Body Building

I’m going to begin today with a word. It’s a very simple word. A very familiar word. It’s not a 5-syllable $50 word. It’s not a word I pulled out of a theology book in seminary. It’s not Greek or Latin or Hebrew or Swahili. It’s just a word but it is one of those words that can make all the difference in the world.


When you’re lazy, you don’t use this word. When you don’t want to think about the consequences of the decisions you make, this is not a word you want to hear. When you think something doesn’t really matter, you don’t use this word. When you just want to be entertained, you don’t want this word.


But if you think your choices make a difference…if you think there is something more to the Christian life than just the entry point…if you think there is something for us to do after we sing, “Here I am, Lord”…if you think there is some walk to go along with the talk…if you think that there may be something more to this journey of faith than a few steps across the room and a few tears at the altar rail…if you don’t think that Jesus rose so you could pose…if you believe that standing on the promises is more than sitting on the premises…if you want…desire…need…thirst for…hunger for…yearn for a life worth living in a church worthy of its Savior…have I got a word for you. The word is…wait for it…THEREFORE.


Therefore. Scientists use it to explain their scientific proofs. “Given all of these complex calculations, THEREFORE e=mc2.” Politicians use it to explain their resolutions. “Whereas King George is a tyrant, THEREFORE be it resolved that we are independent.” Children use it to explain their behavior. “Since I am hungry, THEREFORE I am going to take a cookie from the cookie jar.” And Christians use it…well, how do they use it?


“As you THEREFORE have received Christ Jesus the Lord…” That’s the beginning of the reading from Colossians that we had for today. Do you recognize it? As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, THEREFORE there are consequences. There are things that flow from that. There are QEDs. There are implications. There are subsequent provisions. There is more.


Shane Claiborne, a Christian activist who lives in Philadelphia but who grew up in East Tennessee says that he grew up in a Christian tradition that encouraged him to give his life to Jesus but did very little to guide him in what to do next. I have given my life to Jesus, THEREFORE I am going to do…what? Claiborne, in the book The Irresistible Revolution says, “I must have gotten born again six or eight times and it was great every time. (I highly recommend it.)…I came to realize that preachers were telling me to lay my life at the foot of the cross, but they weren’t giving me anything to pick up. A lot of us were hearing ‘don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t sleep around,’ and naturally started asking, ‘Okay, that was pretty much my life, so what do I do now?’” [The Irresistible Revolution, [Grand Rapids:Zondervan, 2006], p.38]


Shane Claiborne needed a THEREFORE. So he went to live with the poor and the homeless and to love them. We need a THEREFORE. Don’t get me wrong. We need the initial life-altering, head-turning, jaw-dropping, mind-blowing, sin-releasing, redemption-receiving, falling-in-love-with-Jesus thing, too. We need that because otherwise we’ll always have those totally-depressing, low-down, mind-messing, working at the car wash blues. We’ll always be trying to do it on our own power, under our own steam…never knowing what it means to be loved despite ourselves and just for ourselves. But we need a THEREFORE.


“As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, THEREFORE continue to live your lives in him…See that no one takes you captive…” Back in the day, what did it mean to be taken captive? What is this letter to the Colossians trying to say? Were there slave traders going through? Were they being arrested? No, the thing that was going to make them captive was a competing vision of the world. There were mystery religions around them. There were esoteric philosophies. There were powers at work in the world. And they wanted to claim the Christians. They wanted to seduce them into believing lies about themselves. They wanted them to forget who they were.


Let me tell you, you can do a lot of analysis on what these competing philosophies and religions looked like. You can break down the clues in the text and you can figure out what sorts of groups were active in first century Greece. We could get into Jewish splinter groups and Gnostic branches of Platonism. But you don’t need to do all that to understand that the same sorts of forces that were lying to the Christians of Colossae in 60 AD are still lying to the Christians of Franktown in 2010 AD.


Those groups were telling them that their bodies didn’t matter, therefore they could be treated in extreme ways. Those groups said that their identity was not in Christ, that his death and resurrection were irrelevant, that what really mattered was what they ate and how they ate it. What mattered was which festival they turned up at and how they greeted the new moon. Jesus wasn’t it. Something else was.


To which this letter says, “No.” The whole fullness of God dwells bodily in Christ. There is no other thing or person or spirit above him. What a crazy thing to say! Why be so radical? Why speak in such a radical, exclusive way? Isn’t that going to set us apart from other people? Isn’t that going to be a barrier?


“In him you were circumcised.” The writer goes back to the old Jewish ritual that was the sign of the covenant in the flesh. Now we are told that the mark in the flesh, the mark that frees us was Jesus’ shedding of his flesh on the cross.


“You were buried with him in baptism and you were also raised with him through faith in God.” Everyone of those new Christians in Colossae went through the waters of baptism and it gave them a new identity. “You were dead in sin…and God made you alive together with Christ.”


All of this focus on Jesus. Wasn’t it going to make them stick out? Wasn’t it going to make them look funny? Wasn’t it going to make them feel uncomfortable about living like their neighbors? Well, yeah!


THEREFORE don’t let anyone condemn you. THEREFORE don’t believe that your worth or your identity or your self-esteem is tied up with the values of the world because the world can’t offer you any security of position or worth. THEREFORE you are part of the body of Christ and hold fast to the head.


I’m getting ready to go teach in Dallas. I’m teaching local pastors who are serving churches. So every year I try to assign books that will be challenging but will help them see how talk about God is really talk about what we do as people who love God. This year I gave them Shane Claiborne’s book to read. But every year I assign a book called Resident Aliens by Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon. I assign it because it challenges preachers and lay people to think about what we do as though we are a colony in a strange new land.


We are hearing a lot of talk these days about aliens in our immigration debate today – who’s supposed to be here. Who’s not. But it’s helpful for Christians to remember that they are supposed to be aliens in this land. If it was ever true that Christians could depend on the culture around us to support the lifestyle Jesus commands (and I don’t think it ever was) we certainly can’t today. The blue laws that kept Sunday a distinctive day of the week are gone. People can’t comprehend why we do the things we do…why we would say that Jesus has turned our world upside down in such a way that it changes what we do and how we live in the world. The world is even losing its ability to understand and appreciate Christian practices like giving, like compassion, like humility, like working for justice, like self-denial, like fasting –when is the last time you saw any of these promoted in popular culture?


So what does it take to be resident aliens – people who love the world so much that they won’t facilitate its lies? People who love the world so much that they will embrace the strange truth and strange practices of Jesus? People who live fully in this world, but whose home is never fully here?


We have been talking a lot in these last few weeks about our baptismal covenant. We have talked about the special responsibility we have to be a community that cares for our children and youth and who commit to “surrounding these persons” with care and with nurturing them in the faith. Well, now it’s time for the THEREFORE. Since Jesus is the reason we’re here…since we trust that it’s not our merit that matters, but God working in us…since we are bound to each other as one body…since God is counting on us to be Christ’s body on earth…since all these things…THEREFORE we are going to be a body. We are going to act in ways that draw us closer to one another and closer to God. We are going to pass on our faith as it was passed on to us.


Because if we don’t, who shall we be? A people who have given our verbal commitment to Christ but who never give Jesus our bodies. THEREFORE be the people…God’s people. Thanks be to God.


Colossians 2:6-19 [NRSV]
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority.


In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.


Therefore do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths. These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows with a growth that is from God.