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We are well into our series on old songs in the New Testament. And I love the point Jeremy made last week about how we have so much musicality in the Hebrew scriptures. Moses and Miriam sing freedom songs out of Egypt, the erotic song of songs as two lovers sing back and forth to each other, and the highs and the lows of the Psalms of King David. But as much as I like to think about Jesus and the disciples like just walking through the countryside, singing songs together, maybe keeping beat with their bodies and their feet on the earth, that image is located only in my imagination. It seems like the musicality of the Hebrew scriptures just stops in the collection of texts from the early church, but that's not entirely true.

Tucked into the New Testament is a musicality of its own. There's encouragement to sing together and there are traces of songs that were sung. But why should we care about old songs with just lost melodies? We don't know how they sounded. And it turns out there is revelation in songs.

When a friend reveals a song that they're into, you learn more about that friend. Jeremy Begbie, a theologian who writes about Christian wisdom in the world of music says, art reminds us that in fact the world always exceeds our grasp and perception. Art gives us physical objects that can embody the world's excess of meaning with particular potency. I like that language of particular potency. When I share a song that I love with you, something I value and find beautiful is open to you.

So do you wanna hear a song I love? I will not sing it, but I will share it with you. I already mentioned my age, so it shouldn't surprise you that this song is stuck in the nineties. And in the late nineties, there were these albums, you know, compact discs. They were called enter the worship circle.

They were rather hippie dippie. I had all of the CDs and the lyrics to my favorite enter the worship circle song go like this. You have redeemed my soul from the pit of emptiness. You have redeemed my soul from death. I was a hungry child, a dried up river.

I was a burned out forest, and no one could do anything for me. But you put food in my body, water in my dry bed, and to my blackened branches, you brought the springtime rain of new life, and nothing is impossible for you. Twenty three years later, and I still love that song. I am not sorry about that. I will not move on to something cooler.

That song has everything I need. But what did you learn about me from that song? Well, you can see that I love metaphor or, like, five metaphors. Just pile them up for me. And you might wonder what was going on for me in the late nineties for this song to lodge itself so deep into my soul.

And you could presuppose that earthy images are integral to my spiritual sensibilities. Today, we listen to the lyrics of a song in Colossians, and I want us to hold on to the same kind of curiosity. What do the lyrics say about the people who sang them at the dawn of Christian community. And scholars refer to this song as hymn to Christ, and it goes from creation to cosmic renewal in a couple of short stanzas. The text is Colossians one fifteen to 20, and we will talk about the embodied icon, the infinite, how to sing your flourishing and make peace.

But before we dive in, let us pray. Loving God, sun behind all suns, Soul behind all souls. In everything we touch, in everyone we meet, your presence is around us, and we give you thanks. We take a moment to ground ourselves today. We pause to consider what our bodies are telling us.

Where there is stress, we breathe in peace. Where there is pain, we breathe in presence. And where there is contentment, we breathe in gratitude. Christ, us to be open to all of the ways you speak to us through our inner voice, through our friends, through the scriptures. May we hear your words of life.

Come, holy spirit. Amen. Alright. Colossians one fifteen to 17. The sun is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

For in him, all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things and in him, all things hold together. Now it might feel like this passage has its head in the clouds, but it is grounded in creation, I assure you. Christ is the one through whom the creator creates, the one who was at the very beginning, the one in whom all matter coheres. And if you're thinking what I'm thinking, this Christ character sounds nothing like the Jesus that we have seen in the gospels.

This isn't a man sitting around a table with a bunch of sinners. This isn't a teacher knocking heads in the temple. This isn't a little baby tucked into the manger at night by his mother. The form of Jesus in Paul's letters is universal, But where does Paul source such a vision? Well, the Christ hymn conveys a cosmic presence that wasn't just dreamt up.

It was this cool alchemy, and it included the biggest of ideas. Stoic philosophers said for centuries that nature was permeated with the all pervasive spirit, pneuma, that connects all things and holds them all together. And the wisdom tradition in the Hebrew scripture speaks of a female figure known as wisdom, Sofia, who was present at the beginning of creation. She who was constantly at Yahweh's side. And like any good god song, this hymn has these high aspirations weaving together the best in Greek philosophy and Hebrew wisdom.

It's like the people ask, okay. Who is this Jesus that we follow? And the letter instructs the very best of everything you already know. Now picture something with me. You shut your eyes, and in a flash, you time travel to the Roman empire.

It's easy to tell where you are because there are these images of Caesar everywhere. He's in your face. In public spaces, you see Caesar on market stalls and bath walls, columns and amphitheaters, adorning temples and marked on coins. And as soon as you step inside a friend's home, you see images of Caesar carved into their furniture and decorating walls with paintings etched into bowls and little jewelry boxes. The thing is these images mean so much more to the empire than decoration or just aesthetics, image, shapes, imagination.

The might and prosperity conveyed in the image of Caesar is meant to dominate your focus so that you ignore the inequality and the violence that props up the myth of Pax Romana. Rome's peace comes by the sword and domination. Everything is fine as long as you fall in line, conform to the image of the empire. But in early Christian community, imaginations were being formed by one killed for challenging a society of violent conformity. Teachings of love don't pay Caesar.

This community had opened their eyes to the impossibility of true peace in an empire. Staying strong by force is just not good for everyone. But a counterculture community is it's really hard to maintain. Humans love to conform. We stinking love to conform.

We conform just to survive. So along comes this, like, dinky little letter, a small scroll that fits in Tychicus' pocket. Colossians four names Tychicus as this letter carrier. And right from the first words of this referenced hymn, everyone knows that the letter stands against empire. The hymn is in conversation with the culture.

It says, no, no, no, no, no, no. Your Caesar is not divine. The divine infuses so much more than an empire. How do you remember what's good and what's true and what's beautiful in a world that dominates the imagination with violence and the rhetoric of division and a hierarchy of opposition? How do you love when everyone around you is fighting?

Well, goes the letter you picture. The Lord Jesus Christ as the embodied icon of God. You can see it. The image of the invisible one. Everything you need for peace is right there.

This is Christology cranked up to 10 on my old CD player. This is a generation of people after Jesus deciding to trust that he did embody the divine. This vision of a cosmic Christ is what Richard Rohr calls the big billboard that announced God's message in a personal way. It is we consider just how far the message goes, it turns out it's infinite. Verse 18, the second stanza, and Christ is the head of the body, the church.

Christ is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead so that in everything Christ might have the supremacy. Now with a few different terms, verse 18 takes this idea of the beginning and expands it. The Greek words are kephale, literally and figuratively meaning head. RK beginning first or principle and prototokos first born or prototype. And honestly, it just kind of sounds like a mishmash of words to say that Christ is this big boss man.

But what does that even mean? Like, boss of the church, boss of the dead? Let's unpack it. The scholar Victoria Belobansky synthesizes the language of beginning and firstborn with the language of primacy or preeminence. She says the Christ hymn affirms that Christ is not only the beginning but also the ruler and first principle of creation.

Primacy indicates a similar expansiveness. It means the state or position of being prime in order, rank, and importance. The second part of this hymn moves from creation themes to reconciliation themes with references to the dead. Christ connects the divine to every corporeal reality we face, even our dying. And later Christian thinkers like Irenaeus shaped reconciliation with a theological term recapitulation.

And recapitulation means summing up or drawing together. It's this idea from Ephesians that all things are unified in Christ, or we could say Jesus is in solidarity with every part of our lives touched by death. Now maybe you're like, okay. Okay. So what?

Well, sit with it for a second. If Christ is there at every beginning in your life and birthing something new even in death, the mystery of Christ's presence is infinite. Christ always shows up because Christ is already there, but it can feel like we outgrow Jesus. I felt that. Moments where I wondered, really, is this still for me?

Like, could I grow somewhere else? Leave Christianity just behind? I imagine you've thought like that too or that you will. Whenever we put walls up around where God dwells or limit our imagination to how spirit flows or hold ourselves back from Christ's daring work of renewal. We trade the Christ of the cosmos for ones that we create, a little Polly Pocket God to just fit into your pocket.

One who thinks just like you think, how convenient, and certainly one who cannot keep up with all of the changes that will happen in your one life. This is what I imagined was happening for the first Christian community. Their image of Christ was shrinking. Maybe Jesus wasn't such a big deal. Maybe they thought he couldn't speak to the new challenges they faced.

Maybe they thought they could flourish apart from him. And this hymn of Christ sings to them right where they are. Verse 19, for God was pleased to have all God's fullness dwell in Christ. God was pleased. Years ago, my brother did a short term mission trip with a large parachurch organization.

He was so excited to travel on his own after high school and have this adventure with a close buddy of his. As far as I know, he was genuinely interested about Jesus and what it means to be a Christian. But not long after he settled into the first phase of that training camp, he called me and said, Bob, just like what my little brother would call me. Bob, what they're teaching me here doesn't make any sense in the real world. And they don't like my questions.

We suckled. We like to stir it up a little. Anyway, not long after that call, when his trip was over, my brother separated himself from that organization and everything it represented. It wanted to take Christ where they believed Christ was absent. It wanted to sort out these really neat answers to life's brutal and tough questions.

It wanted conversions and really squeaky clean Christians and three point gospel presentations, and God bless him, but my brother wasn't having it. The thing about that story again is that, like, I do relate to it. And maybe you do too. Whether or not you went on a mission trip, all kinds of ideas about the divine have landed all around you, and you need to decide if you'll pick them up or just let them lie. Deep down, we know we need a God bigger than even our biggest ideals.

We need a God with more love in a divine little pinky finger than the very best person that we know. We need a god whose patience is as long as the ocean is deep times a million. Deep down, we know we need a god who is the quiet to our chaos and the warmth to our chill and the joke that shifts the room? Maximus the confessor says that we move ourselves towards our true being when we direct the steps of our soul toward the infinite God. In other words, when you feel like you are flourishing, when you put your efforts towards the flourishing of others, that is the old song of divine fullness and where you feel full, you find Christ.

God is only ever interested in your flourishing. That's your growth and your health. That's your ability to forgive those who hurt you. That's your patched up relationships. Your flourishing is the work you do to care for the planet.

It's the interest you have in dismantling systems that do harm. It's the ways that you practice restorative self care. Your flourishing is this breath and the next. It's making a new friend later in life. It's the deep down belief that you are loved and deserve to find joy.

You do. The hymn of Christ is a song that presents Jesus as the Christ. In theological terms, the Christ is this figure who emerges in the universal claims made by Christians in Jesus's name. So is Christ really in all of these places of our flourishing? Yes.

Exactly, claims the apostle Paul as he shapes the new chapter of the Jesus story. Paul says, where we're going, Christ will go with us. In fact, Christ is already there. Christ in constant conversation and in loving critique with the world we actually live in. So let's finish with verse 20 and this call to make peace.

Verse 20, speaking of God's delight at having divine fullness dwell in Christ and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven by making peace through his blood shed on the cross. So the hymn finishes with Christ reconciling all things. And the verb reconcile means to bring back to a state of harmony. And we see harmony in action through the use of these tiny little words in the hymn prepositions that speak of Christ's work through and to and on and in and before and with and by. And great thinkers in the ancient world used prepositions to talk about empire and philosophy and all the gods but Paul clarifies the meaning of prepositions by attaching the work of Christ not to a system of power but to a body.

A body with blood in its veins. A body brutalized by the force of an empire. A body facing death as a lived experience. Don't confuse the making of peace with the advantages of wealth or power or argument. Christ makes peace through self giving, silencing, and death confronting love.

And I see these prepositions, these tiny words that indicate motion as emblematic of what it means to make peace. As high as this Christ hymn soars, it rests on one man's death. Of course, he's not just any man, he's every man. And by Paul's attestation, he's the Christ, the anointed one who shows us what God is like, how God makes peace. God makes peace by getting smaller.

And resisting big power with provocative tininess by laying down the sword instead of raising it up to fight. Why Jesus didn't even have a sword in his hand to begin with? And now through tiny acts of resistance, we make peace too. We make peace when we shape a small community that keeps its door open and its windows wide. And we make peace when we carefully consider if our boundaries are still serving us or if it's time to make some changes.

We make peace when we say yes to what brings life and no to what drains it. We make peace when we decide not to reduce the totality of a person to their worst ideas. We make peace when we open space in our minds for the thoughts of another on the matter. We make peace when we plant a tiny little seed in the cool ground and watch in spring as it bursts with new life, the never ending pattern of resurrection. A favorite thing I read in studying Colossians one fifteen to 20 was Eugene Peterson's trusty little translation of verses 18 to 20 in the message, also from the nineties.

And I'm just gonna read it to you. Christ was supreme in the beginning and leading the resurrection parade. He is supreme in the end. From from beginning to end, Christ is there, towering far above everything, everyone so spacious is Christ, so roomy that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe, people, and things, animals, and atoms get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies all because of his death, his blood that poured out on the cross.

Maybe those words move you too. But maybe they don't. That's fine. They actually weren't really written for you anyway. When we listen to what Paul said to the church in Colossae, we hear what it's like to move forward with trust that Christ is always with us and up along the horizon ahead, a presence we can never outgrow.

So if this teaching speaks anything little to you today, I hope it's this. Wherever a song or a poem or a story meets you and make some peace in you, be it Florence the Machine's new song Free, it is so good. Be it a poem written and read to you by Padre Gottuma, be it a worship song from the nineties that refuses to let you go, an old song, a new song, a poem, a prayer, a passage of scripture, a text from a friend, any little message that makes some peace in you is Christ showing you he's already there. I'm not going anywhere. Let the beat of what is creative and inspiring bring you into harmony with the life that is all around you and in you and with you and through you divine life everywhere, beautiful and true.

Let us pray. Loving God, you have redeemed our soul from the pit of emptiness. You have redeemed our soul from death. We were hungry children, dried up rivers. We were burned out forests, and no one could do anything for us.

But you put food in our bodies, water in our dry beds, and to our blackened branches, you brought the springtime rain of new life, and nothing is impossible for you. Christ of the cosmos, sing your song of our flourishing over us all this week, we pray. Amen.