Colossians 1:11-20
“Hope springs eternal in the human breast” wrote the poet Alexander Pope.
- To an aspiring U.S. citizen…no hope sings more compellingly than the hope of a green card.
- Few things in life appear more attractive than the vision of themselves…some day in the future…taking the oath of US citizenship.
It’s a story that was played out in the lives of most of our ancestors.
- Most of the masses of immigrants processed through Ellis Island arrived in this country with no papers.
- They carried with them little more than a battered suitcase or a sack slung over their back.
- And not much money.
- Many had yet to learn English.
- But still they came…so eager to have their citizenship transferred from one country to another.
Paul…in Colossians…speaks of another sort of transfer of citizenship:
- “God has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son…in whom we have redemption…the forgiveness of sins.”
We have been transferred into God’s kingdom.
- We continue to dwell here making our mark on this world for good…the best we know how.
- But our true citizenship is elsewhere.
- Paul says: “we are in…but not of the world.”
Advent is just around the corner…and it reminds us how much we Christians are out of sync with the rest of the world.
- Out of sync because our citizenship is elsewhere!
- When the rest of society is engaged in a frantic…materialistic rush toward December 25th.
- That huge secular holiday called Christmas.
- We will be engaged in Advent observances.
- A time of preparation for the Nativity of Our Lord.
- When the shopping-mall sound systems are crooning: “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
- We will be singing “O Come…O Come…Emmanuel.”
- And we will still be singing Christmas Carols for weeks after the holiday.
- Even as secular society is dispiritedly waiting in line at the department store returns department.
Now…please…do not misunderstand me about the secular calendar of the Christmas season…
- Which in present day starts up several weeks before Thanksgiving.
- What I want to say is that our Lord is just as involved in the Spirit of Christmas…the church calendar…
- Jesus is the reason for the season…
- As he is in the Christmas Spirit…the secular calendar.
- God came into the world in the form of a baby…the incarnation.
- God so loved the world!
- There is no judgement here.
But what I also want to say is this:
- On New Year’s Day…the secular year begins with a hangover and ends twelve months later with overindulgence.
- The Christian year…on the other hand…begins with the bright hope of Advent.
- And ends with the all-encompassing reign of Christ…Christ The King.
- A much more uplifting vision…wouldn’t you say?
Around the turn of the twentieth century…the Jansen family of Norway…father and mother and two young children…had booked passage on a steamship to America.
- They had used up all their savings on the tickets.
- Sympathetic neighbors had given them bread and cheese for the journey.
- Which they took with them into their accommodations in steerage…
- The humblest part of that mighty ocean liner…the Stavanger.
The parents calculated they had enough cheese and bread to last the ten-day journey.
- They were grateful for the simple food they had and figured they would find much better fare in America…once they got established.
About six days into the trip…the couple’s young son…Ole…let it be known that he could not look at another cheese sandwich.
- His father took pity on him.
- He gave the boy a few coins to go to the ship’s store and buy an apple.
Well…two hours went by.
- Ole did not return.
- His parents grew worried.
- Jansen set out to find his missing son.
- Up and up he climbed…up each successive ladder out of steerage.
- With each flight of stairs…the surroundings grew more luxurious.
- Jansen felt more and more out of place.
Finally…after a very long time…he found Ole…in the grand dining room.
- There he was…seated at a table…surrounded by a veritable smorgasbord of food.
- Everything good you could possibly imagine.
“Ole…Ole” the father earnestly scolded:
- “What have you done? I can’t pay for all this food. They’ll arrest me for sure…and send us all back home!”
“It’s all right…Father” Ole replied…as he gave back the coins.
- “None of this food costs a thing.
- They told me it’s included in the price of our ticket.
- We could have been eating like this the whole trip!”
How very much like us is the Jansen family…when it comes to our spirituality!
- Christ says we have been rescued from the power of darkness and transferred into another country…another Kingdom.
- Yet we live as though we do not believe it!
- We sit on the edge of our bunks down in steerage.
- Gloomily munching on week-old cheese sandwiches.
- When all the while a rich banquet awaits…up on the main deck.
We look around at our situation and we see so much scarcity.
- When in reality…we have been blessed with more riches than we can imagine.
- Many of us fear that we are about to slip into poverty.
- Viewing ourselves as members of the rapidly shrinking middle class.
- A detached observer would find either insight very hard to believe…
- From one glance at our Thanksgiving tables this coming week.
“In Christ” writes Paul to the Colossians… “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.”
- The Greek word for fullness…pleroma…ple-roma…was often used…in ancient times…to refer to merchant ships heavily laden with cargo.
- It’s the same word Mark uses as Jesus feeds the five thousand.
- When the miracle was all over…Mark tells us…they had 12 baskets of leftover fragments of bread and fish.
- Those baskets were full: pleroma.
- And Jesus…as Christ The King…reigns with a pleroma of grace.
- “And the Word was made flesh…and dwelt among us…and we beheld his glory…the glory as of the only begotten of the Father…full of grace and truth” (John 1).
- The proper response to all this fullness is to give thanks.