Have you ever gotten the sense that things are coming “unglued”?
Watching the news this week, one certainly gets that feeling -- with more violence and hatred at home and abroad: the attack in Nice, France, the military coup in Turkey. Ongoing violence, brutality and general distrust in our nation, between police and people of color. Protests and rallies and parades and more hatred. Campaigns and attack ads, and conventions and reactions…
Do you ever get the sense that things are coming unglued?
I know in my own life, there have been moments, when I thought I had a plan of action for dealing with a challenging situation, I thought I had a strategy, a simple-enough step-by-step process ready to go...like seams on a baseball, nicely tightened and stitched together was my blueprint...but then reality, then unexpected events, then unforeseen and even destructive conversations, then life happens...
Do you ever get the sense that things are coming unglued?
:) What about when you show up for worship -- you just came to hear a word from God, to share in the Meal of the faithful -- but you’re suddenly making a hike through the heat to a “foreign land”!
I think especially in times of grief and loss, we can all get the sense that things are coming unglued. [pause] “What am I supposed to do now that she’s gone?” “How am I going to go on without him?”
Do you ever get the sense that things are coming unglued?
Friends in Christ, we have a text today that describes Jesus himself as the glue -- the one who holds all things together.
And this is a different kind of text. This writing doesn’t look like Paul’s writing. This is like a mystical version of Paul. Colossians gives us a cosmic view of Christ. In Colossians we see Jesus there at the very beginning of creation (1), gluing all things together, constructing the world. [Katie art] ) In Colossians we also see (2) Jesus in his redemptive role, fixing what’s been broken. (We are familiar with that image of Christ). [nativity] Offering peace and reconciliation, as in other places in Scripture. And (3) we see Christ in you [Chicago painting], Christ holding us up, like superglue holds up a painting -- we see Christ holding us up for the world to see! Filling us with life and breath and togetherness...and hope.
There’s this great image in our passage today: “that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven.”
What a prayer for us in these times, where we can feel as though things are coming unglued: “that [we would] continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel…”
When the ugliness of death and loss and disorientation and discrimination and violence and pain and backstabbing...and the list goes on…
When the ugliness of sin pulls and rips at our world, know that even when it seems as though things are coming apart, even when we get the clear and present sense that things are coming unglued, sisters and brothers in Christ, know that God still holds us and this whole cosmos together in love. We have not been severed, we have not been destroyed, we need not give up, and shift away from hope!
God’s got us. God’s got the whole world. And this God -- of which and to whom we sing -- is Christ Jesus, himself! It is this Christ who holds us together and gives us our being. It is Christ who is through and through -- reverberating in every atom of our bodies and beyond the limits of every galaxy in the universe! All is not lost; in fact, all is found. And all is redeemed. And all is “filled to the utmost with God” (as Martin Luther would say). This Cosmic Christ is the glue!
It is in this Christ that we are held us all together. Eugene Peterson translates the last verse here, which talks about “warning people” -- he puts it like this: “We preach Christ, warning people not to add to the Message. We teach in a spirit of profound common sense so that we can bring each person to maturity. To be mature is to be basic. Christ! No more, no less.” [pause]
Sisters and brothers in Christ [that’s a profoundly common sense way to address and understand our selves us, btw], let’s get back to the basics: Christ, no more, no less. Christ, the one in whom we live and move and have our being. Christ, the one in whom we receive forgiveness of all our sin, comfort in all our sorrow, and challenge in all our complacency. Christ: the glue, the ground, the grace...that wraps the cosmos!
In this new space, in whatever space we find ourselves in, we don’t have to be afraid. We don’t have to be angry or guilty. We don’t have to be lost or lonely. We have everything that we need here…
[the Table] [the Bath] [the Book] [the Assembly]
This is enough. This is “the basics”. And Christ is glue. Thanks be to God! AMEN.
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