Andrew Torrance—Year C Proper 11

Anthony: Let’s pivot to our next pericope for the month. It is Colossians 1:15–28. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 11 and Ordinary Time, July 20.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, ¹⁶ 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. ¹⁷ He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸ 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. ¹⁹ For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, ²⁰ 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. ²¹ And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, ²² he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him, ²³ provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. I, Paul, became a minister of this gospel. ²⁴ I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. ²⁵ I became its minister according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, ²⁶ the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints. ²⁷ To them God chose to make known how great among the gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. ²⁸ It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

Glory hallelujah. This pericope is a breathtaking Christological tour-de-force.  Take it away. Andrew. I just want to give you an opportunity to riff on the text.

Andrew: Great, thank you. I know we’re not allowed to have favorite passages and scripture.

Anthony: Yes, you are. Let’s go for it.

Andrew: But this is definitely up there for me, and there’s just so much going on in this passage. And I could write books, if I had the time. But I just really want to focus in on something that I think is just really central in this passage that I think is so neglected by the church today. I think so often when Christians try to understand what creation is all about, how we understand the doctrine of creation, we often just turn to the early chapters of Genesis. And that sometimes means that we end up, in fact it does mean very often, that we end up with a vision of what creation is that neglects Jesus Christ. It is … what often ends up happening is, Jesus Christ ends up becoming this person that turns up later as kind of God’s plan B to make the world become good like it was in the beginning.

And what Colossians 1 tells us is that, no, from the very beginning, Jesus Christ was a part of the plan for creation. Now, God creates the world in, through, and for the person of Jesus Christ. We can’t understand what creation is apart from the conclusion for which God prepared it. The reason, the very reason that God created the world, was so that the Son could be born.

And what’s significant about that is that God, or at least the scripture, is revealing the fact that creation is to be identified with the person of Jesus Christ. And through him we are drawn to participate in the triune koinonia, the triune communion that shapes the life of God. We are not just created to exist in and of ourselves.

God doesn’t just create the world to live on its own terms, to leave it be, and then remove God’s self into the transcendence in which God lives. Now God is with us, not just through his presence, but in and through the very humanity of his Son, Jesus Christ. And it’s that to which God creates the world.

What is fundamental to understanding what creation is, is the person of Jesus Christ. God creates the world not to find its end in itself. And we often think about creation as having value in and of itself, as being an end in itself. But theology, Christian theology resists that. We’re not called to be ends in and of ourselves, but to be a creation that finds its end in God.

And the way in which we find our end in God is by God becoming one with creation, so that in him, in the very person of the Son according to his humanity, humanity would be, and not just humanity, but the whole creation would be at one with God. And so, it’s in this very person that creation finds fulfillment. And so, in order for creation to be all that it was created to be, it needs to come to know the way in which God has identified it with the person of the Son.

So, it is in and through him that we come to know what creation is all about. Again, when we just think about Genesis 1, it becomes very easy for us to just try to understand creation as something that God created that has its own kind of meaning and character that God has then left to itself.

But that’s just not the case. We have to always understand that the starting point for understanding creation, and the ending point, is this person of Jesus Christ.

Anthony: Yeah. Just thinking about the telos, the ending — we’re in the Christian calendar in the season of Eastertide and last week we were in John 20 where Mary of Magdala encounters the risen Lord. And she thought he was a gardener. And I just think there’s so much there. You don’t want to try to extrapolate too much, but this divine gardener shows up who is tending to this creation that he loves, that he’s bound to. And it gives us meaning and purpose in him, like you said.

And I’m so grateful for that because we do start in Genesis, and often, we don’t even start in Genesis 1, we start in Genesis 3 with the fall, right? And then, that becomes the overall or at least the starting point for how people present the gospel, instead of original belonging and the purpose of, meaning of, creation.

As we look through this text, Andrew — and there is so much here, so it’s hard to pick and choose what to talk about — but I do, I did notice we know that Paul frequently talks about being “in Christ”, but it’s rare that we find the phrasing “Christ in you”, which we see in verse 27. Can you tell us more about this hope of glory?

Andrew: Yeah.

Anthony: Great.

Andrew: So, I think to understand this verse, we need to understand it with reference to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And Jesus Christ sends the Spirit into the world to be someone who represents the reality of Jesus Christ. And the Spirit dwells within us, and through the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ dwells within us.

And so, yeah, when the Spirit is working our lives, there’s ways in which Christ really is within us. Christ is present in the life of believers, and as we grow in faith, he becomes more and more someone who’s at the very heart of the Christians’ lives, animating and empowering us to reflect Christ in the world.

So, by being transformed by the Spirit within, so that Christ is really present within us, our lives can then come to reflect the reality of Jesus Christ and the world. Our lives become mobilized. They become witnesses to this mysterious glory of Jesus Christ, who’s revealed to the world. And so, what’s really significant here is that Christ is revealed through us.

Not just us by ourselves, but us through the empowering work of the Holy Spirit. And that means that we have a key responsibility in this world to be people that are constantly bearing witness to that reality. And without us, without the church doing this work, there’s so many people that don’t get the opportunity to receive this reality in their lives, because God doesn’t do things without us. He might take priority, but God is very much creating a ministry that includes us and is using us to, to yeah, to spread the good news.

Anthony: Yeah. And then, part of that is this reconciliation that we have in Christ. He was reconciling all things to the Father and I remind us of what Karl Barth wrote, “Christ accomplishes the reality of our reconciliation with God, not its possibility.” And I think that’s an important word, and in the way that the gospel, quote unquote, is often presented to the masses.