Colossians 3: 1-11

This morning, we come to our final sermon on St Paul’s letter to the Colossians.  Sunday by Sunday, as Graham and I have worked our way through this letter, we have sent each other copies of our sermons, so that the next one preaching may have reference to what has been said on the previous Sunday.  It is necessary to do this, because as I said to Graham, Paul’s letter is “a hard nut to crack”.  All Paul’s letters are difficult at first reading.  But we miss a huge amount of important teaching, not just from St Paul, but from many of Jesus’ first followers – people who knew Jesus – if we turn away from them because they are just too difficult.  In these letters, we learn how the very new Christian communities tried to apply the teachings of Jesus Christ in the situations they found themselves in.  There is a great deal of similarity between what they faced and what we face today, so there is much to be learnt from looking at them. 

This is the second time in the last year that Graham and I have decided to look at a letter of St Paul when they were offered in our lectionary.  Last year it was Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.  The disappointing thing is that in choosing to concentrate on one of the readings you forego the opportunity to look in depth at the other.  Both Graham and I were sorry not to preach on the story of Jesus’ visit to Mary and Martha two weeks ago, and last week on the Lord’s Prayer and Jesus’ encouragement to ask, search and knock on the door in prayer – because it will be opened.  Today, I am grateful for Jesus’ parable of the rich man who full of satisfaction about his accumulated wealth, decides to build even bigger barns to store his worldly goods in and to lie back and enjoy himself, not knowing that that same night, he will die.  Greed comes up in our Colossians reading.  The important line in the gospel we have just read, is the last one, verse 21, 

So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God. 

 Jesus seems to say, “There is nothing wrong with having wealth.  It is your attitude to it and how you use it and whether it gets in the way of your relationship with God, that matters.”  Greed is idolatry.  We are worshipping money instead of God. 

Going back briefly to our gospel reading two weeks ago, the story of Mary and Martha, and to the gospel which was all about prayer from last week, we see that these are all Jesus teaching us how to be rich towards God, to give proper time to the thing that matters more than anything else, our relationship with our creator.  Martha is very busy banging around in her kitchen, getting more and more frustrated at the length of her “to do” list and resentful of the fact that her sister, Mary is not helping her, but instead sitting quietly at the feet of Jesus.  And Jesus’ response is not to tell Mary to go and help her sister, but to say to Martha, “Martha, Martha, you are worried by many things.  Only one thing is necessary.” 

How many of us are distracted, fragmented and burdened by the many, many things on our “to do” list?  But things change when we sit at the feet of Jesus every morning in quietness and prayer.  It isn’t that our problems disappear, but suddenly they don’t seem so very burdensome.  We receive a new perspective.  Things fall into place.  We know better what matters and that is first and foremost, our relationship with our Creator.  As Jesus says in another place, 

Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things, the things that you need, shall come to you. 

And last week’s gospel on prayer – the Lord’s Prayer and the invitation to pray and never give up.  Keep knocking, keep asking, keep searching and the door will be opened to you – but it may not be the door you first thought you were looking for because in the searching and the asking you will grow, you will change, your faith will deepen and you may find you are being led in a new way.  We worship a God of Surprises; never forget that.  Jesus Christ is always “avant garde”. 

So, I have spent a long time talking about the gospels of the last three weeks rather than this, our last reading from Colossians.  Have I cheated?  No, because these gospels are the foundations, the bedrock of what our Colossians reading says to me today – and I think these gospels, together with this reading, speak to where many of us are. 

In a couple of weeks four adults and one child are going to be baptised here.  One of the most powerful things said in the baptism service is that in baptism we die with Christ and this is dramatized in the actual baptism itself.  The word “baptism” comes from the Greek, “bapto”, which means “to plunge”.   In some traditions where there is full immersion the drama of this moment, the “dying” is fully played out.  It would have been in Jesus’ day.  The person being baptised is plunged, fully submerged three times under water.  “In the name of the Father (under) and of the Son (under) and of the Holy Spirit (under).”  When someone is actually drowning, it is said they come up twice before they go down and die.  But in the baptism service, you go down and down and down, signifying the death of the old self, but on the third time you come you come up, raised with Christ, through the death of Christ, into everlasting life, your new life. 

Paul, in chapter 3 v 1, starts at this point, as he says to the baptised believers of the Colossian church, 

So, if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.  Set you minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 

But Paul goes on to list in verse 5, the things that we tend to think about or concentrate on that take us away from God, that do us damage.  Do any of these things ring a bell in you, if you are being really honest with yourself? 

Fornication, impurity (in our modern world with its ability to access the worldwide web, you might substitute the word pornography for impurity), passion (substitute extreme anger or inability to forgive), evil desire (envy, jealousy) and greed, which is, (as we have already said) idolatry. 

It is hard to face anything on this list and see it in yourself. 

Then there is the list of more common or garden faults, from v 8. 

Anger, wrath, malice, slander and abusive language.  And don’t tell lies, says St Paul. 

Don’t do these things, Paul says.  Don’t fall back into habits that you had in the past.  You have been baptised.  Your old life is dead.  But old habits may still raise their ugly heads.  When you see old anger, bitterness, old resentments arising in yourself.  When you feel the urge to gossip maliciously or look at images on your computer which damage other people as well as yourself.  When you wake up to the fact that you are addicted to a news stream which is mean and uncharitable remember that when you look at God’s world through Christ’s eyes, v 11 

There is no longer Greek and Jews, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Sycthian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all. 

When you look out at the world as a person baptised into new life in Christ, do not look for what divides and separates us from other people but look instead for that which reconciles and heals, and that is Christ who is all and in all.  I remind you of chapter 1 v. 16, 

For in him were all things created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers – all things have been created through him and for him. 

Baptism is said to be the outward visible sign of an inward spiritual grace.  In baptism God gives, gifts us, with new life.  But baptism is the beginning, not the end.  It is after baptism that the journey takes off.  This journey includes renewing the mind, turning from sin, growing in dependence on God and service to others. 

Renewing the mind.  Lifelong conversion. That is what we have spoken about today.  When we see ourselves tempted to fall into damaging ways of thinking and going back into old habits of behaving, we turn to Christ.  We don’t rely on doing it in our own strength.  We pray.  We knock, we ask, we seek.  We take time out from out “to do list” to sit at Jesus’ feet.  We seek to re-new our minds again and again and again.  Until good habits take the place of bad habits.   And of course we often fall down, often fail, but, in the words of the playwright, Samuel Beckett, “We fail better”!   

I want to finish by telling you a story which you may well know. The "Story of the Two Wolves" is a parable, often attributed to Native American traditions, about the conflict between good and bad impulses within a person. It tells of a grandfather explaining to his grandson that there are two wolves constantly battling within everyone: one representing positive qualities like love, kindness, and compassion, and the other embodying negative traits such as anger, greed, and jealousy. The grandson asks which wolf will win, and the grandfather replies, "The one you feed. 

Don’t feed the bad old habits.  Feed the new good ones.