I want to do a little congregational participation exercise, and I need you to be good sports about it. No phones. No electronic surveillance devices are permitted in here.
Close your eyes. Now lift a hand and point whichever way you think is true north.
Keep your hands up. Open your eyes and look around. To say the least, we have a scattering of opinions in here. For those of you interested in such things, due north is about that way, through the corner of the building. You don't high-five over that. You are easily impressed with yourselves, you know that?
Some of you are, shall we say, directionally challenged, and would have a hard time getting home without your GPS. That's all right. We welcome all kinds. We're a full-service church.
Back in prehistoric times, before God created the interweb, we used a thing called a compass. Out in the woods, on a hike, you took a reading, and if you knew which way was north you knew which way you were moving.
Scripture is a lamp to our feet, and it is a compass pointing to true north. It tells you which way you are heading and whether you are off course. Colossians 1:24 through 2:5 has been that compass for me for decades. All of the Bible is God's word, all of it, but some passages speak to you more pointedly than others, and these are pivotal words for me.
There are insights you only get out on the path — things you cannot learn from a book or a lecture or a podcast. Five of them here.
A great paradox
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake.
Rejoicing in suffering? Is Paul some kind of masochist? Notice that he never says he enjoyed it. And he had more of it than the rest of us put together will ever know. Five times he took thirty-nine lashes — the thinking was that forty would kill a man, so they stopped one short. Five times. Three times beaten with rods. Once stoned, and stoning in the first century was not a reprimand; it was the electric chair.
Viktor Frankl, the psychotherapist who survived Auschwitz and Dachau, wrote afterward that a man can endure almost any what as long as he has a why. Paul's why is simple. If he were not in prison he would not have written these letters. I doubt he had any inkling what they would mean to the church for the next two thousand years. God knew.
Then the hard half of the verse — filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions. Someone told me they would be fascinated to see how I handled this passage. I told them I would be fascinated too. Don't try this at home; I'm a trained professional.
Paul is not suggesting the cross was insufficient. It is finished — then, now and forever. And the Greek word he uses for afflictions here is never once used of Jesus' sufferings. What he means is that Christ identifies with his church so radically that when we suffer, he suffers. On the Damascus road, Jesus does not ask Saul why he is persecuting the church. He asks, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? When we cry, he tastes the salt of our tears.
A great proclamation
We proclaim him.
We are not handing out a system of ethics and values, however true it is that no one ever taught higher than Jesus and no one ever lived it better. Our message is Jesus himself — born, living, dying, risen, ascended, for us.
When our children were small, Heidi and I had a good friend — I'll call her Mary; that was not her name — who had probably never been inside a church service in her life. I invited her to Carissa's baptism, and instead of saying, oh, lovely, she got anxious. What do I wear? What should I bring? Should I bring something?
Mary, relax. You don't need to bring anything. We don't care what you're wearing. We just want you to come.
That is the gospel. Just come.
A great process
Admonishing everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom.
To admonish is to warn. One day every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord — and that is good news, but there is a dark side to it, because not everyone bows willingly, and what waits for those who do not is separation from God forever. I don't like talking about hell. I wish it were metaphorical. The Bible does not give me that option. People get offended when I say it, and I am sorry, but truth is not up for a majority vote. I hope every one of you lives another sixty years of happy, healthy living. But nobody is guaranteed tomorrow.
The other half of it is teaching, and there are no insignificant teachers and no insignificant students.
A great purpose
That we may present everyone complete in Christ.
Some of you are already saying, I'm not doing well with that. Reading the Bible is a struggle. Prayer is hard. I don't make it here that often. I'm not clicking on all eight cylinders, Pastor. Neither am I, and neither is anybody else. We clean up well on Sundays, but all of us are struggling, including me. The question is not whether you have arrived. It is whether you are further along toward true north than you were yesterday. That is discipleship.
A great power
For this I labor, striving according to his power, which mightily works within me.
The word for striving is agonizomai. We agonize. Picture the weightlifter driving the bar up over his head, or the sprinter straining for the tape. We get the striving and the straining and the agony. The power is God's.
Three steps forward, two back. Two forward, three back. Some days, no steps at all. We are fellow strugglers, and the strength is not ours. Rich Mullins, still the best lyricist we ever had, has a song about a climb steep enough to make a man falter — and about never faltering out beyond the reach of God.
So let me leave you with the question. What is your compass? What guides you to true north? The answer to that makes all the difference in this life and for all eternity.
