The Tie that Binds
A Sermon by the Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, The Feast of Christ the King, November 20th, 2022.
May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power…He is the image of the invisible God… in him all things hold together. He us the head of the body, the Church…For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. Colossians 1: 11-20
Today is Christ the King Sunday. It is the last Sunday of the church year. Next Sunday is the beginning of Advent and a new church year. So, today is a little like New Year’s Eve, a day when we give thanks for the past year and look forward to the next. And we do that in the light of Christ.
In the letter to the Colossians, the writer is trying to encourage the new Christian community in Colossae, a town in modern day Turkey. He says, “May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from Christ’s glorious power.” He is writing to shore up their faith in light of the threat of Gnosticism. There was a heavy gnostic influence in Colossae. The gnostics held that the material world was evil and that salvation came only for people gaining “gnosis”, special spiritual knowledge reserved for the few. Gnostics sought out spiritual experiences that helped them escape an evil world and separate them in a special league of their own, apart and above ordinary people. Some of them also believed that Jesus was sent by God, but that he did not actually share God’s nature. And you can see why, given their belief that the material world and the spiritual world were separate and distinct, the material world being evil and the spiritual world being good. They could not countenance that a good and perfect God would come into a corrupt world in bodily form. The whole point of the spiritual life for them was to escape their body and seek heavenly experiences, so why would God choose to become part of human life?
But belief in the Incarnation, that God comes to us in the flesh, for all people, not just a select few, is the tie that binds Christians together. Next Sunday we begin the season of Advent, and for four weeks we anticipate that very thing, the incredible mystery and blessing of God coming to us in bodily form. God coming to us as a baby, a little bundle of human flesh, who cried and nursed from his mother’s breast, and needed his first century diapers changed. All very bodily stuff. And why? To bless and sanctify this life. To show us that there is one, integrated reality. To show us that this life is holy. To help us to see that God wants to be with us in the most intimate way, that God IS with us in the most intimate way. “For Christ is the image of the invisible God…in him all things hold together..in him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” This life matters. This world matters. Because Jesus became part of it and holds all things together.
Jesus cares about each and every one of us. When we feel like everything is falling apart in our lives, he is there, giving us strength. When someone we love has died and the weight of grief feels too heavy to bear, Jesus is there, helping us to get through. When we feel anxious about the turmoil in our public life, he is with us. When we have doubts, when we struggle with our faith, Jesus is there.
One of the exquisite beauties of our Episcopal understanding of Christianity is that questions are good. When we have questions, it means we are really engaging. Sometimes we can click along in our faith for years, and then something happens that really breaks us open and helps us to go deeper. When someone we love dies, we start thinking a lot more deeply about eternal life. When a relationship ends, and our life is shaken to its core, we ask “where is God in this mess?” But that is exactly the point. God is with us in the mess, all the mess. God is with us in the brokenness, gathering up the pieces, holding us together. God is with us in the joy, the joy of a new child, the beauty of life, adding texture and depth and meaning to every experience. Making us strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power.
We are called to ask questions, to probe deeply, and to engage wholeheartedly with the world around us, the world that Jesus came to live in, in the flesh. A few years ago, I heard the late Sam Lloyd, while he was the Dean of the National Cathedral, give a sermon where he talked about the fact that the Episcopal Church is porous at the edges and very firm at the center. I think what he meant by that is that we allow people to come into an experience of faith gradually. You can stay on the perimeter as long as you need to. A lot of things happen that cause us to struggle with faith. And little by little we invite you to come closer to that firm center. Jesus is there, holding all of us together, people new to an intentional faith journey and people who know at the core of their being that Christ is the axis around whom their whole life rotates.
And that is the beauty of Saint George’s. We are all on the journey together. We practice our faith, no matter how much we feel like we’ve got, we practice our faith in community, in the flesh. We take care of each other. We have fun together. We worship together. We pray together. And our life here flows out into the world that Jesus came to be a part of. We do not to live for ourselves alone, as a community isolated and insolated from the world. We care for people beyond our doors. We are God’s agents, working to relieve suffering and transform unjust structures. The writer of Colossians is talking about the internal and the external life of the church. That we are all part of one integrated whole. That Jesus’ birth, in the flesh, his ministry, in the flesh, his death and bodily resurrection, had a powerful effect on the entire created order of the universe and on each one of us.
May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power…He is the image of the invisible God… in him all things hold together. He us the head of the body, the Church…For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. Colossians 1: 11-20