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 himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.  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 himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

 

I want to do something a little bit different this morning—something perhaps a bit unfair.  I’m going to ask you to really think this morning.  I don’t want to imply that you normally don’t think.  It’s just that there are times when it is easy to sit back and let me do the thinking for you in a sermon.  And then there are times when you have work just as hard as I do to think through something.  This is one of those times.  What makes it a bit unfair is that I’m asking you to do this the Sunday after Thanksgiving when everyone is a bit groggy from too much turkey, too many libations, overly close contact with family, and so many activities. 

This morning I want to take you through this passage bit by bit, but I need you to try to stay with me if it gets a bit complicated.  This is perhaps one of the most profound passages in the Bible, but it is so densely packed that very few Christians grasp fully what it is saying and teaching.  It is like so many passages in Paul’s letters.  When we hear stories or readings from the gospels, they are much easier to understand because they naturally take us with them. Stories and simple teachings always are easier to grasp.  But Paul often delves into deep, deep matters;  matters that are earth-shaking.  But in doing so he often expects us to do as much work as he does in order to understand.  So this morning I want to go over this short passage and open it up to you. 

Before I can do that I have to first help you to understand Paul’s times so that you can gain some insight as to why Paul wrote what he wrote.  He wasn’t writing to us today.  He was addressing problems that existed in the 1st century A.D., problems that are sort of with us now, but not in the way they were in his day.  Paul was writing in response to a growing problem in early Christianity.  There was a philosophy spreading throughout the Roman Empire, a philosophy started in the Greek areas where the church at Colossae was.  It was a philosophy called “Gnosticism,” a name that arose out of the Greek word, “gnowsko,” or “knowledge.”  It was a philosophy suggesting that only secret knowledge of spiritual matters could save us.  And this philosophy was slowly gaining momentum in the Colossian church. 

Gnosticism was built on a set of beliefs that, at their core, taught that the spiritual realm is essentially good, and that all of the material realm is essentially evil.   They believed that there was a hierarchy of realms, of which the material realm was the most base and corrupt.  The Spiritual realm, where God existed, had absolutely no contact with the material realm.  In fact, God, being of the spiritual realm, would have been too pure to have any contact at all with our evil, material plane.  They also believed that the material world was created by demonic, evil powers because God, being spirit, would never create anything out of evil matter.  While they believed that Jesus, being of a more spiritual realm (but not God’s spirit realm), came to this world, they also believed that Jesus, who was spirit, only appeared to be real.  In their belief system, Jesus never became a physical presence, but was a spiritual phantom who left no footprints on the ground, and really wasn’t crucified.  He only appeared to be crucified.  As a result, his appearances after his death were the result of him having a phantom presence again before ascending back to the pure, spiritual realm.  For the Gnostics, becoming good meant adhering to a discipline of denying material needs while learning special spiritual knowledge designed to save them.  Thus, they starved, beat, and mortified their bodies while learning secret philosophical and theological knowledge that was only for a chosen few.  They believed that this secret knowledge would purify their minds and allow their spirits escape the material realm. 

Gnosticism was considered to be a heresy by the early church (and still is today), but that doesn’t mean that Gnostic trends don’t creep into modern Christianity.  For instance, can you think of church movements that focused on denying, abusing, or starving the body?  During the middle ages, many monasteries promoted this idea.  The Puritans also tended toward the Gnostic when they would proclaim everything in God’s creation to be corrupt because of sin.  Christianity believes that sin corrupts, but that God’s creation is essentially good.  Also, you see a promotion of secret knowledge among Christians who promote the idea that you have to “believe” or “learn” the right things to be saved.  Christianity teaches that grace saves us, and it is a gift, not that special knowledge saves us. 

So, in this passage, Paul begins the process of addressing the Gnostics.  He begins by saying that Jesus “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation;... he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.”  What is he saying here?  The first sentence is somewhat hard to grasp only because there are some translation problems.  For instance, it says that Jesus is the “image” of the invisible God.  When we read this, we think of image in the ways we think of images today.  We think of an image as a picture, a video clip, a painting, that isn’t quite real, but that represents what’s real.  That’s not what Paul is saying.  He uses the Greek word “eikon” for “image.”  We recognize that word as “icon.”  Still, when we think of icons, we think of the beautiful ornate paintings that the Eastern Orthodox Christians use for prayer.  But eikon actually refers to something deeper.  An eikon is something that reveals and makes real what is divine but unseen.  An icon is something that helps us see beyond reality into the divine.  It helps us to see into God’s realm and to catch glimpses of the purely spiritual.  By saying that Jesus is the eikon of the invisible God, he is saying that through Jesus we see the true nature of God.  Jesus reveals what God is like.  We can speculate all we want on the nature of God, but in Jesus we see this nature in true light.  Let me show you what I mean.

Think of words that describe Jesus:  Love?  Because Jesus loved, it showed that God loves.  Forgiveness?  Because Jesus forgave, it showed that God forgives.  Kindness?  Because Jesus was kind, it shows that God is kind.  Any nature we ascribe to Jesus can be ascribed to God.  And anything we can’t ascribe to Jesus we can’t ascribe to God.  For instance, is God a God of wrath?  Only in the sense that Jesus was wrathful.  But Jesus was only wrathful when it came to injustice and to people who were abusing their position as priests and teachers of the law.  In the same way, Jesus was never wrathful to the poor, the hurting, or to common people.  Jesus’ life reveals that God is not wrathful, except towards those who abuse their religious positions for power and gain. 

Let’s look at the second part of that sentence:  Jesus “is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.”  What is this saying?  When we see the word “firstborn,” we think that it refers to Jesus being born before all of us.  That’s not what it means.   In ancient, Middle Eastern culture, the term firstborn was more a term of honor than just describing who was born first.  Think about those cultures.  Who inherits all the property, titles, and authority when a father died?  It was the firstborn.  The first son not only inherited everything, but when he became an adult in the father’s household, he had the authority of the father in the household.  If he told a servant to do something, it was as good as the father telling the servant to do something.  The will of the father and the firstborn were the same.   In the same way, Jesus was firstborn. That term is an honorary that signifies less about the fact htat he was born first, and more that he had the authority of the Father so that if he said something it was the same as the Father saying something. 

So, in the beginning of this passage, Paul is telling the Colossians and us that Jesus is not a phantom spirit as the Gnostics taught.  Jesus was real and physical.  And he was the real physical manifestation of the God who we cannot see.  What we see in Jesus is God.  Jesus is the incarnation of God in the universe, and as we come to know Jesus, we come to know God because God’s ways have been revealed in Jesus’ acts.  Also, it is saying that Jesus wasn’t created later by God, but is God, and that Jesus comes before all of creation.  This leads us to the next part of the passage.

Paul goes on to say that “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 himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”  This stuff is profound in a way that most of us don’t even realize.  What is Paul saying here? 

He is saying that Jesus is the process and means of creation.  Paul is trying to take us out of our small-minded understanding of Christ in order to catch a glimpse of how encompassing Christ is.  He is saying that everything we see around us is permeated with Christ’s presence.  Jesus is in all things.  All things have been created through him and for him.  When we look at the stars, there is Christ.  When we look at a beautiful flower, there is Christ.  When we look at everything in life, there is Christ.  He is telling the Gnostics and us that God is not distant from this world, inhabiting some sort of spirit realm.  God is in Christ, and in Christ God is everywhere.  God in Christ not only is physically in the physical realm.  God in Christ is the ongoing creative power in creation.  The Father is God the Creator, and Creation is God in Christ.  Paul is slamming away at the Gnostics with a clear message:  because Christ is the creative power of the world, God not only created everything, but God created everything to be good, and because Christ is in everything, everything is good despite the corrupting power of sin.  To us Paul is saying, “Look around you.  Christ is everywhere.” 

Paul is expressing an idea that goes way beyond how we normally think of Jesus.  When we think of Jesus, how do we normally think of him?  We think of him as a man who lived over 2000 years ago.  We think of this person, and we wonder: was he a great man, God incarnate, or something else?  Paul is taking us way beyond this concept.  He is saying that while Jesus, the man, was the incarnation of Christ, Christ pre-existed the man and all creation.  Christ was the power of the Big Bang.  “All things came in to being through him,” as John said in the beginning of his gospel.  We want to limit Christ to this world and to a particular time.  Paul is saying that Jesus is everywhere and everything in creation, and if we look we can find Christ in others and in ourselves.  There is no place that God in Christ isn’t. 

Let me give you a more practical example of what I mean.  I’ve told the story before of a man named George Ritchie, who, when he was twenty years old, died and was clinically dead for over nine minutes.  He had an experience in death in which he came face to face with Jesus, who then led him through an experience of hell, the future, and then of heaven.  He wrote about these experiences in his book, Return from Tomorrow (which you can find on our website if you click onto our new virtual bookstore).  This experience changed his life.  He realized his life was a calling to care for others in love no matter what. 

One of the remarkable things about his story is that he tells of how a year later he ended up being a medic in the follow-up operation to D-Day during World War II.  At one point he was tending to the blown apart leg of a sergeant major.  He noticed that even though the sergeant major was in great pain, he still focused his attention on Ritchie, finding out where he was from, how he was doing.  He then noticed over the next few weeks that the sergeant major cared for the other soldiers around him, even though he was hurt much worse than most of them.  Over time Ritchie noticed something strange about the man.  Every time he looked at the sergeant major, his face looked so familiar.  But Ritchie couldn’t quite place him.  Where had he seen him before?  After a week or so he finally figured it out.  The sergeant major seemed to have the same face as Jesus, even though the faces were completely different. 

Months later Ritchie was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp to help the victims recover.  He noticed one particular man, a Jew, who seemed to be in better health than the others, and who spent all his time helping the others.  He discovered that this man had been in the camp longer than all the others, yet there was also something familiar about him.  Again, Ritchie realized that this man, too, had the face of Jesus.  Over time Ritchie discovered something else that was fascinating.  If he chose to look with spiritual eyes, he could see the face of Jesus in people all around him: the concentration camp victims, the other soldiers and officers, the townspeople, and even in the German prisoners.  He saw Jesus everywhere.  He realized that Christ was incarnated in everyone and everything, and if he chose to look for Jesus in the faces all around him, he would see Jesus.  What he discovered is very similar to something Mother Teresa used to say:  that she saw the face of Jesus in the poor.  She wasn’t just saying this.  She meant it.  She saw Jesus in the poor because she also understood what Paul was saying:  Christ is everywhere. 

Ultimately Paul was describing a spiritual and physical reality:  if we seek Christ, we can see Christ in all things.  Look at the stars.  There’s Christ.  Look at a sunset or sunrise.  There’s Christ.  Look in each other.  There’s Christ.  Look in yourself, or, as Paul says in 1st Corinthians, “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?”  In this part of the passage, Paul has basically emphasized two points.  First, Jesus is the power of creation in the universe and in heaven.  Through Christ, God created everything.  Second, this means that Christ is not only in everything, but Christ is God’s power that we experience in everything and everyone. 

Paul then says that Jesus “is the head of the body, the church.”  Again, this is profound stuff.  Paul is saying that Jesus not only is in all of creation, but that he is especially in the church.  He’s not in the church because he likes the church better than all of creation, but because we, in the church, have chosen to recognize Christ’s presence here above all places.  When we gather as a church, we are physically Christ’s body together.  And when we act as a church, either collectively or individually, we are incarnating Christ in our actions.  But there’s more.  Who is in charge of the church?  Some people would say it is the pastor, but that’s not true.  In fact, in churches where the pastor is truly in charge, it keeps Christ out.  In other churches there are members who try to be in charge of the church.  Again, when they do that, their actions bar the door to Christ.  Paul is saying that Christ is the head of the church, which means that we have one major responsibility in the church.  We are called to prayerfully seek and do whatever Christ’s will is.  In churches where the pastor is in charge, the church tends to do what the pastor wants, not Christ.  And in churches where one or more members are in charge, the church does what they want, not what Christ wants.  To truly be the church, we have to have a passion for seeking and doing God’s will.  When we are truly Christian, we live in Christ, and Christ lives us, and we are able to see Christ in others, and ourselves.  And as a church, we work to make sure that Christ is incarnated fully into our midst as we seek to do God’s will. 

As I said, all of this is profound stuff. There is way more here than meets the eye.  Paul is giving us a lot to think about in this short, little passage.  He is saying that Christ is the power of creation, that his power and presence are ongoing, that if we choose to look we can see Christ everywhere, and together as the church we incarnate Christ to the world.  Not a bad message for a Sunday morning. 

Amen.