Wednesday Evening Prayer Meeting
December 9, 2009
The Reverend Mr. Nate Shurden
We’re looking at the source of the power for all that is made and all that is
sustained and all that will ever be, right in that manger.
It’s because in Christ, there is the nature of Christ - is God, deity,
and man-humanity, and the mystery of that is enfolded for us in this doctrine,
the deity of Christ. As Paul writes
the letter of Colossians, he writes it like a shepherd to sheep.
He takes his pen in hand, and it’s almost as if it’s a rod and a staff
for him because he’s writing to those who are straying, those who are listening
to messages, to philosophies as he describes them in verse 8, that are contrary
and are not according to Christ, essentially not according to Christ’s deity,
the fullness of all that there is in the person of Christ.
He writes to warn them in many ways about these wolfish philosophies,
these wolf-like philosophies that make their way into the church and seek to
destroy the sheep. And so he writes
taking out the rod, he writes taking out the staff, and he wants them to know
that these philosophies – literally in the Greek, these “sophistries”, these
type of teachings that sound good to the ear, that actually are very important
in terms of the way that they sound, in terms of their convincedness, are
actually nothing short of tricks of the trade.
He refers to them as those things which are empty deceit.
Now we know that in order for something to be deceptive it needs a couple of
qualities. First of all, for
something to be deceptive, for something to be empty, to have nothing in it, in
order for it to really pull of its power and its trick it must look like it is
something that it really is not. It
must look like it is something that it really is not.
It’s the nature of every good Ponzi scheme – it looks like the real
thing; it looks exactly like what you have always hoped and dreamed, and yet as
the layers begin to pull back, as the questions begin to be asked, you realize
that it’s a bunch of hot air. It’s a bunch of empty deceit.
It’s something like what Edmund had to learn the hard way in
The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe,
wasn’t it? When he climbed up into
the sleigh with the White Witch, who Lewis tells us, she looks “ravishingly
beautiful and as innocent as one could ever be,” who grants to him tremendous
promises, feeds him the thing in which he loves the most – Turkish delight – and
promises him that if he will just do what she says to do that more will be in
store for him. It’s the nature of
all true deception - to talk the big talk, to play a big game, to look like
there’s something real of tremendous substance but in the end for it to be full
of empty deceit, to make promises, to talk big and then to never cash in.
We can almost all look back over the course of our lives and see where we
bit down on something that we thought was real only to find that it was nothing
and it was fruitless - that we gave time and energy and resources toward it and
then we got to the end of it and it was a waste of our time.
As Paul writes here to the church at
Now this is the way a movement always works.
It starts out with someone who is convincing, who can tell the philosophy
just the way it needs to be said, who can make the promises, who can give the
guidelines, and that if you follow through with them this will be your sure
reward. That philosophy begins to
develop – it develops into a full range of a tradition.
Ideas begin to spur, books begin to be published, agents begin to be
hired, disciples begin to be gathered together, models and formulas and rules
and protocols and manners and mannerisms begin to be developed.
A school begins to sort of rise; a tradition is birthed.
You see, as the apostle Paul writes to the church at Colossae he wants
them to remember that they have crossed over a threshold, they have come into a
saving relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, and though other philosophies
may be tantalizing to the ear, there may be a sense of rigorous reasoning within
them that would convince most anyone – underneath them it’s a mere human
tradition, it’s a mere facade, it’s a mere form, it’s a mere shell, with nothing
to offer.
At the end, Paul is actually saying it’s a type of idolatry.
That’s really what he means in that phrase, “the elemental spirits of the
world” – that it’s a philosophy that sounds convincing, that looks good, that
has a strong tradition, that has hoards of followers that would sway the crowds,
but actually it’s nothing more than pagan worship, nothing more than deception
given over in the wrong direction, a belief that’s gone far afield of the truth.
When Paul writes this to the church at
Now this is the nature of all pagan worship, it’s the nature of all self
idolatry. Whenever we begin to give
our hearts away to the things of this world we begin to expect things out of
them that they can never give us.
We thought that marriage would be more than it was when we stood on the altar
that day, and now ten years in, fifteen, thirty and thirty five, forty and
fifty, it’s not quite what we thought it would be.
We thought that job and we thought that promotion, we thought moving to
that neighborhood, we thought making that dollar figure, would ultimately get at
the contentment and the satisfaction which our heart craves.
It’s a vein philosophy. It’s
a philosophy of the world indeed and it has lots of followers. There’s a strong
human tradition, but it’s nothing short than sacrificing your soul to the gods,
to the pagan gods, to the things that the world is giving themselves away to.
As Paul writes to these sheep in
So what are we to do? Well Paul
tells us in verse 9, “I want you to wake up to this truth – for in Him, that is
Christ, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.”
Now as Paul writes that, you do understand that the apostle Paul
understands that this has been the human longing since Genesis chapter 3, that
the whole of the human race has been estranged from God, they’ve been cut off
from He who made them, from the One in whose image they bare and the One in whom
identity that they find and share.
It’s even as we were reminded on Sunday night in Genesis chapter 3, that
Christmas is from afar. It is in
mind from Genesis chapter 3 – that the estrangement which takes place because of
sin is ultimately going to need to have a redemption that will require the
closest of presence of God, a presence even in a bodily form, in a human and
incarnational form – that God Himself would take on human flesh and would as all
of the Old Testament longs, that God would dwell with us, that God would dwell
with us. He was the hope, wasn’t
it?
In the book of Deuteronomy Moses is preparing the people of
As Paul writes this to the church at Colossae, he wants them to know that “God
has made His house among you, that
He came such a long distance, and that His house – yes you wouldn’t have
recognized it because it really didn’t look much like your house.
It was a stable. And His
dwelling place didn’t look much like yours and it could be passed over and
missed in a moment because it was a manger.”
But this has been the heartbeat of God’s people, that the relationship
they once had, the relationship that’s been estranged for thousands of years,
would be recovered. How would it be
recovered? When God becomes like us
to make us like Him.
Now when we talk about Christmas, we talk about the fullness of the deity of God
dwelling bodily in Christ, you realize these are the reflections that our hearts
are to be given to. And this is
where Christmas becomes a little bit of a trap for us.
It’s strange that we are drawn into such a reflection of Christ in this
season and yet it’s often so hard to really reflect on Him.
Do you sense that? It
almost, the more attention we give to the needing to reflect on Christ during
the season, it’s almost as if there is a greater distance that we feel.
We talk about it, we discuss it, we mull over it, we put up symbols and
signs and do special services to remind us of it and oftentimes our heart just
is not engaged. It’s as if we have
listened so long to the vein philosophies and given so much away, that we feel
the emptiness of the deceit and we can know that we sold our soul away in
worship to the elemental spirits of the world and we’ve given them away to the
human traditions that are around us.
And it takes us such a long time to wake up to the beauty of the
incarnation and the dwelling of the deity of Christ in bodily form.
It’s a trap.
For some of us we’ve noticed it to be a trap.
In some of the reasons we don’t feel a particular longing and closeness
towards Christ during this particular season is because we’ve given up on it all
together. We’ve seen the
commercialization, we’ve witnessed the ornamentation that goes along, we’ve seen
the manufactured warm and fuzzies that go along with the season and it does
nothing but leave a terrible taste in our mouths.
And we, in a sense, kind of look at this season cynically.
We kind of walk around in a smug sort of, “Oh yes, this is for those who
can’t see through the piffle and the drivel and the swill of this time.
But it’s not that our hearts are turned to Christ, it’s just that our
hearts are turned away from Christmas.
Others of us are so unaware that we have so bought into the vein philosophies,
to the empty deceits, to the human traditions, are so unaware that we’ve
sacrificed for so long to the elemental spirits of the world, we just see is as
another opportunity to give ourselves away to the world.
We think, “One more party.
One more strand of lights on the tree.
One more selfish indulgence.
Oh, it’s all for Christ. I love
Christ, but I really love Christmas.”
We want to recover at such a feverish pace, something of some longing of
memory, of some nostalgic thought, that stands way back there in the recesses of
the heart that we’ve never quite gotten over.
So we grab our hot chocolate, we sit on the couch, we watch
It’s a Wonderful Life, we listen to
Perry Como. We never listen to
Perry Como except at Christmas, but we listen to him a lot at Christmas.
Why do we do that? Well,
we’re actually in bondage to Christmas, we’re actually being draw away from
Christ.
Paul sees these as traps. He sees
these as things in which for those who have cynically and smugly rejected
Christmas and didn’t turn towards Christ, are doomed to their
self-righteousness. And those who
have feverishly given themselves over to the hoop-la and the hullaballoo of
Christmas and have never turned towards Christmas, to the heart of it and to
Christ, actually will wake up the day after Christmas in a pretty deep
depression. You know who you are.
Paul is telling us here in the book of Colossians and in this passage,
that whatever you do for Christmas really doesn’t matter unless divine human
person of Christ is the face that you behold in every moment of every December,
in every tradition that you take up, and every tradition that you reject, in
every meal that you have, in every party that you throw, and every “Merry
Christmas” that you say – is the person and work of Christ at the core of your
heart? If it is, then you know
something of the true spirit of Christmas.
You know something of its wonder, something of its mystery.
But if it’s not, this is a charade and it’s paper thin and it will leave
you depressed on December the 26th.
Tonight Paul calls us to reflection on this deity who loved you and loved
me enough to become like us and then committed to make us like Him.
I pray that this is the spirit of Christmas for us.
Father, we need this. We need Your
grace and we need Your mercy. We
are so distant and so distracted and are given to so much of this world that we
have very little in and of ourselves to give to You.
So we ask that You would, like a good shepherd, bring Your rod and bring
Your staff, and warn us and awaken us, and then fill us with the wonder that is
the incarnation. Do this we pray,
for Christ’s sake. Amen.
Let’s stand to receive the Lord’s benediction.
Grace, mercy, and peace be yours in Christ during this Christmastime and always.
Amen.
© First Presbyterian Church,
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