“What will we wear?” Back when I was first ordained, that was a question that many people asked themselves on a Sunday morning. In those days, people used to dress up for church. Tie straight, pants pressed, shoes polished… People would talk about putting on their Sunday best.
By and large, that kind of formality has gradually disappeared over the last twenty years or so—and I can’t say that I regret it! So I find it interesting that in the few verses we have read from the Bible this morning the apostle Paul stops to tell us how we in the church ought to dress. Of course, he is speaking not literally but metaphorically. And he is not referring just to Sunday mornings but to a whole way of life, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
But before we get too far into this passage, I want us to look at the brief snapshot that Paul gives us of the church in Colossae in the opening verse, because it was a truly remarkable collection of individuals. In Colossians 3:11 we are given a picture of the kind of people we might be likely to meet if we joined with the congregation there on a Sunday. There were Greeks and Jews, barbarians (and here he doesn’t literally mean what we do by “barbarian”, but people from distant lands, whose native language was not Greek or Latin). And finally, there were the Scythians, who had migrated from the north shore of the Black Sea and who really were regarded by and large as a crude, cruel and uncultured people. And if that were not enough, there were both slaves and their masters.
Nevertheless, there they all were in the Colossian church, singing together, learning together, sharing in the Lord’s supper together, serving Christ and proclaiming the good news together. And here we should pause to note that what was true of the Colossian Christian community by and large was true of the dozens of little clusters of believers that had begun to crop up all over the Roman Empire. It was a truly remarkable (dare I say revolutionary?) phenomenon. Indeed, they had already been accused of turning the world upside down (Acts 17:6).
Yet while those differences were a source of strength and something to celebrate, they also brought with them some potential pitfalls. Indeed, some of them were serious enough that they could easily have splintered the church into pieces. We see it happening as early as chapter 6 in the book of Acts, where a dispute arose over the assistance being given to the Jewish versus the Gentile widows. And much of the ink in Paul’s letters (and the other letters in the New Testament for that matter) was devoted to dealing with the cracks and divisions that cropped up and threatened to tear apart the fabric of the church.
The love of Christ
Now Paul is not suggesting that ethnicity and race, slavery and freedom, culture and heritage, are unimportant or insignificant. Far from it! In fact, Paul frequently drew from his own background when the occasion demanded it. Besides, that variety is what gives the church its flavour and richness. I was impressed a few weeks ago when someone pointed out that there were (was it eleven?) different nationalities represented here that morning. I leaned over to my wife and whispered, “This is a church that has a future!”
The problem was that the Colossians had allowed their differences to become sources of misunderstanding and annoyance, of not being entirely honest with one another, and of putting others down. The situation had led to the point where people had begun to sense that they didn’t have the freedom to be who they really were. As a result, they felt forced to wear a kind of costume.
At this point it is as though Paul turns and opens up a closet full of clothes. And he says to the Colossians, “This is what you should be wearing. Take off those costumes you’ve been putting on and try these clothes instead.” What were those clothes? Paul lists them for us in verse 12: compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forbearance, forgiveness…
Every one of those qualities has a beauty all of its own and we could give a whole sermon over to each of them. Yet Paul says that they are only the undergarments. For over them all we are to put on something that outshines and incorporates them all—which is love.
But let’s be clear. When we talk about love, we’re not talking about some airy-fairy feeling. It is that very practical Christian word agape—what one person has described as “a steady direction of the will towards another’s lasting good”[1]. It is the love with which God so loved the world. It is the love that led Jesus to give up his life for you and for me on the cross. It is the love that has been poured into our hearts through the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is the love that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things”. It is the love which, when everything else will have passed away, will still abide.
Now I am not saying that as Christians we cannot have our differences. The New Testament is very clear about that. There are some issues over which we cannot compromise and when sadly we must choose to walk apart. Yet I believe those issues are much rarer than we might think. And if we are willing to clothe ourselves in compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forbearance, forgiveness and above all love, many of our differences will begin to have far less importance and become small in comparison.
The peace of Christ
At this point Paul shifts our focus from what we put on the outside of our lives to what is happening on the inside. In verse 15 he calls upon us to “let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts”. What do you think of when you hear the word “peace”? Whenever I see it in the New Testament, I think of what Jesus said to his followers at the last supper: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (John 14:27).
At that point Jesus was preparing his disciples for what would take place later that night, when he would be roughly dragged off by armed guards to await an unjust trial and a painful death. Their hearts must have been racing as those events unfolded uncontrollably around them. All they could do was to cling to Jesus’ promise. And in those times when nothing is going right and our lives seem to be spinning out of control, we can still bank on that promise today.
However, the peace that Paul is writing about in our passage this morning is something different. It is not so much internal peace as it is interpersonal peace.
I don’t believe that there is anything quite as unbecoming as a church fight. In the fourth century Athanasius got involved in a clash over the deity of Christ. In the fourteenth century John Wycliffe caused controversy through his conviction that the Bible was the final authority on the truth about God. In the sixteenth century Martin Luther became embroiled in a dispute over the question of salvation by faith. In the eighteenth century William Wilberforce in England and John Woolman in America engaged in a battle for the abolition of slavery.
Yes, there are issues worth fighting for. But disputes like the ones I’ve just listed are rare. And they make the clashes that happen in far too many churches today seem petty and insignificant by comparison. And why? Because for the most part they are insignificant. But the damage they do is incalculable. And the result is that people all too often end up leaving the Christian community altogether, while those on the outside see church people as fractious and combative. And in either case, the devil couldn’t be more delighted.
“Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus tells us, “for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9). Peace doesn’t just happen. It takes effort. It has to be made. It requires humility and a willingness to swallow our pride. We may not always be successful. But at the same time, let us never forget that we follow one who brought about our peace at the cost of his life, through the blood of his cross (Colossians 1:20).
The word of Christ
Besides love, there is something else that Paul calls us to carry inside us—and that is the word of Christ. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly…,” he challenges us in verse 16. The word he uses for “richly” means “fully”, “abundantly”, “overflowingly”. One translation of this verse runs, “Be at home in the gospel story, and let it be at home in you, so that it may always be ready for use.”[2] Some time later Paul would tell his young apprentice Timothy, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the messenger of God may be competent, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
I am impressed that a number of you have taken on the challenge of reading though the whole of the Bible in the course of the year. But I trust you won’t just do it in a mechanical fashion, so that twelve months from now, after you’ve read the last chapter of Revelation, you can slam your Bible closed and with a breath of relief pat yourself on the back and say, “I’ve done it!” No, each time you open your Bible ask the Holy Spirit to be your teacher and take time to let its words sink in and be absorbed into who you are on a daily basis.
In my Anglican tradition we have a prayer that calls upon us to “hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” the Scriptures. That means that we need take in the Bible’s message with all our senses, to allow God’s message to reach down into us and to penetrate into our being in a whole variety of ways: on Sunday morning, through the proclamation of God’s word from the pulpit and as we sing it in worship and carry those spiritual earworms with us through the week; in small groups where we can reflect on it with other believers and learn from their experience; in taking time to read and meditate upon it daily; in making the effort to commit portions of it to memory so that, if you’re anything like me, you’ll find those verses popping back into your mind in your daily walk.
I can still remember the first Bible verses I memorized, not many months after I committed my life to Christ as a teenager. They were Psalm 119:9 and 11, and they were in the old King James translation: “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to thy word… Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee.”
May God’s word be hidden in your heart—perhaps like the crocuses I planted in our garden back in the fall. A few months from now, just when I’m beginning to wonder whether spring will ever arrive, they will poke up through the surface of the ground and burst into bloom. The same is true of God’s word as we plant it in our hearts. It will surely bring beauty and meaning into our lives, often at those times when we need it most.
So, what will we wear? As this new year begins, I challenge you to take a look at the spiritual wardrobe that God has graciously provided for us in his Son Jesus Christ and through the power of the Holy Spirit. As each day begins, clothe yourself with those beautiful and lasting garments of compassion, kindness, meekness, humility, patience and forgiveness. But above them all may you put on that most excellent gift of love—the love that is ours in Jesus.
As you do so, may the peace of Christ rule in your hearts and the word of God dwell in you richly as together you seek live in the power of the Holy Spirit and to serve the Lord Jesus Christ throughout this year of 2022.
[1] Stephen Neill, The Christian Character, 22
[2] N.T. Wright quoting A.L. Williams, Colossians and Philemon (Tyndale NT Commentaries), 144
