There was a naval commander, decades in the service, legendary among his men for the battles he had seen. Every morning he came up to the bridge and went through the same peculiar ritual. A key out of his pocket. A locked bottom drawer. Inside it a sealed box with a combination, and inside that an envelope with its own little padlock. He would unfold the paper he found there, study it intently for about thirty seconds, then fold it up and put the whole apparatus back together and lock it away.
Near the end of his career one of his junior officers finally worked up the nerve to ask what was written on that piece of paper — the thing that had carried a man through a career like that.
Without a word, the old man took out his key, opened the drawer, spun the combination, undid the padlock, and showed him. It read: Port is left. Starboard is right.
Sometimes, no matter how long we have been doing this, we need to be reminded of a few basic truths.
Colossians 2:6-7 hands us three of them, and it hands them over so plainly that the preacher hardly has to do anything but point. As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. Rooted. Built up. Abounding in thanksgiving. Some passages you have to wrestle into shape. This one looks up at you and says, preach this.
Rooted
Living in South Florida, I have come to appreciate that palm trees were made for this climate. Most plants were not. When Heidi and I were in our first house, we had one royal palm in the front yard, and a couple of blocks west there was a big stand of Australian pines.
When the wind stopped early on the morning of August 24th, 1992, I went outside — honestly not certain whether the storm was over or whether we were sitting in the eye — and our royal palm was still standing there, naked as a newborn baby. Every frond gone. Still standing tall. The Australian pines were in Naples.
I am no botanist. But there is something about the way a palm is rooted in this soil: the roots do not go all that deep, and yet when the storms come — and we know they come — it holds.
The storms do come. The tropical kind that start as heat rolling off the coast of West Africa, and the personal kind, which do not wait for a season. Emotional, relational, financial, career. If you are out of elementary school you have had them.
So where are your roots planted, and how deeply?
I became a Christian at fourteen, at a youth group meeting, and it changed my life overnight. For four or five years the escalator was stuck in the up direction and I grew like a weed. Then my father died very unexpectedly at the start of my second year of college. A year and a half later two of my closest friends were in a car accident and one of them was killed on the spot. And I was sitting in classes at a secular university learning things I could not square with what I believed. All of a sudden everything felt negotiable.
What I could not doubt — what I could not dispute — was that my life was different because of Jesus. He was the rock my life stood on. He was the soil my roots had grown down into.
Built up, and established
Paul warns them about being taken captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to the elemental spirits of the world. The Greek there is stoicheia, which literally means things lined up in a row — the ABCs, the building blocks. Some of us are old enough to remember teaching a child the alphabet with little wooden blocks. Some of you are nodding. Some of you are wondering how old I really am.
Paul's point is that the Colossian heresy — Jesus is fine as far as he goes, but the really deep truths are elsewhere, available from an enlightened one for a price — is playing with blocks. Put them away. Grow up. It is Christ and Christ alone.
And how does that happen? There are no secrets here and no shortcuts. There is no microwave formula for instant spirituality. It is the spiritual disciplines, beginning with reading the Bible, which is the single best indicator of whether a disciple is growing. Sunday morning will not do it for you. Prayer. Corporate worship — and God bless you for being here, in the second least churched city in the continental United States. Financial stewardship. The sacraments.
Like any discipline you have ever acquired, you did not show up one day and discover you were good at it. You worked at it.
Abounding in thanksgiving
The word Paul uses is eucharistia. Some of you would call this the Eucharist; you can call it the Lord's Supper or communion. It means the giving of thanks, and that is exactly what we are doing at this table.
Chesterton said that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
What do we have to be thankful for, Pastor? There is a war on, prices are high, and our politics are toxic. Friends, there is nothing new under the sun — read about the election of 1800 sometime and see what Jefferson and Adams called each other.
If you woke up this morning and saw daylight. If you got out of bed under your own power. If you have clean running water and food and air conditioning. If you drove here over streets that were not cratered by drone strikes, into a sanctuary where you can worship freely and without fear. Most of the world can only dream of what we take for granted.
And most of all: if you have heard that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, and that invitation has been extended to you, and you have received Christ as Lord — you of all people have the most to be thankful for.
Which is what points us to the table.
Sometimes we just need to be reminded of a few basic truths.
