Sermon Cloud

In Colossians Remixed, Walsh and Keesmaat demonstrate how the empire controlled its subjects by monopolizing their minds through images that promoted the empire’s story and strengthened its claim. We have mentioned that images and inscriptions were everywhere. They promoted the claim that the rule of Caesar is the divine plan for the peace and order of the cosmos.” Words and Images, feasts and festivals, promoted a version of reality that claimed Caesar was the Lord who brings cosmic peace, subduing hostile enemies; he was the son of god, divine, and preeminent over all things. Rome was the body politic and Caesar was the head who imposed the imperial peace through military power and the threat of capital punishment. And in this passage, Paul quotes what was likely a hymn or a poem that was circulating among the early Christians. It is a poem that challenges all of the empires claims and presents a competing vision of reality. It is subversive poetry that undermines the empire’s message and declares Christ to be the Creator, Redeemer and Lord of all Creation, including the empire. The pen is indeed mightier than the sword. The Church needs to recapture this, creative expressions that challenge the status quo, the dominant ideology of the day fleshed out in all the political and economic structures of the day. Illus: Subverting the Empire through artistic expression – challenge the pace of our city and call us to the subversive idea of Sabbath; challenge the radical individualism and isolation of our day and call us to the counter idea of community.
What is the subversive poem saying? What messages is it sending to the Colossians and to us?

Jesus is Lord over Creation. (vv. 15-17). Christ is the visible image (eikon – icon) of the invisible God, God incarnate. The Son is God Revealed. John 1:1-2, 14. Jesus fully shows us what God the Father is like. He is the eternal reflection of the Father. Firstborn of all creation – not first in a series, but first in that he has the place of highest honor in all of the cosmos; preeminence and dignity.  He is supreme in rank and distinguished from all of creation. He has this supremacy because He has created all things and is sustaining them; and the creator is greater than the creation; worthy of more glory than the thing created. Just like a work of art is worthy of praise, but the artists worthy of more. So when you are breathless over a sunset or a the vastness of space and the beauty of this world, remember it is like that because Jesus made it so. ALLTHINGS: Comprehensiveness to this: created all things, before all things, holds all things together; created all things in heaven and earth. Then, the poem gives even greater description to all things: Thrones, dominions, rulers and authorities. What does Paul mean by these things? Colossians would have heard in these terms the earthly powers of their day -  the political and economic power structures of the day, the rule makers and enforcers. Rome and Caesar with his imperial systems and structures that govern the empire. And the poem says that ultimately Jesus has created these powers, and is sovereign, supreme, preeminent over them. As such he is worthy of more glory, honor, allegiance than they are. Not only has he made them, he has made them ultimately for his purposes, to ultimately bring him glory and fulfill his perfect plan for the cosmos. Do you see how treasonous this is? Paul is saying in a world where Caesar is considered sovereign and ruler of the cosmos – the poem says, Jesus is Sovereign – not the powers of the day. He is the one who is creator of all other powers and sovereign over them, and for whom they have been created to serve. The poem says that ultimately all these powers have to answer to him, spiritual and earthly. Jesus outranks them; He is the greatest thing in this life. He is uncontested in power, unmatched and unrivaled in dignity and authority. He is incomparable. Put Christ First. 1:9-12. Prayer that your imagination would be captured by God’s dreams for you. The culture has images and ideologies that compete for our imaginations and seek to shape our values and priorities and tell us how to live and what to live for. Studies show that we are inundated with 5-12k images everyday, from TV to magazines, billboard and even SKY MALL. All these images are competing for our attention, trying to monopolize our minds and shape our goals and patterns for our lives. The prayer in vv9-12 is that God’s vision would trump all that; that you would be liberated from all that and see God’s good and wise intentions for your life. God’s greatest dream for us individually and corporately is that we would supremely value Jesus Christ – the ultimate image and icon –that He would be preeminent in our hearts and that knowing him and becoming like him, conforming to his image, would become the ultimate pursuit of our lives. What does it mean practically for Christ to have first place? To have Christ first means you measure the significance of all things by how they impact your relationship with Him. Career move; relationships; financial decisions…will this chill my affections for Christ? Will this move me closer to his likeness, enable me to better serve his purposes in this world?

Jesus is rewriting their personal stories. (vv 18-23). Jesus has created the cosmos and all that is in it. Sin entered that creation and brought devastation and death. But Jesus is not scrapping the creation; he is restoring it and bringing about a new creation. Sin has vandalized the creation (tagged it) so Jesus takes sin upon himself and through his death and resurrection conquers it, defeating sin and death and reconciling all of creation to himself. Now what does it mean that, through his death on the cross and resurrection he has reconciled all things to himself? It means that because of what Jesus has done, sin and death have been defeated, and in the end, all of creation will be healed and restored. This poem is saying that at the cross Jesus defeated sin and death and initiated the complete restoration of the creation so that in the end, all the brokenness will be healed. All the emptiness will be filled. All the wrongs will be righted. Every tear will be wiped away as pain and suffering and death are ended. Everything that rages against God and his purposes will be banished. All things will be made new and beautiful as they are brought into subjection to Jesus – before whom we are told that in the end, every knee will bow and tongue confess, everywhere, that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father, some to their everlasting joy and some to their everlasting shame. The kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our God and his Christ and He will reign forever and ever. (illus showing this human desire)
But the poem is also telling us that this new creation, this kingdom where brokenness is healed and emptiness is filled and things are made new and beauty and peace is restored has begun even now. The new creation is underway. When Paul says that Jesus is the beginning, the first born from the dead, he is saying that in his resurrection, Jesus has initiated this new creation and is now leading a resurrection parade of people who are becoming new in Him, learning to be like him; people who have had their sins forgiven and its power broken in their lives and are living a new kind life. And he says to the Colossians in 1:21-23, you have entered into this experience personally. You were once alienated from God and hostile in your minds to him, living in self-promoting sinful patterns, broken people, failing to be and experience all God dreams for you to be and experience, but he loved you and in Christ has made a way for you to be forgiven, made holy and blameless in His sight, given a clean slate, made new and reconciled to God, brought into a life-giving relationship with God. Reconciliation came through the cross. And now you are becoming more and more what God envisions for you.
Persevere in this new story personally and corporately.  Don’t shift from the hope of this gospel story. Don’t shift from the story and don’t shift from the hope that comes from it. Don’t shift from the story - move away from it and seek to define yourself or find your identity in any other story, or accomplishments. We are tempted everyday to define ourselves by other stories. Illus: Philip Seymour Hoffman staying in character during the filming of Capote; don’t break character; you are in this story, you have been included in the great epic of God and have a role to play in it; don’t move from that; don’t abandon your identity and your role in this story. Reminds them, there is no hope outside of this story. Don’t shift from the hope of this story: the hope of forgiveness and belonging to God knowing he accepts you and is for you. Corporately. Christ is the head, you collectively in Colossae are the body, the physical expression of this new creation under the leadership of Christ, becoming like Christ – living and loving like him. You are a sign to the world of the kind of world God is going to create. You are the foretaste of God’s coming Kingdom; a prototype of the kind of world that is coming, the kingdom that is coming to heal the creation. Live out this picture now.