Holding It Together
“Holding It Together” by Pastor Rosanna McFadden
Good morning! This is a celebrative, and kinda crazy, season of the year in the church and maybe outside of the church, too. I don’t know what all plans you have for the Thanksgiving holiday later this week — maybe cooking, maybe traveling, maybe a quiet day at home. In the church we are preparing for Advent, the start of the Christian year, which begins next Sunday, November 30. But today we have this blow-out worship where we celebrate harvest and abundance and Thanksgiving, and also Christ’s coming at the end of time and his reign for eternity. The chancel and Gathering area are decked in orange and russet and gold, pumpkins and leaves and corn which are part of late autumn in Indiana. And sometime between now and November 30, it all has to go away and be re-set for Advent and Christmas. In addition to planning a big meal with our families, many of us are baking cookies, decorating cookies or dreaming of cookies and candy for the Cookie Candy Walk on December 6. Diane Lund is in the midst of all these activities — and many more outside of Creekside, and if you ask her about what the last week was like for her, it kind of exemplifies the current whirl of planning.
Fortunately for worship planning, and for our lives generally, Thanksgiving doesn’t have to be a one-and-done season or event. It turns out that thanksgiving pairs well with many things. Thanksgiving goes well with sweet things in our lives: the birth of a baby, new opportunities, time with people we love. Thanksgiving also goes well, surprisingly, with things which are not sweet: gratitude can be a comfort in grief and loss; thanksgiving can give us perspective and even joy during difficult times. Thanksgiving does not go well with sour or bitter — disdain, cynicism, or anger make it difficult to enjoy the experience of thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is great for everyday — it’s appropriate for ordinary consumption, but it’s also appropriate for special occasions, like . . . well, Thanksgiving. It turns out thanksgiving is good for anytime, and good for all of time.
Our reading from Colossians chapter 1 is some of the most lyrical and expansive description of Jesus Christ and his role in the cosmos and in time which we find in the entire Bible. It is also introduced through thanksgiving. I didn’t want Jan to have to read the entire first chapter of Colossians, but here is a sampling: from verse 3: In our prayers for you we always thank the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we have heard of your faith . . . and from verses 11 and 12: May you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father . . . Those opening greetings and verses are warm and gracious and thankful, and then the author launches into the main point of his letter with a memorable description of Jesus Christ: verses 15-19 claim: He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and earth were created. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And skipping to verse 19 and 20: For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of the cross.
There are some big claims going on here, claims about Jesus existing before the work of creation began; that he was before all things, and Christ is in all things, in him all things hold together, and that the fullness of God dwells in him. That is kind of a lot to take in. I mean, we’re talking about everything on earth and in heaven since before the beginning of time.
It should not be surprising, but it is kind of heartening in a strange way that this letter was written to deal with a controversy which had arisen in a gentile congregation. It is heartening — in a schadenfreude kind of way–to remember that church disputes are not a recent phenomenon. There is also some hope in thinking that maybe a couple hundred years from now Christians will look back and find wisdom in some of the ways we are grappling with today. You don’t have to be a historian or even a biblical scholar to figure out what the controversy was about; simply read Colossians, especially this powerful section, and imagine the opposite — or what it was written to refute.
This passage states, lyrically and expansively as I noted earlier, that Christ is in all things, through all things, and has reconciled himself to all things through the blood of the cross. The author is writing against claims that the work of Christ is not yet complete, and believers still have to do more — asceticism, special worship observances, etc — to gain wisdom and access to God. The author of Colossians is saying Christ has fully accomplished all that needs to be accomplished on earth and in heaven, and that God was and is and will be fully present in Jesus Christ. Through the blood of the cross we have been reconciled and can appear holy, blameless, and irreproachable before him, as long as we hold fast to the gospel. This passage is about individual believers and how the work of their salvation has already been accomplished by the work of Jesus on the cross. We could have been torn apart by sin and separated from God forever, but Jesus is holding it together.
Of course, these claims are also about way more than me and my relationship to Jesus: it is about the body of believers known as the church; Jesus is the head of that body. It is about all of creation; Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. Jesus is holding it all together. There is plenty of division and conflict to go around these days — maybe for you on an interpersonal level, but certainly in the church, in our nation, in wars between nations, and even in the destruction and escalation of extreme events in creation. How do we see Jesus holding it together when so many things seem to be falling apart?I believe at least part of the answer lies in giving thanks. The work of the cross was not our work, it was the work of Christ. If we don’t express our own gratitude for that work and what it means for our lives, how can we expect anyone else to acknowledge and give thanks with a grateful heart? I would remind you again about the letter to the Colossians and some of its context: the writer was addressing a controversy, disputing a teaching which he felt was incorrect, and perhaps even dangerous, about limiting the scope of who Jesus is and what he had accomplished. And yet, the opening of the letter is warm and gracious and gives thanks for the people to whom it is addressed. Being gracious to folks with whom you disagree on matters of faith may not seem like it will move the needle much on conflict in the Middle East or Ukraine, or even homeless or poverty in our own communities. But I believe that if we want the light of Jesus Christ to shine for the nations and to shine in our community that has to begin with allowing that light to shine in our lives. On this Last Sunday of the Christian year we proclaim Christ as king of time and eternity, ruler of the cosmos. Next Sunday we will be looking toward the arrival of a tiny baby. This is the same Christ we celebrate, who comes to us in intimate, personal ways, and who also sits on the throne of heaven. When we give thanks and share all the dimensions of who Jesus is, and we demonstrate that we are trying to follow Jesus in the little everyday stuff because we believe that He is the One who is holding together the big stuff and the really big stuff. When we believe this and share this and live this we are truly letting Jesus shine. We pray for the day that Christ is king of our lives, this land, and the world. Halleluia! Amen.