“Sizing-Up”
Scripture Reading: Colossians 1:11-20
Sermon Transcript for November 26, 2006
By Pastor Nancy Blevins
I was not one of those shoppers. How many of you went shopping this weekend or planned to? It’s okay, you can confess. I did but it probably wasn’t what some of you might have gone for. You see, I can barely make my dog obey when I have treats but when I don’t have them I am in big trouble. So I went to the Dollar Store, that mecca, and that was enough for me. But there I noticed something. There were people standing in the aisle in front of me in the dog aisle. As I was looking and searching for the right treat among oh so many choices I noticed what they were doing. They were considering their options, looking, looking, and looking at all the choices. Maybe you don’t remember, but I can remember before dogs got so sophisticated if you threw them a bone they were happy and if you fed them table scraps that was enough. But now we’ve refined our dogs so they like choices as well.
On the way home I said, “Well, I don’t have any bread so I’ll run into the bread aisle at Kroger.” And there again I saw it. What was probably taking place all across Indianapolis and beyond, people standing and looking at shelves. Is a square bagel really a bagel? And you have options like “low fat” but doesn’t taste good. And you have “healthy nut” which describes a few other things. There is just way too many choices.
Paul, in his writing to the Colossians who knew about choice, wasn’t writing to the masses like they were out shopping. He was writing to the church there. And they knew about choices, options. They not only liked to have options in life like we do and many choices, they wanted to be involved in the research and design of their choice. There was a culture in that church that looked up to not just Jesus as the supreme, if at all, but Christ as one of many choices for a personal belief system.
I was reminded of the time when I went down to North Carolina. The parsonage there was not like out back here where it is nice and clean and somebody else mows it. It had a “thicket”. Do you know what thicket is? When I was a little kid I loved thickets. We’d hide in it. Now that I’m grown I tried to get rid of it. But there was a thicket there and I was out chopping. In fact I earned the name, “The Whacker”. I don’t use it too much because I learned there was a lady in our congregation down there named Doris Whacker. She didn’t understand that mine had to do with taking things out of the yard. But I had these wonderful clippers. And you know how it is. Ladies I know that sometimes we get in the kitchen and we start just by cleaning one little area and before we know it we’ve got the cabinets reorganized. The guys out there, you know, right, or do you do that with the garage? Or you’ll start whacking one thing and all at once you’ll find you’re out there and you start digging up more and more and more. And what began as a little thing, you’ve chosen to make it bigger and bigger and bigger.
Well, that’s what happened to me that day. I just started little and then my sister came and boy we were cutting down trees like this in that thicket. And we had this one vine that the more we pulled it just kept running around and we tried to saw it with those clippers and they fell apart right in my hand. And I went and looked at my trusty little jar. Everybody has one or a kitchen drawer that has stuff in it. I had no bolt that would match that. So I relinquished myself to going and looking at the local hardware store. I left my sister cutting. There was another shelf. There were black ones, there were green ones, and there was a red one that I had my eye on. It was only $7.00. But it is kind of broken; the one that I had was just like that and it had broken so fast. Then I noticed the prices. It went not only from $7.00 but to $25.00. Is there really that much difference between 4/8ths of an inch and 7/8ths of an inch? Does it really make that much difference? But bigger is better, right? More is better, right? Oh, I like the choice. So I went and I didn’t know what a lopper was but if I could cut it a little fine with this one I could choose and really go at it with those loppers. Whether it is horse power or the leaf blowers, it is hard not to go with the bigger and the better and the mega size isn’t it? Even at the drive through where you have those choices now. Oh, we have a few healthy choices but we somehow don’t get the biggest salad. You don’t see them super size the salad for me. But super size those fries.
We want choices, don’t we? We’re not so different than those who lived long ago. The shape may have changed, the style of clothes may have changed, but who we are as humanity has not changed that much. I finally got to the end of the aisle and I picked up the one that I thought I’d take in the first place. I was just ready to go with it and I flipped it over and it told me all that it would do. And there was listed good, better, best. I’ll take this one. It’s not even the most expensive, but it’s one of the best. But did you ever have the temptation or said, “There’s super sized, there’s better than the best, there’s the supreme.” I just had to look to see. What would that one do that this one wouldn’t? So I walked down to the other end real fast and I saw it. I flipped it over. Do you know what was on the other side? Professional! Something more, something better, something bigger—that’s what we want! We want options, we want choices. We want choices as consumers.
And sadly many of us are consumers of religion and we see Jesus not as what we just read out of Colossians, but as an add on, an accessory to life. He’s not the source so much as a resource. Paul was addressing a congregation, a fellowship of believers, who had a multitude of choices just as you do. There is a multitude of places that you can worship on Sunday morning. On Saturday night there is no so many but it can happen here for you. Some worship during the week. And that’s just in the Christian faith. If you were to step aside from that you could go to holy places throughout the world that are recognized by many different religions as places where something special happens.
Paul was confronting a heresy and it was actually two. The first was that they were, in that congregation in that fellowship of believers, they were saying that Jesus is just one of many. Have you ever heard that? That Jesus was just one of many various beings ranging from humanity to God and He doesn’t really have an exclusive place. Does that match with what we just read? No! Not just one with a various degree of power and importance. The second thrust of the heresy that was being taught at that time was that they forced angel worship and they imposed on people that wanted to be a part of their belief system that there were completely arbitrary observances such as the New Moon Festival or strict, stringent dietary habits and lifestyles.
I don’t know maybe I am too simplistic. I do like to keep it simple. And there are some people who say, “Keep it simple stupid.” Maybe I am stupid enough to keep it simple. You know, here we are in a culture particularly in America although we have permeated it around the world this idea that bigger is better, more is better. We want nothing but the best. We want to pursue the super size, the mega, the ultimate. It seems bizarre to me that Jesus is not the first choice, not foremost, that Jesus does not hold center place in our culture or in many times our belief system, and, sadly, most of the time in our behavior. We talk about Christ, the King maybe. We talk about rulers. But we probably know the ins and outs of our Internet domain more than we know about the Kingdom and how it might manifest itself and how it might play out in our life. We can so easily take the One that is the source and render Him as just another side dish.
Boyd Overby is one of the authors that I admire and enjoy in his uplifting way of writing and speaking. He was Chaplain of the Senate when he said this, “How we think results in how we feel. And how we feel dictates what we do. Until we know we are loved and secure in God’s love are we free to love others? Until then we cause disruption, discord, distortion, even death all around us.” That’s a choice—to know, believe the love of God is shown in Christ Jesus.
Recently there was, as you know, a change in all the news programs in the evening. Not that I get to see them that often, but I notice where there use to be someone, now there is Katy and Charles Gibson not just on in the morning. And so I started going to CNN but it was just too bizarre for me. It was too busy. There was three different things going on at the same time—an image over here, an image over here and there is something trailing along the bottom. And I just realized that’s what happens. We lose our focus as Christians. We can’t just focus on Jesus and see everything else as peripheral. We bring everything peripheral in and then we are blinded to where Jesus is and where He is acting and active in our life. We see, we hear, we voice but it is so easily obstructed that Christ is King, Christ is ruler, and Christ is Lord.
We must ask ourselves, church, what prevents us from allowing the Kingdom of God to be real to us? Versus 23 says there that not only was Christ reconciling the world to God, but also that we are to be reconcilers, that we too are to offer the Gospel to others. What causes us, what blocks us from providing a way for that reign in our life? Is it business? Is it that it is so easy to take charge? Is it because we pay attention to other things versus where God is active and acting? What makes us, church, reluctant to embrace our call, our call to serve, our call to be ambassadors?
I challenge you that you might hope out of bed and say, “I will accept no substitute”. That slogan—“Accept no substitute”. I will accept Christ as Lord. I will see where Christ wants to be through me a reconciling agent today. We have a choice. The world has a choice. We can go to our Source for perspective, for power, for direction. But we can also realize that we have the power to proclaim the truth, the everlasting truth, the truth that has no end, that Christ is, was, and will be always the same—loving, never done loving, never done giving us life until the end. Never done! Can you integrate that into your life? Let’s give thanks to the Lord that He gives us the opportunity, the choice. Amen and Amen.
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