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Sunday, April 7, 2013

It’s Not Magic, It’s Practice

A sermon based upon Colossians 3: 1-10
By Rev. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
The Second Sunday of Easter, April 7, 2013

“So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God”  (Colossians 3:1).

I want to begin a new series of sermons from Paul’s letter to the Colossians about what Easter should mean in our daily lives as followers of Jesus Christ.   Today we begin with some very big, little words.  “So if….”  

IF” is a mighty big word for only two letters, isn’t it?   In English we use the word “if” to express all kinds of conditional ideas.   Interestingly, this word “if” appears all over the place in New Testament.  I know many of us might think of Christianity as a ‘done deal’.  In other words, you’ve walked the isle, you’ve been baptized, you’ve joined the church, you’ve given your tithe, or maybe you’ve even been on a mission trip, so then, you know that you are already a Christian---right?   Well, maybe, or maybe not!  Stanley Hawerwas teaches Christian Ethics at Duke, but he says there is no way that he is a Christian yet.  He says he’s working on it, but he’s not yet there.  What in the world does he mean by that? 

SO IF……   
Let’s start by thinking about this phrase:  “So if….”   In the New Testament, what is means to follow Jesus is as much “qualified” as it is assured.   Peter writes about the very conditional nature of Christian living saying, “FOR IF these things are yours (the Christian virtues like gentleness, compassion etc) and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.  For anyone who lacks these things is nearsighted and blind, and is forgetful of the cleansing of past sins (2Pe 1:8-9 NRS).   For if… So if…   This whole idea of a Christian life based upon certain conditions and it all started with Jesus, remember?   In Luke’s gospel we read how Jesus said to them all (not just his disciples), "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. (Luk 9:23 NRS).   The conditional nature of faith gets even stronger in John’s gospel, where Jesus declares:  "If you love me, you will keep my commandments.  And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. (Joh 14:15-16 NRS).   In another place Jesus says,  “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, you can ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” (Joh 15:7 NRS) In other words, Jesus is saying:  You can have my abiding presence with you always, “IF”.   You can ask anything, and I will do it…. IF.   Now, that’s a very big IF.  

But don’t misunderstand what Jesus is saying.  The “conditional” nature of faith is not a trick to keep some of us out of God’s good favor nor is it a standard so high so God can keep all his goodness and grace to himself.   If I understand Jesus, Paul and Peter properly, I believe that each one of them are trying to invite us “into” God’s good grace and favor rather than trick us out of it.   I don’t think Jesus nor Paul were trying to draw lines about who’s in or who’s out, but I believe they are trying to help us locate the lines of God’s goodness so that we can know where it is, how to find it, and come to discover the fullness of what it means to have all Jesus has come to offer.  Isn’t this exactly what Jesus meant when he said:  If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you (Joh 15:7 NRS).  Jesus is not trying to make in impossible to get what we need from God, but Jesus wants to make all things possible through prayer.



….YOU HAVE BEEN RAISED WITH CHRIST.
The very next part of Paul’s discussion could sound even more confusing.  How is Paul talking about being “raised’ with Christ and we’re not even dead yet?     

Did you hear the big news that some scientists today are already talking about ‘reversing death’?   I heard someone suggesting that when we die, our brains do not die immediately, but might take several hours after our hearts stop.    If we are young or strong enough, it is conceivable that even if we have had a life threatening injury, if we get to the right hospital, get to the right emergency room and get the right doctor, then maybe, just maybe they could bring you back.  

I think the much bigger question is not will or can ‘they’ bring you back, but should they?  If you get a life threatening injury, are you worth bringing back?   Or do they need to go ahead and make room for someone else, stronger, younger, smarter, better looking.   You know where I’m going with this, don’t you?  You see the questions these days, with all the high tech advancement is less and less what can we do, but it is becoming more and more, ‘what should we’ or what ‘ought’ we to do or not to do.   The great questions of life are less and less scientific and more ethical, less and less physical, and more of a spiritual nature.  If you are dead, should they bring you back?   As I’m writing this, a great controversy has arisen about a California woman who was in an Assisted Living facility and had cardiac arrest.  The nurse on duty refused to perform CPR because it was against policy.  This whole scenario proves what I’m talking about.   The qreat questions of the future are not what can we do, but what should we do, or what should we not do.  These are the great future questions of a society that is having to learn it can’t have or do just everything or anything.  There are limits to what we should, could and can do.

So, back to my question: Should they bring you back?   Is it really worth bringing you back to life if you never were really alive to begin with?   In a world where 90’s percent of health care costs are taking place in the last year of life, we are having to learn that we can’t finance immortality.    But as we realize our limits and start asking harder questions, still the greatest question is ARE YOU ALIVE RIGHT NOW?  I don’t mean, is your heart beating, but are you living the kind of life that will make you and others say, YOU ARE REALLY ALIVE. 

This is what Paul means when he speaks about ‘being raised with Christ’ now, before you die.   What does it mean to be the living, human person you were intended to be, to be all you can be, and to live the way you, as a human person, are supposed to live.      Again, these are not scientific questions which can be observed in a Biology lab or even in a Hospital room.   Cells are cells, but to answer ‘who you are’ and ‘who you ought’ to be takes us into a whole other realm far beyond science and more in the realm of faith.   WHO SHOULD YOU BE REALLY?   Are you ready to think about that?    

In recent years, there has been a Zombie craze in American life.   Last year, there was even some mass hysteria recorded about the Center of Disease Control releasing a new bulletin about a zombie apocalypse taking place, not unlike all those folks who thought Orson Well’s radio talk about the landing of aliens was real in the fiction story entitled, “War of the World.”   But the threat of Zombies is more real than we might think.  Often mass ‘fears’ like this reflect real ‘fear’ in our culture.  The talk of the War of the Worlds took place in 1938 just before there was a real ‘world war’.   All this talk of Zombies might also reflect something tragic in our own culture.  Could it be that with the rise of high tech devices that more and more of us acting like Zombies to one another, when we text and drive, or when we lose our ability to talk to each other in real-life conversations?  Are we not getting dangerously close to becoming a ‘zombie’ people, who for all we want have become a people who are neither hot or cold, dead or alive, still living, but acting very dead---dead but still alive?

Evidently this kind of thing happens a lot.  People can die before they are dead.  People can walk around the living dead. People can make choices in life that kill their chances to live a full and meaningful life.    Christians can fail to be like Christ.   Churches can fail to be Christian.  For Paul, at least in this passage from his letter to the Colossians, Paul is very concerned about his own culture, even the Christian and Church culture, that have been given ‘words’ of life, but are still living as if they are still ‘dead’ in their sins.  This is what happened to them, but surely it would never happen to us, right?  We know better than to do the things that take the very life out of us, or to kill ourselves with bad life choices, even before we die a natural death.  Don’t we know better than this?

Recently CBS 60 minutes had a news program about a young, energetic, and very decorated soldier, who at a very young age, took his own life.  He had survived terrible battles of war.  He had even survived coming back to the states.  He had been on a trip to help people in Haiti.   He had even been involved in a cycling program to build up his courage and desire for life.   But none of it worked.  He still committed suicide.  Even though he was young, handsome, brave and courageous, and had the world by the tail, the war in Afghanistan had sucked the very life out of him.  Twenty-two service men commit suicide every day and more have died at their own hand, that at the hand of the enemy they’ve been up against.   War kills ever its victors.    Just because you win and are alive, doesn’t necessarily mean you are REALLY ALIVE.   

Earlier in this letter the apostle Paul wrote, “For In Him, the whole fullness of deity dwells in a body.”  By being ‘full of God’, Jesus was also ‘full of life’.  Jesus even said his main goal was to bring people ‘life’ and to bring it ‘abundantly’ (John 10:10).   Whatever the gospel of Jesus means, part of it means that God does not want you dead, he want’s you alive!   He wants you alive in Christ, alive in the fullness of God, and alive as a human person who has been “raise” to ‘newness’ of life in Jesus Christ.   This main theme of the preaching of the early church was not mainly about life in heaven when you die, but it was about knowing about ‘heaven’ so that you could be ‘raised with Christ’ here and now---so that you can move out of a zombie-like emotionless existence into the fullness and energy for the life God wants you and I to have HERE AND NOW.

Before we get to Paul’s final point about how ‘new’ energy for life could and should happen, go back to Colossians 2.20.   Here we read about another big “IF”.  Paul wants to introduce us to what’s could be killing us, even before we die.   But before he shows us what can bring life, he wants us to see what can’t bring life.  And the culprit who keeps us dead and dying is a very surprising one too.   Do you see it?  Paul writes:  “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations, "Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch"?  All these regulations refer to things that perish with use; they are simply human commands and teachings. These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility, and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value in checking self-indulgence. (Col 2:20-23 NRS). 

The surprising point from Paul is that ‘legalistic religion’ does not bring life.  It kills us even more.   Rules and regulations are the human parts of God’s law that promote good things, but they can’t do anything to keep you alive.   If you only follow God only for ‘legal’ reasons, YOU END UP DEAD too, still dead in your sins and still dead in your spiritual life.  The point Paul is making is that new life does not come by just stopping bad things, or even by changing the things we do ‘on the outside’, but new life only comes by ‘changing from the inside out’ and adding a whole new dimension to living.   Take the alcoholic, for instance.  You don’t stop alcoholism by simply taking the alcohol away.   Alcohol, drugs or any kind of addiction is not the whole problem.   It can become a problem, but it’s not the heart of the problem.   Prohibition was, and still is a disaster.  No, if you want to be free, you have to find the bigger problem and the true solution.  And the solution starts by asking whether or not a person is willing to submit to another, higher power in their lives.  It’s the same with gun addictions as it is with alcohol.  The problem is not the guns.  The problem is the emptiness in the person.  It’s not what they are doing wrong, as much as what they are not doing right, and what is missing in their lives.   You won’t save the world by getting rid of alcohol, nor will you save America by getting rid of guns, but you can save us all by putting God back on the throne of our lives.   This is what Paul is saying.  You don’t get life just by getting rid of something, but you’ve got to put something, which is really someone, back into the power seat of your life.  YOU’VE GOT TO BE RAISED WITH CHRIST on this side of heaven, not just on the other.

SEEK THOSE THINGS WHICH ARE ABOVE….  
O.K.  I know you are ready for me to tell you ‘how’ all this happens.  How do we find and keep finding new life in Christ, the kind of life that makes us glad to be alive and makes others glad that we are alive?   Paul’s answer is: “Seek those things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of GodSET YOUR MIND ON THINGS THAT ARE ABOVE, not on the things that are on earth, for you have died, and YOUR LIFE IS HIDDEN WITH CHRIST IN GOD.  When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.”  (Colossians 3: 1-4).  Got it?  I didn’t think so. 

When you think about it, this is really a strange way to find life for living a full and meaningful life on earth isn’t it?  How does setting your mind on things ‘above’, and ‘on Christ’ who is now hidden away and not fully revealed’ anywhere nor manifested in any real, important or powerful way in this world---how do we get life out of someone who means little or nothing to how most people live their lives right now?  It’s sounds a lot like trying to figure out how to get something nothing, doesn’t it?  

Not long ago, David Copperfield, the Magician was flying from Las Vegas to New York to the Today Show, but had plane trouble and hand to land in Illinois.  Even though he could not make it to the show, they set up cameras in the airport hangar so that he could ‘go on with the show’.   So that he would disappoint, he did an amazing trick, holding up a sheet and then having an person with emergency lights suddenly appear from behind the sheet ‘out of nowhere’.  He seemed to bring something, or someone out of nothing.   How did he do that?  It was magic, or was it?

When I was in college, Tom Query was a Christian musician studying at Gardner Webb.  We all loved to watch his show.  It made him a very popular man around campus.  One day I got him to stop by my dorm room to show us a few tricks.   “How do you do this, Tom?”  It asked.  It’s really amazing,  “How do you get things to appear out of nowhere?”  Do you know what Tom’s Christian answer was?   He said, “Joey, as a Christian entertainer, who can’t give away all the tricks of his trade, all I can tell you is this: “It’s not magic, but it’s practice, and practice and more practice.

I believe this is exactly where the Paul is taking us in this text.   When Paul tells us that we are to ‘seek things that are above’, he’s not telling us that the Christian life comes like magic, but he is telling us to put the life of Jesus to ‘practice’ in our lives right now.  On my guitar, I have a motto that says, “Praise is the language spoken in Heaven, start practicing now!”   What we practice now, what we do now, what we give our lives to now, is what brings life to us.  It not magic, but it’s practice!    But practice what?

Fred Anderson, a pastor from New York, tells about the habit of some people in his city to dress in such a way that they appear to be ‘powerful”, talented, people who have it all together, and to dress like people you would want to hire, make a deal with, or do business with.   They call this ‘power dressing’.   You put on the right clothes and you make a much better impression, and you will probably make a better deal, get a better job and have a better life.   That’s the idea of ‘power dressing’.   This is exactly where Paul goes next.  Next, he will move from ‘set your mind on things above’, to ‘put off your old clothes and ‘clothe yourself in with the new self”.   The new self, the living self, the glad to be alive self, and the ready to die self, is the kind of self that has become ‘new’ in Jesus Christ.    This is where Paul is headed in this conversation and its where we are headed too.  For now, Paul says that if you want a resurrected life and a new self, he says don’t settle for less, but set your sights high, real high, as high or even higher than you can imagine.   The whole point is that if you don’t aim for a target, you will miss it every time.  If you don’t practice hitting the target of the life you need,  you won’t ever have it.  But to hit the target of a full and meaningful life, you’ve got to practice.  It’s not magic, and it’s not as far away as you think, it’s just aiming and then practice, practice and more practice.   Amen.

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