The Rev. Joseph Peters-Mathews is the vicar of St. Hilda St. Patrick. The sermon for Sunday, July 31, 2022 was preached as a response to Colossians 3.1-11. The sermon was based on the manuscript below.
This week,
Paul is landing the plane.
Or the Lectionary is landing the Colossian plane
that we’ve been riding the last month.
“If you have been raised with Christ,
seek the things that are above,
where Christ is,
seated at the right hand of God.
Set your 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.
When Christ who is your life is revealed,
then you also will be revealed with him in glory….
Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly…
you have stripped off the old self with its practices
and have clothed yourselves with the new self,
which is being renewed in knowledge
according to the image of its creator.
Christ is all and in all!”
Throughout the letter as we’ve heard it,
Paul has been concerned for the Colossians
and a teacher or some teachers
who have tried to introduce secret knowledge
or new teaching on the necessity
of intermediaries between them and God
intermediaries other than Jesus.
He gets another zinger in today,
about the self who is being renewed in knowledge
according to the creator.
As we’ve heard each week,
he calls the people of God
back to Jesus the resurrected Christ
just as the church does for us
when we gather week by week.
You might be aware, or might not,
that the Lambeth Conference is happening right now.
This is usually once a decade
though the last was in 2008.
This conference was envisioned as an opportunity
for the Anglican bishops from around the world
to be in study and prayer together
sharing meals and conversations.
At some point it shifted into an attempt
at being a legislative body
whose legislation has no enforcement mechanisms
and doesn’t bind participants.
Most famously this resulted in Lambeth 1.10 in 1998
a statement on human sexuality.
A lot has changed in the last 24 years.
Although Archbishop Welby offered this conference
as again a time for study and prayer,
sharing meals and conversations,
an attempt at legislation was brought back a week before
and many member provinces –
not just The Episcopal Church,
and not just in the developed West –
felt like this was a bait and switch.
For those paying attention there is a sense of turmoil,
that the bishops are talking about queer inclusion or exclusion
while the climate is collapsing
and the church has been called
to be ministers of reconciliation.
That’s just the current Anglican hullabaloo.
COVID is still around,
still mutating.
The climate crisis is real
and we’ve been feeling the effects this week.
Prices for staples and fuel are up,
Russia is still attacking Ukraine,
and again, things can seem hopeless.
Paul tells the Colossians and us
that through our baptisms,
we can’t be hopeless.
“If you have been raised with Christ,
seek the things that are above,
where Christ is,
seated at the right hand of God.
Set your 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.”
If can be frustrating to hear –
and to say! –
the need for eschatalogical hope,
that God is in control,
working things out in God’s time.
I would love to not be an abstraction to bishops
gathered halfway across the globe
while I’m trying to proclaim Jesus the Christ
crucified and resurrected.
I would love if trans kids
weren’t fearing for their lives
or being separated from their parents
for their parents simply listening to them enough
to get them adequate healthcare.
I would love to not fear that advances of love, rights, equality, and justice
from the last 24 or 50 or 65 years
aren’t in peril.
But here we are.
It’s easy to feel hopeless,
no matter how much we believe
that in Jesus God is making all things well.
Then we have Paul writing to the Colossians,
“Set your 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.
When Christ who is your life is revealed,
then you also will be revealed with him in glory.”
This is not a direction to escapism
but a call to reorient our priorities
and to remember to look at Jesus.
Hopelessness feels natural.
That death is not the end
is supernatural.
We need to hear words of comfort and encouragement, too,
having been raised with Jesus,
stripping off the old self
and clothed ourselves in the new self.
This week I got some from a Twitter account
called CryptoNaturalist.
“We seldom admit
the seductive comfort of hopelessness.
It saves us from ambiguity.
It has an answer for every question:
“There’s just no point.”
Hope,
on the other hand,
is messy.
If it might all work out,
then we have things to do.
We must weather the possibility of happiness”
I’ll add that we must weather the possibility
of change and renewal.
The possibility that God is making all things well.
Throughout the letter as we’ve heard it,
Paul has been concerned for the Colossians
and a teacher or some teachers
who have tried to introduce secret knowledge
or new teaching on the necessity
of intermediaries between them and God
intermediaries other than Jesus.
Paul’s call to set our mind on things that are above
is not a call for escapism,
but a call to wonder and hope
for what might be.
Rather than being bogged down
in the cares and occupations of this world,
bogged down so deeply
that we fall into the comfort of hopelessness,
Paul tells the Colossians and us
to set our minds on things heavenly
because in the messy ambiguity of hope
we have things to do.
May we put to death whatever within us is earthly
and set on minds on Jesus the resurrected Christ
through whom all things were made
and in whom all things
are being made new. Amen.