Christ our Kin
Once when I was a young person, I was questioning what I found to be a particularly boring passage of scripture. Perhaps it was one of the “begats,” where generations of lineage are shared in excruciating detail. (Here’s an example: “And Mahalaleel lived sixty and five years, and begat Jared: And Mahalaleel lived after he begat Jared eight hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters: And all the days of Mahalaleel were eight hundred ninety and five years: and he died.”) The adult to whom I was speaking told me that every verse of the Bible has equal value and importance. I was skeptical at the time, and decades later I would still argue against that assertion. Frankly, some passages of scripture are contradictory, some are repetitive, and some are plain boring.
What I hope the person meant was that every passage of scripture serves a purpose, or at least did when it was written. I think you could make a case for that. For instance, maybe the lesson we can learn from the “begats” is that you should give your kid an easy-to-pronounce name, if only because it makes things simpler for those who in the future will have to read it out loud in a public setting.
Today’s scripture passage is on the opposite end of the spectrum from the one I was questioning all those years ago. Colossians 1 is full of ideas to unpack and interpret. It’s about Jesus and what he offered to believers back in the first century a few decades after the resurrection, but before the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were available.
Colossians is a letter written to a church that was originally attributed to the apostle Paul. Biblical scholars don’t agree on whether it was actually written by Paul or his companion Timothy or perhaps by someone else who learned from Paul, but it became an important writing in the early Christian church. It references Hebrew scripture such as Genesis and Proverbs, as well other sacred writings such as Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon. It makes theological claims about Jesus that would resonate with those familiar with Jewish wisdom traditions (Keesmaat, loc. 52663).
Being a follower of Jesus involved challenges at that time. Some who had known Jesus or his disciples were still alive, sharing stories but without a developed collection of sacred texts reflecting the teachings of Jesus. The Ancient Near East was still occupied by the Romans, and some wondered if Christ would return in their lifetimes to end that oppressive rule. There was tension between those Jews who believed Jesus was the Messiah and those who did not, plus there were those who were not Jewish who became part of their community. It was a time of uncertainty, significant communication challenges, and disorganization.
If you read this passage with that context in mind, a lot makes sense. There was a need for strength and endurance, and the promise of sharing an inheritance with the saints offered a brighter future. The darkness in their time and place was evident, but Jesus would deliver them to a place of redemption.
For church nerds like me, this Sunday of the year (what church nerds like me refer to as the “liturgical year”) is known as “Christ the King Sunday.” It is the last Sunday of the church year, with next Sunday beginning the Advent season, when we start to look forward to the birth of Jesus.
The time for that will come, but first I’d like to draw attention to this oft-overlooked Sunday. It is usually lost in the flurry of Thanksgiving preparation or aftermath, and often occurs two days after the capitalist religious holiday of Black Friday.
It also has the unfortunate designation of containing the word “king.” Certainly no one deserves that designation more than the creator of the universe, but it also lends itself to patriarchy and reminds us of the horrible track record of humans who have held that title. So in the spirit of faith communities like ours who, among other things, are imagining new ways of speaking about the divine, I’d like to offer the title “Christ our Kin Sunday.”
That might upset some folks who would point to shortcomings in my theology and Christology (that’s church nerd speak for what one believes about God and what one believes about Jesus), but I think today’s scripture passage actually supports the idea of Jesus being our kin.
I’d suggest we need a God who is our kin, who is connected to us through blood and through relationship. We know too well the shortcomings of those in our society who would call themselves kings, and unfortunately we share some of those shortcomings ourselves.
If you hang around with me for long, you’ll discover I admire a theologian named Douglas Ottati. Dr. Ottati has a very broad theology that recognizes scientific findings like distant planets and the age of humankind. He frequently uses terms like “cosmic passage” to help contemplate how big God must be.
He describes the shortcomings I just mentioned this way:
There is a persistent human fault. . . . We love the wrong things, or else the right things wrongly; we fail to uphold responsibilities to others and, too often, our social and political relationships are inequitable and unjust. There is no person, community, or institution that is exempt from sin’s effects, and we therefore find ourselves adrift in cycles of fragmentation, conflict, massive suffering and violence in which the true communion with God and community and neighbor, for which we are fitted, is broken.
Such a world stands in need of reconciliation because it stands in need of love of God and neighbor. . . . It stands in need of a new quality of attentiveness to the needs and worth of others as well as new community overcoming division.
It stands in need of loyalty to the universal commonwealth of all persons, animals, plants, and things in their appropriate interrelations with God and with one another. (Ottati, 380)
It’s easy to overlook when all is well, but when it’s not, or when we see it most definitely is not for those on the margins, we realize there is great need in our world. We are, individually and collectively, broken to some degree. If there is a plan for humans to live in harmony with others and with the rest of creation, we might need help getting there.
The author of Colossians believes Jesus is the source of that help. How could a person many of them had known as a man offer this? Because he is God in human form, and has been with God from the beginning. He was witness to and involved in creation, and holds all things together, including the motley crew of believers who would come to be known as Christians. He was killed, but ultimately conquered death, not just for himself but for others as well; thus, he is the firstborn from the dead — the rest of us will follow. Not only that, but he will reconcile all things, bringing us together with God, with one another, and with the rest of creation.
Andrew Lincoln writes that, “Christ is the one who supremely makes the invisible God visible . . . he is the manifestation of the divine in the world of humans.” (Lincoln, 213) And his will is to be connected to all humans. In a time when execution by the Roman authorities was intended to be a source of shame, Jesus used it to be in solidarity with those who suffer. (Lincoln, 225)
Speaking of the Roman authorities, today’s passage stands in opposition to the worldly powers they represent. As Sylvia Keesmaat writes, “In a few short words, Paul draws deeply on Israel’s traditions to undermine the whole mythic structure of the empire: its ruler, its throne, its dominion, its power. Jesus is the one who created these structures and holds them together.” (Keesmaat, loc. 52680) Rome represented the latest in a series of temporary earthly kingdoms; Jesus is the head of a kin-dom without end. Rome maintained peace (as they defined it) through the application of “violent military might, economic oppression, and cultural domination, [whereas] Colossians proclaims a peace achieved through the bearing of violence.” (Keesmaat, loc. 52680)
It sounds like a formula for failure, but here we are recognizing a day named for the victory of Christ, while the symbols of that day’s earthly kingdom crumble.
We’ve learned some things in the almost-2,000 years since Colossians was written, but clearly we’ve not learned all of the things. Douglas Ottati recognizes that when he writes, “The Christ reveals that we are caught up and entangled in a difficulty. He points to a threatening circumstance from which we need to be delivered. The reconciling Word made flesh reveals not only the grace of the divine but also the persistent and extraordinary distance of humans from the divine.” (Ottati, 381)
So Jesus helps us recognize that we’ve fallen short. Thankfully, all doesn’t depend on us. In the words of Andrew Lincoln, Colossians 1 serves as a “reminder of the security of a salvation that is centered in Christ in the transcendent realm; it is not dependent on the feelings or efforts of humanity, not confined to the perspectives of this world.” (Lincoln, 210) Those perspectives include the use of worldly force and privilege, but ultimately “what holds the world together is not the survival of the fittest or an unending cycle of violence but the reconciliation and peace of Christ.” (Lincoln, 224)
We’ve seen and continue to see what the powers and principalities of this world can accomplish, and where they fall short. Too many of the world’s eight billion people live without enough food or freedom or safety or security. Too many are shuffled to the margins by those who would protect their privilege and treasure, including those countries at the COP27 conference whose behaviors are displacing millions from their homes. Many of us, even when we wish to live in a manner that does less harm to others, are immersed in systems that produce things we need in harmful ways. We are, collectively, broken, and thus the message of today’s scripture is as relevant for us now as it was in the first century.
We do not ourselves need to complete the mission of Jesus on earth, but we are at our best when we follow his path, especially when we do so collectively. Each of us was created with wondrous potential, but we won’t realize all of it; nonetheless, today’s scripture reminds us that redemption is on the horizon anyway. Jesus was there when the earth was hung on its axis, he will be there when all things are reconciled, and he is with us in between to relate to us as one who has experienced the joy and pain and challenge of wearing skin.
Thanks be to Christ Jesus, firstborn of God’s new creation, our savior and kin.
Amen.
Works Referenced
Berenson, Jennifer K. “The Letter of Paul to the Colossians.” In The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha, 5th ed., edited by Michael D. Coogan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Keesmaat, Sylvia C. “Colossians.” In Fortress Commentary on the Bible: The Old Testament and Apocrypha, edited by Gale A. Yee, Hugh R. Page, Jr., Matthew J. M. Coomber. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014. Kindle edition.
Lincoln, Andrew T. “Colossians,” in New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume X. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2015.
Ottati, Douglas F. A Theology for the Twenty-First Century. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2020.
