"Hidden Treasures"
Watching for signs of deception and the need to follow Christ
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Text: Colossians 2:1-15
If you are involved in religion or Christianity in particular, this has been, without doubt, a very strange week. Strange, because I have received many phone calls and letters, from media and other places, about our faith and that it seems to be front and centre in so many aspects of the media and social discourse. Whether it is new television programs with ossuaries from Jerusalem claiming to hold the bodies of Jesus and his family, or scandals appearing on the front page of the Toronto Star about a congregation in the city and the problems besetting them due to the supposed excesses of their ministers. Whether it is politicians on the left or the right wings of the political spectrum wearing their religion on their sleeve and using it as a source of either inspiration or the means of clobbering their opposition; or, as published on the back page of Friday's National Post as part of a Lenten series, people dealing with losing their faith and finding their faith; it seems that wherever you turn there is discussion and debate, interest and intrigue about matters of the faith.
Part of this is good, I think. When the truth is being sought, when there is an honest desire to know and to unlock things that cause the truth to become clearer, I think it is laudable. When it is for the profit and gain for individuals, organizations or parties, it is deplorable. In many cases we deal with both, sometimes at the same time. What I have gleaned from these discussions over the last week or two is that some people feel a little disturbed. They're not quite sure how to read the signs and are wondering what direction their lives should go, which bit-by-bit erodes the sense of security, erodes the sense of foundation, erodes the sense of hope and faith. I sometimes think that all these things beset us, all these things trouble us, because they are like road signs that can cause us to go off on a tangent and lead us astray.
I couldn't help but think as I was reading this, of what's been going on over the last couple of weeks while major roadwork is being done in front of our bungalow. First, they decided to put up a sign saying, “Local traffic only.” Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I had so many neighbours, driving so many cars. If that was local traffic, I'll eat my hat!
Realizing that they couldn't do their work because nobody obeyed the sign, they lied and put up a sign saying, “Road closed.” Never in the history of the world have so many people travelled down a closed road! It seems that it only enticed people to see how far they could get. Chaos ensued, work was delayed, people were getting mad at one another and turning the wrong way and backing up in front of my driveway, and all because of unclear signs, signs not telling the truth. They were purporting to do so, but when you put up a sign that says, “Road closed” it had better be closed or else you don't have much legitimacy.
That's the way I feel about a lot of these things that play in the little sandbox of religion, moving things around and playing games as if somehow it doesn't matter, as if somehow it's all just a great big game and anyone can get in the box and play. It doesn't matter what signs you put up or what direction you give because you're not accountable and nobody seems to care anyway.
That couldn't be further from the truth. These deceptive signs have been around since the very beginning of the Christian faith. In today's passage from the Book of Colossians, the apostle Paul writes about the church struggling with false signs that deceive people into going the wrong way. You see, Paul was writing out of great concern for the people of Colossae and also the people of Laodicea, two very important cities in the time of Paul's writing. Colossae was a city in decline. It had been a commercial power, but it was losing its power to other cities. Laodicea though, was a powerful city in the area of Phrygia. It was well known for its business and commerce. But in both Colossae and in Phrygia the Church of Jesus Christ was feeling uncertain. Paul uses an interesting word, he says, “I am ”˜striving' for you. I am contending for you. I am struggling for you.”
The best way to interpret this is to liken it to someone training to become an athlete: that sense of striving of training, of getting ready for the big event. Paul says, “I am struggling for you and I'm concerned about you.” But why? Because, both Colossae and Laodicea were dealing with what I call, the “Twin Towers of apostasy.” On the one hand there were a group of people who tried to impose on the Christian community a new form of legalism. They said that to be a real Christian you had to abide by certain dietary laws, you had to fulfill certain obligations, you had to do certain things - that was the apostasy of legalism. On the other hand, there was the apostasy of a false mysticism saying that you didn't really need to believe anything about Jesus, you didn't really need to believe anything about the faith, all you needed to do was have a direct relationship with God and you could bypass all this doctrine, you could bypass the content of the faith.
On the one hand, the one tower of apostasy said that Christ was not enough, that you needed more, you needed legalism. The other one said that Christ wasn't important at all, all you needed was an unmediated relationship with God. Paul says that this is a deception. He says, “I am contending for you against this deception.” There are those coming along, seeking to deceive you and lead you onto the wrong path.
Now, a lot of people say, “Does any of this really matter? Isn't faith just a personal thing, after all? Isn't it all subjective? Doesn't it all boil down, basically, to what I happen to believe? The answer is, no. What you believe does matter. There is a content to the faith, there is something that you need to have that gives you a grounding for your faith. This has been reinforced in me by reading a couple of books recently.
The first is by a man named Peter Emberley, a Canadian who wrote Divine Hunger. In it he does a survey on the religious life of Canadians. He describes us as a group of people who want to be spiritual, who want to have a right relationship with God, who want to live without fear, who want to live in peace - all those good and wonderful qualities. But there is emerging, what he calls a “fusion faith” a sort of intermingling of all kinds of ideas, wrapped up in a nice little ball and we choose which of these balls we want to play with, which ones we want to possess, making up our own religion as we go along.
The other book is by the New Testament professor that I'm studying under at Acadia University, Craig Evans. He has just published a book titled, Fabricating Jesus. It deals with all these books and ideas out there, from the Da Vinci Code to the ossuary to the different theories about Jesus and his marital life and so on. He deconstructs them all and puts them in their proper place. He shows that they are on shaky ground, that they are built on supposition. It is a brilliant book.
Both these men, coming at it from entirely different points of view, say the same thing. There is, within our society, a spiritual poverty. There is a sense of rootlessness, no real foundation on which to build one's life. For all the nice talk, the fact is, we are the poorer because we are spiritually poor and we don't know where to stand. That, my friends, is because we are not reading the signs correctly and are being easily led astray and very easily confused. I want to say very straightforwardly, unambiguously and clearly that there is a need for people of faith to ground their faith in something of substance. If it has ever been necessary, it is now. But just like any sign, we sometimes need to read the warning. Signs are put up not only so that we might know the way, but that might stop going the wrong way.
I encountered a clear example of this about a week or ten days ago when I was driving through the parking lot of a new shopping complex near where I live. I nearly had a terrible accident. The problem: There are two ways in which you can put signs up, you can put a sign up that says, “Stop” or you can paint it on the ground. The problem with painting it on the ground in Canada in the winter is that when it snows the sign is covered up. Stirling, being a very good and law-abiding citizen, thinking he was doing the right thing, drove through an intersection not knowing that “Stop” was painted on the ground because it was covered with snow. I met a delivery truck from Starbucks going through the same intersection. After a series of rude gestures and comments on where I should end up some day and some reference to the City not posting proper signs in their proper place, we both went our separate ways.
Sometimes stop signs go up to preserve you, to save you, to tell you when and where not to go. In the Book of Colossians, Paul is concerned not only with the sign saying (I paraphrase), “Here is the truth, live by it, but beware (stop) that there are false signs as well.” There are a couple of stop signs I want you to heed this morning because if you don't see them and read them it is easy for you to live in spiritual impoverishment, rather than have the true treasures of God.
The first sign is, “Beware of the cult of personality.” Paul was deeply concerned that there were those who were being deceptive and usually deceivers arise from having a strong sense of their own will and power even above the truth. Let's face it, religion is a powerful thing, it's emotive, it moves people and when it is allied to strong personalities it can have devastating consequences and it can be used wrongfully.
I have been trying to understand for example, the conflict in the Middle East between the Sunnis and the Shia within Islam - these two denominations. I've tried to come to some understanding as to why we have such a powerful military clash. It's not just based on what's going on now or the fact that the Shia tend for the most part to be poorer, while the Sunnis tend to have more power or that Islam tends to be interpreted more through the Sunni story than the Shia story.
It actually goes back to who was the successor to Mohammad, and the Sunnis believe that it was Abu Bhakar and the Shia believe it was Ali, the son-in-law, and they interpret the whole series of events after Mohammad through the eyes of who should be the right Caliph, the right leader. Even when it comes to the interpretation of who the sons of Ali are, Al Hassan and Al Husayn, and how they died, there is a debate between the Sunni and the Shia. Right at the very roots, right back to personalities, to who should provide religious leadership, this conflict arises - and everything that has followed since.
Christianity has not been exempt from conflict, particularly in the first century, and into the second and even more into the third. After the death of Jesus, there were personalities coming along, contending for the affection and the attention of people with their ideas and apostasies, the twin towers that I mentioned earlier. There were cults developed around these personalities, and they became the great leaders.
So often, my friends, the truth, the source, the reason for the revelation gets lost in the midst of the personalities who drive the agenda. G. K. Chesterton, in warning about the dangers of following people rather than following the truth made this clear:
Why have we no great men? We have no great men chiefly because we are always looking for them. We are connoisseurs of greatness and connoisseurs can never be great. When anybody goes around on his hands and knees looking for a great man to worship, he is making sure that one man, at any rate, shall not be great.
When we elevate personalities above the truth, no matter how strong they are, there is danger. I think that this is a danger that the church in our city I mentioned earlier got into.
Leadership is important and strong leadership is important. There is nothing wrong with leadership. You can't do anything without leadership. But, when that leadership takes on a mystique all of its own, it can be very dangerous, and there needs to be STOP signs! Whether it is the media who tend to think that they are right, or movie makers who twist the truth so cleverly and easily with innuendo and supposition, it is so easy to see these things as the most important things rather than going back to the source and honestly looking at whether it is truthful.
The second thing that any church or religious organization or religious leader or Christian needs to be aware of is the imbalance that can occur in our ministry. Paul has a wonderful phrase, “There are sometimes those who worship the elemental spirits of the age as opposed to Jesus Christ.” The elemental spirits of the age are usually self-serving. The elemental spirits of the age are usually for the glory of an individual, as opposed to Jesus Christ, who was the man for others.
Any church, therefore, that purports to hold on to the truth and who wants to be authentic, needs to read the sign that says, “You had better be a people for others before you are a people for yourselves. You had better have a passion for social justice rather than just a passion for your own aggrandizement. You had better care for the outcasts and the refugee and the lost. If you are going to care for yourself, make sure that when you care for yourself you are doing it in such a way that it is going to be for the benefit of others. You have got to make sure that in your wealth and substance you are generous to the poor. You had better make sure that if you have a ministry in Christ's name it is a ministry that is going to be on the side of the vulnerable. And, if you are going to say that you love God, you had better make sure that you love your neighbour within your church first.”
There is no question about it, those elements of the world that get off track do so because they are only looking at themselves, they are not looking at the needs of others. For Jesus, it was abundantly clear: “Whatever you do for the least of these my children you do for me.” It is clear. And when the church is authentic, and when the church is great, and when the church is true to its foundation and reading the right signs, it is out there caring for others. No doubt about it!
The second thing we have to look out to is not just the world, but to the Lord. Here I have a message that I believe to the depths of my soul, there is a need for us to have a strong sense of doctrine. Paul wrote to the Colossians, “In Christ are all the hidden treasures of God.” Now, we haven't been very good at doctrine over the last few years. It has become a dirty word. But, I agree with C. S. Lewis:
Doctrines are like maps. They are not the reality and may not be as exciting as reality, but they chart reality for us in a vital way. Just studying a map of the shore of the Atlantic is not as exciting as walking along the Atlantic coast itself, so studying the Doctrine of Atonement is not exactly the same as experiencing the cross itself. But, the purpose of the map is to represent, graph and explain the reality. If you want to find your way, you may need to have a reliable map, and we should consult it frequently.
And we do need a map, for the map gives us signs.
This March Break I have been reflecting on growing up in Bermuda. We used to really enjoy all the tourists who came to our island. “Man, you Canadians are crazy,” we thought! You came, and Americans came, and all manner of British came for the break. Some of my friends decided they were going to make money from visitors so they set up a small sign outside a place called Flat's Inlet. I'll explain it in a moment. It said “For ten dollars we will help you find buried treasure.” The idea was that they would take you on a boat and with scuba gear they would send you diving and you would be able to go into Harrington Sound and find sunken treasure from shipwrecks. There was one flaw in this endeavour - and I really saw it through a nautical chart of Bermuda that Harvie Brooks gave me a couple of years ago,. There is only one little inlet into Harrington Sound and you can only get through that in a very small, narrow, shallow boat, but nobody thought about that. How were all these great ships that had all these treasures going to get into that sound?
Nobody asked the question, and so for tens and tens and tens of dollars, people would go diving in Harrington Sound and lo and behold, they would find treasure. Isn't it remarkable? It was plastic, and said, “Made in Hong Kong” but they didn't care! They had gone diving and found treasure. They went home to Alabama, New York and Toronto with their wonderful treasures, and they felt good about it. The Bermudians were laughing all the way to the bank!
A false sign led them to false treasures. A false sign deceived them. It made them feel good. Oh, they felt great! But it wasn't worth anything! It was a deception. It was a lie. So, too, in matters of the spirit there can be deception; there can be lies. Don't misunderstand me, I believe there are people of genuine faith in all faiths in this country, people who genuinely believe and hold on to those beliefs sincerely. With those kinds of people I can work. With those kinds of people I can talk. But, for those who are genuinely deceptive for the sake of their own gain, I say, “NO!”
I look at the sound doctrine that comes from Paul in Colossae. He makes it abundantly clear, “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ, for in Christ” and this is the key, “all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head of every power and authority, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God who raised him from the dead, and having disarmed the powers of authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”
The cross is the sign that says, “Here are the true treasures of God!” Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.