Rev. David P. Baak Colossians 1:11-20 Reign of Christ Sunday November 24, 2013 Scripture Introduction Today is the Reign of Christ or Christ the King Sunday a major point in the liturgical year, specifically related to Christ so the color of our vestments is white, as it is for Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, and Ascension Day. It is also the time of our national Thanksgiving. This is a celebrative week: We celebrate a harvest festival, the culmination of fall before the winter sets in, and we are at the culmination of the gospel story. Today we focus on the theology of and give thanks for the eternal reign of the risen and ascended Christ, the human Jesus, divine and eternal, before we move into Advent and focus on the theology of God incarnate ( God with us ), the divine Jesus, eternal and also human. There is great joy and celebration all around. There is also heavy theology and deep mystery that is difficult to comprehend. How do we get our minds around it all? And what difference does it make for our lives each day? I want to suggest that our annual, national Thanksgiving Day is a metaphor for thanksgiving as a daily practice of our faith for our time. Both can be responses to the message of this, the last Sunday of the liturgical year the Reign of Christ Sunday. The scripture reading from the first chapter of Colossians brings these themes together. Scripture: Colossians 1:9-23 9 we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. 11 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, while joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. 13 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. 15 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. * * * Because sermons are prepared with an emphasis on verbal presentation, the written accounts may occasionally stray from proper grammar and punctuation.
We all know a little about the story of the first Thanksgiving Day of the Pilgrims in 1621, after that first very difficult year and after they had a good harvest. We usually think of that day in terms of a harvest festival. But it is more likely that they were following a tradition started by the radical Puritans in England some fifty years earlier. The Puritans wanted to ban all holidays, including Christmas and Easter, and to replace them with special days of Fasting or of Thanksgiving depending on the circumstances. These were special, declared occasions, held during the week, outside the Sunday service. So there is somewhat of a myth around a three-day harvest feast of thanksgiving in 1621. The first Thanksgiving Day was very likely a special day set aside for giving thanks for God s goodness and was most probably a very religious observance. Annual harvest festivals didn t become common in the colonies until the late 1660s. We also have a long tradition of presidential Thanksgiving Day proclamations that have transformed this initially religious observance so that it has become part of our secular, civic culture sometimes we call it our civic religion. (And there is a developmental relationship here with the interfaith service we will hold tomorrow at Temple Emanuel it is a secular service held in a religious way by faith groups.) The proclamations began with George Washington in 1789 and have been issued by every president since. (The latest will be released by President Obama, probably this Tuesday on schedule, like other government reports.) The annual proclamation is a civic call for Thanksgiving, even though many of them contain some very religious language. In 1863, it was Abraham Lincoln whose proclamation formalized giving thanks when he set Thanksgiving Day on the fourth Thursday of November for the whole country. He put in place an annual, national, conscious practice of thanksgiving. The text of that proclamation is very interesting. It begins: The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. 1 Only then does he go on, In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, but he spends very little time on the war. He goes through a whole litany of blessings that are ordinary, everyday, livelihood activities and experiences. Then he says: I do therefore invite my fellow citizens to set apart and observe a day of Thanksgiving. 2 This was 1863, two and half years into a civil war. This was the year he issued the highly controversial Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves in the south. 1 http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/thanks.htm 2 Ibid. Westminster Presbyterian Church, Grand Rapids, MI Page 2 of 7 November 24, 2013
This was the year of the battle at Gettysburg where nearly ten thousand soldiers were killed and another forty thousand injured--in three days. This is one of those circumstances within which I would think it would be very difficult to give thanks. Lincoln concludes the proclamation by urging that, along with giving thanks, the people pray for the widows, orphans, mourners and sufferers in the war and to fervently implore God to heal the wounds of the nation and to establish peace, harmony, tranquility and Union. 3 The author of Colossians prays that you may be strong with all the strength that comes from [God s] glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to [God], who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light (v. 11) so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God (v. 10). Both of these emphasize thanksgiving in the middle of and really in spite of whatever difficult circumstances may be ours. And both emphasize behavior practices that lead to growth and a deepening of faith. National Thanksgiving may emphasize the civic and secular part of our lives, but it is a regular reminder, an annual day set apart regardless of what we do with it, or how we celebrate it, or how we take time off. By definition, it is a practice; a behavior, in itself; a pause to remember, and to give thanks. And surely the apostle also is talking about behavior giving thanks through worthy lives and bearing fruit in every good work. The core of this passage, in verses 15-20, may well be an early Christian hymn, or maybe a confession, that people memorized as a statement of faith, perhaps with the name In Praise of Christ. Perhaps it went like this: [Christ] who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him were created all things in heaven and on earth things visible and invisible all things have been created through [Christ] and for him and he himself is before all things, and all things hold together in him and he himself is the head of the body who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, for in [Christ] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through [Christ] to reconcile all things 3 Ibid. Westminster Presbyterian Church, Grand Rapids, MI Page 3 of 7 November 24, 2013
making peace through [Christ] whether things on earth or things in heaven. 4 The first verse is about Christ and creation; the idea is restated in the second verse and adds that everything is sustained by Christ; then the third verse is about resurrection and reconciliation, through Christ, of everything. But this is not just about Jesus. It is also about what happens because of who Jesus is. This is about process more than it is about a destination called the Kingdom. The Reign of Christ takes the power of Christ s spirit and applies it to our lives. This is not something that has to be finished in order to be valuable. The reign of Christ describes how we live our lives in hope, in joy, attempting to see through the lens of Christ, to find the good; to practice; to try to do mercy and justice and reconciliation. Today every day. There s great comfort and motivation in thinking this way. For the apostle, this is the center of our faith. This is the teaching for the people of the congregation of Colossae. And, for the author, it is the reason for God s reconciling all things [vv. 21-23]: [Y]ou who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, God has now reconciled, through Christ s death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before God provided you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith. So, here s a theological summary: this passage is intended to be a reminder of what God has done. God is the one who has reconciled all things (including all of us) and this, then, is an invitation to us to give thanks joyfully because we have been forgiven for the evil deeds and, in the eternal reign of Christ, we are presented as blameless and irreproachable. That s an amazing word: we are irreproachable before God. And, as we say every Sunday: Believe this good news of the gospel. But that, still, is all theory; it is good for our reflection and growth, but the goal is for this to make a difference in our daily lives. We praise God for the cosmic, universal, and eternal reality of God s love reconciling the world to God s self, but as Chandler has suggested more than once, Praise begins with God and there is a difference between praise and thanksgiving. He said last week: Thanks and praise start in different places. Thanks begins with us. There is a kind of reciprocity in thanks. It s because we have received something, some grace or gift from God [for which] we thank God. Thank you for what we have received. 5 And thanksgiving is a practice that fits into the other practices of our faith. The way to become confident and competent at something is to do it, and then to do it again, and do it again. The range of thanksgiving activity is infinite from playing in a brass quintet to giving blood; from learning Spanish to visiting someone in the hospital; from baking cookies to starting a conversation with someone next to 4 Andrew T. Lincoln, Colossians, in The New Interpreters Bible, Vol. 11 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000), pp. 602-603. 5 Chandler Stokes, Praise, a sermon on Psalm 8 and Matthew 11:28-30, preached at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Grand Rapids, MI, November 17, 2013. Westminster Presbyterian Church, Grand Rapids, MI Page 4 of 7 November 24, 2013
you that you do not know. Thanksgiving is about every area of our life and about all of our behaviors, including the behavior of helping each other get better at our own behavior. Thanksgiving, indeed, is a way of life that takes expression because we are part of God s reconciling the world to God s self. The genius of our creation is that we are people of both head and heart of intellect and emotion; of understanding and of behavior; of reconciliation and of thanksgiving. And this is all about thankful behavior regardless of what s going on around us. That s why the model of a national Thanksgiving is instructive. Our national condition the circumstances of our lives is sometimes difficult to endure: from the less than sublime to the desperate; from Black Friday, which now starts at midnight on Wednesday, to Christmas decorations that skip Thanksgiving altogether; to political leadership that is often frustrating, at best; to the disparity of wealth in our country and the anxiety that such a disparity produces for so many people; to personal and natural disasters that disrupt and destroy lives and livelihood. The circumstances of our lives are sometimes difficult to endure, to say nothing about doing so while joyfully giving thanks. But we are invited to do so indeed, we are called to do so in our present national situation that serves as a model a metaphor for our personal lives, not unlike Lincoln s call to the people in 1863 to give thanks in the middle of a civil war. This whole year has been a commemoration of the 150 th anniversary of that year, 1863, and the Emancipation Proclamation, and so many other events of the Civil War. You will have noticed how many movies, television programs, and other events have picked up the theme. A couple of weeks ago I saw the movie Twelve Years a Slave based on the true story of Solomon Northup, a black professional musician in Syracuse, New York, who in 1841 was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the plantations of the Louisiana bayous. It is a devastating story of violence, inhumanity, and cruelty and courageous survival. In 1853 Solomon was freed and reunited with his family; he wrote a book, on which the movie is based. He became an activist for abolition and his personal acts of thanksgiving helped bring about the public support that led to the national emancipation of slaves ten years later. I am struck by Solomon s language. Time and again, in his book, as he reflects on his awful experience, he practices his faith he repeats the language of his belief. In one instance, when he has run through a swamp that is full of alligators and water moccasins and has managed to elude one particularly cruel slave master who was pursuing him with dogs, he writes: I was desolate, but thankful What would become of me? Who would befriend me? Whither should I fly? Oh God! Thou who gavest me life, and implanted in my bosom the love of life who filled it with emotions such as other men, thy creatures, have, do not forsake me. 6 One of the most powerful lines in the movie is when Solomon says, in anguish: I don t just want to survive; I want to live. The reign of Christ is about living. It is the eternal, reconciled life given by the cosmic Christ that is lifted up in the lofty language of the hymn in this Scripture passage. It is the life that prompts our behavioral response called thanksgiving. It is the life that stimulates individual practices of gratitude sometimes 6 Sue Eakin, ed., The Autobiography of Solomon Northup: Twelve Years a Slave enhanced paperback edition (Eakin Films and Publishing, Inc., 2013), p. 78. Westminster Presbyterian Church, Grand Rapids, MI Page 5 of 7 November 24, 2013
prompted by reminders, including annual days of national thanksgiving that give us the strength to live through each day and through every circumstance we encounter. That is what thanksgiving is it starts with us and moves outside ourselves. Surely it is God-directed, but it is more than praise. Giving thanks is tangible and affects those around us leading lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to God as you bear fruit in every good work enduring everything with patience while joyfully giving thanks. In the name of God: Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Westminster Presbyterian Church, Grand Rapids, MI Page 6 of 7 November 24, 2013
Proclamation of Thanksgiving Washington, D.C., October 3, 1863 By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battlefield; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union. In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth. By the President: Abraham Lincoln William H. Seward, Secretary of State 7 7 http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/thanks.htm Westminster Presbyterian Church, Grand Rapids, MI Page 7 of 7 November 24, 2013