All together... Reflections on Colossians 3
This past week I took a little break and spent 4 nights in Rick and Naomi Hunter’s beautiful home in the Sierra foothills in Arnold.
If you know Rick and Naomi, you know how thoughtful and considerate they are. And their vacation home is no exception. They offer a warm welcome and they have also made good use of their label maker by leaving notes everywhere. There was rarely a moment where I had to wonder where something was or what to do.
They not only had notes, but they had posted “a note about the notes” which read:
“We know that we have posted a LOT of notes and instructions around our home! Some guests have teased us about this, and we understand why! But believe us, there is a story behind each and every note; so please be patient with us if we seem to be over-communicating about obvious things. We’ve found that the notes help our guests and keep our home in good working order!”
And then the final sentence: “And by all means, try NOT to give us a reason to write one more note!”
Turns out there was one note that became particularly dear to me.
One day, I went out to explore the town of Murphy’s a bit. I had brought the garage door opener in my car and let myself back into the garage when I got back to the house and instead of taking the opener with me upstairs, I decided to just push the button inside the garage and duck under the door like I always used to do when I was growing up. That way I wouldn’t have to keep carrying the garage door opener with me.
Yeah — so, I’m sure most of you are much smarter than me, but late that night it dawned on me that I had no way to get back INTO the garage. I went to bed with visions of a very embarrassing call to Naomi and Rick, to someone having to drive a key or a garage door opener 2 1/2 hours up to me at Arnold. And of course, asking myself over and over, “How could you be so stupid??”
But the next morning I decided to just do a little tour of the house to see if I could solve the problem myself. And by the front door, there was a hook with a little key and a note: “Key for side garage door.” I opened the door and retrieved my car and the garage door opener.
And I’ve never been so grateful for a note in my life.
Notes are important.
My daughter is leaving for school next week, and we’ve got notes all over the house of things to do and pack.
But my husband and I are also giving her lots of verbal notes.
“Don’t forget to study.”
“Don’t let anyone put something in your drink.”
“Should we order you pepper spray?”
“Clean your room.”
But you know what?
There are not enough notes.
She is going to encounter situations we cannot imagine. And even if we could stick post it notes all over her body, in the end, it’s not enough. She will encounter circumstances that no note can anticipate or change.
This is one of the hardest things about being a parent! We want the notes to be the thing that protects our kids but in the end, our notes aren’t enough.
Our kids are on their journey and once they leave the house, it is our job to give them unconditional love and to support their wholeness as they journey through life. It’s about so much more than the notes.
Which brings me to Colossians 3. It contains some notes. But more importantly, it invites the community in Colosse to foster an eco-system where they can flourish in the way of Jesus — where their lives become full of joy, meaning, hope in a way that changes the world around them.
Paul has a lot of notes for the church in Colosse.
The things you don’t do: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk, discrimination, superiority.
The things you do do: kindness, humility, meekness, patience, bear with one another, forgive.
And if we were to read on in the passage, Paul adds a few that some of us take issue with: Wives, submit to your husband. (which has been the source of a lot of pain in its implementation throughout history). And to the husbands: love your wives and do not be harsh with them. (Which also seems to have a lot of patriarchal assumptions built into it!). Along with: obey your parents, do not provoke your children, obey your masters, masters treat your servants justly (also not a favorite), and work heartily. Those are a topic for another day.
But suffice it to say: Paul has a lot of notes. And some of them resonate and some don’t. Some of them are consistent with the rest of Scripture and some contradict what we read other places. Some are bound to Paul’s context and culture and some are timeless.
But Paul’s notes are sandwiched by bigger statements: Set your hearts on things above. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Put on love. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. And whatever you do — do everything in the name of Jesus.
When we read this passage, it’s easy to focus on the lists of things to do and not do.
And unfortunately, religious folks for a long time have mistaken the notes for faith. Compliance for transformation. Checklists for belonging.
We all know faith communities and traditions where these notes become a behavior-modification tool.
But I think there is an equal danger of dismissing the lists while dismissing the invitation to faith, transformation and belonging.
I’m less curious about Paul’s notes and more curious about questions like these:
What does it mean to have died and been raised with Christ?
How can I experience my life that is hidden with Christ in God?
How do I actualize a moment by moment awareness of being God’s chosen one, holy and beloved?
What might it look like if the peace of Christ ruled in my heart and the word of Christ dwelled in me richly?
Those are the personal questions but Paul also speaks about community.
How do we create communities where there is no hierarchy based on ethnicity or social identity?
How can we curate spaces where we can freely sing and speak honestly (what Paul’s calls admonishing), and cultivate gratitude?
These are big questions — and they don’t have simple answers. These are the questions that must be more lived into than solved. And I believe it is the asking of these questions — holding them close and returning to them over and over again — that takes us into a life that lives the answers.
But Paul is on to something when he blends these deep spiritual mysteries of personal transformation with community practice.
While owning our individual journey of transformation is important, we also need communities that are fostering an eco-system where this transformation is fostered.
We need spaces where we can have real conversations and see people for who they are, not the labels they have been given.
We need practices like singing and teaching and admonishing to help open our hearts and minds to the presence of Christ.
When I was up in Arnold this week, I went to Calaveras Big Trees State Park early one morning before it got too hot. I had a couple hours alone to wander around and gaze up at those enormous Sequoias.
It was interesting to read that after a few years of putting down deep roots in the soil, Sequoias, then send their roots out long,, along the edge of the forest. This literally roots them in the community of trees and allows them to share resources with the other trees in the forest.
And I wondered:
how conscious am I of the ecosystem that I live in?
How can I, how can WE co-create ecosystems that optimizes our capacity to flourish in the image of Christ?
The individual trees are amazing but they need each other, as do we, to grow into their full potential.
As a church:
How can we together root ourselves into the stream of Christ so that we can be an eco-system of justice, hope, forgiveness, hospitality, grace, beauty, compassion?
This question is one I invite all of us to tend and wrestle with as I believe this place has deep possibility to be that kind of eco-system.
I was sad to read that one of the writers who has most formed me as a pastor and a Christian, Frederick Buechner, died at age 96. (First Christian reads outside evangelicalism, Chris meeting, Christmas Eve) As I was perusing his collection of daily readings that I read so often the binding has broken, I found one with a note, written in handwriting from my early 20’s, that says: “My first reading of FB”
It’s the perfect way to close our reflection on Colossians 3:
Yet they meet as well as diverge, our stories and Christ’s, and even when they diverge, it is his they diverge from, so that by his absence as well as by his presence in our lives we know who he is and who we are and who we are not.
We have it in us to be Christs to each other and maybe in some unimaginable way to God too—that’s what we have to tell finally. We have it in us to work miracles of love and healing as well as to have them worked upon us. We have it in us to bless with him and forgive with him and heal with him and once in a while maybe even to grieve with some measure of his grief at another’s pain and to rejoice with some measure of his rejoicing at another’s joy almost as if it were our own And who knows but that in the end, by God’s mercy, the two stories will converge for good and all, and though we would never have had the courage or the faith or the wit to die for him any more than we have ever managed to live for him very well either, his story will come true in us at last. And in the meantime, this side of Paradise, it is our business (not like so many peddlers of God’s word but as men and women of sincerity) to speak with our hearts (which is what sincerity means) and to bear witness to, and live out of, and live toward, and live by, the true word of his holy story as it seeks to stammer itself forth through the holy stories of us all. (Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner)
May it be so.
Preached at Valley Presbyterian Church, August 21, 2022