Ordinary Time, Summer 07
Cycle C, Proper 13
August
5, 2007
Title: Rich toward God
Song leader: Roger
Worship leader: Jonathan
Speaker: Linda
Texts: Colossians 3:1-15
(extended past lection); Luke 12:13-21
Colossians
3:1 So if you have been raised
with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the
right hand of God. 3:2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things
that are on earth, 3:3 for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ
in God. 3:4 When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be
revealed with him in glory. 3:5 Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is
earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is
idolatry). 3:6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are
disobedient. 3:7 These are the ways you also once followed, when you were
living that life. 3:8 But now you must get rid of all such things--anger,
wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. 3:9 Do not lie to
one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices
3:10 and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in
knowledge according to the image of its creator. 3:11 In that renewal there is
no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian,
slave and free; but Christ is all and in all! 3:12 As God's chosen ones, holy
and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness,
and patience. 3:13 Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against
another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also
must forgive. 3:14 Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds
everything together in perfect harmony. 3:15 And let the peace of Christ rule
in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be
thankful.
Luke 12:13 Someone in the crowd
said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance
with me." 12:14 But he said to him, "Friend, who set me to be a judge
or arbitrator over you?" 12:15 And he said to them, "Take care! Be on
your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the
abundance of possessions." 12:16 Then he told them a parable: "The
land of a rich man produced abundantly. 12:17 And he thought to himself, 'What
should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' 12:18 Then he said, 'I
will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will
store all my grain and my goods. 12:19 And I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you
have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' 12:20
But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of
you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' 12:21 So it is with
those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."
Contemporary
quote: "It
is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after
all." --Laura Ingalls Wilder
Introduction:
When
Gary and I went to Zambia
as community development workers in
the 80’s
our sending agency, Mennonite
Central Committee,
seconded
us to the Salvation Army
as MCC doesn’t have institutions in
Southern Africa;
they only second personnel to
qualifying programs.
We
came prepared for experiencing culture shock
in learning how to relate
to the rural, desperately
impoverished Zambian population.
But
we were blindsided with the degree of culture shock
we experienced in a second culture,
the culture of the Salvation Army on
the mission station where we lived…
We
were both from strongly pacifist traditions;
Gary grew up in the Church of the
Brethren
and I was Mennonite, both historical
peace churches.
Our
pacifism was all part of a deeply engrained conviction,
how we understood Christ’s call:
that
living a life of following his teaching,
meant
being peacemakers,
living a daily life of discipleship.
So
it was a real shock to participate in a Christian culture
that took a totally different tack,
that depended so strongly on
military language and imagery…
the
Salvation Army uniforms were the most visible symbol of that.
We
struggled with this on several fronts.
The
military tie-in and the constant attention to rank was one part.
The
other issue for us was that desperately poor villagers would scrimp and save
and scheme for months to scrape up money for a uniform. And the Zambian uniform color was cream—a
terrible color to keep clean in a world of dust and dirt floors where detergents
and water were in chronically short supply.
And
yet, the glowing joy and pride on a villager’s face when able to show up at a
gathering in a uniform was stunning—
it was such a clear sign of having
succeeded, in belonging,
in an unmistakable message to the
whole watching world
of
one’s identification with this group…
It
made us stop and think beyond our bias.
I
ran across a story this week about the young daughter of the founder of the
Salvation Army and it has helped me to continue to rethink and reframe this
business of uniforms.
Evangeline
Booth, with a child’s enthusiasm,
made her pet monkey a Salvation Army
Lassie uniform,
matching her own.
“Expecting praise for her enthusiasm and creativity, she called
her mother to come and see. Her mother
promptly removed the [monkey’s] clothes.
In response to Evangeline’s protest, she said, ‘You can’t wear this
uniform unless you live the life.’” --
Ernest D. Martin, BCBC
Colossians-Philemon, p. 145
“You can’t wear this uniform
unless you live the life.”
A monkey, even a dear one, can’t
live the life.
Knowing
that I share 98% of my DNA with chimpanzees
makes me wonder if I can
live the life…
there’s a lot of monkey in all of
us…
Colossians: stripping off the old self
The
writer of Colossians wrestles with a very similar thought.
Like
many of the epistles,
Colossians is a bear to try to
preach from
as these texts are so densely woven,
each
phrase, each verse
tied in to many other thoughts and
phrases
so
that trying to disentangle a single preachable strand
is
a real challenge.
This
first-century style is as far from our 21st century sound-bite
approach as one can get.
But
I’ll try to put it into a sound-bite…how about “Strip and dress”?
(Reminds
me of a startling note in a congregation’s trustees minutes;
the pastor did a double take when
she read
that
the trustees had decided that “Bob will strip and wax before Sunday School
begins in September.”
At
first gasp it sounded to her like poor Bob would be nude and hairless when the
kids arrived.)
This
text has two lists of monkey business
two lists of five vices each…
the
first is made up of sexual sins,
summed up by the last one,
greed, “which is idolatry”;
The
second list is made up of sins of speech,
summed up again by the last one,
“abusive language from your
mouth”.
Why
would the writer of Colossians single out sex and speech for attention in this
passage?
The
two together form a list of 10 things;
coming out of the Hebrew tradition
of the Decalogue,
the 10 Commandments,
this
is unlikely to be a coincidence…
But that still doesn’t answer the
questions:
Why sex?
Why speech?
The
ten commandments break down into two categories as well:
the first set has to do with idolatry,
the second with relationships in the
human community.
It
looks to me like the author of the Colossians text is using sexual sins in
verse 5 as a case study for greed—which, he says, “is idolatry.”
Here’s
the link, perhaps, to the Ten Commandments.
I
want to dismiss any sense that sexuality in and of itself
is being targeted as sinful or less
than good;
both
the Hebrew and the Greek scriptures
are
unanimous in their celebration of sexuality as God’s good gift.
But
when sexuality is twisted
and exercised in a greedy,
self-serving way
it is destructive, both for
individuals and for the community.
Ernest
Martin, author of the Believers’ Church Bible commentary on Colossians says, “[Greed] describes an insatiable desire for
more without regard to the rights or
needs of others….Greed is idolatry because it leads to making gods out of
things other than God.” --p. 149, emphasis added.
The
second list, in verse 8, is summarized by the last phrase, “abusive language
from your mouth.”
It
seems to me that this also follows
the order of the groupings in the
ten commandments,
the
second one which focuses on relationships in the human community.
Like
sexuality gone askew and become greedy and idolatrous,
speech that is abusive
ruins
relationships in the human community.
All
ten of these negatives tear down community.
And
all of us have lived some of these…
we’ve all been destructive in our
relationships at times.
So,
don’t lie about it; the text says bluntly in v. 9;
all this stuff is to be
stripped off as part of the old self, the old practices.
Strip and dress:
Instead,
we are dress ourselves differently,
to clothe ourselves with the new
self—
which
has the renewal of awareness
that we all carry the image of the
Creator—
and that is what is important.
Our
eldest, Frieda, often talked about the friends she had in various cliques at
Capital High and how frustrating it was to feel that talking with a kid in one
group automatically made her suspect with another.
Hard core, punk, straight edge,
emos, hippies, preppies, jocks,
gays, straights—
one’s
high school identity is established within rigid lines
and is often immediately apparent
by
how one is dressed.
You
could describe them as dress codes, as uniforms….
This
is not unique to high school.
Think
suits, cowboy, biker, homeless, fashion chic;
and we all
respond differently to people
who present in these different
uniforms.
Some
uniforms trigger our fear, our anger, our hostility;
Perhaps most
of them trigger some degree of slanderous assumptions—
some form of bigotry, prejudice.
Strip it off, Colossians says;
But here’s the twist: it’s not taking off the uniform;
it’s stripping off our response
to the uniform.
So
take it off;
strip
off prejudice—
“pre-judging,”
based on clothes or class or color.
Strip
off any form of behavior
that
doesn’t regard the rights or needs of others;
that doesn’t treasure the image of
God in all others.
Instead,
Colossians gives us something else to wear:
another list of 10 things,
and tells us to dress ourselves in
these clothes:
v.
12:, clothe yourselves
with
compassion,
kindness,
humility,
meekness,
and patience.
Bear with one another and, if anyone
has a complaint against another, forgive
each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must
forgive.
3:14 Above all, clothe yourselves
with love, which binds
everything together in perfect harmony. 3:15 And let
the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were
called in the one body.
And be thankful.
These things too form a dress code, a uniform;
a stunningly
beautiful uniform that opens up possibilities for friendship,
for community
across all boundaries.
Think
of the uniforms that cause you alarm;
think
of when a strange person dressed in a stereotypic way
has suddenly come up to you—
car
salesman, traffic cop, panhandler, etc—
and your response tells you clearly
that
there are assumptions at work…
We
are all, in Dick Hamm’s expression,
in orbit around our own assumptions…. --Quote via Sharla Hulsey, Midrash
Now visualize your being able to strip off your
hostile
and probably slanderous response
and
instead, consciously clothe yourself in
compassion,
kindness,
humility,
meekness,
and patience.
We know what these mean;
I
understand Bearing with one another
as simply meaning moving over and making room for
another.
We also understand what forgiving each other means.
In this case, it may mean forgiving someone for
looking
like,
dressing
like
someone
else who has caused us hurt or alarm in the past…
this is the source for many
slanderous assumptions.
But
the best parts of this uniform are saved for last:
“Above all, clothe
yourselves
with love…
with the peace of Christ…
And be thankful.”
Instead of being in orbit around our own assumptions, our own prejudice,
We are to be in orbit
around Christ,
our new life, our new
community.
This
is precisely what our gospel text refers to as being “rich toward God…”
Conclusion:
In
Colossians, living the life IS wearing the uniform…
As
we clothe ourselves with these stunningly beautiful garments,
our uniform becomes a clear sign of
where we belong,
to
whom we belong;
It is an unmistakable message to the
whole watching world
of
the only
legitimate identification we can have
with this group…with God’s community.
Notes:
Colossians is a good statement of the move from Jesus to Christ, from
particular person to cosmic personification of Deity. World views and how they shift; good entre into current shifts.
Rich toward God in the “sweet simple things” of “cloth[ing]
yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience… Bear
with one another… forgive each other; clothe yourselves with love, which
binds everything together in perfect harmony…. the peace of Christ rule in your
hearts….And be thankful.
Martin
points out that these negative behaviors “spoil relationships, and the positive
ones enable community. The focus is not
on private piety, but on the community of faith in which new life in Christ is
experienced and expressed.” p. 146
William
Barclay: There is no more difficult
book in the New Testament than Colossians.