Fight the Powers

– Colossians 1:11-20
November 25, 2007

Today’s scripture is a letter written by Paul to the Christians at Collossae. Let’s open this letter and see if it just might be a letter addressed to us as well.

The once great port city of Collossae was destroyed by an earthquake in about 64 CE; it silted up afterwards and it’s never been rebuilt. For that little town of Collossae, and the tiny group of early Christians in it, Paul wrote from prison a powerful short letter in which the victory of Christ the king over “the powers” is his chief message.

The readers of this letter lived in a world under the grip of something called “the powers.” The world of Paul’s readers was run by invisible forces quite beyond their control. The gods of the sea determined the success or failure of sea voyages. If you were fighting a war, you had better offer a sacrifice to the god Mars, god of war. The principalities and powers were not far away. They were behind, or above every single event in the visible world and controlled the destinies of humanity.

Now, before you dismiss this talk about principalities and powers, ask the question, “Who runs our world?” The politicians who parade about on the evening news? We think of them as powerful people. But they say they are victims of “forces beyond our control.” When we complain about the fix we’re in, we’re told “the economy” is to blame. What is that? Ever seen “the economy?” It is the power that determines our well being, pulls our strings, gives us happiness or misery, even though you can’t see it. That’s the language we use. We can’t touch and see “the economy” or “capital trends,” we can’t touch “terrorism” or the “global market” but these “powers” call the shots.

It’s not the president of the university here who runs the university; it’s the university that runs the president. We don’t work the system, the system works us.

Our ancestors called these powers “gods” and named them Mars, Jupiter and Venus and told wonderful stories about them. We call them “politics” or “economics” or “hormones” and have theories about how they may be manipulated and managed, but I’m not sure that we know much more about how to deal with these “powers” than our ancestors. We’ve got problems with the powers. We feel so powerless and defenseless before forces over which we have no control.

“Don’t blame me,” says our governator. “I can’t be held responsible for a downturn in the economy.” We’ve got problems with the powers.

Our scripture for this Christ the King Sunday is the first chapter of the letter to the Colossians. This letter opens with Paul’s thanksgiving that there is a church in Colossae in the first place. Paul tells them that they are to live as if they were all a song of thanksgiving to God, saying, before the letter ends, “whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

Paul says that they should be thankful that God has rescued them “from the powers of darkness, and has transferred them into the kingdom of his beloved son, in whom we have redemption for the forgiveness of sins.” Do you hear an echo in that phrase? It is an echo from the Exodus. Just as the children of Israel were brought out of slavery in Egypt and were delivered as free people, so now, by the preaching of the Gospel, people everywhere can be transferred from the grip of the powers into the kingdom of Jesus…the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, as Paul puts it.

Paul says something important about the powers in this letter. In 1:15-20, we find the basic affirmation on which everything else depends: “All things were made in Christ, through Christ, and for Christ.”

All things — including the “powers!” The world is not ultimately divided into the good part that belongs to God and the bad part that is ruled by the powers. The whole world was created by God and it all belongs to God.

So what went wrong? Paul indicates that what went wrong was that human beings forsook their God-ordained responsibility for God’s world and gave the world over to the powers. If you refuse to practice sexuality under God, then Venus is all too willing to take charge. When business is done just for money and not as a gift from God, the mammon takes charge and all hell breaks loose.

Now Jesus came to take on the principalities and powers. He lived and taught a way of being human, which challenged the powers. The powers said, “Live and die for the almighty dollar!” (which I guess isn’t so almighty these days, is it?) Jesus said you can’t serve God and mammon. The powers said get a big gun and use it; that’s the only way to get things done, it’s all “they” understand. Jesus said that those who take the sword perish by the sword. The powers said that Caesar was the most powerful ruler in the world. Jesus proclaimed the reign of God. The powers whipped us into line by threat of military force, Jesus ruled as a bleeding lamb upon a throne.

Now, what happens to people like Jesus who stand up to the powers? It looks fine for a while; and then the powers get organized. The tanks roll in. The powerful, invisible forces get going. That’s what happened to Jesus. The powers can’t stand people who challenge them. The powers rule by the illusion that they have everything under control. So if someone breaks loose, speaks of a different world, an alternative rule, they get nervous, and frequently deadly.

The powers nailed up above Jesus’ head the charge of which he is guilty; he acted like he was in charge when they were in charge. They stripped him naked and publicly humiliated him in his trial and crucifixion. They celebrated their victory over the would-be king. And then Jesus hung there for a while, proof that nobody can beat the system.

Now, listen to Colossians 2:15 and see how Paul stands all this on its head: “Jesus stripped the powers naked; he made a public example of them; he celebrated his triumph over them!”

Surprise. The cross was not the defeat of Christ by the powers; it was the defeat of the powers by the bloody cross of Christ.

The powers…like lust, greed, fear, pride, and all the rest…whisper to you that you can’t resist them. Go along to get along. Get a gun, or a fat bank account, and work with the powers. But Paul says that these powers were defeated on the cross. They have no power over you. The battle has been won. Something has been done about the powers.

Paul’s vision of the Christian life is thus of a life lived between D-Day and VE-Day. The decisive battle has been won; the battles we face today are part of the mopping-up operation to implement that victory. In the meantime, we are to live as those who know that the decisive battle has been fought, the war has been won, and we have been liberated to live as those who know for sure who sits on the throne. There is now only one power we are to obey, in life and death, in life beyond death. That power has a human face, a face once crowned with thorns.

How can we live in the light of that victory that was worked on a cross? How can we best exercise our citizenship in this new reign, under a new King?

How about this? Every time that you pray that prayer that our King has taught us, as we did earlier, you are saying, in great defiance, that Jesus Christ is Lord and that the “powers” aren’t. “Thy kingdom come.” Every time you bow your head and say a blessing at a meal, you are making a political statement, saying that the food that you partake is gift of God, not an achievement of your savvy economic mastery. Every time you come forward and receive the blessing of the wine and bread, you are partaking in the inauguration banquet, in the victory celebration for the defeat and unmasking of the powers.

So, having heard this political proclamation, this victory announcement from Paul’s letter to the Colossians, we are to go back home, go out into our community, and live as those who now know who sits on the throne and how the world ends and who is in charge.

The main job of the church is to keep telling people the news: Jesus Christ is Lord, and Aphrodite, Mars, Caesar, Herod, and Mammon are not! The battle has been fought and won. Victory is assured. Now, let’s get on and live it.

We need to cultivate the insight and honesty of that little boy in Hans Christian Anderson’s well-known children’s story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” which concludes with this scene:

“And so the emperor marched in the procession under the beautiful canopy and everybody on the street and in the windows cried out: ‘The Emperor’s new clothes are peerless! What a beautiful train! How wonderfully they fit!’

No one would let it be known that he saw nothing, for that would have meant he was unfit for his office, or else that he was very stupid… ‘But he has nothing on!’ said a little child.

‘Just listen to the innocent!’ said the child’s father. But one person whispered to another what the child had said…

‘But he really hasn’t anything on!’ at last shouted all the people. The Emperor had a creepy feeling, for it seemed to him that they were right. But then he thought to himself, ‘I must carry the thing out (stay the course) and go through with the procession.’

So he bore himself still more proudly, and the chamberlains walked along behind him carrying the train which was not there at all.’”