Seventh Sunday After Pentecost Year C 2010

The Saints in the Light

"May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light."

We're going to be considering Paul's letter to the Colossian church over the next several weeks, and we notice right away that Paul is delighted with this congregation. Big difference from Galatians, isn't it? Paul begins this letter as he begins all of them, except for Galatians, with this outpouring of love and joy. Of course, there is an issue Paul needs to discuss with them, but they themselves are not the problem.

You might open your bibles if you have them and scan these first lines again, because hidden in them is a whole wealth of good information about the church in Paul's day.

One of the things you'll notice is that Paul had a global orientation. He didn't start the congregation at Colossae, His co-worker Epaphras did, but Paul as an apostle nevertheless had oversight of this congregation. Paul makes note that the Colossians have love for all the saints, that is, all the other congregations of the church. He also makes note that the gospel is "bearing fruit in the whole world," and that the fruit-bearing at Colossae is within that larger context.

The church for Paul, and I think for the New Testament as a whole, is not instituted by human beings. It's something God is doing for the whole world. And so, while each congregation has its own local authority to shape its ministry in its peculiar context, to forget its covenant with all other congregations is to cease to be the church.

Suspicion and distrust is very much the order of the day, isn't it? It seems the world is filled with a sense of betrayal. I think many of us, myself included, find themselves asking, "whom can I trust?" And for many of us, I think the answer is only those who are close by. Only those who think as we do. Only those who live as we do. Only those who look like we do. Only those who speak our language. It seems that for our safety and well-being, we must simply reject and ignore or even destroy everyone else.

So it was for Israel in the days of the prophet Amos. Israel was split into two kingdoms. Kings were assassinated and replaced by even less faithful kings. The priests of the Northern Kingdom abandoned faith in God in order to suck up to the latest assassin in the throne. Most importantly though, the Northern kingdom had abandoned the unity of the people of God by refusing to worship at the one temple God had established in Jerusalem in the Southern kingdom.

Because they broke the covenant of unity, God sent Amos to the Northern kingdom to pronounce God's judgment. If the Northern kingdom rejected God's word and command, Amos said, God would reject and condemn the Northern kingdom and it would come to ruin.

Centuries later, the fallout of that judgment was that in the northern part of Israel there lived an outcast community of Jews called the Samaritans, named after what had been the capital city of the northern kingdom in Amos' day. The Samaritans rejected the prophets and had as their bible only the first five books of Moses. They continued to refuse to worship in Jerusalem at the temple, as all the rest of the world's Jews did, and worshipped only in the so-called high places, the mountain-top altars scattered around the northern territories. Jews regarded the Samaritans as beyond help, unclean, rejected by God forever. KInd of the way we think of the Middle East today.

So when the Jewish lawyer asked Jesus who his neighbor was, Jesus' answer was a shocker. A Samaritan is your neighbor, friend. The person you have rejected, the person you have dismissed from your mind and heart, the person you least trust, the person for whom you have the most contempt. That's the neighbor you are to love as you love yourself.

Who are the saints in the light? They are those who have been transferred into the kingdom of the Son of God, in whom, Paul says, we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Forgiveness is the foundation of Christian unity. Not love, not friendship, not like-mindedness, not homogeneity, not place or race or ideology or obeying the same laws. Forgiveness. Without forgiveness, redemption is not possible. Without forgiveness, Christian community is not possible. Without forgiveness, there is only destruction and death. Without forgiveness, the gates of hell slam closed and the world is plunged into despair.

The saints in the light are not the perfect people who never do anything wrong, who never hurt anyone. They are the forgiven people, who practice forgiveness for each other and for all the rest of the broken and troubled world.

God alone is judge, and God's judgment, his plumb line, is a gift. It's only the judgment of human beings that is toxic and ugly and disastrous. Whatever war is going on today is not some new war, but the same war that's been fought ever since Cain slew Abel, because every act of judgment and violence eventually begets more judgment and violence. No war has succeeded in accomplishing anything except more war. So it is with all judgment and vengeance. It's a never-ending demonic cycle leading only to sin and death.

Still, we are broken people who continue to put ourselves in the throne of God and judge other people. This is our chief sin. In fact, I find it almost axiomatic that whatever it is that makes me most angry about others is precisely what is wrongest with me. By the same token, what I admire most in others is often what is best in me.

God's plumb line, his measure of our uprightness as it were, is a gift. It's not our job to wallow in self-hatred and self-denial, but it's also not our job to justify and rationalize everything we do, while at the same time pointing out the faults of everyone else. To receive God's judgment helps us to see the riches of his grace. Twas grace, after all, that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved.

To love my neighbor as myself means to continue to bless my neighbor even as he or she disappoints me or even hurts me, just as God continues to bless me even as I disappoint and even hurt God. its to help those who are far away and unknown to me even though they don't know me or show any gratitude to me or give me anything in return, just as God helps me though I am far away from him and don't know him and show him no gratitude or do anything in return.

The saints in the light are those who are not holy in themselves, but have been made holy by the forgiveness of God. And the unholy world is blessed with holiness by the forgiveness of the saints.

And so it is that the garden of paradise, in some places and times, yet blooms in the world.

Amen.