Chris Taylor’s Sermon – 1/13/08
Empty Wisdom
Psalm 138
Colossians 2:8-15
This passage is the first in a series of warnings that Paul is going to offer in this epistle. Here he is telling the Colossians to be on guard for a certain kind of teaching. We can’t be sure of exactly what form this teaching took, but it appears to have been connected to certain ritual and ascetic practices. We catch glimpses of them in the verses that follow.
The ritual: 2:16, “Do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or Sabbaths.”
And the ascetic: 2:20-23, “Why do submit to regulations, ‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch’… These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility, and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value in checking self-indulgence.”
It is that appearance of wisdom that seems to be the issue, drawing these Colossians away from the Gospel. They are looking for something more; looking for ways in which they might add to it and make it stronger. They are hardly alone. We’ve been doing the same thing for close to two thousand years.
The appearance of wisdom has always been particularly compelling for us, along with its attendant shortcomings. Consider the events of this past week. The best minds in politics (including those of the Clinton camp) were convinced that a double-digit Obama victory was all but certain in New Hampshire. Senators who had carefully straddled the fence were getting ready to throw their hats Obama’s way. The pundits were talking about shake-ups in Clinton’s campaign staff, and whether she would be encouraged to withdraw from the race altogether.
What a difference a week can make. More to the point, how wrong even the most sophisticated among us can sometimes be.
And that is really the issue here as we look at this text. The gospel can seem so simplistic, so archaic with all its talk of atonement and forgiveness and Jesus dying on the cross. The temptation in Paul’s time, as it is in our own, was to look for something more sophisticated; something more intellectually satisfying.
Against that stands the Gospel itself, and its central message, “Jesus saves.” Not our efforts to be better people. Not our commitment to social or economic justice. Not even our knowledge of scripture and the intricacies of orthodox theology. Just “Jesus saves,” – a message whose very simplicity can make us flinch even now.
What does it mean to say that “Jesus saves”? Saves from what? Saves from hell? From damnation? From death itself? Several years ago I asked some clergy friends what the phrase meant to them – what they would preach or teach about the nature of salvation. I was uncomfortable with the traditional language around deliverance from hell or life after death. It is not that Jesus didn’t talk about these things. The issue, rather, is that when he talked about them he seemed to be pointing to something deeper, something more. The emphasis in his teaching was on that Kingdom of God which has broken into this world. Salvation is the experience of this Kingdom; an experience that is not just “out there” in some distant future, but something that we can experience through Christ here and now. Salvation, in other words, isn’t just some future event, but an event and experience that has relevance for us today.
The starting point for Paul was Jesus’ nature, v. 9, “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily…” This is the incarnation, God taking the form of human flesh. This is the great distinctive and great paradox of Jesus’ nature; both fully human and fully divine.
What it means for us is that if we want to know God, the best way is to look at Jesus. It is in him that the essence of God, undivided and in its fullness, can be observed. It is like finding yourself in London’s Trafalgar Square. You know that way up on top of that massive column is a statue of Lord Nelson, but because it is so high you can’t really see it. If you want to know what the original looks like up there, you would need to look at a duplicate down here at eye level – down where we can access it. If you want to know what God looks like, then look at Jesus.
What does Jesus reveal? It is here that we begin to understand the nature of our salvation. In Jesus we encounter God’s truth, God’s love, and God’s life.
God is truth. Back in verse 3 of this second chapter this is what Paul calls the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that we find in Jesus. Truth. Truth that stands against that which is deceitful; stands against that which is unjust or oppressive; stands against that which is harmful or destructive.
Where do we see that in the pages of Scripture? We see it in God’s judgment. God judging Egypt for its oppression of the Hebrew slaves. God judging the wealthy and the powerful for using their positions for their own gain. We see it in Jesus as he confronted the demonic and the unhealthy. We see it in him as he created that whip and drove the money-changers from the Temple. We see it in his condemnation of the religious leadership of his time.
Is this judgment bad news? Consider one of the first complaints we usually hear from our children, “It isn’t fair.” And they usually don’t say this is soft and measured tones. Usually that phrase is accompanied by shouts of outrage! There is something in us, something that is part of our very make-up, which longs for fairness. We care passionately about justice. So isn’t it wonderful to know that the God of all creation is every bit as passionate about that justice as we are? God is truth, and so God’s very nature is to stand against – to judge – all that that contradicts it, and that is good news for us. Ultimately, justice and fairness are going to win out!
This encounter with truth, however, is not limited to entire societies. It is an encounter that touches us at a very personal level, as well. We’ve all experienced it. We all carry at some level the awareness of those broken places in our lives – the times we’ve made terrible mistakes; the times we have failed, or lied or cheated.
I had a great friend out in Colorado. He died unexpectedly about six years ago, but a strange thing happened to him in the year or two leading up to his death. He began to remember all the women that he had manipulated and mistreated twenty five and thirty years before. They were terrible memories, and they filled him with a kind of horror at what he had done. What he felt was a deep sense of shame.
How do we usually react when those kind of memories bubble up to the surface of our awareness? Our instinct is to try and bury them; to push them away. We try, at times, to disassociate ourselves from that part of ourselves that is struggling; that part which keeps coming up short. “That’s a different part,” we think to ourselves, “not really who we truly are.” But the efforts never work. In fact, the more we try to push those things away, the more power we give them – the greater their capacity to wreak havoc in our lives.
There is that part of God’s truth, God’s judgment, that challenges us; that breaks through the denial and self-delusion and confronts us. To know God is to know ourselves as sinners. It is to become aware of those areas in our lives where we are struggling: our pride; our self-centeredness; our unloving or unforgiving spirit. Truth, by itself, can cut more deeply than any well-honed blade.
But Jesus didn’t stop with truth. Right beside it and all around it, Jesus brought love, as well. Love that comes to us, as Paul puts it here, in the form of forgiveness. Love so great it would endure the agony of the cross in order to bridge the gap.
What does Jesus say to us? Change and then I will love you? No, what he says is that he loves us in the whole of who we are – not just the good part, not just the parts that get it right, but in the broken and needy and shame-filled parts as well. .
My friend back in Colorado hated those memories, but as they pushed their way into his consciousness he didn’t try to run from them. He talked about them with his wife, and with me and with a few others. He brought them out into the open where they could experience God’s healing touch; out into the open where he could know God’s forgiveness even there.
That’s part of becoming more truly human, more truly free. Nothing to hide. No need for pretense. No longer driven by what others might think. If one part of salvation is the encounter with truth, the second part and every bit as essential, is the encounter with that love which is right beside it.
But then there is this third quality revealed in Jesus, the quality of life. Just as God is truth and love, so God is life, as well. Paul speaks of our being raised with Jesus from the dead (v. 12). And in verse 13 he speaks of our being made alive together with him.
He talking about something that has already happened to us, a different kind of life that you and I can experience right now. This, I would suggest, is the Kingdom kind of life – or, to put it differently, life in that Kingdom which Jesus proclaimed. Life in the presence and power of God. Life as God intended it.
This is the third dimension, then, of what Jesus offered. He showed us, through his teaching, what this life looked like. He showed us how to live it – how to live in that eternal dimension that has broken into this world and that surrounds us, even now.
The real measure of wisdom isn’t how clever or how sophisticated it might sound. The real measure is whether it works; whether it leads to the kind of life for which you and I have been searching.
“Jesus saves” may sound too simple for many of us, but it is, in fact, right there that we encounter “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Jesus saves. What that means for us is that in his truth, his love and his life, Jesus offers the way to healing and wholeness. It is to say that Jesus offers us the eternal kind of life, the very best of life, right here and right now.