Though we continue within the same stream of thought as yesterday, Paul's message becomes a bit more expanded as we enter Chapter two of this letter to the Collosians.
For I want you to know how much I am struggling for you, and for those in Laodicea, and for all how have not seen me face to face. I want their hearts to be encouraged and united in love, so that they may have all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God's mystery, that is, Christ himself, in wisdom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I am saying this so that no one may deceive you with plausible arguments. For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit and I rejoice to see your morale and the firmness of your faith in Christ. (2:1-5)
In a world like ours, we must be willing to go a long way to bring this mystery of God - Christ himself - to those around us. Why? It is easy to dismiss it. Grace and the expansive love of God is easy to turn into a limited message...and the limited message - the half truth (which is no truth at all) must be resisted by the unveiling of the mystery of how God's love redeems all people despite our ability to keep on rejecting it. It does not take much wisdom at all to live and operate the world operates. In fact, we have all heard any number of people make very good argument for a limited grace that brings in a limited and exclusive reign...that is not the Reign of God. And yet, since this limited grace is just like the life of the world, it is no mystery and people therefore cling to it quite easily. Paul is struggling because he is offering a word of life that is no plausible - it is radical and outlandish. It is the grace of God fully extended - fully handed over - fully available. This will grab some and other (maybe even most) will not let it take hold. The life that we are offered in Christ doesn't taste good when our tastes are stuck on what we have been fed all along by a world that cannot live by grace and will not participate in the realm of forgiveness and reconciliation that comes when the mystery of God's love is revealed in simple human terms...day to day.
Connection: Today we will all taste the stuff of this world that goes over so well with everyone. It will sound right...it will make good sense. But...hold off and then hold it up alongside the graciousness of our God as we see it in Jesus. That may be one way to see just how hard it is to persist with this word of love and hope.
Be for us, O God, the light that shines to open up the way of your gracious Reign as it begins, even now, to break in around us. It is so easy to fall in line with the world, and yet, we know that we are always being called out into a new way of living right in the middle of the ordinary and routine. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment