Readings for the Day:
Sermon:
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I met a woman recently, we'll call her Rhonda, who was telling me a little bit about her church and some of the work they were doing there in service of others. She was especially hopeful about bringing in more children to her church.
Part of the reason for that is because she was hopeful the children could grow up to know the ways of the Lord. This was particularly important to her because of her own history with addiction and her work helping others who struggle from addiction as well.
Part of the reason for her hope in raising others in the faith is because she knows the truth taught in Anonymous communities, basically that we need a higher power. It's when we rely solely on ourselves that we fall. When we rely on God, then there's growth and healing that results in our lives.
That's what we hear in Colossians today. The power of God is what we need to make out lives full, because we cannot do so on our own.
Colossians warns against being made captive through "philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ." What these so-called 'philosophies of empty deceit and human tradition are can vary, as they do and have throughout the ages. These are anything that we as people have come up with that draws us away from the Truth we have in Christ Jesus.
In doing so, these purely human traditions make us captive. They draw us away from being in relationship with God and make us more centered on ourselves.
However, as Colossians tells us, Christ Jesus makes us whole, perhaps for the first time in our lives. Though we are dead to sin and our trespasses, Jesus raises us up. Though those things of the past that we are rightly un-proud of bring us down, Jesus helps pick us back up. Through Jesus Christ, we receive forgiveness for the first time. All that we have done has been laid aside, nailed on the cross, to afflict us no more.
In Christ Jesus, we also receive life, and life in a way that we did not have it before. Colossians speaks of Baptism, and we know from our recent Baptism here that in that act we die to sin and rise in new life in Jesus. This is precisely what Colossians is trying to say. As the letter says, we "were dead in trespasses" and yet "God made [us] alive together with [Christ Jesus]."Jesus gives us the gift of life, a gift that there is no way we could have had on our own.
There are so many so-called philosophies made of purely human hands and minds that may seem well meaning, but can actually be quite destructive. Ideas, such as the idea of the "True Self" make us feel that we can "find ourselves" buried deep inside on our own. This idea gives us the false hope that we have all the tools we need already inside us if we would only just use them.
These ideas can lead us into the false sense that all I need is me to bring me out of the mire and into life again. What we learn from communities such as Anonymous groups is that we can' too it on our own. We need help from a power beyond ourselves. That power to bring us out of death and despair into life and hope comes from Jesus Christ and the gift of His love and grace.
These ideas can potentially lead us away from a relationship with God, which is all we really need. That is why we must be careful when we hear new ideas. We must frame them within the context of the Gospel. We must ask, "Does this idea help bring me closer to the love of God and the gift of love and grace from our Lord Jesus Christ, or does it separate me from that relationship and make me reliant on myself alone?"
These ideas not only come from outside the church, but from within as well. At the end of Colossians we hear that matters of ritual are ultimately not what is important. As the letter reads "These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ." Our worship should be such that draws us closer to Christ Jesus, as the words we read in the Eucharistic Prayer do. We must always be mindful in the church about what we are doing and ask, "Does this draw me closer to or further away from God?"
Most of all, we are called to realize that we must ever be reliant on God, and God alone. No earthly power or person can stand in the way of our relationship with God, and anything that does, we need to step away from.
As we continue our service and as you leave here today, ask yourselves in all that you do, "does this draw me closer in relationship with God?" If the answer is yes, then continue on that path. If the answer is no, then step away from that thing and pray to God for something to replace it that can bring you closer to our Lord.