Holding Together

 

Holding Together

 

Colossians 1:15-28

A hymn to Christ 

 

1:15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation,

 

1:16 for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers--all things have been created through him and for him.

 

1:17 He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

 

1:18 He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.

 

1:19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,

 

1:20 and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

 

1:21 And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds,

 

1:22 he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him,

 

1:23 provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. I, Paul, became a minister of this gospel.

 

1:24 I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.

 

1:25 I became its minister according to God's commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known,

 

1:26 the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints.

 

1:27 To them God chose to make known how great among the gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

 

1:28 It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

 

 

Have you ever thought much about what things actually hold disparate people in some form of togetherness or unity, even for a season? 

 

As a Steelers fan from the early 1970s, I can tell you that rooting for a suddenly emerging championship sports teams certainly can! Steelers fans of that era couldn’t possibly have been more diverse—steelworkers, investment bankers, teenagers, housewives, and even the incarcerated were all rooting for the object of “Franco’s Italian Army,” “Gerela’s Gorillas,” and “Dobre Shanka’s” affection, the Pittsburgh Steelers. And Steelers fandom knew no color barriers, either. And speaking of sports, if you are old enough to remember when the Pittsburgh Pirates played championship baseball, you might recall that they, too, had a broad-based following that seem to bring people together.

 

Of course, war has often been a force to congeal people into a unified group, unfortunately. All except for Vietnam, which drove us apart, as a nation. 

 

But what about music? Don’t you find that some forms of it—most especially popular songs—often do the same thing? Dara and I often attend concerts of the Pittsburgh Symphony at Heinz Hall, and see a great variety of persons brought together by a love of a similar style of music, in this case, classical. Who among us anywhere near our vintage didn’t experience “Beatlemania,” and carry out a life of enjoying Beatles music, from the originals, to garage band covers, to tribute bands, and even to “elevator music” renditions of “Hey Jude,” “I Wanna’ Hold Your Hand,” or “Yellow Submarine”? “Deadheads” and “Margaritaville” have come together for decades over love of a singular band or artist, haven’t they? Sometimes it is the love of the tunes—such as classical or jazz—or the words and a song’s meaning, like we experienced with later Beatles songs, that draws us in and holds us together as a “fan block.” We social justice types have almost memorized the lyrics of “Abraham, Martin, and John,” “One Tin Soldier,” or “Give Peace a Chance.” Nature lovers mimic John Denver’s rendition of “Almost Heaven,” or “This Land is Your Land.” Country music often taps into the deeply emotional experiences, ranging from our love lives, to troubles with friends, work, or booze. All of these may attract folk into an empathetic community, if even for an evening or a single concert. Music rarely tears people apart, but it most assuredly can bring them together. 

 

Oh, there are those songs like “Ooo-eee, ooo-ah-ah, ting-tang, walla walla bing bang,” or “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” that puzzle me as to their popularity, but I suppose it can be the beat OR the tune? “Wing-a-weppa, wing-a-weppa…” Sometimes we just need a little “silly” in our lives to get through the daily morass. 

 

This weekend’s lectionary passage from Colossians begins with what scholars call a “Christ Hymn,” probably one of the first praise songs of the early Christian church. The author’s original audience would have recognized it immediately, kind of like one of us beginning a letter with:

 

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me,

I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.

 

Of course, He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, is no ooo-ee, ooo-ah-ah, ting-tang, walla-walla bing bang, the latter being a kind of “universal” song many of us have mocked and sung since we were children. The former “Christ Hymn” would have been familiar only to those who had some experience with early church worship. So it is with the contemporary Christian praise songs of our time, and even then, for those of us who prefer the “old hymns” of the faith, and tend to worship in more “traditional” settings, even the modern tunes are a mystery. Our worship at the United Methodist Annual Conference meetings has gone almost exclusively “contemporary,” with praise bands eclipsing choirs and church organs. I admit to knowing few of their songs, which means I am not “held together” with them like those who sing them regularly. Interestingly, the past couple of years at this conference, a gifted praise band leader and composer has been invited, and he has featured praise music he has written. His songs not only are theologically quite sound (unlike some of the ooo-ee, ooo-ah-ah, ting-tang, walla-walla bing bang numbers that might have the occasionally recognized Jesus in their over-simplified lyrics, which are repeated 25 times), but quite pleasant to sing. The fact that the assembled body must learn them together DOES draw and hold us together. I find this all quite worshipful, and glad that we are not rejoicing that “the horse and the rider are thrown into the sea.” 

 

The Colossians passage preserves an early church hymn, as we said earlier, and it’s important to note that it plays well into our Wesleyan heritage! The Christ Hymn is substantive in its theology: Christ IS God, and the “visible” image of an invisible Creator God; Christ, as an essential element of the godhead, was not only “present” at the creation, but it was done “in him, through him, and FOR him,” according to the hymn. In Christ, all things “hold together”; Christ is the head of the Body of Christ, the church; Christ is the “firstborn of the dead,” a decidedly Pauline theological construct, endorsing this letter as either FROM Paul, or at least by one of his disciples, fully immersed in Paul’s theology and teachings. In Christ, the fullness of God is represented, and Christ is reconciling “all things” to himself—including US! (Note that this is God’s work, not ours. We are called to be witnesses of “the mystery,” and to “offer them Christ,” but we are not “saving souls” or collecting spiritual pelts like some heaven-appointed trapper going after muskrats.) So it was with the hymns that flowed from the pen of Charles Wesley—they were deeply theological and substantive. AND, such as was the case with the corpus of the Wesleyan hymns, the early church “learned” its theology through its worship experience, including most assuredly, its hymns. The Wesley’s ministered to “the masses,” who were largely uneducated, or at least poorly educated, in what we might call “book learning.” Ergo, to teach them about the Bible, one used preached sermons, and to help them learn the important rudiments of Christian theology and moral teachings, one would teach them songs that, like most music does, would “bore” into their brains as they sang each song. The first song I remember in my whole life went like this: “Jesus loved me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so…” How about you. (Incidentally, the second song I remember was “Itsy-bitsy, Teeny-Weenie, Yellow Polka-dot Bikini,” but the whys and wherefores of that will have to wait for another sermon.) 

 

[A funny story comes to mind about the power of songs and tunes: Being of the generation that tuned in weekly to the TV sitcom called “Cheers,” a “Coach” story pops up. At one point, Coach, an aged bartender who took too many to the bean while playing baseball, is taking a class and must memorize the countries of the world, and their placement. He does so by incorporating their names and those of neighboring nations into a song sung to the tune of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” We all laugh at the folly of this until at least a few of us must admit that we can only recite the alphabet by singing it, right?]

 

The point of all of this is that, of all the things that “bind” us together, even in a nation so terribly divided, our love of music and songs can. I’ve heard passionate conversation about music—or the latest Grammy Awards—between two people whom I know have not a single point of intersection when it comes to religion or politics. And yet, in discussing something like music, they find common ground, even to the point of being able to venture into conversation about less benign things, from time to time. The Wesleys knew this, and two things they used to draw together the vastly diverse society they were creating in the early Methodist movement were Charles’ hymns AND a common emphasis on helping the poor and incarcerated. 

 

So, what does it mean, then, that the author of this Colossians Christ Hymn says that CHRIST is that which holds all things together? I have two thoughts. Years ago, I preached a sermon at the Coraopolis UMC (where this particular sermon will be preached on Sunday, July 20) about what science tells us about the nature of matter. Turns out, we and all matter we think is “solid,” is nothing but a series of energy bundles or “events,” held together by some mysterious force. Is the hand of God that force? Are we, literally, a “construct” in the mind of the Divine Creator? Or are we the “words” to a hymn or song composed by the creator, to think of it in a more exotic or “romantic” way? These things fascinate me, but since they don’t trip the trigger of everyone, lets move on…

 

For the author of this text, Christ is that which holds all things together, however you choose to understand that. At a most practical level, it is our common faith in Jesus Christ that has the power to hold the church together and to give it momentum to move forward in mission and “acts of mercy,” as John Wesley described it. We can argue about how Christ is reconciling the world to god-self, and even about what part we have in this ministry (which Paul tells us in II Corinthians 5 we ARE called to be a part of, by the way), but if we find common ground in Christ himself, we CAN hold things together. This is what grieves me so about the recent disaffiliation in the United Methodist Church. I had hoped we could find some common ground in Christ and in Christ’s effort to reconcile the world to God, but that apparently wasn’t enough for many folk, who chose a few other things they felt they had to “hold in common” to find unity. Unfortunately, for many of us who “stayed,” we were not happy that these elements meant cutting off a whole group of people who we believe to ALSO be children of God. I hope those who disaffiliated find the kind of unity they are looking for, and I pray our “remnant” United Methodist Church finds its way as a fully welcoming, diverse body, especially when the tide of American society seems to be kicking against the reality that we ARE a diverse people.

 

In short (and when am I ever “short”?), I believe that Jesus Christ is the key to us holding together, whether we are talking about the church as Christ’s body, our “being,” if we’re talking about the nature of what we call matter, or even our mental health, which probably always needs a divine “GPS” to keep us on path. 

 

Trusting in Christ as the bonding “song” of our life together is worth our exploration, Dear Ones. Otherwise, I suppose we could just “Ooo-eee, ooo-ah-ah, ting-tang, walla-walla bing bang” and hope that something sticks? Amen.