Paul was a consummate and tireless letter writer. Thirteen of the twenty-seven books of our New Testament are attributed to him. Throughout the many years of his missionary ministry to the gentiles, he wrote to the new church communities he had planted~ nurturing, exhorting, giving thanks to God for them, assuring them of his constant prayers, encouraging them, and when they went astray, reproving them and steering them back onto the right path.
Last Sunday Ruth began our series on Paul’s letter to the church in Colossae~ a letter he wrote during his imprisonment in Rome. Colossae was a market town about 160 Ks from Ephesus. It was important to Paul only because during his earlier three-year ministry in Ephesus, one of the leading converts, Epaphras, had carried the gospel to Colossae, and established a Christian community there.
This young church flourished at first, but as time went on false teachers infiltrated the ranks with their own ideas, and the community began to lose its way. The members were full of faith and hope and love for Jesus, but still young in the faith, lacking in wisdom and discernment Many of them started to look at these deceptive teachings with interest, seeing in them something that could be added to the salvation Jesus had earned for them in his death on the cross and his resurrection. It seemed to them not disloyalty, but an exciting fresh revelation of truth, taking them on from Epaphras’ beginnings~ things that they could do for themselves to help them on their way to eternal life. How reminiscent this was of the old law of the Pharisees that the Jews among them had escaped when they first became Christians!
Coupled with this there were pagan ideas about the spirit world filtering into the congregation from the wider Colossian community~ false gods that needed to be feared and placated, but who in their innocence as new Christians, they thought could be helpful to them.
Epaphras became so concerned that he made the journey to Rome to consult Paul. Paul responded by writing to the Colossians himself.
The introduction of Paul’s letter, as we saw last Sunday, is a model of courtesy, affirmation, love, and fatherly care, with an assurance of his constant prayers for the young church. But, underlying it, is his deep concern about the gap in their understanding of the status and person of Jesus Christ, their Lord and Saviour, the Son of God the Father. Paul writes:
God ‘has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.’ (1: 13,14)
There it is! Nothing more is needed.
These joyful encouraging words of Paul lead into what is, in the original Greek, a beautiful poem about Jesus, as formal in its construction as an English sonnet. It was almost certainly used in the early church as part of the liturgy~ in much the same way as we say the creed together in our services to remind ourselves as a community of faith of the basics what we actually believe. Of course, our English translation today of Paul’s poem has lost Paul’s poetry, but the content is there, basic and foundational, just what those Colossians needed to hear, above the peripheral tempting noise of the false doctrines floating around them.
Aren’t we in the same situation, here today? We have the same urgent need to hear and heed Paul’s message over the background noise of So many trivialities and lifestyle choices competing for our attention.
Where is Jesus in our busy, busy lives?
Do we ask that question often enough?
So, what is Paul saying to the Colossians?
He begins with a clear statement about the supremacy of Jesus above all these false gods.
“Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.
For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ. (15,19).
So, in Jesus there is nothing of God the Father left out. Jesus is the full revelation of God, and nothing more is necessary. If you want to see what God the Father is like,
look at Jesus.
Verse 15 reminds us that Jesus is also the Lord of Creation, existing before the moment of creation, present and active in the creation itself. Listen again to the beautiful opening words of John’s gospel:
‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.’
God the Father made all things, seen and unseen~ through Jesus, and for Jesus.
The whole of creation was for Jesus ~ to be his, so that in its worship and love for him he might find his honour and his joy.
Paul tells us that ‘in Christ all things hold together~ that the complexities and the beauty of the world, the scientific laws by which the universe hangs together~ are an expression of the mind of Christ. So whenever something of the world’s beauty causes you to catch your breath with wonder and delight, remember that it is like that~ because of Jesus.
There’s plenty of evil and ugliness in God’s world, as we all know, but that wasn’t the original intention. Our God has now acted to heal his world of the wickedness and corruption that is so evident to us and was certainly present in different forms in Paul’s time. Jesus, through whom the world was made in the first place, is the same Jesus through whom the world has now been redeemed:
‘By Christ God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of his blood on the cross.’ (19-20)
Those wandering Colossians didn’t need the Plan B for their salvation, as their new teacher had told them. Paul, in his letter, had given them, chapter and verse, the blessed assurance that Jesus was indeed King of kings and Lord of lords and their true and loving Saviour. Paul had shown the way ahead.
On the night before his crucifixion, at the Last Supper, Jesus’ disciples had needed that same assurance. Jesus had told them that he was going away to prepare a place for them in his Father’s house.
Thomas responded for all of them with a question, ‘Lord, we don’t know where you are going. How can we know the way?
We heard Jesus’ answer in our Gospel today:’
I am the way the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.
If you know me, you will know my father also.
From now on you do know him and have seen him.
Believe me that I am in the Father
and the Father is in me. (John 14.6)
Jesus’ reply to Thomas has confronted and challenged every person who has heard it
from that night so long ago up to the present day.
‘I am the way,’ Jesus says, ‘and the truth and the life.
If you want to get to my father’s house, you must come with me.’
There it is~ the central core of our Christian faith.
Not a cold set of rules to live by. Not a distant, incomprehensible deity, far removed from our everyday lives, but the very person of Jesus~ coming and living among us, dying on a cross and rising again to bring us back to God.
‘I am the way, the truth and the life,’ Jesus said.
The truth, the life, through which we find the way, is Jesus himself: the Jesus who washed the disciples’ feet and told them to copy his example of servanthood. The Jesus who was on his way, even as he spoke these words, to give his life as the good shepherd of the sheep.
“If you know me,’ he said, ’you will know my father.’
So, we can look at Jesus,
who wept at the tomb of his friend Lazarus,
who welcomed the little children into his arms ~
who healed the sick and calmed the storm ~
who rejoiced at the wedding feast and turned water into wine ~
who railed at the Pharisees for their hypocrisy ~
and at the money changers in the temple for their greed ~
and taught us about recognizing and caring for our neighbour ~
We can look at this Jesus, and see something more of God the father, who loves us with an everlasting love ~ and whose heart’s desire is to draw us to himself.
Amen.