Inheritance

Colossians 1:9-20

January 6, 2019 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Today is Epiphany, and for most of you, I bet you’re thinking, “Huh?” On the Christian calendar, January 6 is the holiday called Epiphany. The Twelve Days of Christmas (yes, that’s a real thing, not just a goofy song) have passed, and now we’re into a new season. Some cultures recognize this as the visit of the Magi or Wise Men, and in others, this is the day when you open your presents for Christmas. (Can you imagine arriving at Christmas and then telling your kids they have to wait twelve more days to open their gifts?) “Epiphany” is a word that means a revealing or a sudden and striking realization. I once heard a mentor of mine translate “epiphany” as “Aha!” It’s a moment of understanding, and so the season of Epiphany goes along with the presentation of Jesus in the Temple, with the old man’s Simeon’s declaration that he had seen the Lord’s Messiah or Savior, with the idea that Jesus has now been revealed to the world for who he is. So, Happy Epiphany, and may you realize more and more in this new year who Jesus is and what he wants to do in your life.

That’s really the essence of Paul’s prayer for the Colossians in the passage we read this morning. Now, of course, Paul meant this prayer for a specific church in a specific time and place, but the essence of the prayer transcends that time and place and can give shape to our new year as well. We’re probably at the point in the year, six days in, where many if not most of our New Year’s resolutions have already been broken. The most commonly made resolutions for 2018 were to lose weight, exercise more (it seems that those two probably go together) and save money. And a lot of folks make great effort in the first week or so to follow through. But most of us will not make it out of the first month before we have gone back to the way we have always done things. That’s true with those resolutions, and it’s true in our life of faith as well. Christmas always inspires great changes. We’re going to read our Bibles more, pray more, go to church more…and so on. But, like that gym membership, it isn’t long before those promises are forgotten and we’re back to our “normal” way of doing things. Paul has that concern for his friends in Colossae—not because of any New Year’s resolutions that they have made but because they were surrounded by a culture that wasn’t inclined to help their new Christian commitment. He knew how tempting it would be for them to turn back to their old way of life, and since he couldn’t be there in person, he sent this letter with a prayer for their perseverance. In this letter, there are three things Paul prays for the Colossians that can also guide us as individuals and as a church into the New Year.

The first thing Paul prays for them and God hopes for us is this: “to fill you with the knowledge of his will…” (1:9). He prays we will know the will of God. That’s a tall order, so think about it this way. Cathy and I are at the stage of life that some of you have passed and others just hope you can get to someday: we are nearing the “empty nest” phase, a time of life where your children really have become their own persons and are mostly on their own. Our son, Christopher, started a new job back in November, a job he really loves, so he has moved back up north and is working on finding a more permanent place to live in Michigan. Rachel is really coming into her own and finding her calling working in medicine, both in her classes and in her work at Regional Hospital. She’s more and more confident that this is where God has called her. For both of our kids, we want them to become their own persons, and we have loved watching them develop personalities and interests and careers that are uniquely “them.” I’m proud of then, and especially so when I see certain things growing in them. You never stop having dreams and desires for your kids. There are already things they do or say that remind me of myself or of Cathy—most of those things are good, and some scare me! But most of all, Cathy and I both want to see both of our kids becoming more like Jesus, loving him better and serving him well. As the Apostle John once wrote, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth” (3 John 4).

Paul echoes that prayer. He prays that the Colossians would inherit what we might call a “Christian instinct,” a desire to be more like God by knowing his will. Paul prayer is that discerning the will of their heavenly father would be the priority for these new children of God (cf. Wright, Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters, pg. 146). The problem with such a prayer today is that we want such discernment quickly. We want everything to happen quickly, because that’s the way we are programmed. But few things happen instantly in the spiritual world. God works on his own timetable. I had been here six months before I received my first criticism that I wasn’t changing things fast enough, and now with this particular change in the Sunday morning schedule, I’m told I’m changing things too quickly. But that’s, as Pastor Rick says, life on planet Earth! The reality is this: discerning the will of God does not happen instantly or even in a 5-minute prayer session. It takes patience, and walking with God day by day. Dr. Maxie Dunnam puts it this way: “The will of God is often enshrouded in darkness, clouded in ambiguity; silence as well as speaking marks His communication with us. In prayer we struggle to discern God’s will. We talk. We listen. We ponder scripture. We reflect. We wait. And graciously the response comes. Not according to our timetable, nor in the form and mode of our design, but in God’s timing and in His way” (Communicator’s Commentary: Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, pg. 339). Paul prays we will inherit discernment of the will of God.

The second thing Paul prays for the Colossians is that they will live out that will, that they will “live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way” (1:10). We might call the first prayer “Christian instinct” and this second prayer “Christian behavior.” Now, we’re not talking about (and I don’t believe Paul is talking about) just adhering to a list of rules. In too many times and places, the Christian faith has been reduced to a list of do’s and don’ts—mostly don’ts, it seems! When we reduce faith to a list, we can check things off the list and never actually be changed. We can do the stuff and not know the savior. Jesus is far more interested in us being conformed to his image, in our being made like him, than he is in our simply checking things off a list. His desire is for us to learn to love others, to learn to love everyone the way he did, rather than make this faith about certain things we do and other things we don’t. Jesus himself said the greatest commandment is to love God and to other others (cf. Matthew 22:34-40). Though that may sound like two commands, it’s really two sides of one. We can’t love God without loving others; the Apostle John puts it quite bluntly this way: “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen” (1 John 4:20). And we love God by loving others. The way we please God is by loving God and loving those around us—it’s a lifestyle. It’s a choice to love and live a life worthy, a life pleasing to God. A life bigger than a list.

Then, the third prayer is this: that you would be “bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God…so that you may have great endurance and patience” (1:10-11). Here at the start of the year, let me remind you again of our mission: “making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” If the world is going to be transformed—and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t think it needs to be, though we may disagree about what kind of transformation needs to happen—but if the world is going to be transformed as God desires it to be, it’s going to take more than just you and me living quiet, private Christian lives in our little huddles. We have to be following God’s will, living our lives and making a difference in every area of life.

We call that “Christian discipleship,” and as I’ve shared in the past few weeks, that is our focus for this New Year. Last year, our major focus was on hospitality, on creating an even more welcoming environment, particularly for those who don’t yet know Christ, because the church exists primarily for the sake of those who are on the outside. That’s hard for some of us to swallow or wrap our heads around, because we want every institution, including the church, to exist for us, for me, for our group and no more. But that’s not why Jesus established the church. Let me remind you of our calling as followers of Jesus, of the last command he gave to his followers: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20). He didn’t say, “Sit in your pews and wait for me to come back.” He calls us to be busy growing in our faith and sharing the good news, helping others find and follow him. As Ed Stetzer is fond of saying, we’re called to always “show and share the love of Jesus.”

So in prayer, as I was lifting up Mount Pleasant and asking God about our future, the phrase for 2019 that came my mind and heart, as clear as day, was this: we’re to be engaged in activities that cause us to grow “deeper in discipleship and desperate in outreach.” Deeper in discipleship and desperate in outreach. That’s why we’ve made the changes we’ve made. The four classes that we’re offering right now (each of which, by the way, will be offered at the other time later in the year) are only part of a strategy to help each of us grow in our faith and understanding, to help us discern God’s will in various areas of life. As a staff, we prayerfully asked: what are the basics we need to explore to be able to live as a Christian in these days? And then we began to put to together ways for each of us to grow in these areas: parenting, finances, marriage, studying the Scriptures, taking on “hot topics,” dating, family life, leadership and so on. We’ll cycle through these various small groups, so maybe there’s not something that grabs you this time around (though I’d be surprised if there’s not something that applies to your life right now), but there will be. We’ve tried to make it as easy as possible for everyone, to make Sunday a sort of “one-stop-shop” for discipleship. But, folks, all of this learning is not just so you can know more. It’s meant to equip you to live more faithfully as a disciple of Jesus Christ, to make a difference in the world you live in.

Mary (not her real name) had spent all of her life in church, soaking in good Biblical sermons and lessons, but it wasn’t until she signed up for an intensive Bible study that she began to think that there was more. First, she wrestled somewhat with what it meant to have her character shaped by Jesus, and then she began looking for what God was calling her to do in response to all that God had done for her. One evening, we were discussing God’s special concern for the poor and the hungry, and she spoke up. “So what are we going to do about this? I mean, we’re talking about those who are hungry and I have kids in my classroom who are hungry and can’t focus because of it.” As we talked, someone else shared about a church they knew of in another community that had provided backpacks for kids to take home on the weekends that contained healthy meals and snacks. Out of that discussion, Mary took on a new mission: to make a difference and transform the kids in her classroom. That grew into a mission to transform the whole school system. Something similar happened here in Vigo County Schools several years ago, and I’m particularly happy to be part of a task force put together by Dr. Haworth, our current school superintendent, to revamp the backpack program and make it sustainable for many years to come. I don’t know what your calling in 2019 will be, but I know in the depths of my soul that as we pursue those callings, a year from now, Mount Pleasant will be more than ever deeper in discipleship and desperate in outreach. More than ever, this world needs believers who claim their inheritance and live out their calling to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. The world needs you.

There’s one more thing to notice in this prayer, which will lead us into the rest of our worship service. Paul urges the Colossians to give “joyful thanks” to God because God has allowed us to be part of his kingdom (1:12). A sign that we are beginning to live a healthy Christian life, that we are progressing toward maturity, is a life of gratitude (cf. Wright 147-148). We do what we do not out of obligation, but with gratitude for all that God has done, is doing and will continue to do. Paul points out several reasons we have to be thankful: Jesus has “rescued” us, he has given us a home in his kingdom, he has “redeemed” us and he has forgiven us (1:13-14). Each of those phrases could be a sermon in itself, but suffice it to say that Jesus has done for us what we could not do for ourselves. That’s what we come to the table to remember this morning. Here, at the start of the New Year, we participate in this odd practice called communion where a small piece of bread and a bit of grape juice is meant to help us draw closer to Jesus. If you’ve grown up taking communion, it might not seem that odd, but trust me when I say that to folks who don’t know church traditions, this whole thing is kind of strange. And yet, in the bread and the cup we remember what Jesus did on the cross, how he showed us that love looks like giving your life for the sake of another (cf. John 15:13), and how somehow on that cross he enabled forgiveness for all of humanity. We don’t understand it all, but we trust and believe that what Jesus did there enables us to live forever in God’s presence, and that act alone should fill us with gratitude enough to change the world.

So, this morning, as people who are committed to be deeper in discipleship and desperate in outreach, let’s come to the table in gratitude, giving all that we are to Jesus’ mission in 2019 and beyond.

+++++++

This morning, as our benediction, I’m going to ask us to pray together a covenant prayer in the Wesleyan tradition. This prayer, or one similar to it, is used around the world by Christians in the Wesleyan tradition at the start of the New Year to re-commit ourselves to our mission. We’ve done this for the last four years, sometimes in this shortened version and other times in a longer form, but this morning, as followers of Jesus, let’s pray this shorter version as we prepare to go to change the world.

I am no longer my own, but thine.

Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.

Put me to doing, put me to suffering.

Let me be employed for thee, or laid aside for thee,

Exalted for thee or brought low by thee.

Let me be full, let me empty.

Let me have all things, let me have nothing.

I freely and heartily yield all things

To thy pleasure and disposal.

And now, O glorious and blessed God,

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

Thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.

And the covenant which I have made on earth,

Let it be ratified in heaven.

Amen.

(UMH 607)