Joined to Christ

Is it obvious that a vine branch cut off from the vine will soon be worthless?  If it is a grapevine, grapes will no longer grow on it.  The branch will die.  Then what do we have? 

            Actually the prophet Ezekiel points out that the dried, dead vine branch is useful as kindling (15:1-8).  We need fire for warmth, for cooking, and for light.  Good kindling is very valuable, once.  However, after the fire has burned out, all that’s left of that once needed kindling is dead ash.  Ezekiel uses the image of the burned up vine branch to envision the faithless inhabitants of Jerusalem.  They turned away from God to neglect the poor among them.  They worshiped idols.  And they burned.  “I will make the land desolate, because they have acted faithlessly, says the Lord” (Ezek. 15:8).

            It’s kind of a depressing opening, don’t you think?  But it does show a few things.  One, it seems Jesus has Ezekiel in mind as much as the Gospel writers did Isaiah and the Psalms.  His imagery recalls the word pictures used by the prophet of the exile.  Two, the halting image of a city razed, burned to the ground, amplifies Jesus’ “I am the vine” picture.  A disconnected vine is a dead thing, only good to be burned.  A person cut off from Christ is destined for death. 

            A third truth to glean from the Ezekiel message is the either-or nature of what both Ezekiel and Jesus believe.  Judah and Jerusalem were cut off because they acted faithlessly.  As much as any prophet, Ezekiel ties faithful living to justice and proper worship.  One either lives faithfully, or is cut off.  There’s no other option.  Jesus picks this up.  “Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned” (v.6).

            Branches = people, human beings, you and me.  Cut off from Christ, we are destined for death, an eternity apart from God.  Whatever the experience of that eternity is, Jesus is clear about one thing.  It is an eternity spent cut off from him.  So, we branches either stay connected to the vine, Jesus himself, or, we are bound for destruction.  Obviously then, if we want eternal life, we stay connected to Christ.  But, how do we do that?

            Before dealing with the “how-to,” we look at meaning.  Jesus tells each one of us, “Abide in me as I abide in you.”  What does that mean, that phrase “abide in me?” The problem as I see it is ‘abide’ is not a word most English speakers use in every day conversations.  Any time a Biblical idea or a phrase is used exclusively in a church-setting, it fails to influences our lives.  If church is the only place you say or hear a word, it will be the only place that word has an effect.  We live most of our lives away from the church building, outside the worship service.  If ‘abide’ only means something when I am reading John chapter 15, then the idea that I am to ‘abide in Christ’ lacks any real punch in the 99.9% of the time I am not sitting with John 15 open before me.

We are blessed (or cursed as the case may be) to have many options when it comes to Bibles in English.  Normally, I read the New Revised Standard Version.  The Greek word for abide in verse 4 is ‘meinate.‘  That Greek verb is in a different verb tense in verse 7, ‘meinhte.’  The NRSV translates this verb ‘abide,’ as do several other English versions including the King James, the English Standard Version, and the New American Standard.  As that word is used in English today, is ‘abide’ the best word to convey what Jesus had to say? 

The Greek verb means ‘to stay in a place,’ or ‘remain in a sphere,’ or ‘to endure.’  The Holman Standard Christian Bible, as well as the NIV, the Good New Translation, and the New Living Translation, render it ‘remain.’  In these versions, Jesus says, “Remain in me.”  Remain?  Abide?  Are there other, better options?  The J.B. Phillips Bible says, “Live your life in me.”  The Message says, “Make your home in me.”

All these options could lead us to the conclusion that in order to live the lives Jesus wants us to live and is calling us to live, we have to live in a way that keeps us connected to God through faith in Jesus, with the help of the Holy Spirit.  I firmly believe that the Holy Spirit is guiding us as we read the Bible and will enable us to get the message even when we read different English versions.  Reading the Bible is not just a solitary Christian or a gathered group in church on Sunday morning.  The Holy Spirit is an active player when we read, carrying the message deeper than even our conscious understanding. 

That said, great value comes from accurate translation.  Two tools deepen our knowledge of God’s word, the ongoing study of Koine Greek, the language of the New Testament, and ongoing awareness of the evolution of language, in our case the English language.  Of all the Bible versions, the one I think best gets at what Jesus is telling us when he says, “I am the vine, you are the branches,” is the Contemporary English Version. 

In that version, verse 4 reads, “Stay joined to me, and I will stay joined to you.  Just as a branch cannot produce fruit unless it stays joined to the vine, you cannot produce fruit unless you stay joined to me.”  And verse 7 in the CEV renders Jesus words, “Stay joined to me and let my teaching become a part of you.  Then you can pray for whatever you want and your prayer will be answered.” 

Note please that before we receive whatever we pray for, Jesus’ teaching becomes a part of us.  We might hear “pray for whatever you want your prayer will be answered,” and we might get big ideas.  ‘I am going to pray for a Rolls Royce.  I am going to pray for a private jet.  I am going to ask that the Detroit Tigers win the World Series.’  On practical note, I couldn’t afford the insurance on a Rolls, I don’t know how to fly the private jet I’d be praying for, and what if while I am praying for the Tigers to win the series, John Folliard is every bit as joined to Christ, and he’s praying for the Chicago White Sox to win the series?  More significantly, if Jesus’ teaching becomes a part of me, becomes a part of John, are he and I praying for cars and planes and World Series winners?  Connected to Christ, his teaching coloring the desires of our hearts, we will be inclined to pray for different things.  We will have a heart like his. 

The vine imagery Jesus uses in John 15 tells us that the Christian life, the disciple life is a life joined to Christ.  The one in this life cannot go out and party in a way that disregards the morals valued by God.  We can’t leave our faith on the shelf for just this one night of debauchery.  We’re connected, permanently joined.  Where we go, Jesus goes.  Living this way, we find life is at its best when we go where He guides us. 

The one in this life cannot spend money in a way that ignore the heart of God for all people.  We cannot disassociate our money with our faith because He is Lord of our entire lives.  When we go on vacation, when we go shopping, when open the check book, or make the electronic purchase online, Jesus is there.  We’re thoroughly connected, joined to Christ.  Living this way, we find life is at its best when we strive to be extravagantly generous and at the same time thoroughly wise, always looking to our Lord in terms of what to do with our money. 

In our relationships; in our decisions about sex; in thinking about what we put in our bodies; regarding what our eyes see on the screen, online, on TV; in all things, we are joined to Christ.  He is there.  He is not part of our lives.  He is at the center of our lives.  Being a Christian is not one aspect of our lives.  Every aspect of our lives is determined by Christ. 

Anyone tempted to think, you mean Jesus is everywhere I go?  Everywhere?

Jesus says, “Abide in my love” (v.9).  Remain in the embrace of Jesus.  For him the entire vine-branches idea illustrates relationship.  For Jesus obedience to God is an expression of love just as his coming is God’s statement of love for all of us.  To stay with him is to be in a close relationship with someone who love us, wants the best for us, and will sacrifice on our behalf.  Greek has different words that can be translated “love” in English.  When he says “abide in my love” in verse 9, the verb is ‘agape.’  Jesus means stay in this relationship in which I will do whatever I have to for your good. 

And “for our good” is not the elimination of joy or the end of freedom or shackles on our self-expression.  The passage leads up to verse 11 where this is what we hear from Jesus.  “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.”  Jesus has no intention of stripping the fun, laughter, and whimsy out of life.  In fact, the life full of the richest smiles, greatest happiness, and the most potent of loves is the life of a disciple of Jesus. 

The word joy, in verse 11, is the same root as the word grace.  Jesus doesn’t just save us from death and Hell.  Jesus also saves us from misery, from bitterness, jealousy, and greed.  As Jesus saves us from a life cut off from God, Jesus also saves us for a life of great meaning; a life in which we walk in God’s light; a life defined both by pleasure and purity. 

How then do we live a life joined to Christ?  Obviously we stay connected to the body Christ, the church, and we do this by being deeply involved in a local congregation.  We stay in the word of God, through regular Bible reading and study under good Bible teachers.  We commit to worship, making the regular, weekly participation in church a part of our lives.  We serve in the church and in the world, working for justice and sharing the good news of life in Christ.  These are things we do.

At a deeper level, we resolve to live in absolute honesty before God.  Even the 12 disciples, who went everywhere with Jesus in the body, messed up.  They sinned as close as they were to him.  We do too.  Even joined to Christ, we slip.  But when we mess up, we don’t put on masks and pretend to be perfect.  We do not pretend everything is OK all the time.  We live in awareness of God’s presence.  And in God’s presence, we walk in raw, exposed honesty.  We confess when we need to confess.  We ask for help when we need it.  And sometimes we just fall on our knees before God weeping because tears are the only language that adequately name our wounds and our inner hunger. 

How do we live a life joined to Christ?  There are things we do.  There’s a posture we adopt – the honesty of broken people.  Finally we let go of self-reliance and we receive.  We receive the grace God gives, the love we cannot earn, the joy that is a gift; a gift God gives to overflowing. 

I pray that you can have this God-defined life.  You’ll never know happiness like the joy Jesus gives.  Whatever you’re holding onto, keeping from him, let it go right now.  Right now, come back to the vine.  Come into the embrace of our Lord Jesus and see your life in the light He shines. 

AMEN

The New You (Colossians 2:11-15)

Sunday, June 1, 2014

            Often while reading articles online the advertisements in the side bar will be for weight-loss programs.  Whether it is a diet, a miracle pill, an exercise plan, or a combination of all three, the ad is the way for you to shed 10lbs in a short time.  Photos always accompany the ad.  Before, the woman was pushing 300lbs.  After, she, who is over 4, struts down the beach in a bikini looking like she could be on the cover a magazine. 

            It is effective.  I saw a headline this week that reports obesity as a serious problem is on the rise in every country.   The simple answer to the problem is to eat healthier foods, eat less processed and fat-filled food, and exercise.  Just walking for 30 minutes a day can make a difference.  But the point in the ad photos, the “before” and “after” is the change.  We want to be healthy.  We want to look good.  For a lot of people this means changes need to happen.

            Colossians 2:11: “in him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh.”  Circumcision is painful.  We who have gone through it are quite happy that it happened so long ago, we don’t remember.  That’s bloody, visceral imagery.  Jesus tapped into this in John 15 where he says, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. ² He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.”

            Circumcising, pruning; does there need to be so much snipping and slicing and cutting for us to grow close to God?  Yes.  If we could photograph the totality of a person – the mind, the body, the spirit, the soul – there would be a “before,” and an “after.”  Like the 200 pounder trying to get down to 170, the one who wants to be in Christ has to get rid of something.  The allegiance to the world, the sin nature, the corruption that has infested God’s good creation – humanity – that all has to go.  Paul calls this the circumcision of the heart in Romans 2:29, and in Colossians 3:12 he talks about clothing one’s self with the stuff of the Kingdom as opposed to that which comprises our sinful nature.  It is taking off the sin as one takes off a tattered garment.  It is circumcising the heart so that the will is freed of the evils of sin.  It is pruning, cutting off the unfruitful, wasteful bits of life.

            Thus Colossians 2:11 - “in him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh.”  N.T. Wright in the Tyndale New Testament Commentary says this phrase is quite tricky for scholars translating from the Greek (p.110).[i]  I found three potential ways of understanding what the apostle is saying.  I share each this morning because this idea of circumcising the heart is a matter of turning one’s self to God.  We turn away from all the sinfulness, death, and destruction around us and we turn ourselves to God.  That involves more than just one aspect of our lives and I think the three different pathways of understanding I read this week all fit.  

            The first comes from The Interpreter’s Bible, author Francis Beare where he writes that spiritual circumcision involves cutting off the “corrupt personality as a whole – what [humanity] is apart from the regenerating grace of God.”[ii]  Apart from God, we die without hope.  Death is permanent and any existence beyond death is an eternity without God, without God’s love and the fellowship of God’s family.  God is God of the living.  Every moment is a moment closer to our death and a Godless eternity.

            However, we have changed – become something different, a new humanity, because of Christ.  Colossians 2:10 says we come to fullness in Him.  And then our verse, verse 11.  We put off the body of flesh – we are no longer of the humanity under the fall.  We no longer are destined for death.  The change is not seen with the eye, but the reality is unmistakable from God’s point of view.  We put off the flesh and we are raised with Christ – raised from the death (Col. 2:12).  To read and understand Colossians 2:11, especially that phrase, is to realize our basic nature has changed because of spiritual circumcision. 

Baptism depicts this.  We go under the water – buried.  We are dead in sin and dead things are buried.  However, then we rise.  In the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, by the power of God, we rise to new life.  As new creations, we have put off the body of flesh.  We rise as eternal beings.

A second way of understanding this phrase in Colossians 2:11 is described by Fuller Theological Seminary Professor Arthur Patzia.[iii] This approach was taken by the translators of the New Living Translation which renders the phrase – “Christ performed a spiritual circumcision—the cutting away of your sinful nature.” 

This way of thinking is similar to the notion of transformed human nature but is more specific.  As people born again in Christ, “put to death” fornication, impurity and whatever is of earth, of the flesh (3:5).  We are told to “get rid of” all sinful attitudes and actions (3:8); simple to say, but is it impossible to do?  As members of the new humanity which is destined for eternal life not death, we are freed from sin’s grasp.  This theme runs throughout Paul’s letters.  First Corinthians 15 is one example.

“Death has been swallowed up in victory.
⁵⁵ “Where, O death, is your victory?  Where, O death, is your sting?”

⁵⁶ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. ⁵⁷ But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Because of the power of God at work in us, we can actually stop sinning and live righteously.  Of course this does not come easily our consistently.  If it did, Paul would not have had to write letters like Corinthians and Colossians.  Even after we turn to Christ, even after Christ takes ups permanent residence in us, we still have the power to choose how we will think and act in life.  We are still vulnerable to temptation.  Choosing to sin is walking the way of death, yet we do it.  Paul urgently reminds us there is another way and the power to turn that way, the way of life, is in us because Christ is in us.  Putting off the flesh, Colossians 2:11, is us yielding to a painful but needed procedure – the work of Jesus cutting the sin out of our lives.  This requires of us that we sit still and stay focused on him.  Sitting still and staying focused comes about when we live spiritually disciplined lives, practicing prayer, confession, worship, and Bible reading.  In these and other ways, we are present for God so that the Spirit may work in us, pruning, and growing us. 

We have been discussing, this morning, three ways of understanding a phrase from Colossians 2:11 – “¹¹ in him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ.” We have understood ‘putting off the body of the flesh’ to mean the creation of a new humanity, one destined for life in Christ.  We have understood it to mean freedom from sin – a freedom made available by Jesus’ death and resurrection.  We are alive and we are free in Christ.  Because of this, we are part of something great – the Kingdom of God

This idea that in Christ we are part of something new is a third way of seeing the spiritual circumcision described in Colossians 2. This perspective comes from N.T. Wright.[iv]

He says, “The Colossians now belong first and foremost to the family of God, and not to their human families to which they formerly belonged.  ‘Body’ [from verse 11] can easily carry the connotation of a group of people.”  Putting off the body of the flesh in spiritual circumcision, which is marked by baptism, means cutting off old solidarities.   Our primarily loyalty then is to one another and to others who are in Christ.

The first way of seeing the phrase, a sense of new humanity, describes what we are.  We are born again, born to eternal life.  The second identifies our potential.  We are free in Christ, free from sin and free to not sin.  This third path of understanding builds on the first two by showing where we belong.

Perhaps this third facet of understanding is the most challenging to accept.  Are you your family’s name?  Are you your nationality?  What is it that defines you?  To whom do you belong?

Am I a Tennant?  Am I an American? 

Often this is not in conflict.  I can bring honor to my family name as I serve Jesus by loving my neighbor and in doing so I build up my community and help my country.  The three loyalties complement each other.  Just as often, the loyalties are divided.  In Colossians there was a Judaizing presence; mystery cult religions were around, religions that identified many gods.  There were local Roman authorities.  All these groups vying for loyalty challenged Christ-followers because often group loyalty demanded actions and words that ran against the gospel and the way of Jesus.  To make a stand as a part of the community of Christ followers was to draw the ire and scorn of the surrounding people.  But, we have put off the body of flesh, the human group loyalty.  That has been pruned.  We are connected to those who are in Christ.  Paul called on the Colossians to stay true to the Gospel even if it meant banding together and enduring persecution.

I saw this many years ago.  A friend of mine went to a family funeral, which was in another town.  When she got back, I asked about it and all she would say is it was a “Chinese funeral.”  That tells me nothing.  Millions of Chinese are Uyghurs.  Their funeral would be a Muslim funeral.  Many millions more are atheist.  What happens at an atheist funeral?  The fastest growing Christian nation on earth is China.  A Christian funeral would be very different than an atheist or a Muslim one. 

My friend said her relative had a Chinese funeral.  What she did not say was it was a Buddhist funeral.  She was living a bifurcated life.  She wanted to be in our church family.  She believed what the Bible says about Jesus.  She wanted to follow Christ.  But she wanted to do so without releasing her loyalty to her mostly Buddhist family.  She was not prepared for the pruning Jesus was doing in her life.  She did not want to put off the body of flesh to which she belonged. 

It is not easy.  There will be times in every believer’s life when our allegiance is tested.  Would I forsake the Tennants if following Christ required me to do so?  I hope so.  That is what Colossians 2 calls for.  When the moment comes, would you see yourself first and foremost as in Christ?

This does not have to mean abandoning those we love.  Jesus was not calling on my friend to forever leave behind her Buddhist relatives, people she deeply loved.  If she did that, she’d never be able to show Jesus to them.  Jesus loves them more than she does.  He wants them in His family and maybe she is the key.

We are part of the new humanity when we are part of Christ.  We destined for eternal life in the Kingdom.  We live among those who die daily because they have not yet received the life Jesus gives.  Our mission is to help them see Him.

We are freed from sin.  It has no power over us.  We live in a world soaked in sin.  While we are to not participate in the sin around us, we are to love those still enchained by sin’s shackles.  And we are, through humble, patient love, to help people see the way they can be freed from sin by Jesus.

We are connected to the body of Christ.  We no longer belong to our nation or to our families but to the Kingdom of God.  We still live in the world as it is, loving our families and living in them as a witness to Jesus’ love and goodness. 

Colossians 2:12 says we are raised with him.  Verse 13 – he has made us alive.  This is the new you and the new me – the new us; we are of the new heaven and earth, destined for resurrection, freed from sin, and made to worship Jesus as we draw others to him.  The before and after won’t be seen on a banner or advertisement.  It is seen in how we live, how we relate to people around us. 

Paul says we have received the Lord Jesus Christ; now, we live our lives in him (2:6).

AMEN

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[i] Wright (1986), The Tyndale New Testament Commentaries: Colossians and Philemon, Intervarsity Press, Nottingham.

[ii] Beare (1955),”The Epistle to the Colossians” exegesis section, The Interpreter’s Bible Vol 11, Abingdon Press, Nashville, p.196-7.

[iii] Patzia (1984), New International Bible Commentary, New Testament series, vol.10, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, MA, p.54-55.

[iv] Wright, p.109-113.