Year C. Eight Sunday after Pentecost July 29, 2001
Colossians 2:6-19
Title: “Evil only has the power over us that we give it”
In Chapter two verse ten, Paul introduced the theme “fullness of life” as a way of capturing the whole Christian experience in a single phrase. Verses eleven to thirteen develop this idea by emphasizing the radical re-birth experienced in Baptism. Despite the fact that Paul fought so hard to eliminate physical circumcision as a required sign of being part of God’s chosen people, he still appreciated its deep symbolism. The putting off of a part of one’s flesh, foreskin, was symbolically indicative of dying, especially to the old or former ways. The symbolism fit Baptism even better than it did circumcision. Circumcision, albeit, for men only, was a ritual of initiation into Israel, God’s signed people, and of reconciliation with him, precisely the effects now of Baptism. In fact, in verse eleven, the author even refers to Baptism as the “circumcision of Christ.”
In verse twelve, you were buried with him in baptism: As in the case of “putting off” the flesh in circumcision, Christians must now “put off,” that is, die to, leave behind, detach from their previous worldly practices and thought patterns. Baptism involves this movement, a movement akin to death.
“You were also raised with him,” Baptism also involves another movement, a becoming “new.” It does not end in death but continues on into the “fullness of life,” now captured under the rubric of resurrection.
“Through faith in the power of God,” yet, Baptism, the very power of God himself, is no magical rite automatically effective. It requires personal faith, an interior renewal of mind, objectively done by God and subjectively accepted and personally appropriated by the Christian. Baptism and faith are of the same cloth as the dying and rising of Jesus
In verse thirteen, you were dead in transgressions, the Jews had received the divine law by revelation. They disobeyed God’s will in the form in which they knew it, the Mosaic law. Pagans, ignorant of the Mosaic law, had disobeyed God’s will in the form in which they knew it, the inner voice of conscience. Both Jew and Gentile were morally bankrupt before God and equally in need of his pardoning grace. Here that situation of moral bankruptcy is described as like being dead.
“Uncircumcision of your flesh,” it matters little whether a person enters into Baptism physically circumcised or not. The person undergoes Baptism as a “spiritual circumcision,” a putting off of the old flesh.
“He brought you to life along with him,” one aspect of Baptism is the submerging, the “dying.” But it is not over. One does not stay submerged or dead. One rises, exits the water and lives a new way of life. Christ did that in his death and subsequent resurrection and so does the baptized Christian do that along with him.
“Having forgiven us all our transgressions,” the former situation of bondage to sin, present sins, past sins, and sin itself, represented by submergence into the water, is changed by emergence from the water, now equated with forgiveness. The word used here for forgiveness is not the usual one, Greek aphiemi, but charizomai. Its root is charis, “grace.” It was used to indicate the free cancellation of a debt as in Luke 7:42. It prepares the way for the imagery in the next verse. It also links forgiveness to free and undeserved, indeed, unexpected, grace as opposed to earning forgiveness through penance.
In verse fourteen to fifteen, the passage ends with a collage of three metaphors to illustrate just how we now possess “fullness of life.” Just as Jesus fashioned his parables from the raw material of the village and country life of Galilee where he preached, so the author uses images and examples from the bustling ethos of the Greco-Roman cities where he preached. Citing the examples of 1) the debtor’s bond, 2) the inscription on the cross of a condemned man indicating his crime, and 3) the triumphal march of a conquering Roman general, the author illustrates three major aspects of forgiveness.
In verse fourteen, obliterating the bond against us, in those days if one were bankrupt one could not declare “Chapter 13” or anything else. One went to prison until the debts were paid and they hardly ever were. How can one pay off debts while in prison? The author uses this well-known situation to illustrate that Christ himself, in effect, cancelled or paid off our mountain of bankruptcy. Debts would be written down on wax tablets or slates. Hence the imagery of “wiping out” or “erasing” would be apropos.
“Nailing it to the cross,” it is as if Jesus took all our bills, charge accounts and all, and nailed them right up there with the inscription on his cross charging him with being a king. There they are fastened publicly for all to see on the cross of Christ. The same nails, which fastened Christ, freed us.
In verse fifteen, he made a public spectacle of them leading them away in triumph by it, the hostile spiritual powers looked on Christ as defeated. They had trapped him and nailed him. So they thought for a time, but nothing could be further from the truth. It turned out that he trapped and tricked them into believing he was weak, perhaps because he was non-violent. These spiritual powers could not see past the surface and externals of the crucifixion into its meaning, meaning that was transparent to God, apparent to believers but hidden to unbelievers and inaccessible to evil forces. These foolish and blind powers mistook Jesus for a mere mortal man. That fatal mistake enabled Jesus to turn them into captives. It was they who were conquered and now, like a triumphant general marching into a city to take possession of it, Jesus parades his now chained prisoners for all to see and mock as powerless.
In verse eleven, the author refers to the “circumcision of Christ.” It means both Christ’s passion and death as well as a Christian’s Baptism into it. Just as circumcision is a stripping away, a cutting off of a portion of flesh, the foreskin, so Christ’s death stripped away only a portion of his body. His glorious body did not die. What died was what was mortal, that flesh connected with death because of sin, that flesh which was not Jesus’ physical body but his “corporate” body, our flesh, our sin. And just as Christ did not get stuck in death, neither do we. We go along with him into the resurrected life. This is not a disembodied, purely spiritual, spiritual in the sense of non-body or out-of-body, life. Thus we continue to live in the world and to a certain extent in the “flesh” after Baptism, but not of the world. We are part of the new creation. We are like the former caterpillar turned butterfly, using the same matter, but reorganized, redeemed into a new, renewed, really, body with new capabilities.
Because we are identified with Christ through Baptism, our “link” to his saving death and resurrection, we are not only released from our past debts or sins, we are freed from the bondage which would impel us to sin again. Our addiction to sin has been broken. We are no longer condemned to repeat former habits. We are no longer like the person who finally pays off or has someone else pay off his or her credit card debt only to return to old habits and fall back into debt. We are no longer like that person because not only has our debt been paid by Christ, but the compulsion, the urge, the power that got us into debt in the first place has been conquered by Christ. He parades before us these now beaten foes, these powers we foolishly thought had such power over us. He shows them for the weak things they are. They thought they were more powerful than he. They were so wrong. What is even worse, even more wrong, is that we, we humans, think or once thought these “powers and principalities” are more powerful not only than Christ, but more powerful than we are, we who are “in Christ.” They are not. Evil only has the power over us that we give it, that we allow ourselves through fear to be duped into believing it has.
Those three mental pictures- the erasing of the debt, the nailing the debts to the cross, and the parading of the conquered evil powers before our eyes- change our mental picture of reality and allow us to see ourselves living in the new creation where the old situations of slavery and sin do not apply. Fortified with this change of heart and mind, with this new awareness that we are no longer creeping caterpillars but winged butterflies, we can enjoy fullness of life even here and now. Christ has entered us and given us his power to combat the old self, the self chained to the hostile powers of the universe, the self condemned to crawl on the surface of things and at the edges of the hearts of other humans. He has entered into us to empower us to enter into life and love and others in a way impossible before. He has freed us and done so publicly. This is no covert freedom or imminent one. It is an accomplished fact. True, he hung on the cross. True evil tried to nail him down. True the evil powers thought it was their victory and Christ’s defeat, but how wrong they were, dead wrong. Their colossal, cosmic error resulted in death for and to them, but life for and to us.
If someone paid off our debts- our mortgage, our car, all our bills- we would rejoice but only for a short time. Unless we changed we would find ourselves back in debt again and looking for another “savior” or gambling to hit the lottery. However, we Christians can have not the fleeting feeling of freedom but the abiding attitude of freedom that comes from reminding ourselves that we are indeed free from the slavery of sin and our debt has been cancelled once and for all. “Fullness of life” describes the experience and captures the attitude. We Christians are like visitors to a prison. We see and experience everything the condemned do save one. We are “visitors” and can leave the confines any time we choose. As we walk around the planet and see all the slavery in its many forms we are sad for those condemned to it, even without knowing it, and want to introduce them to Christ so they can glad to be free forever as we are.
By Baptism Christians are buried with and in Christ, where formerly they were buried with and in debt to sin and Satan.
Christ not only changed our situation before God but also changed us, raised us with him, so we do not return to our former state.
Christ did not wait until we changed on our own, but while still sinners he saved us by forgiving us.
Molting: Molting is the process that involves the shedding or casting off of an outer layer, e.g. of skin, or covering, e.g. of feathers, and the formation of its replacement. Molting occurs throughout the animal kingdom. It includes the shedding and replacement of horns, hair, reptile skin, and bird feathers. It is likely that people of primitive cultures and by “primitive” we mean technologically primitive not intellectually inept, observed this process among the animals and imitated it in the rite of circumcision, both male and female. Today, although male circumcision is still widespread, female circumcision is widely considered barbaric and pointless. Even male circumcision is thought by many to be unnecessary in most cases and also barbaric and cruel. Why does it survive and why was it so widespread among primitive cultures, including Jewish culture? Certainly, one of the answers lies in the primitives observing the molting process of many animals. The animals underwent the process of shedding their skin for renewal and growth purposes, to adapt to a new environment or situation or challenge of adulthood. So, many cultures practiced circumcision to mark the beginning of adulthood and its responsibilities. The reasoning would go something like this: if it works for animals why wouldn’t it work for humans? Thus circumcision not only identified a male as an adult in his society, it also offered the hope, at least, of having the power to meet adult responsibilities. The problem is that circumcision does not have that power. It might have the power of identification as an adult, but it does not bring with it the power to carry out the responsibilities of adulthood. Soon, the man learns that he is really the same relatively fragile and frightened being he was before the painful rite, that felt like he would die from it or during it. Paul and his disciples saw that the hope, disappointment, really, of circumcision as a power to change, to metamorphose, to transform internally and not merely externally, was fulfilled in Baptism. Baptism, a rite of shedding dirt rather than skin, bestowed the power to change in essence and not just appearance. In fact, Baptism’s effect is physically invisible, once the water dries, until the person starts behaving in a way that only makes sense if he or she is from another creation, following another set of “laws.” In Baptism we molt, but not our external skin, rather our internal attitudes. That’s all we can do, simply decide to die to former ways. Only Christ and his Spirit, who enters us, can change us once we agree to let him.
Fullness of Life: If Baptism only offered the hope of transformation we would be no better off than people of other religions, like Judaism, that can know what is the right path to follow, the right thing to do, but cannot really do it. So long as we are chained to the old creation we are like people condemned to prison. Oh, yes, we can get somewhat comfortable in this prison, but never free. As Christians we are aware that our lives do not depend on our power or powers, but on God’s in Christ. That is such a freeing experience that we are empowered to detach from this creation and all its lures and laws and live on a different level and in a different dimension, seeing all things in the light of eternity. That awareness, awareness of a fact and not merely a hope or dream, fills us with life and love for life. Not life on earth’s terms, but on God’s terms. That we have been forgiven our past sins and now have the power, Christ’s power, available to us to resist returning to our former state, we are not condemned to gain that “weight” or incur that debt back, gives us a joie de vivre based on truth and not mere wishful thinking. And so it lasts throughout our earthly lifetime and increases when we step over completely into eternity- fullness of life. Amen.
