Paul wrote this letter to the church at Colossae because they were in danger of being turned into Gnostics. Now, we aren’t in danger of turning into Gnostics, are we? I mean, how many of you woke up this morning and said to yourself, “you know, this Gnosticism stuff - I think I’d really better look into it.” And when you turn on the TV you don’t think, “Aha! Those Gnostics are at it again!”
Well, you might be surprised at how many Americans really are Gnostics at heart.
You see, Gnosticism was a system of thought that grew up in the years when the Christian church was beginning to take shape in response to two very common pressures. The first pressure was the desire to reconcile the popular culture with the teaching of the church.
You see, one of the most common philosophies in those days was dualism, the belief that the universe is divided into good and evil, with the good being spiritual and anything material being evil. It was populated by a whole series of gods. At the top of the pecking order was a god - or maybe just a force - who was perfect, untouched by any sin or evil, that is to say anything physical. Descending from the top god was a series of "emanations", who were less pure because of their contact with material things, and at the bottom of this totem pole, well separated from the spirit at the top, was an intermediate being, often identified as the “logos” or word, who created all the physical things which constitute the world we know with our senses. The Old Testament God, with his claim to be creator, thus became automatically subordinate, a lesser god. So, the formal teachings of the church, with Jesus being spirit and flesh combined, both divine and human, pure spirit born into impure flesh, was really hard to swallow.
The Gnostics - by the way, the word comes from the Greek “gnosis”, or knowledge, taught instead that Jesus had left behind secret teachings which, of course, could only be understood by the spiritually enlightened, those with knowledge. And since Jesus was representing the pure god, who could not be corrupted by contact with physical things, Christ only appeared to be a person, but he wasn’t really. Therefore, he couldn’t have suffered and died on the cross. He just seemed to. Some people even said that he didn’t cast a shadow when he walked. So, you see, Gnosticism was an attempt to make Christianity understandable, acceptable, and respectable in a Greek world.
The second pressure was the difficulty with accepting salvation as a free gift - accepting that we are incapable of earning our way into heaven under our own steam. Because, you see, if salvation is God’s free gift, not something that is ours by right, we can’t demand that he serve us, that God live up to our standards of behavior before we will pay any attention to him. It was just as hard for the people of Jesus’ day as it is for us; most everybody wants to be in control, and if there’s nothing we can do but surrender to God and trust in his mercy, then we’re not in control any more, are we? And furthermore: not only are we supposed to just accept it, we’re supposed to go out and offer it to everybody else on the same terms we got it - namely, completely free, no entrance requirements, secret handshakes or cool in-group stuff that gives us a sense of our own uniqueness and superiority.
Gnosticism gave you things you could DO. There were two branches: one said that the body didn’t really exist, so you could do whatever you liked as long as you believed the right things. That wasn’t the most popular branch, though. The most popular version added a variety of self-abasement techniques, designed to wean the soul away from the body and thus ascend to a higher level of spirituality.
Well, as the people who have been attending the Sunday morning class on comparative religion can tell you, Gnosticism is alive and well in many different places around the world. Offshoots from orthodox Christianity like Mormonism, Christian Science, and Jehovah’s witness emphasize secret knowledge, an additional “key” revelation which enables the initiated to discern the true, hidden meaning of Scripture. Christian Science is also intensely dualistic, believing that the body - with all its attendant aches and pains - is all an illusion, and that true spirituality is gained by recognizing the illusion for what it is.
Other world religions, particularly Hinduism and Buddhism, are also dualistic, believing that material things, the physical world, are either illusions or traps. And every single one believes that there are certain things you have to do in order to earn salvation - however you define it.
But although Gnosticism in the classic sense is still believed and practiced throughout the world, the real danger is somewhat different. It’s still a response to societal pressures, the attempt to reconcile classic orthodox Christianity to the popular culture. But today’s popular culture is not dualistic, it’s materialistic. Our culture doesn’t value self-denial, but exalts self-indulgence. And the central theme of this world view is freedom, the radical freedom of the autonomous self to define its own identity, its own values, and - in fact - its own religion. And the interesting thing is that the people who embrace that world view claim that they are more “enlightened” than those of us who claim allegiance to Christ. They have “knowledge”- whether science or experience - which trumps God’s revelation.
And that mind set is thriving even within our own denomination. The More Light movement is one symptom; they hold that modern people have “more light” on certain subjects - particularly sexuality - than the writers of Scripture did. Our “scientific” knowledge trumps God’s revelation. The witness of God’s spirit within the individual believer, said one of the leaders of the liberal wing of our church, is more authoritative than the written word. Said another, “We don’t need people hanging from crosses and blood and all that stuff.” A number of Presbyteries, even local churches, have been advocating a sort of “local option” for obeying the Book of Order when it comes to ordination standards and “holy union” ceremonies - all in the name of “freedom of conscience.”
The freedom to define one’s own self, the freedom to define one’s own values, the freedom to define one’s own god... sounds attractive, doesn’t it? That means not being bound by one’s past, by one’s community, by other peoples’ expectations. Freedom beckons us like a vast unlimited field of possibilities, and those who warn against it are nothing but spoilsports, kill-joys, control freaks. Who are you to tell me what I can and can’t do, anyway?
And yet those of you who were here a couple of years ago for the series on the 10 Commandments may remember that the essence of sin is brokenness. Each commandment zeroes in on a place of brokenness in the human condition. First the relationship with God is broken; that shows up in different ways in commandments 1 through 3. Next the relationship with creation is broken - the Sabbath brings us temporarily back into that day of rest when everything was, indeed, still good. Then God zeroes in on the importance of maintaining continuity from one generation to the next when he tells us to honor father and mother. The relationship between brothers is broken with murder; husband and wife are broken apart by adultery. We further divide brother against brother, nation against nation with coveting and theft, and we divorce ourselves from truth itself the moment we embrace a lie. And so the reconciliation Christ brings is more a matter of re-establishing binding ties than a matter of blessing the distances.
The Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote about the consequences to society when we each try to go our own separate ways, when there is no longer a central, uniting vision of reality that we all subscribe to. He presents a sort of spiritual vision of a universe without the force of gravity - you know that the whole vast whirling universe, in all its intricate, inter-related beauty, is governed by its relationship to a single, central starting point - and with that force gone, all the component parts go flying off at random, banging into each other, losing all their beauty and power and purpose. It’s particularly poignant to look at it again, during this season of advent.
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre,
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Freedom from God results in slavery to sin. It’s as simple as that. We can follow Christ, coming on our knees this season to the manger, or we can follow the monster we have let loose on the world by our pursuit of the illusion of freedom....
And the cure for modern-day Gnosticism is the same as it was in Paul’s day. It is to focus on Jesus Christ, to understand and embrace who he is, and what he did for us. Jesus Christ, incarnate for us as a baby in a manger, giving up power and privilege to die on a cross for us, is God himself, come to bring us home. And the only way is to look up from our preoccupation with ourselves and acknowledge the truth of the cross, even more, to embrace the truth of the cross.
Because it is only in Jesus Christ that we are reconciled to God, to each other, to creation, and to truth itself. We aren’t set adrift in eternity, but we are anchored in creation at one end - remember, “we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”. [Eph 2:10] And we are anchored in redemption at the other end - if, as Paul reminds us, we “continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel.” [Col 1:23] We are anchored to earth in our physicality, which is confirmed as good through Christ’s incarnation - and we are anchored to heaven through the gift of the Spirit and our adoption as children of God. And we are anchored to each other through the Christ’s church, his body.
If we are firmly anchored to Jesus Christ, he will hold all things together, he does hold all things together. The chaos that swirls around us will not knock us off our feet, will not drown us or push us off course. If we are in right relationship to God in Christ, we will also be in the right relationship to everything else. Our center will hold... and so will we.
