Daniel 4 - Nebuchadnezzar's Madness

            Dream interpretation.  Giant statues of gold, silver, bronze, & iron. The fiery furnace.  The lions’ den.  Can you think of short stories anywhere as captivating as those in Daniel chapters 1-6?  On websites, on TV, on Twitter and Facebook, there’s so much noise.  There’s partisan division; a lot of shouting without much listening. 

            I wanted us to begin 2018 looking at stories in the Bible.  Stories hold our interest.  If the story is good, we listen, we absorb it.  We don’t need to talk or argue.  We can receive what the storyteller has to share.  If that good story is in the Bible, then we meet God in it.  And my hope is that we can focus less on the noise of angry politics and more on the God we meet in the stories of the Bible – the only true God. 

It doesn’t mean we ignore the world around.  God has something to say and God often speaks through His church who is meeting Him in the Bible and in worship and then speaking from that encounter. Current events are always on the table, but we speak to our day from God’s perspective and a primary source for God’s perspective is the Bible. 

We could have gone to the Gospels or great stories of David or some of the fascinating accounts in the book of Numbers or Judges, but, felt God leading us to Daniel.  Here’s a curious question.  Who was the first worshiping body to hear Daniel as Holy Scripture, stories of God, read in its worship gathering?  How did congregations before ours receive the word of God as we have it in Daniel?

The first group was the gathering of Jews in Jerusalem in the 2^nd century, the 170’s – 150’s BC.  Israel was land God promised to the descendants of Abraham, the Jewish people, but they had not governed that land for a long time.  They were subjugated by the Assyrians in the 8^th century, and then the Babylonians in the late 7^th and early 6^th.  Power passed to the Persians, and then the Greeks under Alexander the great.  It became really bad for the Jews in the second century as Alexander’s empire was divided among his four generals and Israel fell under the cruel hand of Antiochus Epiphanes IV.

He set up a statue right in the second temple, the temple of Haggai and Ezra.  In that space, holy to Jews, dedicated to God, he put up idols and performed abominable acts.  He persecuted and even killed Jews who would not renounce the way of Abraham and Moses.  The persecution under Antiochus was as bad as any the Jews had known.  In that context of humiliating oppression, Daniel was read as Holy Scripture for the first time.

Feeling powerless, worshipers could look to this Jewish hero who defied the might of Babylon and then Media and Persia.  While an exile, with no voice, Daniel and his friends stayed faithful in their worship of God and their refusal to participate in Pagan worship practices. 

In Daniel 1, they refused unclean food and ate only vegetables.  Maintaining proper dietary restraint as their tradition dictated, Daniel and his three friends outperformed all other Jewish conscripts and rose in wisdom and prominence before the Babylonian king.  In chapter 2, when death was the penalty for failure, Daniel successfully recited the king’s dream.  Daniel was praised even though he prophesied the king’s downfall. 

In chapter 3, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to worship a statue of the king.  For such a brazen revolt against the king’s edict, the three young Jews were thrown into the furnace, and in an enraged act of overdoing it, the king demanded the heat be raised and it was to the point that some of the guards were consumed by flames; but not Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  Accompanied by an angel, they strolled around unharmed. 

Chapter 3 ended with the self-aggrandizing King, Nebuchadnezzar, declaring that anyone who blasphemed against the God of Israel would be ripped limb from limb.  Ironically, he couldn’t see that his own edict violated itself.  God didn’t need to make such macabre threats and God did not generally rip people limb from limb.  God allowed those who turned against him to fall into the destruction that came as a result of their own bad choices.  He needed no help from Nebuchadnezzar.

Chapter 4, this week’s Daniel story, continues the madness of King Nebuchadnezzar.  It is true that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and in Nebuchadnezzar’s case, absolute power also scrambled his own brain and completely distorted his perspective.

Essentially what happens is the king has another dream.  This time when his own palace wise men and wizards cannot interpret it for him, he does not kill them.  Instead he moves on to Daniel.  Why he didn’t start with Daniel is anyone’s guess considering Daniel’s previous dream interpretation abilities.  In the dream, the king sees a tree – the great tree of the world.  All the world was blessed under the great tree.

However, a holy watcher (v.13) descending from Heaven declared the great tree should be cut down leaving only the stump.  The great tree will be but a stump, unprotected against the elements for seven years.  The voice of the holy watcher declared this would happen so that all the world would see that God most High is sovereign over even the great kingdoms of the world (v.17).  Those who rule kingdoms are no better than the poorest peasants and anyone who has power, has it because God has allowed them to have it. 

Daniel knew this dream was about King Nebuchadnezzar.  He didn’t want to tell the meaning because he knew it was bad news for the king.  However, Nebuchadnezzar encouraged Daniel, so he told him.  “The tree that you saw – it is you, O King” (v.20, 21).  Daniel went on to explain that Nebuchadnezzar had become the greatest king on earth, but by decree of God (v.24), he would be reduced to madness.  Nebuchadnezzar would leave human society and roam the wild fields, sleeping out in the open like an animal.  He would grow his hair and nails long and unkempt.  He would graze on grass like cattle.  He would lose the power of speech and logical thought.  This insanity would last seven years.  That’s how long it would take for King Nebuchadnezzar to see that God and not he was the all-powerful one. 

We aren’t told how the king reacted to Daniel’s interpretation.  The next word from the story teller is that all happened just as Daniel said it would.  Striding in all his royal finery along the roof of the royal palace, the king heard a voice from heaven declare all that had been said in the dream.  He was immediately driven from human society, stripped of his vestments and robes.  He became an inhuman creature, a mindless beast, and he stayed that way for seven years. 

Please note the progression of the story in Daniel 4.  It begins with King Nebuchadnezzar openly praising God.  “The signs and wonders that the Most High God has worked for me I am pleased to recount.  How great are his signs, how mighty his wonders!  His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his sovereignty is from generation to generation” (4:2-3).  It is self-centered.  Look at what God’s done for me.  But it is praise directed toward God.  Then in the middle of the story, Nebuchadnezzar sings a different tune.  Verse 30, “Is this not magnificent Babylon, which I have built as a royal capital by my mighty power and for my glorious majesty?” 

What a pivot!  The king moves from praising God for his wonders to praising himself for his own might and power.  The story ends with the king once again praising God.  “Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are truth and his ways are justice; his able to bring low those who walk in pride” (4:37).  It’s a true statement and of all people, King Nebuchadnezzar would know.

What moves the story from self-serving praise to an unabashedly arrogant boast to humble praise?  There comes an interruption – and we all have these interruptions in our lives.  We don’t know if King Nebuchadnezzar heard the interruption.  We aren’t told.  We know King Antiochus Epiphanes IV did not hear God’s warnings.  He relentlessly terrorized the Jerusalem Jews in the second century BC and is thus forever vilified by the symbolism in Daniel.  He ranks with the worst of villains, Antiochus Epiphanes IV right alongside Hitler and all the malevolent despots of history.  No one is worse. 

Setting aside Antiochus, the interruption we see in Daniel 4 should be an interruption in our lives.  What matters for us today is when God interrupts our stories, to remind us that He is God and we are not, do we listen?  See Daniel’s fearlessness in verse 27.  He says right to Nebuchadnezzar’s face, “Atone for your sins with righteousness, and your iniquities with mercy to the oppressed.”  Daniel was in Babylon.  Back in Israel, people were starving to death because their cities had been toppled and left as rubble, and their crops had been burned.  The people were oppressed because of the way Nebuchadnezzar’s soldiers acted.  Now Daniel tells him, it is time to atone. 

Have we benefited because others have suffered.  Do we drink coffee made from beans harvested by laborers who are paid slave wages?  Do we wear clothes made in sweatshops were workers don’t get paid enough and have no option of leaving?  “Atone … for your iniquities by showing mercy to the oppressed.”  That’s the message at the heart of Daniel 4.  Verse 27, to show that you know and honor and bow before God, show mercy to the oppressed. 

Daniel left the wicked king a way out.  He didn’t have to crawl about on all fours like an ox or cow.  He didn’t have to lose his mind.  That’s where self-obsession and power-obsession leads: mania.  Daniel, anointed by God, pointed to another path.  We, readers of the story have that path before us. 

“Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink.  And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing?  And when, O Lord, was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?  And the [King of all kings] will answer, ‘truly I tell you whenever you did it to the least of these my children, you did it to me’” (Matthew 25:37-40).

Do we see the interruption, hear the warning, and take the path opened before us by the word of God?  King Nebuchadnezzar did not.  He ignored the prophet’s word because he thought he was the ultimate one, the one favored by God.  He disregarded the warning, boasted of his own greatness, and ended up insane.  After his boast, he discovered that Daniel, whom he said he trusted, was right.  The prophecy Daniel gave came true. 

The crazy, grazing king returned to sanity when he lifted his eyes to heaven.  He strutted around when he should have bowed in humble worship, and so God, brought him low.  When, having been brought low, he raised his eyes in humble worship, God allowed him to stand once again.  The way we experience life is directly related to how we respond to what we know to be true about God.  

We know God through our knowledge of God’s son, our Savior Jesus Christ.  Note the difference between Jesus and the evil king of Babylon.  Nebuchadnezzar was a man who thought he was on equal footing with God.  Jesus was God who had become a man. 

Philippians 2:5-11:

⁵ Let the same mind be in you that was^[a] in Christ Jesus,

⁶ who, though he was in the form of God,
    did not regard equality with God
    as something to be exploited,
⁷ but emptied himself,
    taking the form of a slave,
    being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
⁸     he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death—
    even death on a cross.

⁹ Therefore God also highly exalted him
    and gave him the name
    that is above every name,
¹⁰ so that at the name of Jesus
    every knee should bend,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and every tongue should confess
    that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

           

            In life, when we are up against tremendous challenges, maybe under the heel of our own Nebuchadnezzar or Antiochus Epiphanes, we praise God because we know God is in control and will carry us through our hard times.  In life, when things are going well, and we find ourselves on top, doing the winning, we bow in humble worship and praise God, thanking Him for our successes as we work to be generous in uplifting those around us who wallow in their struggles.  When we’re up, when we’re down and at times in between, we praise God.

            Anne Lamott has write book titled Hallelujah Anyway!  The idea is that even when life is thoroughly crud-filled and painful, was praise because God is there.  Based on the idea that God is there and that we have the Daniel opportunity before us – to take the path of worship and mercy – I proposed a modification on her title.  God is God and we aren’t.  God is here and it is a good thing that God is here because God can and will help us. 

            Maybe on a hard day we say Hallelujah Anyway!  But, knowing God is with us, we say, Hallelujah Always.  God is in Babylon and God is here, and in control.  That’s good news, the very best of news. 

AMEN 

Fall on Your Knees (Mal. 3:7; Lk. 12:35-36)

Our youth pastor Nathan gave the sermon for the first Sunday of Advent.  If you'd like a recording of his sermon, contact our church office or email me.

Here are my thoughts on the text of Nathan's sermon.

     Writer Philip Yancey says he has met the most fulfilled, godly people among the poorest of the poor in prison cells, leper colonies, and inner city slums.  In these dark places, where daily life is survival, and just barely, he has encountered truly holy people who are indeed, very close to God. 

Yancey quotes author John Cheever who said, “The main emotion of the adult American who has all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment.”[i] I don’t know how Cheever knows that.  I do, though, find the quote compelling. 

Is it true? 

You can test it yourself, this season, leading to Christmas.  As you shop for that new game system or that new I-phone or some other gift that will bring great happiness when pulled from under the tree and unwrapped, ask yourself, is this were happiness and joy are found?  The main emotion of the one who has everything is disappointment.

          I don’t know if that is true.  I know the world is wounded.  I know there is disappointment aplenty in our community.  There is as much disappointment as there is affluence.

          There is also emptiness. 

          My friend wrote a book which he sent to several of us to review.  In his writing, he identifies a worldview that has no place for God and that accepts that humanity has evolved from simpler life forms.  Millions of years ago, simple chemical interactions came together to produce life – single-celled organisms.  Over the eons, these beings evolved to more and more complex organisms up to the present day.  And today we have us, beings with self-awareness. 

          When we die, our bodies will decompose and eventually go back to the dirt from which we came.  My friend, Steve Davis, a pastor whose church is near Fort Bragg, calls us “dirt in transition.”[ii]  This is the worldview he’s describing.

He does not believe that.  He actually believes we are created beings.  Even if evolution is the process, it is a process God created and each one of us is made in God’s image. 

          But many people are materialists.  They cannot by way of empirical observation prove God’s existence, so they assume there is no God.  They not only accept that humans are “dirt in transition,” they are sure of it. 

In terms of meaning, this worldview comes up empty.  Our lives no meaning beyond what we come up with ourselves.  If the only meaning we have is what we or other humans create, it is totally arbitrary.  No matter what we desire, we are in fact just complex chemical compositions fated to die.

          So is that the human condition?  Philip Yancey cites Loren Eiseley a materialist who makes art out science.  Eiseley thinks that when we long for meaning, the idea that there is something more than the world we see, we are like frogs croaking through the night.  “We’re here.  We’re here.  We’re here.”[iii]  And we hope against reality that something out there notices. 

          This bleakness is in the Bible.  The book of Ecclesiastes opens by saying, “Vanities of vanities.  All is vanity” (1:2).  So for Christmas, buy the I-phone for your girlfriend.  Maybe she’ll be happy, at least until the next one comes out.   Then, well, buy the next thing.

          This disappointment and meaninglessness leads to all manners of catastrophe.  On a small scale, people who cannot afford expensive things are envious and disheartened because they cannot have what others have.  Those who can afford those things are disheartened and disillusioned because the expensive toys don’t bring any real happiness.  The longed-for fulfillment never comes.

          On a larger scale, the emptiness leads us collectively to create myths.  Some myths are couched in religious terms that lead us to accept lies or to join movements that wreak havoc, like terrorist groups.  Other myths wear the colors of patriotism.  In our country that is blended with the myth of the middle class American life.  That is where happiness lies.

          Well, no, not really.  This is not where happiness lies! But our advertisers and our politicians have become wealthy selling this myth.  We get convinced and we buy it all time and in bulk around Christmas time.   In longing for something more, meaninglessness and emptiness and disappointment lead women and men to, create the means of their own destruction. 

          What if the incarnation is God’s response to our desperate longing for something more? 

Incarnation is the word we use to explain God becoming human.  In the birth of Jesus, God entered the world in a new way.  God had always been and always is present.  Nothing is hidden from God. There is never a time when you or I are alone, unseen.  God always is with us and sees us.

          In the incarnation, God is present in a unique way.  God took on human flesh as a complete human being with DNA, with a growth process from fetus to new born, from toddler to adolescent to adult.  Jesus was as human as you or I are human. 

          What I am asking us to consider is this.  What if God doing that – becoming human – was God’s way of responding to our condition, a depression of utter meaninglessness?  What if God came in Jesus in order to show us who we are and who we can be? 

          This assumes that God responds to human beings.  I believe the Bible shows over and over that God is a responsive God.  And I think God’s ultimate response to human pain is God’s coming as Jesus.  If Jesus is God’s embodied response, God’s love embodied, then we are saying God does respond to us. 

          So what then? 

We are empty when we try to find meaning for ourselves.  God responds to impoverished souls by becoming one of us in order to show us love, to die for our sins, to overcome death in resurrection, and then to invite us to faith and life and relationship as we find ourselves in Jesus.  We have the condition and God’s response. 

What of it? 

          How do we respond to God’s action in Jesus Christ?  Chew on this.  We’re ontologically bankrupt.  We have nothing that brings significance.  Then God comes and fills us with joy and meaning and purpose.  What do we do? 

          The great hymn “O Holy Night” gives part of the answer.  In that hymn, we sing these words.

                   A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices.

                   For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Yes, in the coming Christ, all Heaven had broken loose.  Meaning?  Significance?  Purpose?  We clumps of dirt in transition are invited into an eternal relationship of love with the holy God through the action of God-in-the-flesh!  What do we do?  The song gives the answer.

                   Fall on our knees.  O Hear the angel voices.

                   O night divine.  O night when Christ was born

          We don’t kneel very much in our worship services.  Sometimes individuals will come during prayer time after the sermon, kneel at the steps and either bow their heads or look to the cross.  In these profound moments, the kneeling is a beautiful gesture done to show that the one praying knows who God is.  That’s what we say in kneeling.  I know who God is.  And I know it is not me.

          Through the mouth of the prophet, God said the following (Isaiah 45):

          ²² Turn to me and be saved,
    all the ends of the earth!
    For I am God, and there is no other.
²³ By myself I have sworn,
    from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness
    a word that shall not return:
“To me every knee shall bow,
    every tongue shall swear.”

²⁴ Only in the Lord, it shall be said of me,
    are righteousness and strength;
all who were incensed against him
    shall come to him and be ashamed.

          Every knee shall bow.  I wonder if this word from Isaiah was on Peter’s mind the first time he met Jesus and saw a miracle.  He threw himself on the ground at Jesus’ feet in worship and in humiliation (Luke 5:7-9). 

I wonder if Paul had this Isaiah passage before him when he wrote in Romans 14:11 that every knee shall bow to the Lord. 

We find a similar sentiment in Philippians 2.  There, Paul is quoting what most scholars believe was an extremely early hymn, possibly sung within just a just few years of the resurrection.  The gospels weren’t written until probably the 60’s or later.  First Thessalonians was the earliest of Paul’s letters.  The hymn he quotes in Philippians 2 might be the earliest actual written Christian work.  In it is the declaration that upon seeing Jesus in glory, everyone will have no choice but to bow in reverence.  This will be an act of humiliation, not an act of faith.  Every knee shall bow.

What I am suggesting is that now, when our response to God is a faith response, not a response that comes after judgment, we choose to kneel.  There is precedent for making this choice.

Throughout the book Revelation there is kneeling.  First, the author, John of Patmos, falls at Jesus’ feet (ch. 1). Then the elders who spend their time in Heaven on thrones, exalted, threw themselves down before Him (ch. 4, 11).   The otherworldly “living creatures” we meet in the vision do the same (ch. 5).  These are instances of people as well as divine beings choosing to kneel and worship.

We find ourselves in a time when we can choose.  Today, God does not force us to kneel, to worship, to give homage.  God helps.  The Holy Spirit convicts us of our sins.  This means, the Holy Spirit shows us the extent to which our sins destroy our lives and the lives of those we love.  The Holy Spirit pricks our consciences, awakens our minds, appeals to our hearts, and opens our eyes.  But God does not force us to worship.  It is our choice and it is one I urge us to consider. 

The prophet Malachi offers a perfect word for us as we live in the days leading up to Christmas.  In Malachi, God says, “Return to me, and I will return to you” (3:7).  Then Malachi writes that the Lord took notice of those who revered Him and said, “They shall be my special possession on the day when I act” (3:17). 

When we kneel before Jesus Christ, we are saying, we are not God.  He is.  He is the source of hope because he brings forgiveness of sin, healing of wounds, restoration of hearts, and an invitation to life.  He gives us meaning when he shows us what love is and fills us with this love and nudges us to share it.  Also, in humility and with great compassion, we invites others to come to Him. 

We are not the source of own meaning.  We are not responsible for filling our own emptiness.  He accomplishes all of this in us when we look to the Lord and when we live in love. 

It starts when we follow the song’s prompt and fall on our knees.  No longer are we consumed with ourselves.  We die to self and find ourselves born again, made new, called into resurrection where our bodies are no longer clumps of dirt, but incorruptible, made of the stuff of Heaven. 

What is Christmas going to be for you this year?  Who can say?  Not me. 

But, here is what I can say.  Of all the things that fill the season, the shopping, the TV specials, the office and school Christmas parties, the decorating, and the other traditions, Christmas is a time of worship.  As you read this, say this out loud, over and over, until it rings in your heart.  Christmas is a time of worship.

          Look at your nativity set.  The lowly shepherds and the gathered magi together kneel before the baby Jesus.  As we worship this Christmas season, may we worship while kneeling before the glorified, risen Lord.  May we discover the joy and happiness that can only be found there. 

AMEN

---

[i] P. Yancey (2014). Vanishing Grace (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI), p.208.

[ii] S. Davis (2015).  Faith in Your Handwriting (self published, on Amazon Kindle reader).

[iii] Yancey, p.137.

Do we Know Jesus? (Colossians 1:9-23)

Sunday, May 18, 2014

            If you open your Bible, turn to Colossians and begin reading in the very first verse, you are struck with how positive this letter is.  “Grace and peace … we have heard of your faith and your love … [we heard] from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant; … he has made known to us your love in the Spirit” (from v.1-8).  What a ‘feel good’ start! 

And yet, it is not all rosy.  It could not be, not for a first century church.  In the midst of a truly uplifting introduction, we read, “May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience.  … He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, ¹⁴ in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:11, 13-14).

            Why is Paul praying that the Colossians be “made strong?”  What ordeal required them to have strength?  Was the life of their church and their very selves as Christ followers threatened to the point that the only way they could maintain true faith and correct belief was by the glorious power of God?  Why did Paul think such a prayer was necessary?  What evil threatened the Colossian fellowship?

            “May you be able to endure everything with patience.”  He does not ask that God remove the threat, whatever it may have been.  He does not ask God to deliver the Colossians.  He asks God to uphold them that they might endure some trial.  I hear Christians ask God to protect them from trials and to heal wounds and for shelter in the storm.  Paul asks God to help the Colossian weather the storm.  The storm is inevitable.    The only hope they have is the help that comes from the Holy Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

What can be said about him?  Who is this son of God?  Who, exactly, is this Jesus to whom we have pledged our allegiance?  We have staked our lives, our souls, our eternal hope on what the Bible tells us about him.  Paul knew the Colossians could not hold up as a church without help from him.  For them and for us, he is the key to everything.  Do we truly know Jesus? 

            When he met a blind man, he spit in the dirt, made mud, and rubbed it in the blind man’s eyes.  Would you allow someone to rub mud made from saliva on your face?  It’s kind of gross.  Yes, gross, but the eyes of the man born blind were healed.  He could see.

Jesus enjoyed weddings so much he turned water to wine to keep the party going.  Before his disciples, he dropped to his knees and washed their feet.  He befriended prostitutes and disreputables, society’s dregs and rejects.  He partied with them and with those in high society.  Jesus was able to genuinely love everyone. 

All these anecdotes about Jesus form a picture of a great man – the greatest of human beings.  It is perfectly appropriate to talk of Jesus as a person.  You and I – we are persons, individuals.  So too was Jesus. 

            The very human Jesus truly is Jesus.  He was a first century Jewish man who came from the region of Galilee, received Rabbi training, whether formal or informal we don’t know.  His humanity must never be forgotten or ignored or intentionally shelved.  Neither may we do away with his divinity.  Jesus is both: 100% God and 100% human.  A robust, healthy Easter theology recognizes and insists upon the full divinity and full humanity of Jesus.  This duality is a great paradox, impossible to rationally explain yet undeniable.

            In Colossians, where the faithful have exhibited devotion in their faith, the accent is on the divine nature of the Son of God.  The Colossian believers are confused by other teachings that have come from countless angles in a culture so religiously diverse it’s dizzying.  Jewish, Roman, and numerous forms of Greek religious expressions competed for the attention and hearts of these people who have pledged themselves to Jesus. How could they maintain true faith?

Similar challenges confront Jesus’ church in every era and in every place.  Even though thousands of years and thousands of miles make us as different from our Colossians siblings in the faith as one might expect, we also are tempted by forces around us that would divert our loyalty away from our Lord.  Worse, we are weakened by sin.  Jesus has rescued us from sin in his death on the cross (v.13), but we are still vulnerable to temptation.  They were.  We are. 

            So Paul names his worries – weakness (he prays for strength), and trials and temptations (he prays for endurance).  Then , pointing to our source of help and hope, Paul quotes a poem that is dedicated to the rule and wonder of Jesus.  Most scholars believe Colossians 1:15-20 is a hymn Paul quoted, one likely older than anything Paul wrote.  What we read here was used in worship in the ancient church by the Christ followers probably even earlier than Paul’s conversion which is described in Acts 9.  Another example of Paul quoting an ancient hymn to make his point is Philippians 2:5-11.  In both cases, we find Christianity in its earliest most authentic form.  

In times of trouble, in times of confusion, when darkness threatens, we turn to Jesus.  Do we know Jesus Christ, the beloved son of God?  What would we say about him?  Look at Colossians 1:15-20 and see what the Apostle said.

            Jesus, the Son of God, is the firstborn of all creation.    Jesus, the man we meet in the New Testament, did not exist until the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary.  But Jesus as God, the divine logos described in John chapter 1, the Word, certainly did exist prior to the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.  He was, says Colossians, before the universe was.  From verses 16 & 17, “In him all things in heaven and on earth were created.  … He himself is before all things and in him all things hold together.”  Science can study observable phenomena, only that which occurs or exists within the history of the universe.  Jesus is before the history of the universe.  He is the pre-existent one.

            The son is distinct from the father, and here we find another paradox no theologian has adequately reduced to a definition we can grasp.  The term ‘trinity’ is not mentioned in the Bible, but it adequately names how God exists and how we know God.  Great minds have tried to make the trinity comprehendible for 2 millennia with no success.  The Father is God.  Jesus is God.  The Spirit is God.  They are distinct from one another.  There is only one God: 3 in 1.  This is where we turn, to this triune God, when we are in desperate need.  I could offer a plethora of metaphors to try to illustrate the trinity, but all come up short. 

            A while ago, a priest was the guest on Steven Colbert’s show.  The comedian is a devout Catholic.  I don’t know if he prepared the priest for what he was going to ask, but I was thoroughly impressed with the priest’s answer.  Colbert asked, “OK, what is God’s job.”  How would you answer?  I thought the question was kind of strange, but then I was struck by the thought that as a Christian, and especially as clergy, I should be able to answer that.  And I was stuck.  I did not know exactly where to begin.  What is God’s job?  Without missing a beat, the priest said, “God’s job is sustaining the universe.”  Brilliant! 

            The Father creates the universe and sustains it.  The Son draws humanity to the father, saving us from our sins and presenting us as righteous.  The Spirit is the constant presence of God in Jesus’ absence, the comforter and helper.  Each member of the trinity has a specific role and that is how we understand the trinity. 

Not so fast!  Colossians 1:17 says in the Son all things hold together.  Yes, God the Father sustains, but Jesus the Son has a role in holding everything together as well.  And, per v. 16, Jesus has a role in the creation of all that we see.  This verse, Colossians 1:16, indicates that the man from Galilee, before he was ever born in a Bethlehem stable, was the agent of creation and the goal of creation.

            Then verse 18 zooms in from the view of everything that exists in the cosmos to a focus on a particular people on earth, those who follow Jesus, the church.  We are the church.  From believers in megachurches housed in multimillion dollar facilities that sit on campuses that would make many colleges jealous, to groups of believers that gather in dirt floored third-world huts, the church is the gathering of people who follow Jesus and worship God through their knowledge of Jesus.  From the first century believers in Colossae to us who gather on Sundays at HillSong in 2014, we are the church.  Colossians 1:18 says the beloved son, the pre-existent one and creator of all, is the head of the church. 

            He who formed the Milky Way galaxy astronomers spend their lives observing is the one who watches over and leads us and all churches like us and those thoroughly unlike us.  Why?  Jesus is the firstborn of the dead.  The resurrection links his humanity and divinity; and it links us to him. 

            We would be destined to be separated from God for eternity if not for Jesus.  Our sins cut us off.  I think Hell is eternal separation from God.  All the descriptions of unquenchable fire and lakes of sulfur and weeping and gnashing of teeth – these are Biblical metaphors employed to show just how bad eternal separation from God is. However, Jesus came, died, and rose.  The New Testament says over and over, because of what he did, we have hope of resurrection.  He paves the way and makes resurrection a reality for us, his followers, so he holds first place in everything.  Any portion of life we can imagine, no matter how we see our lives or divide life into segments, Jesus, the resurrected, is first in all.  Not only is there no portion of life Jesus does not touch.  There is no portion of life Jesus does not rule.

Because of sin, the world is a fallen place, a place of pain, but Jesus is working through His church for the healing of the world.  Verse 20 says, “Through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven by making peace through the blood of the cross.”  This verse does not say that the purpose of Jesus’ death on the cross was to provide salvation for us from our sins so we would go heaven when we die.  It does not say his death on the cross was for that.  Salvation is a consequence of the crucifixion of the son of God.  We are saved.  We are made righteous by him and promised to be with him eternally.  But Colossians 1:20 says through the cross all things are reconciled to God: animals, plant life, the elements (wondrous rock, gems, and metals in the earth), the cosmos, and people – all was declared Good in the creation.  All was corrupted in the fall.  In the death and resurrection and return of Jesus, all will be reconciled to God.  When we love the earth and act as the stewards God has called us to be, we are caring for what God made and what God will make new in the future through the work of Jesus, the Son.

Paul prayed that his readers would be made strong and be prepared to endure.  They worshiped as a minority faith in the midst of an empire that was pagan, polytheistic, and insistent upon all acknowledging the supremacy of the Roman emperor.  They were surrounded by people who sneered at their monotheism or mocked their claim that the Messiah had come and had been resurrected.   The first readers of Colossians were trying to follow Jesus in a world that potentially could hurt them severely for doing so.

We read Colossians as we live in the American empire.  Ours is vaguely Christian, or at least was born in the tradition of Christendom.  What threatens and causes us to rely upon Jesus for help? 

-                           Some reduce our faith to a system of morals.  We cannot.  The way of Jesus is very moral as are many religious faiths.  We are distinctive in that we insist that Jesus is Lord. 

-                           Another threat is the idol of materialism.  Life is all about me, so following Jesus is fine as long as it is good for me.  This idolatry will lead us straight out of the kingdom of God and in America, where freedom has been corrupted into the notion that we “deserve” immediate satisfaction in all things, we are bombarded by the deception of materialism. 

-                           Another threat is the way our culture has turned the concept of tolerance into the undiscerning practice of saying all things are OK and all religions are basically the same.  It’s a double lie; all behaviors are not OK and all religions are not, at the core, the same.  Each religion is unique from all others. 

We need help from our Lord so we can be strong enough and clear enough and loving enough to say Jesus is King, to kill the idol of materialism and to overcome the lies that are birthed by the siren song of tolerance. 

We could probably name numerous other threats to Christian faith in America.  If we considered other places in the world, the threats would be deadly in addition to being ideologically dangerous.  The Colossians prayer fits.  We need Jesus if we are to stand for him and with each other.  That we will be made strong and be prepared to endure so that with a gentle voice of welcoming love we can tell the world around us that all things come together in Christ alone – that prayer is one we need.  And we need to look to and point the world to Jesus, the beloved son of God, the creator and sustainer of all. 

He is Lord of the universe and head of the church and we and all his followers, no matter how different than us, comprise the church, the body of Christ. 

No matter the cost or consequences, together we are in Christ, the Lord of all.

AMEN