By Such Stripes Are We Healed
by Jack Shaver
©The United Church of Canada, 1985
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 0-88622-196-X
7M/12/85/APL
Used with Permission
Tuesday
It's flesh that saves us
Colossians 1: 15-26
It is very possible Paul wrote this letter. The ideas are similar to his, as are the concerns addressed and the metaphors used to express the significance of Jesus Christ. Unlike the letters which are indisputably his, this one has a more general sound. It has not been dashed off in spontaneous response to a particular situation. The language is beginning to sound conventional rather than newly minted in order to express a new mystery. Therefore, whether by Paul or not, what we have here are the beginnings of the expression of the community's faith. This is less the language of one person's pilgrimage and more the conventional formulation of correct belief. The passage for todays reads, in part, like an official creed.
All the more interesting for its content. As the reading begins it mentions something very much like the Word made flesh. This is followed by a flowery statement that if you want to know what the power and majesty of God is all about, it is in Christ that they all dwell. Christ is declared the head of the church, the body of Christ. God's work in Christ is declared to be the reconciliation of all things on earth and in heaven. It is through the blood of Christ's cross that this reconciliation is accomplished. It reads like a list of topics for our reflection through Lent.
We have good reason to feel, sometimes, that orthodoxy and conventional expressions lose the sharp edge and radical depth of the original insights they were meant to safeguard. In the experience of any of us pious words can get so familiar that they pass by without taking any effect. How often have you heard someone say, when they finally hear the gospel, "Why didn't someone tell me that's what it was about?"
- I think it is worth noting, from time to time, that the words are there, asleep in the conventional language. And the conventional language can become a great gift once the words are made alive.
Notice how the conventional language of our text continues to use that no-no word flesh in connection with our salvation: - And you, who once were estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body flesh by his death.
- I think the connection those first Christians made between Christ's flesh and our reconciliation with God will remain a living source of insights until the end of time.
And that source becomes even more abundant when we read down to the verse where the author characterizes his own role in the ministry of reconciliation, as resting in his flesh.
Who of us has not grown flesh-weary and flesh-disgusted for long periods and to great depths. What a promise, that we can have redemptive purpose restored to our flesh!
Offering
God of the ages,
your people Israel brought you many and diverse offerings.
They brought thank offerings- sin offerings
- wave offerings and
heave offerings. - We can understand why they called one of them "heave offering" - having to do with the shoulder, lifting up by putting one's shoulder to it.
Almighty God, we bring you our heave offering:
The burdens that have been too much for us. The ones we take up in pride and self-righteousness; the ones we punish ourselves with in guilt and self-rejection. The ones we are rightfully under because that's where you are.
Almighty God, we bring to you our heave offering:
All our responsibilities: the people and causes that count on us; the people and causes that absorb us; the people and causes we neglect. Gracious God, we are nothing if we are not responsible, and we lift up our responsibilities that you might receive, cleanse and bless them.
Almighty God, we bring you our heave offering:
The offering that we can only make together: the work and the ministry and mission that we can do only if we band together. How prone we are to strive and suffer alone when you have given us to one another.
We lift up one another and our collective efforts so that our service can be received and cleansed and blessed.
Receive, O God, everything that is on our backs. Make room there for Christ's easy yoke and his light burden.- Amen