Beyond Doing It Alone – Pentecost Sunday (Colossians 3: 12-17)
This week we will pick back up with the sermon series theme of Beyond. This theme comes to us from the General Assembly theme text in Ephesians 3: 20-21, where the Apostle Paul prays to a God that can do more and go beyond what we can ask or even imagine. Today we will take a look at Colossians 3: 12-17, and what that might say to us about what it means to go beyond going it alone or doing things independently. In this reading for today, Paul reminds the Colossians that they are called to be in community. Beyond that is what the call means, and how it should lead people to live their lives.
Of course, today is also a special holiday on the church calendar. If you can believe it, today we are now fifty days after Easter. On this day we celebrate Pentecost. We celebrate the day that the Holy Spirit came upon the people gathered as flames dancing in the wind just above their heads. It is marked as the birth of the Church as we know it. A community brought together by the Holy Spirit. We celebrate that the people who followed Christ in this world, would no longer have to do it alone.
Another thing happens on Pentecost. As the flames of the Holy Spirit came to rest over the heads of those gathered, they suddenly all begin to speak in tongues. Specifically, the languages of those gathered. Each person could understand the others in their own language. By the power of the Holy Spirit that particular barrier to community -miscommunication and misunderstanding- was brought down. The path to unity was made easier for them. That is where we go when we move beyond isolation or stubborn independence. Beyond doing it alone is unity and community. The way we get there is found in what Jesus has taught us. What Paul writes to the Colossians about in this letter is a call to community among a group that is facing division and disunity.
In this letter we are reminded of the same kind of things that we remember on Pentecost. We are reminded that God blesses us with community. That we are called to go beyond doing the work of God alone. Pentecost is a celebration that we do it together. This means being in right relationship, not just with God, but with each other. As Paul writes, we do that by cultivating certain values, first in ourselves and then in our community. These are virtues that emphasize a good attitude toward oneself, as well as genuine concern for others. In his letter, Paul names traits like compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience as hallmarks of healthy relationships.
Colossians is written during a time when Christian communities were learning to live beyond the excitement and the urgency of an impending apocalypse, and instead find a way to live in the reality of waiting. This community gathers decades after the resurrection event, decades after the Pentecost event. Paul tells them that the apocalypse is coming, and Christ will soon return, but of course, they haven’t seen it yet. So, what does their community look like in this time of waiting? Well, it means there is a lot of room for interpretation and opinions about how to move forward and how to honor their beliefs as they await the next big event. However, Paul writes to them, explaining how the best way to live in a time of waiting is to live as if glorious new realm has already arrived. That means coming together in community.
The problem is that people come chime in with lots of ideas about what the community should do. Rules they should follow. There is less concern placed on right relationship and more concern placed on having the right answers. Pauls’ letter suggests that the path to unity emphasizes communal practice over common belief.
This notion is in line with the perspective of the founders of our church’s denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Christian unity was a key concept for our founders. Bringing the community together and stripping away the things that up to that point had created so much division among different groups of Christians. So, they set about to make a church that was non-creedal, meaning to become part of this church there is nothing you have memorize and recite that outlines any specific belief you are meant to have, all that is asked is if you believe in and want to follow Jesus Christ. There is an emphasis on the freedom to interpret the Bible as you will, but also an openness and expectation that we can talk about it. And of course, the founders placed the open communion table at the heart of worship. Where all who wish to share in the unconditional love of Christ are invited to take part. We are a church community not because we believe all the same things, but because we wish to be together, and the common belief we do have is that we recognize in the life of Jesus Christ that we are called and loved by God. When we realize that we are called and loved by God, we then have a sense of self that makes it possible to relate to others with love, which makes forgiveness possible, which makes unity possible. This was true for the Colossians, true for the founders of the Disciples of Christ, and it is true for us today. So why not get beyond all the things that divide us, including the belief that independence and individualism are some of our highest virtues – why not get beyond that and find our way to unity?
Well, there are, of course, things that stand in the way. When I was in high school, there was a regular debate among people in the town about the idea that the students in the high school should have to wear uniforms. There were different reasons that people felt the need for a dress code. Some of it came from that tension that always seems to exist between the generations of people. The culture, including the fashion, of the younger generations often seems out of place, confusing and, sometimes, threatening to the older generations. So, when I was in school that meant they thought the girl’s shorts were too short and the boy’s pants were too baggy. This was, after all, a time when style dictated that boys wear jeans so big and baggy that they were usually sliding down below their butts. That wasn’t how I wore my pants, but it was popular.
Actually, when I was in junior high, I mostly wore sweatpants. Usually, black. It was just a comfortable habit that started in elementary school. I got teased for it in junior high and started wearing jeans. Of course, now this would not have been seen as the major fashion faux pas that it was then. Now people wear sweatpants everywhere. To school, to restaurants, out to run errands. They’re everywhere, and it’s perfectly fine. Also, yoga pants are a very popular clothing item, even for people who don’t do yoga. Like I said, changes in fashion and culture can be source of tension, and a cause for critique.
The school uniform debate usually centered around two issues. One was adults worried that the short shorts and the sagging pants, and other types of fashion choices would be distracting for other students. The other problem some people saw, was that some students might feel bad. That is, the students who couldn’t afford to dress in a certain way or wear popular brands would feel less than. Kids who wore the wrong thing might get picked on. So, whether it was that or whether it was distraction, people worried that the clothes kids chose to wear could be a source of conflict. The easiest way to avoid or smooth over that conflict would be to introduce school uniforms. Everyone would wear the same modest outfit, that way nobody would be distracted or made to feel bad. In other words, they might create disunity.
Eventually, they did institute a uniform dress code, some years after I graduated. There were still lots of fights in the schools. Even so, it is true that what we clothe ourselves in can make a big difference. Culture and fashion and language are things that we must deal with when we attempt to make community together, because they are signifiers of our differences. Just like political beliefs or religious creeds. These are things that can distract us from dealing with one another with kindness, compassion, humility and gentleness and compassion. Those differences can also be a source of conflict, leading to some to ridicule others, or show hate toward them, or them. Basically, treating people in the opposite manner to which Paul instructs his church. We seek to get beyond that and find a way to unity.
The fastest way to unity and community is love. Opening your hearts and your doors in love is a path forward. On the other hand, hate slows things down. Worrying about who to exclude is just a process of spinning your wheels. Exerting energy but not going anywhere. For instance, our Pride flag in front of the church has been taken down several times in the past week or so Each time we have put a new one up. So where are we now? There has been some anger, and some annoyance, but flag or not we still are who we say we are. Who God calls us to be. An open and affirming congregation. So, to move forward, it is better to be about the work of inclusion, and to get beyond the fruitless thinking of exclusion. (I mean, just spend some time thinking about what you do want, and then think about what you don’t want. Which one leaves you feeling more energized?) Then, once more people are included, we must continue to be about the work of unity.
Paul says that we must clothe ourselves in these virtues of the holy life. To identify ourselves, to our community and to those not yet in our community, as those who have been called by God in Christ to love and serve God’s world. What clothes should we wear when baptized and raised to new life in Christ? These clothes will, and must, change how we relate to other people. When clothed in Christ we are saying that we are motivated by the love of Christ. So, we seek to make community in that way. We put on that uniform not because we are being motivated by the desire to minimize diversity and descension, but because we know that through the power of the Holy Spirit -which is God at work in the world in ways beyond what we can ask or imagine- we can live in a world of unity. A world where we know that the thing that binds us together, that we are all clothed in, now and forever, is the love of God.
Amen.