Colossians 1:1-8

William F. Schnell

July 11, 2010

I’m not feeling really good about Miami right now, so you will excuse me if I dust off a slightly used and unflattering story about that town. When Jim Bob graduated from high school he got to pick where the family would vacation. He picked a Caribbean cruise departing from Miami. We flew to Miami, took the cruise and upon our return visited overnight with some friends on their boat in the Keys. As I used their computer to print out our boarding passes on the day of our departure I was dismayed to discover that out return flight had been moved up a couple of hours. How could this be? I had never heard of such a thing.

So we raced to Miami International, returned the rental and ran to the gate with our carry on backpacks, which is all I allow family members in the way of baggage. Wouldn’t you know that we just missed our flight? Now what do we do. When I asked an attendant that very question, he raised his hands and said, "No hablo Ingles." When I turned to another person in uniform I got the same answer. I began running from employee to employee and nobody spoke the language. It was like the Twilight Zone. I actually began to panic since this was not just me in this helpless mess by my wife and children who were beginning to give me the look: "Fix this Dad."

So I fell back on every Dad’s "Plan B"--food. We drug ourselves and our packs to a concourse eatery and ordered something to eat. While we were eating an absolutely beautiful Latina ran up to us and said, "Thank goodness I found you." I say she was beautiful because a) she could clearly speak the language, and b) she was clearly concerned about us. First she gave us vouchers for our meals. Then she gave us vouchers for a taxi to Ft. Lauderdale International Airport. Then she gave us vouchers for two rooms at a nice hotel, and vouchers for more meals there and, finally, airline tickets home the next morning. Sweet. Life was good. Everybody was happy. Dad was a hero. But that Latina, whoever she was, was beautiful.

It is so weird when people don’t speak the language where you expect them to speak the language. In church you expect people to speak the language of love. By and large, that is the language people speak here. But there are some religious organizations where they may speak the lingo, but they do not speak the language of love. They fuss and fight with one another over stupid things. They gossip and backbite. They undermine and obstruct each others’ efforts at ministry. And of course they struggle and struggle and forever wonder why. If you have ever visited a place like that you might feel like I did at Miami International Airport and think to yourself, there is something not right about this.

We expect better from people of faith, and we should. We should expect them to speak the language. We should expect them to speak the language of love. The title of our message for this morning is; "Faith Expressing Itself through Love." As Paul writes in what has become known as "the love chapter" of I Corinthians 13, …if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing (I Corinthians 13:2). I am nothing in God’s sight. I may, for a season, fool others into believing that I am holier-than-thou with my outward show of religiosity, but I will never fool God. Without love, I am nothing in God’s sight.

Our text for this morning is the introduction to a letter from Paul to the church at Colosse. Paul, good diplomat that he is, begins on a positive note about the faith of the Colossians which expresses itself through love. He writes: We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints... (Verses 3-4). Paul is linking faith in Christ with love for all the saints—not just some of the saints who are like you, but for all the saints including those who may be different from you in certain respects.

As we read on in the letter, Paul addresses some important ways this ideal is not being lived out at the church in Colosse. He warns: See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ (2:8). Apparently a faction of Jewish coverts to Christianity within the church has a holier-than-thou attitude toward the Gentile coverts. Among other things having to do with esoteric knowledge lacking among the Gentiles, the Jewish coverts refuse to accept the Gentile converts because the latter, while baptized, have not been circumcised.

Just as baptism has been the initiatory rite into the Christian faith community, circumcision has been the initiatory rite into the Jewish faith community (insofar as males are concerned). The Jewish Christians believed that true believers should be both baptized and circumcised. Now it is one thing to expect an adult male to be baptized, but (and I speak as an adult male here) it is another thing entirely to expect one to be circumcised. So when the Gentile Christians refused to be circumcised, the Jewish Christians shunned them, refused to fellowship or worship with them and generally wrote them off as hell bound heathen.

So what we had here was a good old fashioned church fight over something stupid. Imagine attending that church on a Sunday morning where each group keeps to themselves and refuses to acknowledge the other. I attended one church while on vacation several years ago which was immersed in a worship war. You had the contemporary praise contingent and you had the traditional hymn contingent. The church leadership had responded with a "blended" worship service with a band leading one song projected on a screen and an organist playing another song from the hymnal.

Big mistake. During the contemporary number half the congregation sang with gusto while the other half remained stoically silent. During the traditional number the folks you thought couldn’t sing belted out the verses with the religious fervor of a revivalist choir while the other half of the congregation rolled its eyes. As a guest that morning, it was very weird. I sang all the songs and nobody knew what to make of me, and therefore did not greet me after the service. That was fine with me because it gave me an opening for an early exit after the service.

It is amazing how a complete stranger can tell if a church is conflicted in just a few minutes from the vibe that is given off by its members. Something is just not right. People are not speaking the language. Their faith is not expressing itself through love. Paul was in the church building business, not in the church demolition business. He didn’t want visitors getting a bad first impression and looking for an early exit, never to return again. He wanted visitors to feel the love and acceptance of believers which transcended all lesser differences.

So his advice, not only to the church in Colosse but to all the churches, was summed up in a letter to the church at Galatia—a portion of which is printed at the top of our bulletin. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love (Galatians 5:6). If you are already circumcised, remain that way. If you are uncircumcised, remain that way. And whatever way you remain, don’t hassle anyone else to become like you except in one regard: you must all speak the same language—you must speak the language of love. Share a common faith that expresses itself through love.

Following worship today I am going to baptize a father and his infant daughter by sprinkling water on their heads. In a few weeks I will lead a group of youth at church camp into a lake where I will baptize them by immersion. Some churches accept only one mode of baptism and others accept only the other. We practice a "blended baptism" here, and in this case it works. What we try not to do is fuss and fight over things like sacraments, worship styles and doctrinal differences. What we try to do is speak the same spiritual language—the language of love. We try to share a common faith that expresses itself through love.

We don’t always perfectly reflect this ideal, but we strive toward perfection—and praise the Lord for that. In our Call to Worship, Paul says that …love is the fulfillment of the law (Romans 13:10). In this he is echoing Jesus Christ’s two greatest commandments: love of God and love of neighbor. All the law and prophets, he says, hang on these two commandments (Matthew 22:40). All of God’s law spoken by his prophets aims for one goal: us loving God by loving his other children—no exceptions.

So we don’t fly jetliners into buildings of innocents in God’s name, and we don’t demonize others as heathen and heretics in God’s name because they worship him differently than we, and we don’t gossip about fellow church members in God’s name because, frankly, it makes the faith look bad. Nobody’s attracted to that kind of faith. The kind of faith that attracts those searching for an authentic spirituality is a Faith Expressing Itself Though Love.

And so we close where Paul began, linking faith and love in our prayers for you. We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints…. Let others know we are Christians, not by our mode of baptism or style of worship or doctrinal dogmatism. Let them know we are Christians by our love.