Jeremy Duncan: God is big, and God is beyond us. And in some sense, we will never, as human beings, be able to make sense of the divine. We have to make peace with that. But everything we need to know about God, everything God wanted to say to us, All of that is present in the way that Jesus moved through the world. Last week, we wrapped up a strange new world.
Today, we begin cosmic thoughts for daily life. We'll get there in a moment. However, before we get to our new series, let's look back at where we've just been together. Because immediately coming out of Easter, we stepped into a series called strange new world. And that series was a set of conversations all about looking at our lives, looking at our experience of church really in the light of resurrection.
On Easter Sunday, I stood here and I said that against all odds, Easter shows us that resurrection is the natural state of the cosmos. And if that is true, which I believe it to be, the implications for that statement are, I mean, really transformational. They change everything about how we look and how we think, how we experience absolutely everything. And so in our strange new world series, we explored the landscape of church really in the light of resurrection. We looked at how we experienced the Eucharist and mission and baptism and marriage and last week even death.
But in all of these conversations, we used a very specific term a lot over the last five weeks, sacrament. It's a beautiful word, an old word, a very religious sounding word, and how it's defined often varies from tradition to tradition. But for me, the core idea of sacrament is this conviction that holds all of these five conversations together in mind. It's simply this, the grace of God is communicated not only in ideas, but also maybe even primarily through our experiences as human beings. Sacrament is the conviction that mundane, ordinary, everyday objects, things we might interact with a thousand times throughout the week and never blink an eye, can also be conduits for grace.
And in that sense for me, sacraments are an extension of one of our core convictions as Christians. God was present in the life of Jesus. God can be present in bread and grape and water and community because this is what we call incarnation. The idea that God is not just an idea. The divine is present with us, around us, surrounding us in ways that we can touch and taste and smell and hold all the time if we reach out.
Which is why reaching all the way back to Easter morning, resurrection is so important to the Christian story. Faith doesn't live just in some ethereal intellectual simulation of reality. Faith exists in what you can touch and taste, what you can hold on to, how we can care for each other. Because God inhabits this world precisely because God loves this world. That means God loves you, loves your neighbor, loves your body, loves the food that you feed it, and the earth that it grows from, loves all the ways that we can learn to embrace and care for all of it.
Because incarnation shows us that to be human can even still somehow be divine. And the sacraments remind us that the very stuff of our lives are where we encounter God's self. And if we can even begin to live as if that is true, then perhaps we could find ourselves in a completely new, almost foreign, strange new world even right where we are. Now, today, we start a new series. And the plan is again to start big, as big as the cosmos in fact, and then to end small.
As small as your family perhaps because that is exactly the arc that Paul takes us on through the book of Colossians. First though, let's pray. God whose eyes are on the universe, from the furthest star to the smallest mouse, who loves every part of your creation with infinite welcome, whose grace is never exhausted no matter how often we think we need to claw a piece of it for ourselves. Right? We slowly come to believe that the magnitude of such love can be found in bread and grape, in a meal with friends, in a kind word that reminds us of who we truly are.
It can be found in living water and emerging toward the surface and being surrounded by communities that affirm and experience our faith alongside us can be found in life and in death, in purpose, and out making the world a better place, and trusting that tomorrow can be good news and filled with surprise because you will be there too. And in all of these ways, may there be small moments of grace teaching us of an inexhaustible love that stretches all the way out to the cosmos and then all the way back to us. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen. Cosmic thoughts for daily life.
Today, we will cover authorship, poetry, introductions, and foundations. But first, let's start here. This is bit of a silly name for a series. Right? We can be honest about that.
A little opaque if you're trying to discern what we're actually going to be talking about. But this title comes from sitting with Paul's letter to the Colossians for a time. Because Colossians has always been a bit of an anomaly for me. Paul begins his letter, as he often does, somewhat formally. A very by the books greeting actually, introducing himself, saying hi to everyone, but then almost immediately launching into one of his absolute best monologues.
A sweeping cosmic presentation of gospel that stretches from the formation of the universe all the way back to its reunification with the divine. After which, Paul then switches gears to dive all the way down into things like household codes, talking about wives and husbands and children and slaves and how to order a home in the Roman dialect. At first glance, it's all very disorienting. And yet, part of what we want to argue over the next five weeks together by taking our time to work through and understand Paul's logic here is that actually our biggest, most cosmic, most fantastic convictions about the universe are never really as disconnected from our daily lives as we think they are. In fact, it's precisely our daily life that has to be rooted in some kind of cosmic conviction.
Now all that said, I think perhaps part of the reason that I love this letter is because I have found myself able to take this corner with Paul because I find myself switching gears, randomly changing directions in almost all of my interactions these days, at least at home. I live with an 11 year old and a five year old, and for slightly different developmental reasons, none of my conversations ever seemed to unfold in anything like a straight line. This week, in the span of honestly less than two minutes sitting around the dinner table, we went from a conversation about how much my kids hate eating pizza. No idea where that came from because they love it. To the life cycle of the caterpillars that we are growing on our kitchen table.
And, yeah, that's real. We're doing that. My daughter loves butterflies, so we're gonna make our own. But we went from a conversation about hating pizza to whether God watches us grow the way that we watch our caterpillars grow, all the way back to the fact that my kids actually love pizza, and it's their favorite dinner ever. The dinner table at the Duncan household makes Paul's mood swings seem like a country stroll, and maybe that's why I love this letter.
And so perhaps for that reason alone, Colossians remains fascinating to me, holds a really special place in how I approach understanding Paul's logic. But as we start this series, we need a little context here Because there are a total of 13 letters that are ascribed to Paul in our New Testament, seven of which are what we call the undisputed letters. Those are Romans, first and second Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, first Thessalonians, and Philemon. Generally, scholars think these were all written by the historical person Paul. They are generally considered three more that we call pseudo epigraphal.
We think that means that they may have been written by another writer, writing in the style of a spirit of Paul sometime in the late first century. These are sometimes called the pastoral epistles. They are first and second Timothy and Titus. And part of the reason that scholars think they came from late in the first century is after Paul's death is that they tend to have a more developed structure and politic within the church than Paul's other letters do. It just seems later, more developed.
This, of course, is very highly debated. No one really knows for sure. But it is important to note that the word pseudo epigraphal, this type of writing, was not necessarily something that would have been done for nefarious reasons or to deceive someone. This was a common practice in the ancient world. This would have been a disciple of Paul, a student of Paul writing to address certain situations or gaps in Paul's writing as faithfully as they could understand Paul.
Still, that still leaves three letters, who we sometimes call the disputed or the Deuteropaline books of Ephesians, Colossians, and second Thessalonians. Now personal cards on the table here. I'm open to, though not entirely convinced of the pseudo epigraphal arguments surrounding the pastoral epistles. I am far more skeptical though of the arguments denying Pauline authorship of particularly Ephesians and Colossians. And the whole reason I bring this up as a start today is because the cosmic opening of Colossians.
Chapters one verses 15 to 23, the very section we want to focus on today and ground our series in is precisely, largely the argument that is leveled against Pauline authorship of this letter. It's too cosmic, they say, too bombastic. The language is too poetic, and the vocabulary too developed to be Paul, it's been argued. In fact, that is also part of the argument that's levied at Ephesians, and spoiler here, we'll make our way back to Ephesians next year. But for me, that entire argument misses the obvious.
What if Paul didn't write those verses? What if Paul is reciting for us the hymns, the poems of the Christian community as a foundation for the beliefs and the theology he wants to teach? See, we actually did a series on this a few years back. It was called the old songs. It's in our archives.
But we worked through some of the sections in our New Testament where as scholars, we tend to think that the writers might be quoting hymns or songs, psalms that were circulating within the early Jesus community. So for example, Ephesians two, for he himself is our peace who has made the two groups one and destroyed the barrier between. He came and preached peace to you who are far and peace to those who were near For through him, we all have access by God to one spirit. Or maybe Philippians two, Christ Jesus who being in very nature God did not consider divine equality something to be used. Therefore, God exalted Christ to the highest place, gave him the name that is above every other.
So that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven or on earth or under. And perhaps even the opening lines of the book of Hebrews. In the past, God spoke at many times in various ways, but in these days he has spoken through a son whom he appointed heir of all things and through whom was made the universe. The sun is the radiance of God's glory, the exact representation of his being sustaining all things. Each of these passages has a scope that feels bigger than the letter they exist within.
And they have vocabulary that feels more grand than the text surrounding them. They have an orientation that seems to want to reach up out into the heavens even as it's being used to ground our feet in the world that surrounds us. And so for this reason, we generally understand that these passages were either written as poetry themselves or were perhaps being recited, quoted as Christian psalms that were already circulating in the early Jesus community. Because this is how we use language. Right?
We speak in different ways for different purposes. I spoke differently in the prayer that I wrote and recited to start this sermon than I am right now. I speak differently when I quote someone that I admire to buttress my arguments. I speak differently when I'm trying to draw out our emotions to point us somewhere. We generally look up before we look out.
And in fact, would argue that is precisely when religion is at its best. When our highest ideals about the nature of the universe come crashing down into how we treat our neighbor beside us. That's the scope that our faith affords us. Now to be fair, that is not the only argument against Pauline authorship. One of the other primary arguments is based on the specific vocabulary that's used in Colossians.
See, the text of this letter is composed of 30% unique words that are not found anywhere else in any of other Paul's letters. Maybe, the argument goes, that indicates it's a different person writing. Now, that could simply be a quirk of dictation. We know that Paul used an amanuensis. That means essentially he would dictate his letters out loud and have someone transcribe them as he talked.
Thing is, you can't handwrite a letter as quickly as someone can speak it, and so any amanuensis would necessarily be paraphrasing things to some extent as they went along. In this case, it's possibly even Timothy who's physically writing out the letter for Paul and maybe introducing some of his own vocabulary as he does. At the same time though, a topic is always going to dictate vocabulary to some extent. And for interest sake, I went back and I looked at my last few sermons. I actually did a lexical analysis of my own words this week.
And what I found is that in this sermon today, I have used 22% unique words from all of my sermons in our last series. And that is even in a sermon where I spent my introduction recapping that previous series. If I take that section out and I analyze just the portion from when I started to talk about Colossians, it rises to 26% of my words that are unique today. And that's in an analysis of 15,000 words of writing. Now for the record, Colossians, entire book is just over 1,500 words, which actually makes the impact of unique words even greater because of the lower sample size.
It might also say something about my writing, considering Paul could get all of this out in 1,500 words, and here I am struggling to edit down my manuscript every week. But I digress, and I make the point worse as I do that anyway. Bottom line is, I just don't find arguments against Pauline authorship particularly compelling in this case of Colossians. And I do think the theology that we're going to encounter here is actually remarkably consistent with everything else we read from Paul with granted a different larger more cosmic focus. And so with all that as background, let's start at Colossians verse one.
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, and Timothy our brother. To God's holy people in Colossae, the faithful brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our father. Colossi, that's the name of the city wherein the Colossians live. Fairly significant but smaller city between two larger centers, Laodicea and Hierapolis. It was, for the most part, wiped out by an earthquake that happened in about sixty four CE, which is right around the time that we think Paul would have been executed in Rome.
So that means the letter was written in the late fifties, early sixties. But he continues here. We always thank God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you because we've heard of your faith and all the love that you have for all of God's people. Jumping ahead a bit to verse seven here, we read, you learned all this from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf and who also told us of your love in the spirit. So a pretty standard opening for Paul.
We got some formal greetings, introducing himself and his companions, even name dropping someone who's known to the community, which Paul often likes to do. All of that before he moves on to his agenda. But I do wanna pause here quickly because Epaphras, who is mentioned here, that's actually a short form of a familiar name in the first century, Epaphroditus. Now I'm sure you know this, but a new pope was recently elected. And before he selected his papal title, his name was Robert Prevost.
You may have also seen this in the news. There was a quote from one of the cardinals who voted on the new pope saying that he was praying for Bob in his new position. Pope Bob. Now I mentioned that first for a cheap laugh, but also because Epaphras is Bob. Like Paul knows this person.
He refers to him by a familiar name, a short form. He knows this community and the people who live here. And he might be about to go into poet mode to set the stage for what he wants to teach later, but before that Paul is writing as their, at the very least, one step removed friend. And I think that's important because, yes, Paul wants to impress, and he wants his words to stick, and he wants to craft his argument in a way that pierces through any indifference it might encounter. But that is second on the agenda to establishing a real human connection in colossi.
And, again, we all use different language at different times for different purposes. Right? We employ different strategies when necessary. We even try on different personas from time to time. But those people who can't cut through it all and won't settle down to have a real conversation with a real person face to face I have to at least wonder about the value of their fanciest words.
And so even as someone who spends a lot of time with words, I appreciate that Paul can just talk with friends before he starts to preach. Now that said, when he does preach, it's something. So this is verse 15, the hymn that will ground us in the stars for the next five weeks. 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. He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or in heaven by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.
Now again, this is beautiful language. It's expansive in its scope. It is fantastic and poetic theology. Fun. Even as I put it on the screen, one verse at a time, you'd notice anything as we read this.
Well, if you happen to think back to studying poetry in grade 12, you may have noticed we have six verses here, and they all seem to be structured as couplets. It's short verse, long verse, statement verse, implication verse, introductory explanatory verse. All of this three times over again. And that's convenient because it helps us to understand the structure of this poem. We've got three presuppositions that form Paul's cosmic understanding of history.
Each of them followed by a poetic expansion. The sun is the image of the invisible God. Jesus is before all things and in him all things hold together. God was pleased to have divine fullness dwell in Christ. That's Paul's theology.
And for us at Commons, that should sound familiar. Because for eleven years now, we've been saying Jesus at the center. Jesus at the center. Jesus is the lens through which we understand God. We even articulate that conviction on the first page of the journal each year by saying that the scriptures lead us to the realization that Jesus is the only exact representation of the divine and that God has always looked like Jesus even when we didn't see that clearly.
So God is big, and God is beyond us. And in some sense, we will never, as human beings, be able to make sense of the divine. We have to make peace with that. But everything we need to know about God, everything God wanted to say to us, all of that is present in the way that Jesus moved through the world. Colossians is Paul setting that table for us.
And so as we set the stage to move through this letter together, there are three things that we need to hold in our minds at the height of our imagination. That's what it means to keep Jesus at the center. First, Jesus is the image of the invisible God, which Paul goes on to explain by saying that in him all things, earth and stones and blood and sweat and humans and suns and stars and galaxies, all of it was somehow created in Christ. What he's doing here is connecting Jesus to the very old idea of divine wisdom. See, in Hebrew scriptures, wisdom is personified as this woman who participates with God in the creation of the world.
And so in Proverbs eight, we read, does not wisdom call out? Does not understanding raise her voice? The highest point along the way where the paths meet, she takes her stand and now wisdom begins to speak. She says, for I was formed long ages ago at the very beginning when the world came to be. When there were no watery depths, I was given birth.
Back when there were no springs overflowing with water. Before the mountains were settled in place. Before even the hills, I was given birth. I was there when God set the heavens in place. When God marked out the horizon on the face of the deep.
That's a callback to Genesis one. The spirit of God hovers over the waters of creation. But now, wisdom says, my children listen to me for blessed are those who keep my ways. For Paul, Jesus is the wisdom of God that both creates and guides us through the world. John does something very similar when he describes Jesus as the logos or the word of God in the opening poem of his gospel.
But together, what they're saying is that Jesus is not just someone who shares with us the wisdom of God or through whom God speaks to us. Jesus is the very conversation that God is having with humanity. The Sophia Logos, the creative word behind the world. And another way to say that is that to follow the way of Jesus is not just to make a series of good choices in your life. It is to align your life with the love that sits at the founding of the universe.
That's what it means to keep Jesus at the center, Which then leads Paul to his second point that Jesus in him all things hold together. And it's kind of neat to watch what he does here. Right? Because in Christ all things are created, but now in Christ the end of all things is undone. So Jesus is the firstborn of creation, but now the firstborn from the dead.
So what he's saying is that Jesus is the start of our story. Jesus is also the turning pint of our story, which means that Jesus is ultimately the destination of all stories. Why? Because God was pleased to have the fullness dwell in him. Now in English, in our bibles, we'll often end up translating this, the fullness of God or the fullness of deity.
It helps with the grammar. But actually fullness here is probably being used by Paul as a divine name. And honestly, that alone is probably worth the price of admissions into Colossians, the fullness. I love that. And what does that mean?
Well, it means that all things, all of those same things in fact that were created in Christ in the beginning will eventually somehow be reconciled back to their creator in the end. And we can be honest here, at least in a systematic approach. This is a difficult line to make sense of. And what does Paul mean that all things all things in heaven on earth will be reconciled to God? I mean, there are certainly moments in Paul's writings where he seems far less optimistic than that.
And yet, is what we call apokatostases, when Paul reaches up and out and into his most fantastic imagination of the divine And goes out of his way to argue that everything, explicitly all of the things created in Christ, which is precisely everything, will one day find their way back into divine embrace. Now how does that work exactly? Well, he kinda leaves us hanging here. There is no systematic explanation for the hope that Paul grounds his theology in, which means that we, as the church, have effectively been wrestling with the implications of these verses for, well, two thousand years now. I am certainly not going to settle any of that debate today, but perhaps the best I can offer is this, that absolutely everything created in Christ will one day find its way home because precisely nothing that points in any direction but Christ could ever be more than fleeting.
And if that's true, then that has to shape everything about the path that I will choose in my life. Because I wanna be on the path that is ahead of the curve on its way home to where I'm heading. For God was pleased to have fullness dwell in Christ and through him to reconcile all things to God's self. Let's pray. God, are times that the scope of good news feels too big, too good, too impossible to be true.
And, should we trust that the love that sits at the founding of the universe is calling each of us, all of us, everything you have created home. And even if we struggle to believe it, we trust that by your spirit you are guiding us toward that path. So, the steps that we take in our world, in our relationships, in the way that we move along your path will ultimately shape us into the people you imagine us to become. Might we trust that everything that points in a direction away from you will one day find its end. And so, God, might we shape our hearts and our actions and our feet toward you even this day.
In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website, commons.church, for more information. You can find us on all of the socials commonschurch.
You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server. Head to commons.churchdiscord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in.
Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.