Sermon from July 25

Pentecost 9
July 25, 2010
Colossians 2:6-15
Walk in him

In the name of Jesus, amen. When you are little, you long to be grown up. When you are grown up, you realize that being grown up is not all that it appeared. Where did all this responsibility come from? What do you mean I have to pay bills, buy insurance, put gas in the car? What nut job invented such a thing as a mortgage? No one told me about all this when I was seven and making a fuss about being a grown up, about being able to do whatever I wanted to do whenever I wanted to do it.

Growing up is a real mixture, is it not? Fun and frustrating. Exciting and exasperating. Paul provides the Colossians with blessed reality, that our all-merciful and all-loving God helps us to grow up. God doesn’t throw us into the deep end by ourselves. We are taught and instructed. We have models that we are fortunate to follow.

Parents are models. They demonstrate for their children the appropriate ways to behave in different places. We behave differently in church than we do on the playground. Our behavior in school is different than when we are playing in the basement with our brothers. As children we need to learn some things, and Mom and Dad are the prime teachers, from saying please and thank you to driving a car and balancing a checkbook.

Siblings are models. So are teachers, coaches, and pastors. All of the lessons we receive help us to grow.

With honesty we acknowledge that not all lessons are good, not all growth is good, and not all models are ideal. How long do you think it is before children realize that their parents are sinners? A week? A month? Thanks be to God it’s not that quick but children grasp the truth that mom and pop do things that are wrong, that their parents are sinners. And our parents model sinful behavior. We learn greed, sloth, hostility, spite, deception, and every other sin from the models that are in our life. We hear Grandma talk about our shiftless uncle when our uncle isn’t around to defend himself. We watch Dad deceive Mom in order to cover up his mistake. We receive firsthand from our brother what the wrong way to deal with anger is.

We need Paul’s instruction. The Colossians did, and together with our brothers and sisters from the first century, we learn with them about headship. We learn about authority. We learn how to grow up. “As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”

The first thing we hear from Paul is that we receive Christ. Christ is gift. Never lose sight of your baptism, of the holy washing, in the firm declaration of your status as God’s son or daughter. We receive Christ. We receive the Holy Spirit, who plants faith in our heart and gives us parents, grandparents, other models who help nurture that faith into blossom.

For most of us, we received Christ in our infancy. We received Christ without even asking for him. We received Christ with great humility, not claiming that we deserved him or that Christ was owed to us. As you received Christ, with meekness, so walk in Christ humbly.

As we walk with Christ, as we live with him, as we rest with Christ, as we live, move and have our being in Christ, we grow up into him. We are built up into Christ, who is truly our head.

God has made us His own. The Father has lovingly claimed us. Our Father thinks so highly of you and me that He has made us His own. Thus God the Father teaches us to grow up into Christ our head by the leading and direction of the Holy Spirit.

We walk in Jesus. We walk with Jesus. That is our prayer and that is what the triune God helps us to do. St. Patrick was quite a theologian. He lived and worked among the pagans and fearlessly confessed Jesus as Savior. Here is a prayer from St. Patrick that sheds light on the walk we make under the watchful and loving eye of God: Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

Wednesday brought the reality of Christ’s presence to mind. Denny came to the office bringing the news that his father had passed away. Shortly after Denny left, news came that Fred Arimoto died. Their walk in Christ was completed on earth and that walk had led them to the Father’s side in heaven.

Walking in Christ, as we are encouraged to do, as we are strengthened to do, means being honest with ourselves and one another. It means honestly acknowledging that we were dead in our trespasses, dead in our sin, dead in all the ways that we have rejected God and served ourselves rather than our neighbors. Being dead in our trespasses, God made us alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

Forgiven, we walk in Christ. We continue to grow up into Jesus. We grow to learn about the depth of forgiveness, the joy of sacrifice, the blessing of love that comforts and challenges, supports, holds fast, and releases. We grow into Christ. And by the Father’s grace, by the Spirit’s guidance, we walk in him until our life is ended. SDG