Year C NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENECOST (PROPER 13) AUGUST 5, 2001
Colossians 3: 1-11
Title: “The Heavenly and the earthly.”
The first two chapters of this letter focused on the person of Christ. It is Paul’s belief that if we get Christ right we get everything else right. The second half of the letter is dedicated to ethics, the practical implications and applications of life in Christ. Thus the focus moves from doctrine to ethics, from principle to practice, from the universal to the particular, from the indicative to the imperative, from “is” to “ought.”
Paul’s moral teaching is based on the fundamental principle that Christians are dead and newly risen people. They must behave in a new and different way. They are to become in this world what they already are through Baptism in the “world to come,” the new creation. They are to do good works not in order to be saved, but because they already have been saved. Ethics, then, is gratitude. And “salvation,” although grammatically a noun, is a verb with three tenses: a past event, it depends upon the cross and so is already accomplished. A new seed of life has been implanted in us at Baptism, a present experience; as such it mingles with our experience of personal sinfulness and a sinful world. God’s grace is necessary to minute by minute overcome the pull of the “flesh.”, and a future blessing, fully real in eternity, but not yet fully realized in time. As the ultimate purpose of history we must still await a Savior [Phil 3:20] by whom we shall be saved [Rom5:9].) Paul intermingles these three perspectives when he gives moral teaching.
In verse one, “If then you were raised with Christ,” this past event, historically past for Christ at his resurrection and for the Christian at his Baptism, has practical implications for the present.
Seek what is above: This past event and our incorporation into it through Baptism gives us real communion with the crucified and risen Lord, but it also requires a new lifestyle corresponding to this new status. This is Paul’s version of the Lord’s teaching in Matthew 6:21: “Where your treasure is, there also will be your heart.” This is the present dimension of salvation, requiring a new outlook, attitude, perspective and quest with Christ as the focus. In one sense Christians already belong to this dimension.
Where Christ is seated at the right hand of God: The apostles no more thought of a location on a literal throne at God’s literal right hand than we do today. They were well aware they were using figurative language to describe the final state of affairs, the future hope where we will all be in God’s presence. It is that future focus, eternal dimension, which forms the context for our concrete decisions and actions while we are still on earth, just as it did for Jesus when he was still on earth.
In verse two, “think of what is above,” Paul knew that “above” was a mental spiritual dimension, again, he is using figurative language, not a physical direction. The word “think” translates the Greek phroneite, a favorite Pauline word for attitude, mindset, perspective. This is a perspective above that of the realm of the principalities and powers, the sometimes-evil spirits that seek to rule the universe. This is the perspective of God’s realm. The earthbound perspective is just that: transitory, illusory and without lasting substance.
In verses three and four, “your life is hidden…when Christ your life appears…you too will appear,” Christians continue to live on earth in their mortal bodies. Because of this the splendor, glory, “obviousness,” if you will, of Christ is hidden both from the Christian and from the world. Of course, it is not entirely hidden. Its “hiddenness” depends on and is relative to the degree of awareness of the person or people involved. It is the province of Christ’s Spirit, living and active within us, to reproduce his likeness increasingly, one degree at a time, as 2Cor 3:18 puts it, in our lives. True, the consummation awaits the day of Christ, but the brightness, glory or increasing “obviousness” is happening in front of earthly eyes as well. The day of glory may be future but its arrival is as sure as if it were already here.
In verse five, “put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly,” having lain out the general principle of morality- seek the things above- Paul turns to the practical applications of that principle. He begins with the basic requirement. The Christian has died; he or she should make sure he/ or she is completely dead. By this Paul means the Christian is to let go of the old, let go and let God be God, stop trying to hang on to the former life and its ways. Christians are “dead to the world” and should behave that way. This is no mere figure of speech; it is a real event, a fact, a fact now of new life. Christians are to become in actual practice what they are by divine act. So, ideally, the metamorphosis took place in an instant, at Baptism. Practically, it is a lifelong process. Although “parts” refers to the bodily members used to sin, the word represents the whole person doing the sinning. This is another form of Jesus’ teaching Matthew 5:29-30, where he metaphorically said the offending foot, hand or eye should be cut off. “Earthly” is a synonym for “fleshly,” meaning human behavior and effort opposed to God. The significance of both “parts” and “earthly” is moral rather than material. Paul is not advocating a hatred for the human body or things earthly in and of themselves. It is only in so far as these realities have been invaded and taken over by evil that they are to be either shunned or re-conquered and re-possessed.
In verses five to nine, “immorality…evil desire,” Paul moves from the externally visible form of sexual sin “immorality” translates the word for “fornication,” Greek, porneia), a broad term including traffic with prostitutes and intercourse within the forbidden degrees of affinity, to the invisible root cause , “evil desire,” much as Jesus did in the Sermon on the Mount. There Jesus traced murder back to the angry thought and adultery back to the lustful glance Matthew 5:21-29.
The greed that is idolatry: Greed, the inordinate desire for material wealth, with disregard for the needs and rights of others, is seen as a dangerous form of idolatry, extinguishing one’s desire for God and clogging the heart See Luke 12: 13-21, today’s gospel. In 1 Timithy 6:10 it is even considered the root of all evil. These two vices, impurity and greed fundamentally, in all their various forms, cover the whole domain of human selfishness.
In verse eleven, “not Greek or Jew,” the earthly perspective likes to divide things and people, to make distinctions and thereby assign worth and value. The heavenly perspective likes to unite them and thereby give them true distinction or honor. Union shows the difference and worth of all, not division. The Jew divided the world between Jew and non-Jew, called here “Greek,” meaning “Gentile. This is not only an error; it fosters evil and has no part in the Christian vision and version of reality. Racial differences are surface. Racial prejudice is based on error. Racial boundaries should not harden or heighten into barriers. A boundary is a line; a barrier is a wall.
Circumcision and uncircumcision: This represents religious prejudice and is frequently equated with racial prejudice. Even some Jewish Christians still erroneously thought of themselves as superior to those uncircumcised. Old habits of thought as well as action die hard.
Barbarian, Scythian: Like the Jews, the Greeks divided the world of people between Greeks and non-Greeks, called “barbarians” in mockery of all non-Greek languages that sounded in Greek ears like so much gibberish or “bar-bar-bar-bar.” Of course, like all prejudicial distinctions, it did not end there. A special category of extra-low people was reserved for the Scythians, particularly outlandish. The Scythians had invaded the Fertile Crescent toward the end of the seventh century BC and became a byword for uncultured barbarism. They served as policemen in Athens and were mocked in Greek comedy for their uncouth ways and speech. The Greeks might accept barbarians, like the Romans who captured them but really, Greek culture captured Rome, but never the Scythians! Not so in Christianity. A person’s “couth” or lack of it, “culture” or lack of it, or speech patterns have nothing to do with salvation.
Slave or free: As a social institution nothing was more taken for granted than slavery, a normal and necessary state of affairs, the result of war, tradition and inequality of destiny and heredity. While this remained as an “earthly” and social distinction, it did not prevent slaves from becoming leaders in the church and over freemen who might, outside the church, be their very masters. All this is changed in Christ and “the things above.” Christians were to think and act differently from pagans or Jews.
Christians live in the one and only world, but on two levels simultaneously: the spiritual and the fleshly, the heavenly and the earthly. These are not two different places or locations, but two different dimensions of the same locality, the same reality. Faith in Christ has given us access into his eternal realm. While we still live in the mortal body, our old hereditary nature still pines for and is prone to return to the “old ways” of perceiving, thinking, doing, experiencing, evaluating and enjoying. It is like a dormant force or virus ready to spring to life again whenever the opportunity presents itself. If the Christian lets down his or her guard, loses focus, drifts away from the discipline of Christian living, it will rear its ugly head. Recovering addicts of all stripes know this truth all too well. They may go for years maintaining serenity and sobriety and then inexplicably fall off the wagon. When they look back and view the matter from the broader perspective of hindsight, they can see the signs of relapse and the triggers they failed to disarm. The catalogue of vices Paul gives in verses five to nine are such triggers. They begin small, hardly noticeable, but they grow into major vices, habits of behavior, obsessions and, finally, compulsions. What is the remedy?
Attitude! Think of the “things above.” Above where? Above the earthbound values we have inherited from our culture and families. The things we took for granted were the keys to life, the means to happiness. When we accepted Christ we saw them for what they were- the things below, below us, below the dignity bestowed upon us by the free grace of God, below what we can become. We are to keep our sights on, focus on, attention on Christ. There’s the remedy for backsliding, relapse, becoming enrolled once again as a slave, a member of the old creation. And make no mistake about it, the old creation will always take us back, provided we accept its terms. Since Christ it has gone way down in enrollment and needs all the adherents it can get. Its recruitment officers are everywhere. Luring in the prey, promising the world, the old world, the one no one would really want if he or she could see it from the perspective of Christ and the new creation. But we are to put off these things, these old habits, and discard them much as we would a suit that no longer fits us. They, like a suit too small, are beneath and below us. Who would squeeze into a suit too small for him or her? Only one who has no choice. But we do have a choice and the constant asking ourselves “What is my attitude?” reveals the choices.
It also reveals that many of our inherited prejudices against groups of people and, so, people themselves, are also too small for us and make us small. We have outgrown all of it in and through Christ. The perspective of the new creation, from above, sheds new and generous light on everything and everyone. We know there is a boundary between one country and another. But we also know they are both composed of the same dirt. A boundary is a mutually agreed upon “border of respect” not a barrier to communication. In the new country, the new creation we speak with a different language and assign different degrees of value to things. There are certain behaviors and attitudes that were acceptable in the old country, but no longer are appropriate in this new land of love. Yet, we are aware that we frequently pine for the good old days and, not so, good old ways. Then we must catch ourselves and set our hearts on the higher things, the new things, on Christ. While this is a “hidden” activity, visible to no one, its results are hardly invisible. The concrete actions that flow from this sort of prayer are the very stuff that attracts others to enroll in the new creation whereby we become the image of the Creator he originally intended all of us to be. Sin and addiction first stained that image and finally took over our lives completely, but thanks to Christ he has brought us back. We are dead to this world in so far as sin. Paul says to us, “Let’s keep it that way.”
Our union with Christ began when we were baptized, when we died and rose with him.
Our union with Christ will only be complete in heaven, at the “right hand of God.”
Between Baptism and heaven we must actively seek to become while still on earth what we are already in heaven’s eyes.
The heavenly vision, the very vision of Christ, lights up and identifies sin for what it is, even as it identifies us for who and what we are.
The old ways of living are like dormant viruses waiting to become active as soon as we lose focus and discipline.
Greed is a form of idolatry, worshiping something other than God.
Deceiving self “denial,” and deceiving others is the first sign of recidivism.
In the vision of Christ people are different, even unique, but not superior to other humans, except morally.
X-Ray Vision: The ability to look inside things, especially people’s bodies, marks a great advance in the science and technology of our world. This is especially so when it comes to seeing signs of ill-health, bone fracture and disease. Without X-ray vision we could not see many realities as they really are. Faith vision is like X-ray vision. It allows us to see into things, to go beneath the surface, to penetrate appearances and get to essences. X-ray vision is a human achievement; faith vision is a gift. Both come from God ultimately. The first is mediated through human intelligence, higher brain activity, and effort cooperating with the powers of God; the second is mediated through Christ, God himself. Then there is X-rated vision, the vision of things as seen through the lower brain, the older brain, the hypothalamus. This vision sees things as either or. A thing or person is either desirable or acceptable or it is the opposite. G-rated vision, God’s vision and version of reality, sees things and people as both and. The old brain asks the question, “What is my feeling?” and the new brain asks, “What is my attitude?” Once the old brain gets the answer, it reacts. It is a slave to the answer. Once the new brain gets the answer, it decides whether the answer is appropriate to the full picture of reality and not just the feelings that accompany the prima facie, the first impression. The new brain does something the old brain cannot do: it deliberates and decides. It responds, acts, rather than reacts. The new creation of which Christians speak actually began long before the birth of Jesus. It goes all the way back to the birth or emergence of the new brain. At that point humans were born and became capable of knowing God’s vision and version of reality, became not only conscious but conscious that they were conscious, self-conscious, if you will. Without the new brain the old one rules. With its X-rated vision it gives sex and sexual matters and topics a priority, a primacy, really, that it does not have in the new brain perspective. Sex is both and, not either or. It is both good and can be used for bad purposes. It is the higher, more human, perspective, the “what is above” vision and version of things, “the image of its creator” viewpoint. Of course, sex is not the only thing that is X-rated in the old brain. Everything is. Every thing is evaluated and valued in terms of the self-preservation and self- pleasure of the individual. While this works perfectly well for the animal world, it has proven to be rather disastrous as the fundamental operating principle of the human world. So, after giving us a chance to figure it all out for ourselves, God became one of us in Christ so that we would be able to see things from his point of view and also have the power available to us to trump the old brain, to correct its errors and to enter into a healthy and life-producing union with all other humans, humans we did not produce, humans who need not be our enemies or our tools or toys.
Attitude: We have little or no say over most of the circumstances of our life and none over the physical, biological and chemical laws of nature. We also cannot help how we feel. But we do have a say over what our attitude toward all and everything is. Freedom lies in exercising our right to decide what our attitude will be toward any set of otherwise imposed circumstances. Amen.
