By
Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.
Flat
Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership,
Sunday August 23rd, 2020 (Growing
In Grace)
Please permit me
to begin with a brief bit of reflection.
I’ve been on around for over 6 decades, now. Some of you have been around a little longer
and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about when I say… I heard the original music and experienced the
mania of the Beatles shaking the music world.
I felt the shock of the
assignation of JFK . I watched in
amazement as men walk on the moon. The
dawn of the computer and digital age has changed how I do a lot of my work. Finally, along with most of you, I was overjoyed
and surprised at the fall of the Berlin Wall, but not long afterward, I stood in
shock as those Trade Towers fell in New York.
While I probably
didn’t see as dramatic of historical changes in American Life as my grandmother
did, (as a result of the automobile), the changes I’ve experienced have been
nevertheless life-altering and sometimes even astounding. As I approach the final years of my life, I
often wonder what will happen next. I
wonder not only what will happen in the world, but I also wonder what will
happen to me.
“Life comes at
you fast”, the Insurance Commercial advises, and this is true. Growing up as a child playing on Cochran
Street in Statesville seems like the day before yesterday. Am I really, almost 63 years old? Besides, what does it mean to have
lived---not just in the short scheme of things, but does it mean to have lived
at all? What gives life its meaning, and
even more so, what gives us hope?
Do you ever think
about it? The apostle Paul did. In
his letter to the Church in Colosse, Paul wrote that the ‘mystery’
and the meaning of our lives is ‘hidden with Christ in God’ (3:3). What Paul
means is that the mystery of life can never be fully solved by us, but our
lives can still be filled with both meaning and hope. Paul
claims that Christ, who now rules our lives from heaven, holds all ‘the treasures
of wisdom and knowledge’ (2:3). These
‘treasures’ are not hidden for us to miss, but they are hidden
for us to discover so we too can come to ‘fullness (of life) in him’
(2:10).
In Him…the Fulness
of God Dwells (v9)
This is quite a claim,
isn’t it? How can people in a world with so many other
options believe that Jesus Christ holds the mystery and meaning of human life? While the western world of our heritage and
history certainly has a Christian past, the Christian worldview isn’t as relevant.
That’s at least
what a very smart young fellow once told me.
When I was trying to introduce
the ‘fullness of life in Christ’ with him, he explained how he had enjoyed
the ‘youth meetings’ but he believed ‘religion’ was something people should now
move beyond. “Science is the future, not
religion,” he said. He meant the once
dominate Christian religion.
One thing that very
intelligent young man rightly understood was that we live in an age dominated
by science. By the word ‘science’, I’m
not only referring to a class of facts, figures and formulas you once had to master
in school, but I’m referring to the vast, enormous, and commanding field of
human knowledge that now rules over most everything. Today,
astronomy, biology, physics and the other sciences have been able to perform
tasks and answer questions that were thought unanswerable just a few decades
ago.
For example, after
the Hubble Space Telescope was launched, astronomers announced that they had
been able to see far enough out in space and, thus, far enough back in time, to
see the echo of the big bang and the beginning of the universe. In our
lifetime Science can even hazard to guess ‘why’ that ‘bang’ might have happened
without any need of God as the explanation. Of course, to rule God out is still a guess, but
it’s become the most popular educated one.
Equally
astounding, just a few years ago, a working draft of the entire human DNA was
announced. This work was ironically nick-named
the discovery of ‘the language of God’ by
its lead scientist, a believing Christian, Francis Collins. As a result of that work, medical scientists
have already been able to find the causes of some syndromes and diseases and to
predict a time in the not-too-distant future when cures will be brought about,
not by drugs or surgery, but by repairing or replacing malformed or damaged
genes.
One of the
greatest medical diagnostic devices in this coming age of Genetic Breakthrough
will probably be a ‘smart toilet’, which will be able to detect cancer years before
it forms. It is now believed that Cancer
will eventually be prevented, not cured, through the science that will enable
each home to have its own ‘smart toilet’.
This will be far more important than having a ‘smart TV.
Indeed, we live
in an amazing age of science. Today, we look
to science to answer our big questions, to solve our great problems, and to
explain our world. And we should even be
glad that we have come to look to science and not to magic or speculation to
answer our questions about the natural world. We have all benefited from the answers that
science can find and has found. Many of
us are living proof that Science gives life.
Scientific advances like antibiotics and improvements in surgical
procedures have given us all the promise of longer and more productive lives.
Thus, Science
not only gives life to us, it can also help us see the truth about life. The most important foundation of all
scientific learning is the scientific method. Perhaps you recall being introduced to it in
school. It is the scientific method
that has encouraged a healthy dose of skepticism
about anything and everything that can’t be proven as a repeatable and
observable fact. Truth always starts with hypotheses, claims
and beliefs, but these claims can’t remain in the realm of ‘unjustified conclusions’
based upon ‘insufficient evidence’. Any truth claims we make must ‘prove’ to be
true, not just be believed to be true. If you follow this method, it is said, you are
much less likely to be taken in by the various charlatans and ‘snake oil
salesmen’ out there.
And it’s the job
of science to be skeptical of all human, and even any religious explanations, at
least until all the facts are in. For example, a rainbow is not the finger of
the gods or a god painting the sky with color.
A rainbow is light being prismatically reflected through water droplets.
There is no pot of gold at the end of a
rainbow either. Science today tells us that a rainbow is
simply a mist before our eyes and just like that belief in a pot of gold.
From a Scientific
perspective, then, many things humans used to think and believe has been called
into question. Once a rainbow was a
symbol of God’s promise, but today that’s not necessarily so. Today it’s not religion that gives us the
answer, but we rely mostly upon science to solve our problems and to answer the
mysteries we face. But
where does this leave us, and what about the ‘fulness’ of God and the fulness
of life Paul once wrote about?
Interestingly,
this sole reliance upon science to tell us what’s true and what’s not comes
with a cost. As Mark Twain once wrote
about the rainbow: "We don’t have the reverent feeling about the
rainbow that primitive humans use to have.
Because we know how the rainbow it is made, we have lost as much as we
gained by prying into the matter.” Or,
as a person said on a summer night in 1969, after Neil Armstrong had set foot
on the moon; "We'll never look at the moon with such wonder again.".
Since Science is now dominate and the mysteries
of are being solved by human knowledge and wisdom, has the wonder and
possibility of having fulness and meaning in Christ vanished like a rainbow?
It’s unfortunate,
like that young fellow in Germany, that many people today would be led to believe
that science and religion are at war with each other another. Indeed,
in some minds they are at odds, but not necessarily in the mind of God. God gave humans minds to use, and Science is simply
the categorized and systematic use of ‘human knowledge’, but it’s still important
for us to remember what science can and can't do. Science can remove the magic and mystery from
the world, but it’s about all science can do. Science can indeed tell us how life happens, and
it might help us have a little more of it, but in a larger sense—Science can’t
tell us ‘why’ there is life instead of nothing.
Of course, Science can do so many wonderful
things and it can answer many very important questions, but it will never answer
the biggest questions. Science can tell us how the earth came
together, and how you and I are put together, but it can’t begin to address any
kind of definitive, provable, observable answer to ‘why’ we are here and what should life mean ( This section
relies heavily upon some thoughts of a scientist and bishop, Julian Gordy, in a
sermon ‘Ordinary Holiness’, 2010).
And science
certainly can’t tell us anything about what happens after you die. I heard a popular scientist talking about
black holes in the universe and how mysterious they are. He said any large object that comes near a mysterious
‘black hole’ is swallowed up by that darkness.
However, afterwards, objects
going into it also comes through it and reappear on the other side ‘It is’,
he said, ‘as if there is another universe or dimension of reality in
that space’. Then, he joked, ‘Could Elvis still be alive in out there?’ This Harvard trained Physicists answered
that even he couldn’t rule that out. But, of course, he wasn’t speaking
scientifically. He had to say this because from Science, all
the could say is what can be observed: ‘When you are dead you are dead’.
If you want any hope in life today, or to have any kind of lasting
meaning in what we know as life, Science can’t give any definitive answer. And it’s exactly because Science can only see
what Science can see, and Science is unable to see what only faith can see. This is why we will always need more than
human knowledge to know the ‘fulness…hidden in Christ with God.’ As brilliant as many Scientist are, and as
wonderful as Science can be, it will never be able to answer the simpliest
question a child asks, “Why?” Why are
we here, who should you be, or what you must you do to have fullness, meaning,
and purpose in your life?
Here I’m reminded
of what my orthopedic doctor once recommended I do when he was releasing me
from his care, after repairing my foot from a terrible accident I had at 17
years old. He looked at me, and said, ‘Now, go forth
from here and play Tennis and do something!’
He was very smart doctor, and he did good work to save my foot, but he still
didn’t have a clue about what could or should do. I appreciated him for everything he did, but he actually knew nothing about who I was
or my life. What he did was ‘all’ he could do, but it
wasn’t all; it wasn’t even close.
CONTINUE TO LIVE
YOUR LIVES IN HIM. (v6)
Paul drew meaning,
purpose and hope for his life from having the ‘fullness of the blessing of
Jesus Christ (Rom. 15:29). In the opening of his letter to the Colossians,
Paul explained how the ‘fullness’ of God dwells in Jesus and he is now challenging
the Colossians to continue to find their own ‘fullness of life’ in him.
Saying that Jesus
has ‘the fullness of God” coincides with Paul’s lofty language about
Jesus also being ‘the image of the invisible God’ and ‘the first born
of all creation’ (1:15) With each phrase and in each case Paul was implying
that the image of God originally ‘stamped’ in the human soul from the beginning,
that had been marred by sin and rebellion, can now be fully restored and
redeemed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Through Jesus, this ‘fulness of God’ has
been revealed to us in human form so that God’s fulness can be passed on to us
by faith, so that God’s image can be redeem, restore and ‘re-stamped’ in us.
Why was Paul talking
like this? Well, one of the pressures
among the Colossians at the time, which was the reason for Paul’s letter, was
that other philosophies, ideas, traditions (2:8) or religious practices might deceitfully
pull the church away from growing (2:19) and maturing (1:28) in God’s mystery…’ which Paul’s
says, is ‘in Christ himself’ (2:2). And this allure to leave Jesus for other ways
of knowledge and wisdom is still pulling against us too. Can’t
you feel it? I’m not really talking
about Science verse Faith here. There
is really no war going on between Science and Faith, since about the same
number of Scientist believe in God as people in the general public. No, the allure to leave Faith is Jesus more a
struggle going on in the human heart than in the human mind. It’s not a ‘battle’ out there, as much as it’s
a battle going on inside of each of us.
What would you name as a continual and constant ‘power’ that might pull
you away from growing and maturing to your full potential of fulness of life in
Jesus Christ?
To help us
understand how this ‘struggle’ happens in us all, recall the plot in the well-known
story The Wizard of Oz? Dorthy is carried
away by a twister into a land that is far away from home. On her journey to find her way back
home, she encounters other ‘lost’ souls; a scarecrow who needs a brain, a tin man
who’d desires a heart, and a cowardly lion who needs courage. They all believe that the Great Wizard has he
answer to what they need. So, they are, as the song goes, “Off, to see
the Wizard!” But when they finally meet the Wizard, he
seems intent on making their wishes practically impossible to receive. To gain their wishes they must give him the
‘broom’ from the Wicked Witch of the West.
In the most climatic scene of the story, Dorothy and her
companions finally pull back the curtain to reveal the truth about the
so-called "Magnificent Oz" who ends up being a very ordinary human
being. Rather than being a powerful and
terrible wizard, he is only an old man with a lot of technology at his
disposal. Science debunks the pretense of the Wizard!
But you will
also remember that this ‘pretender’ was still able to give each of the seekers exactly
what he or she needed--courage, a heart, a brain, a home. But he didn’t actually
give it to them. He, nor Science was
able to do that. This points us to the
power of having a personal faith. The
Wizard ends helping them, but his ‘help’ is only to point them to possibilities
within themselves. These possibilities neither
magic, nor science, but they the powers given to us by God, which are of very ordinary,
often unseen, and long overlooked.
This is ‘power’
of growing up into goodness, is the power the ‘fullness of life’ God offers us
through Jesus Christ. While there is a ‘mystery
of God’ (1 Cor. 2:1), this ‘mystery…has now been revealed’. This mystery, Paul explains, is ‘Christ
in you, the hope of glory’ (1;27). This mystery is Christ’s goodness, purposes, and
fulness, now being lived in you, by you, for yourself, and for those around you.
“It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone
and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in
Christ (1:29). But what does that
mean, that we have the potential to be ‘mature in Christ’ and to live in
God’s fulness and in Christ’s goodness?
You Have Come to
Fulness In Him (v10)
To help you
understand what it still means to ‘live in the knowledge of God’s mystery,
which is Christ himself’ (2:2) and to encourage you to continue to ‘mature’
in this knowledge until you come to ‘fullness in him’ who is still, at
least in my book and this book, ‘the head
of every ruler and authority’ (even Science, technology, or whatever else
might come along that tries to pull you away from Jesus Christ); to help you here
Paul’s argument fresh for our own day and time, let me give you another good
example of why Science, and everything else in this world falls short of the ‘fullness
in him’.
Let me start
again with Science, since our world is dominated by Science and Technology. Now science can explain why most men are
attracted to women and vice versa. It's
an evolutionary, biological, hard-wired need to preserve the species perhaps. Or it's hormones. Or it's a psychological predisposition. Or it's social or cultural training. Or it's some combination of those realities.
In short, Science
can explain sexual attraction. It can
explain why a handsome young man and a beautiful, healthy woman of reproductive
age seek each other out. Science can
explain attraction, but what science still can't explain, nor replicate, or
produce either, is love.
Science can't
explain why, for example, forty years later--not as healthy, not as
good-looking and far beyond reproductive age--that same man sits by the
hospital bed of that same woman night after night holding her hand, praying that she survives cancer, willing--in a second--to change places with
her, to die if that would mean that she could live.
Science can
measure and study and explain the need of a species to reproduce itself and
survive. But science can't fully explain love. And, yet, love is as real as attraction---and
it has more staying power too. Love has been, and still is as real as it is
unexplainable. Down through the
centuries, human love has remained a mystery too---and it’s a holy mystery—a mystery
that lies within us, beyond and beneath
what we can measure, but it’s there, if we will nurture it and allow it to mature
within us.
In the very next
chapter, Paul rightly concludes: “Above all, clothe yourselves with love,
which binds everything together in perfect harmony’ (3:14). This
language about God’s ‘fullness’ in Jesus is filled mystery in how it
comes to us, but it’s mostly filled with very ordinary things. For
more than anything else, what is holy about Jesus, Paul says, is also what should
become ordinary among us when
we’ve been with Jesus: “If you have
been raised with Christ,” Paul says, “seek the things that are above,
where Christ is…” (3:1). Is this
really that hard to think about? What is most holy, most religious and most
Christlike isn’t really religious at all, just like it isn’t very scientific either. What should be ‘ordinary’ for people living with
God’s fullness, is this kind of growth, this kind of maturity, and this kind of
new (3:10) ordinary: “As God’s
chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness,
humility, meekness, and patience. Bear
one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other,
just as the Lord has forgiven you. Above
all, clothe yourselves with love….”
Again, to review. It is the job of science is to remove the
mystery from the world. But it is the
job of faith, and the faithful who live by faith, to ‘display’ or ‘show’ the love of Jesus Christ’ so that we
might mature in the mystery of Christ’s fullness still to be revealed through
us. Amen.
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