By: Julia Baker

Colossians 3:12-17

I love this week of Christmastide,
there is a liminal nature to these days
that offer a sacred quiet.

The Light has come, we no longer sit in darkness.

And we look toward…

In these threshold days many of us reflect on the year past
and the one ahead. As I do this for myself,

this Lucille Clifton poem has been ringing in me:

I am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that I catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
old promises and
It will be hard to let go
Of what I said to myself
About myself
When I was sixteen and
twenty-six and thirty-six
even thirty-six but
I am running into a new year
and I beg what I love and
I leave to forgive me

At this invitational time what a gift we are given the Col. passage
in the lectionary rotation. I am going to focus my reflection there today.

Like the poem it is a passage in which Paul invites

us to consider our loves.

First a few things to think on as we orient ourselves
with the church in Colossae reading this letter:

It is important whenever we read words from Paul
to remember that he was not writing from a warm home,
with a table and quill, clean clothes and enough food in his belly.
He was writing from a 1st century Roman prison.
He was surely hungry, cold, fighting illness,
not to mention anxiety, loneliness and the cavernous unknown.

From that dark his words, what light they are,
show his beautiful drive and faithful passion to support,
encourage and challenge early Jesus followers.

—

The first word of the passage we read today gives us a clue
of something to pay special importance to —

“Therefore”

With this we need to look at what is said directly before
and in the shape of the whole letter.
And acknowledge it is a letter that we are reading.
We are getting the privilege of reading someone else’s mail.

Paul is writing to this small community of Christians in Colossae
to give encouragement within the forces
they are seeking to resist and to counter
the strong cultural pull around them.

The challenges of false teachers, paganism,
Jewish legalism, and mystical polytheism.

I picture the church as a little boat in a raging river
trying to row against the current.

The first two chapters of Colassians are addressing these forces.

Our passage today offers the encouragement
of what to use to steer and row in that strong cultural current.

What to put on — clothe ourselves in,
for that we are given a list of virtues:

Compassion, kindness, gentleness, humility and patience.

Virtues, what a durable classic word,
the heavy-lifting it does here articulates
a vision of formative habits of the heart.

And habits are what we do as 2nd nature — breathing, speaking.

The call of these verses then is to have
our habits be such that Christ like love bubbles out of us,
is woven into our very character with each breath, each word, each action.

—

After the list of virtues Paul invites us
to over all these things to clothe ourselves in Love
which binds it all together in perfect unity.

What beautiful poetic imagery.

Humans are lovers — we are love driven and motivated.
We are what we love.

Most fundamentally, at our core level,
we don’t think our way through life, we long and love our way.
The human heart is a compass.

And so, it is thus vital we ask what it is that we love.

What are we draping ourselves in? What we are putting on?

Does what you love really align with your innermost longings? With the way of Jesus?

Do our virtues, our habits reflect our love?

Such a tricky thing about being human
is that we soak in all sorts of messages about what to love.
Much of it is subconscious.
Our habits, our hearts have been trained in disoriented directions.

The waters around our small boat selves spill and slosh into the boat,
we get turned around in the current thinking land
and thriving is where we are headed.

What is the liturgy (love shaping practice) of our social media feeds,
the books we read, shows we watch,
the stores we shop in,
the tone in which we speak to one another,
the political commentary we absorb etc. etc. etc.

As the Church of Brethren, as Anabaptists,
There is already a deep posture of separation from the world.
We have been doing this boat against the current thing for a long time.
What gift…

And I still think there is a strong invitation here to really

take a love audit of our lives.
Get really honest with ourselves…

For that is where peace lives in aligning
our loves with the True North of God.
Verse 15 “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.”

What a beautiful thing to read this passage in community of worship.
Paul ends with encouragement of what we are doing here today.
The love-shaping practice of worship. A rehoning, reorienting practice.
The place where 12 year-old Jesus went to learn, to grow, to be shaped.

It is an intense world out there.

As we run into a new year how is this community,
this little boat, being or and compass to each other of
where is the true dry land?

—

I love the opening words of today’s passage:

“Therefore, as God’s holy one’s, chosen and beloved…”

These invitations don’t come from the world’s energy of
“new year new you”
or diet culture, no shaming fingers here. Rather

SINCE we are beloved, so incredibly loved beyond our fathoming…

may we clothe ourselves with a holy way of life —
drape ourselves in love in order to live courageous lives in Christ’s peace.

AMEN