Colossians 1:11-20 Dr. David Cozad Blacksburg Presbyterian Church November 24, 2019

“All in All” Luke 23:33-38; Colossians 1:11-20 Dr. David Cozad Blacksburg Presbyterian Church November 24, 2019 It’s amazing what you can see this time of year, as the air clears and the leaves come off the trees. Like the far end of my daily walk on the Deerfield trail, where, since my arrival in late spring, I thought I was walking in deep woods —only to discover now that I am passing within a stone’s throw of large houses on the ridge above Tom’s Creek, and open fields are just a few yards through the trees. Or stepping out the front door of our apartment in Charlotte, and suddenly being face-to- face with the uptown skyline —when until three weeks ago, it was an eight-block streetcar ride to where those buildings first begin to come into view. Or this time a year ago, discovering that the Montreat Conference Center (which I had known intimately for well over 50 years) looks entirely different without its leafy mantle—such that the entire layout now seems to be configured differently. But these occurrences are just annual reminders that there may be other things that happen to you or me only a few times in a lifetime. They, too, sneak up on you, and cause your world suddenly to come into different focus. Maybe a line in a Mary Oliver poem, or a scene in some off-Broadway play. And then for a few days, people and events appear different than before--until your old way of seeing gradually takes over again. But what if it’s something that reorients the entire way that your spiritual world is put together? Something that causes you to realize, say, that your God is too small—or even more startling, that the Jesus you have always believed in turns out to be a lot bigger than you ever imagined? Richard Rohr begins his latest book, The Universal Christ, by quoting from an early 20th century vision that was experienced by the British mystic and poet, Caryll Houselander. It happened while she was riding the underground in London—something that she had done a thousand times before, packed in with sitters and strap-hangers, all on their way home from work, when suddenly, she saw the face of Christ, not just in one of them but all of them, living and dying in them, rejoicing and sorrowing in them. And what she discovered was a reverence for even the worst among them, because she saw that even in them, Christ himself was suffering and waiting to be resurrected. (The Universal Christ, 2019, pp.1-2) Now, in reading that, I was immediately reminded of another 20th century vision by another mystic author, the Trappist monk Thomas Merton. Merton wrote of being at the corner of Fourth and Walnut in downtown Louisville, KY one spring day in 1958, when suddenly he realized the face of Christ was shining in every person in the crowds around him, such that even though he knew none of them, he felt a divine kinship with each of them. (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, 1959.) In both of those cases, the vision faded in a day or two. But their lives were never the same. Now, those two visions may speak to you, or they may sound just too over the top -- something only preachers or mystics or spiritual wannabes could get into. But if that’s the case, you may want to listen again to this reading from Colossians. Because it is one of only two places in the New Testament where an entirely different picture of Christ breaks through. One that shifts the way you see the world. “He is the image of the invisible God”—yes, we’re familiar with that one. But how about, “the firstborn of all creation,” or “in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers.” And then, he is “before all things,” and “in him all things hang together.” Or, he is the “firstborn from the dead,” and “through him, God was pleased to reconcile “all things, whether on earth or in heaven.” Now, I don’t know about you, but this one passage contains all sorts of stuff that goes way beyond the Jesus that I grew up hearing about. Yes, that Jesus was one who died on the cross for our sins, who rose from the dead and showed the way to eternal life, and who invites, challenges, judges, forgives. All are important things. But this Jesus is in charge of the entire cosmos! According to the author of Colossians, not only the healing of your sick aunt, but tensions between global superpower nation-states, or explorations into deep space. Not only will he judge them in the end, but even now, whether they recognize it or not, he may be working through them to get it right. And not only do we celebrate the beauty of nature as a symbol of his love; it turns out, apparently, that even care of the earth and the future of rising sea levels are solidly within his dominion! Who knew? Now, in asking that, I’m not trying to be sarcastic. It’s just that before we rhapsodize any further about the all-powerful and cosmically in-control Christ, we also should remember that in today’s gospel reading for Christ the King Sunday, we just heard that much more familiar account of the kingship of Christ being something that the religious and political authorities sarcastically inscribed on his cross as they executed him. And you don’t have to look far to see how that is playing out today. For example, at Thursday’s meeting of Presbytery of the Peaks, we began with a stirring singing of “Crown Him With Many Crowns,” followed by a litany in which each response was, “Christ will reign forever and ever.” And then we proceeded, in the business meeting, to close one small church, dismiss another to a more conservative Presbyterian denomination, and pass a plan for the reorganization of presbytery that represents the need to do more with less resources. Now I hasten to say that the reorganization plan was as creative and resourceful as anything I have seen any presbytery do. It was based on long and careful listening, and wise provision for emerging realities. But what are we to make of the apparent disconnect between the current challenges to church life, and the declarations of Colossians 1? Were we just whistling in the dark when we sang that hymn and repeated that litany? Especially when we come up for air on this special Sunday each year, and look around, and see global tensions unabated and corruption abounding, in a world that appears to be heading south as fast as it can go. And in particular, what does it mean that many of those who speak most loudly and confidently about Christ appear to be more complicit in the world as it is, rather than the world that could be? Well, one place to look for an answer is in the wise counsel of Rabbi Michael Lerner. It may sound ironic to look to a leader of the Jewish faith when we are trying to understand this portrait of Christ that is proffered in this New Testament letter. But Lerner’s advice to Jews and Christians alike is that we need to distinguish between two pictures of God that can be found in the Hebrew scriptures that are so much a part of our inheritance. One he calls the “Right Hand of God.” This understanding of God “… sees the universe as a fundamentally scary place filled with evil forces.” “In this view God is the avenger, the big man in heaven who can be invoked to … dominate and control …” those evil forces “… before they can dominate and control us.” But the problem, he says, is that such power oriented religion actually contributes to what he calls the “despiritualization” of our life together. By making everything black or white, good or evil, reward or punishment, they make our spiritual realm feel small and cramped. On the other hand, says Lerner, these Hebrew scriptures also pay eloquent tribute to the “Left Hand of God.” It is portrayed as “the loving, kind, and generous energy in the universe” that seeks the common good. And that common good is something much larger than our current Culture Wars or self- help “formulas for successful living” can envision. Which may be what the writer of Colossians has in mind when asserting that in Christ, we are transferred from the power of darkness to the kingdom of God’s beloved son. And it may be precisely what G.K. Chesterton meant when he once wrote, “Your religion is not the church that you belong to, but the cosmos that you inhabit [emphasis mine].” (quoted in Rohr, The Universal Christ, p. 6) So what would it mean for you and me to inhabit the cosmos that the author of this ancient New Testament letter is pointing to? I am struck, for instance, by the fact that seven times in six verses, the word “all” is used. It appears to be pointing to something much bigger than the spiritual space most of us normally inhabit. So what would it mean to see Jesus not just as the one who is in charge of getting us into heaven, but as one who also is quietly and invisibly steering the global balance of power toward a more just and enduring peace—and inviting us to join him? What would it be like for Jesus to be not just the one to whom we pray when that spot appears on the MRI, but also the one who is guiding medical researchers to a fuller understanding of why such spots occur in the human body-- and inviting us to incorporate reverence for the natural world and the realm of science into our worship? So back to that earlier mention of Fr.

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