Colossians 3:12-17
This advent season we have looked at key words each week to help drive the message of Christmas deeper into our capitalistic and consumer oriented souls as an alternative way to live into this season of the Coming of God. We began Imagining the world with God in it. We listened to the reality of the coming of God accepted in faith. Then on the third Sunday in Advent we exclaimed and loud “YES” when we knew the promise would become a reality and last week we started to search for the coming of God in his birth from the margins. On Christmas Evening we were intrigued by the mystery and wonder of the arrival still remaining strong to this day over 2,000 years later. Today we feast on this new meal. The meal is called God among us. This meal has many names it is called sanctification, justification, reformation, reparation, reconciliation, the shift from the “old/previous” existence to the “new/transformed” existence available to us through Christ’s birth, death, resurrection and ascension.
This text in Paul’s letter to the church in Colossae is THE text articulating the move from what was is to what can be, ought to be and should be. It is transformation. It is God alive in each of us and therefore, all of us. It is powerful as we wind up a year and begin a new one. This is how the church ought to get undressed and re-dressed. Pastors and elders must love people, pastor people into transformation at whatever age from the old to the new…
I. Notice we get undressed of the old and re-dressed with the new (At this point I will be taking off my sport coat and tie and putting on my Doctoral robe with all of its adornments and even my hood) Sorry that I was running a little bit late today and didn’t have time to get all of this taken care of ahead of time…
a. Negatively: take off anger, rage, malice, slander, lying, bigotry and prejudices, stereotyping, entitlements, compartmentalizing and all reductionisms of humankind. Notice that these are all issues of misplaced power and expectations….IT is the abuse of power according to Walter Wink
b. Positively: Putting on these new virtues; compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, and forgiveness.
c. I saw the movie Invictus last Sunday it detailed the early days of the Presidency of Nelson Mandela in South Africa after apartheid and the rebuilding of a nation torn by abuse of power. I have been to Mandela’s home, the apartheid museum and wondered how black South Africa could so easily forgive? I even asked how you could forgive those who falsely imprisoned you as terrorists for 27 years. The answer have you ever heard of the word forgiveness.
d. As Christians putting on the new nature of Jesus Christ we are wearing a new groove in the snow of our lives…..
e. This is not easy work. It is very difficult work. It is the work of transformation, spiritual growth, mission, living into our baptism, and remembering the sacrament of the Lord’s table.
II. The Interior life will begin to flourish
a. We will put on love, peace, gratitude, thanks, and a life style of worship through all events and seasons of life…
b. The power of this text is that it is not just moralisms and vice to virtue it is change-radical painful outside-inside and inside to outside change. A reformation around Jesus Christ at the center. It is more than a mere y’all play nice church together or “you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.” Feast on a meal that invites you to a table that is a radical re-orientation around a different principality and power—the cosmic God with us in Jesus. It is Emmanuel inside of us and outward to the world… Eat of this feast and you will never thirst or hunger again…
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