OPENING STORY
My freshman year of college, I was blessed with the opportunity to take a quarter class in Denver learning about urban development and strategies for alleviating poverty. Now, I could claim that my motivations were noble, and they somewhat were. I mean, I really did want to help alleviate poverty and make the world a better place… but what I really wanted at the time was to get close to the mountains.
You see, I’ve always been drawn to them, ever since I was a little boy. They were a place of mystery, with peaks above the trees and in the heart of storms. They were the middle of the wilderness and the closest one could get to walking in the sky short of hopping in an airplane. In the bible, they were often the places where God met with people, and there is something immense and a little bit terrifying about them. It’s no wonder that, though I was born and raised in Iowa, my life has repeatedly brought me back to the mountains.
So naturally, when I came out to Colorado for this class, the very first weekend I was here, I decided to climb Colorado’s highest mountain, Mt. Elbert. Now it’s not a particularly difficult hike, compared to more technical or treacherous climbs, but in my hurry to get up above the clouds, I underestimated the weather and overestimated my ability. It was the beginning of Spring in the lowlands, but in the mountains it was still most definitely winter. Not only that, but I had scheduled a date with a girl in my class to see the play Les Miserables in Denver that very evening! I was sure I could make a quick hike up the mountain and back before the play started.
I started my hike at 2 o'clock that morning, so I could be up and below the treeline before the afternoon storms came in, but in my haste I wasn’t wearing the winter clothing I needed and I didn’t even have a very good map of the area. I think you can see where this is going, as I pretty quickly found myself utterly and hopelessly lost. At some point I had mistaken a deer path for the trail and wandered around for what must have been hours. I was cold, short on water, and out of food. I eventually found a stream and figured that since water flows downhill, and people tend to settle near water, eventually I would find a town, or a house, or somebody who could help me at least get back to my car!
Eventually, by the grace of God, I found a single dirt road in a plain that stretched as far as the eye could see in either direction and a lone car was traveling down that road. I waved the elderly couple down who were driving it, and they told me I was on the complete opposite side of the mountain from my car, and that though this was their land, they only drove down that road maybe once a week or so. They graciously drove me back to my car (despite me not having any money to pay for the trip) and I hurried on my way to make that date.
The problem was, as I was driving down the road, I noticed my heels began to itch. Then they felt like they were throbbing, and by the time I reached Denver they were absolutely burning. I had frostbite on my heels! Somehow, some snow got packed in between my heels and my boots and froze the skin. Despite being in excruciating pain, I barely made it to the theater in time for my date, and after a nice play and dinner, I asked my date to drive me to the urgent care clinic so I could have my heels looked at. As I always say, the best way to ensure you have a memorable time is by ending the night in the hospital!
BE PREPARED
Now, all that wandering around in the mountains and the pain which followed could have been avoided if I had just been prepared. Maybe the most embarrassing part of this story is that I’m even an Eagle Scout. I not only should have known better, I did know better! But I was in a hurry and I didn’t bring the proper clothing, or the proper provisions, or make the proper preparations. In the passage from Colossians we just read, Paul is trying to make sure the Church at Colossae doesn’t make the same mistake, and it’s my job to make sure you don’t either, if I can help it.
You see, the letter to the Colossians isn’t like some of the other letters from Paul, like the letters to the Corinthians or Galatians, who were already having serious problems that needed to be corrected. Instead, the Colossians are on the right path, but are treading dangerous waters.(1) They are in the midst of a Greco-Roman culture obsessed with mystery cults and secret knowledge, and a new group called the Gnostics have begun to mix Christian teachings with the belief that salvation could only be obtained through strict asceticism and through the secret knowledge of heavenly things, and the worship of and appeal to orders of angels.(2) They believed that this secret knowledge was not only the key to salvation, but was also reserved for an elite few, who felt they were intrinsically superior to their uninitiated neighbors.(3)
This group was especially popular in Asia Minor, what we call Turkey today, where the seven churches mentioned in Revelation were, and where Ephesus and Colossae were. In fact, there is a famous story passed on by Polycarp, one of the followers of the Apostle John, that after John had settled in Ephesus he was visiting the local bathhouse to wash, as was the custom, a local Gnostic teacher named Cerinthus walked in to bathe also. John immediately jumped up and fled the bathhouse shouting that he didn’t want to be in it when the roof collapsed under the weight of God’s judgment on Cerinthus’ teaching. Much of John’s writing (and that of his followers) suggest that he was coming up against some of the same popular teachings that Paul had heard about in the same locality, and Paul was taking the preemptive step of ensuring that the Church didn’t fall under the spell of this new, trendy teaching.
CLOTHED IN REAL VIRTUE
[For this part, as each “layer of clothing” is described, place a piece of clothing - jackets, sweaters, scarves, gloves, etc. - on a member of the congregation, until they are completely, and hopefully comically, layered in clothes]
So, Paul instructs the Church in Colossae to clothe themselves in real virtue. - And now for this part, I’ll need a volunteer – He begins with a heart of compassion, because this is the source out of which the other virtues flow. Compassion is what characterized Jesus’ ministry(4), and Paul calls God himself “the Father of Compassion” in 2 Cor. 1:3. But as one commentator noted, a compassionate heart is more than just a collection of nice acts we do for those we happen to come across, rather it is the state in which we are driven to seek out those who are suffering and help them.(5) If we are comfortable, simply the knowledge that others suffer should drive us to leave that comfort behind and seek them out to ease their suffering.
The next layer in Paul’s clothes of virtue, is that of kindness. We are to cultivate a “gracious sensitivity” which is motivated by the real desire for the well-being of others.(6) Our popular culture plays lip-service to kindness, but most of the time people are taught to approach everything from business to personally relationships with the attitude of, “What can I get out of this?” We treat relationships like economic exchanges, as long as we come out on top with a better bargain, we’re happy.
And unfortunately, that’s how many people approach Church. It’s the reason why many in our culture tend to “church shop.” And while I really do believe people should be fed by the Word in the service, as does Paul later in this passage, for many people their primary reason for switching between churches is that they felt like they weren’t getting anything out of the service. I wonder how much our business dealings, our personal relationships, and even our churches would be different if the first and last question we asked wasn’t “What can I get out of this?” but “How can I serve my brother or sister today?” For just as Rom. 2:4 makes it clear that God’s kindness leads people to repentance, it’s our kindness which often leads people to God.
The third layer of clothing which Paul describes, is a warm coat of humility. Though we are used to hearing that humility is a virtue today, to a Greco-Roman audience it would have been a little shocking, as most Romans associated humility with unmanliness or slavishness.(7) But God isn’t a Roman, and as v. 11 makes clear, all the old divisions between Romans, Greeks, Jews, the circumcised and the uncircumcised are broken down in Christ who is all and in all. By realizing there are no specialized elites in God’s kingdom who are superior to the others, God’s people are called to live in an exact opposite manner to that which appealed to the Gnostics of both that time and our time.
The fourth layer of clothing we are called to put on is the sweatshirt of gentleness. This is so that we don’t steamroll each other in our desire to get what we want. I have to admit, this is one area where I struggled with quite a bit in my own marriage. I’ve always prized myself in my decisiveness. I tend to be very driven and goal-oriented, and I rarely let challenges stand in my way. This has proved to be useful time and again in my studies, and during my military career, as I was able to quickly make decisions in the face of adversity and was not easily dissuaded or discouraged.
The problem is that I often put my own desires or my own goals over those of the people I cared about, and sometimes even above my wife’s. I would miss what I thought were subtle cues (and what she probably thought were obvious) about even mundane things, like where to go for dinner and it created a lot of conflict, especially early in our marriage. It took me a long time to learn to be more sensitive to what she might be thinking and feeling, and to remember that my goals, even if they are important to me, do not automatically take precedence over hers. It’s a hard adjustment to make, and it’s taken years. It wasn’t necessarily that I was malicious, it’s just that like all human beings, I had to learn to overcome my selfishness and grow to be sensitive to the needs of others which may not immediately be obvious.
The fifth layer of clothing Paul encourages us to wear as we face the cold world outside is that of patience. We’ve often heard that patience is a virtue, but it just might be the most difficult one on this list to master. Just about any parent will tell you that telling your kid they just have to be patient when they want something right now usually has the opposite effect. And our culture mixed with technology doesn’t make things any easier. The internet, cell phones, free two day shipping, streaming movies, and drive-thru windows have made it so that we expect our food, our friends, our employees, and our world to be at our fingertips at all times.
So many of us have been utterly spoiled by technology that to have to wait even an extra 10 minutes for a steak in a restaurant, where someone else raised, killed, and cooked the cow for us, seems like an interminable amount of time. How many of us have snapped at a cashier, who is making minimum wage at three jobs to make ends meet, just because the express line in the grocery store was 5 minutes too long?
I was told once that the reason the Amish reject most modern technology is not because they view it as intrinsically evil, but because whenever they encounter a new technology, they weigh whether or not it will be helpful or harmful to cultivating community. If they find it won’t be helpful, they don’t adopt it. I’m not sure how true that is for their communities, but sometimes I wonder if we wouldn’t be better off adopting a similar stance rather than rushing after the latest product that doesn’t really make our lives any less stressful or our relationships any deeper.
Finally, Paul tells us that over all these other layers, we are to put on a coat of love. This layer binds all the ones before it closer together, just as it binds the community closer together as the body of Christ. In fact, in v. 14, Paul calls love “the bond of perfection”(8) which cultivates the peace of God which is the goal of all these virtues in the first place. You may have noticed that contrary to the virtues of Greek philosophy, which tend to focus on the internal attributes within the minds of individuals, such as “truthfulness” or “happiness,” the virtues which Paul describes are relational in nature. Paul does care about the transformation of individuals, but he realizes that we cannot really be transformed apart from the Body of Christ. We can’t go it alone. The peace of God isn’t just something we feel in our hearts. It is the rule, or closer to the Greek word which Paul uses, the umpire or coach which governs and guides our relationships with one another and with God Himself.
TRANSFORMATION THROUGH COMMUNITY AND WORSHIP
And it’s for that reason that Paul links this peace within the Body of Christ to worship in the very next verse. Believe it our not, our relationships, and our theology are shaped by the songs we sing.(9) One of my biggest pet peeves are worship songs with no real theological content. Many people are content simply singing a song which amounts to saying “I love you Lord” over and over again. But if the words of a Christian worship song could easily be sung in the congregation of another religion because they are so vague, then that can begin to be a problem if that constitutes the majority of songs sung. Not every song needs to be packed with deep theological concepts to be useful in worship.
But songs have always shaped humanity more than almost any other medium, besides maybe story. And in fact, the best worship songs should tell a story. Ideally, they tell the story of who Christ is, what He did, what He is doing in us, and what He has promised to do in the future. It’s one of the reasons I like so many of the old hymns. I mean, what better retelling of the Christmas story couched in the language of the Trinity can one find than Charles’s Wesley’s “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”. Or what better testament to the unshakable hope and peace found in Christ than “It is Well With My Soul,” written by a father as he sailed over the spot where just weeks before all four of his daughters had been carried under the waves and drowned? And what better declaration of the immense depths of God’s grace than the song, “Amazing Grace” written by a former slave-ship captain who repented of his sin and became a pastor?
So many of these old songs were written in the wake of tremendous struggle and hard-won lessons about the beautiful character of Christ, and because of that I find they often convey a depth which a song written for a commercial label in Nashville often fails to reach. Please understand that I’m not against contemporary worship music, and in fact there are some new songs which have come out in the last couple of years which I really love. But I think the driving force behind our worship shouldn’t just be what sounds nice, but rather what tells the story and what compels and admonishes us to cultivate the virtues which Paul described above.
CONCLUSION
[To volunteer] Now all those layers are getting pretty cozy, am I right? Do you feel like you can brave the cold winter morning outside? How about hike up a mountain? How do you feel? Any chance of getting frostbite? All right! See, that’s why we dress in layers! And that’s why Paul encourages us to layer virtue after virtue over ourselves, clothing ourselves completely in Christ and strengthening those virtues by staying in His word, and by being built up through the experience of worship; so that we will be protected when false teachings, or selfish vices attempt to drive a wedge between us.
FOOTNOTES
(1) Cf. Col. 1:21-23.
(2) “Introduction to Colossians,” in The New Catholic Answer Bible. (Wichita: Devore & Sons, 2005), 1292.
(3) Col. 2:18.
(4) Still, Todd D. “Colossians,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Revised Edition. Vol. 12. Ed. By Tremper Longman III & David E. Garland. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 331.
(5) Clarke, Adam. Clarke’s Commentary, Vol. 6. (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press), 528.
(6) Still, “Colossians,” 331.
(7) Ibid.
(8) NKJV.
(9) Allen, Joseph, et. al. Annotations in The Orthodox Study Bible, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2008), 1621.
Delivered Dec. 30, 2018 – First Church of the Nazarene, Cortez, CO
