue Dot that is Earth and then I want you to think of all the 7 billion people who call the Pale Blue Dot home… understanding that if the Pale Blue Dot is but a speck of dust in the larger scheme of the universe, contemplate how miniscule we are. And yet God loves us everyone.
I saw an advertisement online this week for The Perfect Gift for a child. It’s a book and the title of the book is “Look, It’s All about Me.” You can actually order a personalized story book, where the child to whom you are giving the book, becomes the star of the story.
I think there is a certain wonder in knowing that God loves me and did all this colossal stuff for me. It is as if God is not the star of the story and I am the star. God loves ME!
I could say:
!. It’s about me (insert you for a second reading…)
“Once I was far away from God. I was his enemy, separated from him… yet now he has reconciled me to himself through the death of Christ and as a result he has brought me into his own presence, and I am holy and blameless as I stand before him without a single fault.” Colossians 1:21-23
While that be true, there is another truth and the little book titled: “It’s Not All About You” captures this larger thought.
2. It’s not all about me
“And God gave us [me and you] this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ’s ambassadors; Christ is making his appeal through us.” II Corinthians 5:18-21
It is about me and you and all the other 107 billion, 602 million, 707 thousand and 791 people have lived on earth and for us, the nearly 7 billion people living on Earth today.
As we go into this new week we go as ambassadors of the Christ the King.
There are lots of ways we can be ambassadors… Relate Ron Ottercrans’ compassion for teenager driver.
