Sermon for the 5th Sunday after Pentecost

13 July 2025

Colossians 1:1-14, Psalm 25, Luke 10:25-37

   As we continue to see the effects and learn the news in the aftermath of last week’s storm and flooding, we can surely say this has been a challenging week of disruption, loss, heartbreak, and mourning. Times like this can bring questions of how to continue to trust in what we affirmed in Psalm 25, that God’s compassion and love are from everlasting. There may even be the potential for enemies like doubt, fear, anger, hopelessness to triumph. In order to continue to trust, to disarm such enemies, it is necessary to grow up spiritually, to continue on a path toward maturity in Christ, and that, Christian maturity, is a primary purpose for St. Paul’s Letter to the Colossians, the opening of which we hear today.

   Colossians, along with Galatians, Ephesians, and Philippians, are together known as Paul’s Prison Epistles, written during a time when he was imprisoned on account of the Gospel. Epaphras brought Paul a glowing report about how the Gospel was taking root in Colossae.In his circumstance as an inmate, Paul was unable to visit the young church, so writing to them was the next best way to encourage and guide them toward maturity in Christ. That purpose begins in the very opening of the letter. Paul displays a mature humility, writing that his apostleship is by the will of God, not any attribute or characteristic of his own. Paul knows whom he serves. He knows also that he does not serve in isolation, naming Timothy as a co-author of the letter. The Christian life is, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer titled one of his books, Life Together.^[1] God calls us to be a family, brothers and sisters, the body of Christ, sent into the world to enlarge the family. That call was bearing fruit in Colossae, with a growing number of people in it whom Paul could name as saints, holy ones, set aside for God’s purposes; brothers and sisters, each one part of God’s family, functioning members of the body of Christ.

   Paul greets the Colossians with two words that are foundational to Christian maturity, Grace and Peace. Grace is a gift from God, his favor bestowed, not on any merit of our own, but on the merits of Christ, the Crucified and Risen Son.^[2] Receiving God’s grace brings the Peace of knowing, in the midst of all circumstances, the blessings that come from being a member of the family of God.

   Twice Paul assures the Colossians of his prayers for them. Paul has a pastoral heart, and his prayers for others are further evidence of his maturity in Christ, for whose sake he is imprisoned, which could have the effect of turning his prayer, his attention, selfward. Paul, the Pharisee who once devoted himself to stamping out the Jesus movement, is now convinced that the God Israel is also the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in that conviction Paul has a new purpose, something larger than himself, sharing the Gospel, the Good News of the One whose name he once wanted forgotten in the world.  Paul prays in thanksgiving, eucharistically, for the Colossians because he has heard that an important triad of words is true among them. Those words are faith, love, and hope, a slightly different order from the more familiar presentation in 1st Corinthians 13 - faith, hope, and the greatest of these, love.

   Paul is thankful for their display of faith by making the good confession that Jesus is Lord. To us those may sound like just three little words, but in those times they were uttered at great risk. To say “Jesus is Lord” is also to say “Caesar is not Lord.” One of the tests of civic loyalty in those times was the slogan “Caesar is Lord” as an affirmation of loyalty to Roman rule. From early on, the followers of Jesus started to recognize a new loyalty - to Christ - and a new citizenship - in heaven.

   In Colossae, faith in Christ was blossoming into a community inspired by and living in the love of Christ, love best demonstrated by the cross, where Christ freely offered his own life to redeem ours.

   The new believers in Colossae were growing into that mature self-giving kind of love because of the Hope that had taken hold of them, born in the confession of faith, Jesus is Lord; and the reason for faith, God raised him from the dead, and from that confession and its reason comes faith’s Hope;

as he, Jesus, was raised, so shall we who abide in him, be.

   Because of the good report of Epaphras, Paul wants the Colossians to know that he prays for them to continue on the path toward full maturity, a path of the mind - being filled with godly knowledge and wisdom; and a path of the heart, that knowledge and wisdom spilling over into the will, the center of thoughts, words, and deeds, to live in a way that is pleasing to God, a way that reveals God to others and invites them into communion with God.

   Living such a life in the present age, filled as it is with changes and chances, with beauty and goodness, but also with evil, both human initiated and calamitous acts of nature, requires the strength of God’s power to be our strength, and that strength, God’s strength, is the strength of love - self-giving, noncoercive love. The Christian life requires, too, the patience to endure through the changes and chances, trusting that God can work, is at work, to bring a greater good through it all.

   A greater good, such as Paul sees through prison bars, as he trusts that his troubles will advance the cause of Christ. A greater good, as Jesus describes in his parable about a man of Judea who is beaten, robbed, left for dead; who is passed by by two of his own people; but who is rescued and brought to healing by the heart and hands of a most unlikely neighbor, a man of Samaria.

   We will hear more from Colossians in coming weeks, as Paul spirals down into the theme of Christian maturity, a state of being most worthy of our attention and aspiration, as we continue in the aftermath of the July 4th Flood, and whatever challenges we know not about that will follow; as we receive the gift of God’s grace, experience the peace of knowing we belong to Christ and are part of God’s family; as our prayers are more and more others-directed; as Eucharist, thanksgiving, becomes not just an hour on Sunday, but a way that sustains us each day; as we make the good confession of faith, Jesus is Lord; as we grow in love for one another, abounding in the hope of heaven; as the godly knowledge found in Scripture and the wisdom of great spiritual writings form our mind, and inspire our hearts to live lives that are pleasing to God, in any circumstance, without being washed away by loss, setback, or tragedy, but trusting always in God’s greater good.

Matthew Rowe+