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Who is Our Christ?
(Colossians 1: 15-28)
(A Sermon preached July 22, 2007 at University United Methodist
Church, East Lansing MI by Kennetha Bigham-Tsai)
An American soldier serving in Iraq shared that he had thought that the
hardest thing he had ever had to do was to pick up the body parts of one of his
buddies. He thought that until the day he watched a young Iraqi boy do the same
with pieces of his father.
When we live in a world where you can witness what that soldier witnessed,
then we must ask who our God is. When we as Christians live in such a world,
then we must ask, “Who is our Christ?
Is Christ the one who sustains us in the midst of impossible situations? Is
Christ the one who will bring to us peace and stability and harmony in the midst
of chaos? Is Christ the one who will bring us hope?
Now I believe that these are important questions. For understanding the
identity of Christ is important to understanding God’s work in the world God
intents for our lives and for the Church.
And so we look at this passage in Colossians today. For, nowhere else in the
New Testament do we so eloquently hear the affirmation of the identity of
Christ. This passage first affirms that Christ is the revelation of the
invisible God. In him, the fullness of God dwells. Through him God is fully
revealed to us.
Our tradition has always affirmed that we are unable to fully know God. Human
understanding is unable to fully comprehend who God is. You remember that story
in Exodus where Moses asks for a revelation of God. God hides Moses in the cleft
of the rock, and shows Moses just a little bit of God’s glory. But, then God
says, “But you cannot see my face, for no one shall see me and live,” (Exo
33:20).
This idea of the hiddenness of God had to do with God’s holiness. The
suggestion was that the unholy could not stand in the presence of absolute
holiness and live. Therefore, humanity could not fully experience the identity
of God.
Yet, our tradition also affirms that God is gracious and desires relationship
with humanity. God so desires relationship with us and is so gracious to us that
God wants to reveal God’s identity to us. But God has not hidden us in the cleft
of a rock to show us just a little bit of God’s glory. God has fully revealed
Godself to us in the person of Jesus Christ. This is what this passage in
Colossians affirms--that Christ is the revelation of God. In Christ, we can
indeed look upon God’s face and live. We can know God and live. What was
invisible has been made visible through Christ. For in him the fullness of God
dwells.
Yet, Christ is not just the revelation of God. This passage in Colossians
affirms that Christ is much more. Christ is also the revelation of God’s intent
and goal for the creation. For it is God’s intent and goal that the whole of the
creation conform itself to the image of Christ.
By being conformed to Christ’s image, humanity is conformed to an image of
one who is holy and in intimate relationship with God. In Christ, humanity is no
longer estranged from God and hostile in mind. Humanity is no longer unjust and
unloving and unable to make peace with one another or with God. Instead humanity
is conformed to the image of one who is already in intimate relationship with
God. Indeed, humanity is conformed to the image of one who is part of the
Trinitarian Godhead. As such, humanity, in being conformed to Christ’s image, is
then able to fully enter the divine life.
And Christ, as the great reconciler, is also the vehicle for humanity’s
conformity to his image. Indeed, Christ became the image of God and entered into
our reality so that we could become the image of the Christ and be fully
reconciled with God. In other words, Christ who is the image of God in
his divinity took on the image of humanity as Jesus to bring the two together.
And this togetherness is the point.
Indeed, our whole tradition affirms that the purpose of creation is to be in
relationship with God. God created us for Godself. We were created and called to
be in unbroken fellowship with God. We were created and called to be in intimate
relationship with God. And this call has been realized in and through Christ.
Think of what this means in terms of reconciliation of the divine human
relationship. A humanity that would kill Jesus is reconciled and redeemed to
such extent that that same humanity would conform itself to the image of Christ.
The humanity that would crucify Christ would become truly like him and, with
him, would join with God in the divine community. This is what it means to be
reconciled to God through the fleshly body of Christ.
And friends such reconciliation is absolutely necessary because our own
self-centeredness got in the way of the God-centeredness to which we were
called. We became so focused on ourselves and our own designs, that we became
estranged and alienated from God.
Isn’t this the message of the cross? The cross and the story of the
crucifixion reveal our injustice and our inability or unwillingness to love God
and each other. This story shows us to be at odds with God’s purpose for
creation.
And the cross indicts all of us. For all participated in the betrayal of
Jesus—Gentile and Jew, rich and poor, slave and free, male and female, friend
and enemy. The betrayal of Jesus encompassed all of humanity. The cross indicts
us all, yet the cross also saves us all.
Sometimes I struggle with the imagery of the cross. Why did reconciliation
have to happen through such a horrific experience as a crucifixion? What is
redemptive about the suffering of Jesus? I have refused to accept a theology of
the cross without question.
Yet, when I read this passage in Colossians I find in it peace with the
symbolism of the cross. For through the cross, Christ chose to enter into the
injustice of humanity. Christ chose to experience the unholiness of humanity.
“He reconciled us to God in his fleshly body through death on a cross in order
to present us holy and blameless and irreproachable before God,” says our
passage (vs. 22).
Christ chose to enter into injustice and unholiness and death and then redeem
these aspects of the human condition. And he carried out that redemption through
the act of forgiveness. He could have responded to what happened to him with
bitterness and hatred. Yet, he redeemed the ugliness of that injustice by
forgiving those who perpetrated it against him. Through forgiveness and through
love he disarmed the powers of darkness and stood in victory over sin.
I remember the day that Nelson Mandela was released from prison. He had been
there for more than a decade, the victim of great racial injustice. He came out
of the darkness of that prison experience victorious over all of the injustice
perpetrated against him and his people. He came out victorious because he came
out with a spirit of forgiveness. He came out of that prison experience with
the spirit of Christ and conformed to Christ’s image.
For it was Christ who, through forgiveness, set the pattern for the
redemption of injustice. It was Christ who set the pattern for reconciliation
and peace between those who had once been enemies. For, Jesus took on the
greatest injustice and responded with love and forgiveness. He made peace
through the blood of his cross.
And what does this all mean for us? For one, it is a call and a challenge for
Christ’s Church. Look at verse 18. Even though Christ is affirmed as sovereign
over the entire cosmos, (all things in heaven and in earth were created in him,
through him and for him), only the Church is referred to as his body, (vs. 18).
In this sense, the Church, as Christ’s body is both the agent and goal of
reconciliation and redemption for the whole world, just as Christ is.
In the Church, the fullness of God dwells and all things are reconciled.
Peace between God and humanity is made through the Church. That is an
affirmation of the importance of the Church in God’s redemptive work, but it is
also a challenge.
For indeed, we live in a state of “now and not yet.” Even within the Church
we are estranged from God and hostile in mind. We sometimes fall short of our
identity as the image and revelation of God. But we have hope. For if we
continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from
the hope promised by the Gospel, we can have hope that we will realize our full
identity in Christ. And when we realize that identity, we will also realize our
call.
We will realize that because we are a new creation in Christ, we are called
to create something new on this earth. We are called to create justice and love
on this earth. We are called to be the vehicles for resurrection within our
world.
And moreover we are called to be conformed to Christ and therefore to move
ourselves toward the goal of creation, which is to be in intimate fellowship
with God. And as we are called to such conformity to Christ’s image and to such
relationship with God, we are also called to move the whole world in that
direction—to move the whole world toward God’s purpose for creation—to move the
whole world toward Christ.
This does not mean that we have to make the whole world conform to Christian
practice. But this does mean that we are called to move the whole world toward
the love, and justice and harmony exemplified in Christ. In this way we move the
whole world toward conformity to the image of Christ and toward right
relationship with God and creation exemplified in Christ.
This is why I believe that the Church’s work for social justice is a type of
evangelism. Not evangelism as conversion, but evangelism as moving the world
toward the love and justice exemplified in Christ. Evangelism as moving the
whole world toward reconciled relationship with God realized in and through
Christ.
This is why it is important to understand who Christ is. For in the midst of
all of the chaos in our world, Christ is the revelation of God’s purpose for our
lives and for the world. For it is God’s purpose for humanity to be conformed to
the image of Christ and therefore reconciled with God. It is God’s purpose for
humanity to be holy and blameless before God and able to look upon God’s face
and live.
Who is our Christ? “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn
of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created,
things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or
powers—all things have been created through him and for him…He is the head of
the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that
he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of
God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to
Godself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the
blood of his cross. Amen.
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