Notes from a Sojourn
August 9, 2020
“Christ in you, the hope of glory”
A Sermon for St. Lawrence Sunday (Memorial)
“Here,” Lawrence said, “this is the Church’s wealth!”
Lawrence gestured toward a gathering of his companions which he had assembled before the magistrate. They were a diverse group: young and old, women and men, each of them differently abled and disabled. Some of the people with him were mentally ill, others suffered memory loss and confusion. Many were poor, some of them estranged from their families. But they all knew each other. They were friends of Lawrence, a man they had adopted as their brother. A man who taught them Jesus – mostly with his help, his presence among them, his prayers with them.
But the magistrate was not amused. He was livid.
During a renewed persecution of the Church in Rome during the middle of the third century, deacon Lawrence had been granted three days bail to gather the Church’s coins, silverware, and other liquidable hardware to hand over to his captors. But when Lawrence returned, his pockets were empty. There was no mule hauling a precious cargo behind him. Instead, he walked in with his friends and daringly said, “This,” these, we, “are the Church’s wealth.”
And Lawrence was executed immediately.
What value did Lawrence see in his companions that his persecutors did not? What gave him the courage to stand empty handed in front of his persecutors and say what he said?
Lawrence wasn’t cracking a joke. He wasn’t playing games – not with his life. He was testifying to the truth – the truth that Jesus had taught him, the truth by which he lived his own life. That truth is this: we are the treasures of the Church. Our lives, modest, fragile, broken, and personal, radiating the light of God’s presence, revealing the reach of God’s healing power, and teaching the ways of God’s wisdom.
It is fitting that today’s scripture reading from Paul’s letter to the Colossians bears this same message.
Paul writes,
I became [the Church’s] servant according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory…
Christ in you, the hope of glory.
It’s beautiful, but what does it mean? And why is Paul saying it?
The Christians in Colossae to whom Paul is writing this letter, are undergoing a crisis of confidence in their own faith. The Christian who founded of their community, Epaphras, is no longer with them. In fact, he’s been imprisoned, like Paul is. And, in Epaphras’ absence, different teachers have taken his place, and they’re telling the Colossian Christians that they need to take their faith to the “next level.” And, as many religious teachers claim, they know exactly what everyone needs to do to get there.
We can’t tell exactly what these teachers were teaching, but by listening to Paul’s letter we can infer that they were preaching about unique prayer experiences and stricter living conditions that would enhance their religious “maturity”. And all this teaching was beginning to make the Colossians doubt that the good news about Jesus that Epaphras had first taught them - the liberating word of hope and life that had brought them into community in the first place - wasn’t enough to keep them going. That their patience in loving one another as Jesus loved them was a little “ho-hum” compared to higher forms of religious experience.
And, you guessed it, this makes Paul mad. And, it makes Paul pick up his quill and share, yet again, the mystery of God’s ways in Jesus and in us.
In nearly every letter he writes, Paul explains how it is that the fullness of the glory of God – the blinding light of God’s truth, the overwhelming power of God’s being, the inscrutable wisdom of God’s ways – was pleased to dwell in Jesus Christ.
And the scandalous paradox that Paul keeps preaching as good news is this:
We might think that the glory of God dwelling in Jesus might have made him a superhuman of some kind: a strong man, powerful, rich, sensual. A demi-god. But that’s not Jesus at all. He’s an obscure man from Nazareth of Galilee. A man without a home, who speaks about faith and God, of repentance and forgiveness. Who keeps close company with a collection of disreputable down-and-outs, who antagonizes the proud and dumbfounds the wise.
The radiance of God is seen in this Jesus.
The power of God’s healing is felt through this Jesus.
The wisdom of God’s ways are learned from this Jesus.
And this Jesus carries the glory of God all the way into the deepest human darkness, powerlessness, and humiliation at the cross. Even there, where God ought not to be, God is, manifesting the patient love God has for us.
So Paul is not happy when he hears that these new teachers are promoting high-flying spiritual visions in prayer or athletic feats of asceticism in community living as a way to “maturing” or “perfecting” their faith. Paul brings them back to basics: love one another patiently in everything you are already doing – in your homes, with your neighbours, in your workplace, with your customers, and in your church.
Here then is Paul’s word to the Colossians: the goal of Christian maturity is “not the self assertion and pride of the ascetic or mystic, which leads to the judging of others, but the patience of love that leads to service for others.” (LTJ 353) By this road of love, the glory of God will show itself in our lives.
This is the value that Jesus, and Paul, and Lawrence see in your life and mine.
When we receive the good news of Jesus’ self-giving love for us and know the joy of God’s delight in us, the radiance of God will be seen, the power of God will be felt, and the wisdom of God will be learned through our lives – this is the Church’s wealth!
Colin+
