Colossians 3:1-11 | Göttinger Predigten im Internet

The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost | 31 July 2022 | Colossians 3:1-11 | Samuel D. Zumwalt, STS |

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. ² Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. ³ For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. ⁴When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. ⁵ Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. ⁶ On account of these the wrath of God is coming. ⁷In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. ⁸ But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. ⁹Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices ¹⁰ and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. ¹¹ Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.

HOLY BAPTISM: THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

This summer, our parish has been focusing on the Ten Commandments and Martin Luther’s explanation of them in his Large Catechism. We have also looked for a textual interplay each week between the epistle lesson and the commandment. Like our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, we Lutherans count three commandments directed towards God and seven towards our neighbors. Like our Jewish friends, we do not see a separate commandment against graven images but rather this is assumed under having no other gods. So, then, the seventh commandment forbids stealing.

Since our heavenly Father is far more interested in good things than spending eternity speaking a cosmic “No,” He says to His people through these commandments, “Not that way, but this!”

As has been our pattern all summer, we have memory work again this week.

P: The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,

C: the world and those who dwell therein (Psalm 24:1).

We have discovered that St. Paul’s letter to the Church at Colossae (in present-day Asian Turkey) was sent as a spiritual father’s instruction to new Christians contending both with a Jewish cult devoted to St. Michael the Archangel and the typical Gentile hedonism of that day. We have read the previous three weeks that Holy Baptism is the mark of the new covenant administered both to males and females and to Jews and Gentiles. Crucified with Christ in Holy Baptism, Christians are no longer our own. The old ways of walking through this world are abandoned for following the Crucified Jesus, whose way is of limitless, humble service even unto death on a cross. The early Church baptized naked candidates to emphasize the new birth from above. After the washing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the new child of God was clothed in a new white robe. He or she was clothed in Christ’s righteousness and, again, not his or her own!

Life is difficult, and the Christian life is even more difficult. This we must say to parents and grandparents bringing children for Holy Baptism. This we must say more clearly without equivocation to youth and adults who come inquiring to the services of God’s house.

Too many congregations, pastors, and bishops have slowly made compromises with the wider culture out of anxiety about institutional survival. Too many instructors and professors of Bible and religion have made peace with their own unbelief by revising the Christian faith in light of their flirtations with Marxism or their clever apologetics in the service of justifying their own departure from the Church’s teaching and practice regarding marriage and sexuality. Because one cannot rely on the historic structures of episcopacy or the trustworthiness of once hallowed halls of academia to hold fast to the faith once delivered to the saints, pastors and parents have to seek out those who will join with them in refusing to kiss Baal’s lips or any other part of his anatomy.

As we said last week, the uncatechized are particularly vulnerable to the take-no-prisoners brown shirts of tolerance, inclusion, and diversity. Without knowing who and Whose they are as baptized children of God, the uncatechized quickly capitulate to charges of intolerance and “phobia.” The best defense is a good offense, which is to teach them to say with St. Paul: “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised,” et cetera. In Christ’s Church, we have the baptized, who daily die to themselves. We do not have degrees of intersectional victimology.

So, if we are looking for a textual connection with the 7^th commandment, there it is. When parents, pastors, professors, bishops and the like teach contrary to the faith once delivered to the saints, they are stealing… selling false merchandise… refusing to proclaim Christ Crucified!

And, because this is a recurring theme among cultural, country-club Christians who just have to have little prince or princess baptized, receive first communion, and have fun youth activities that the kids want, we have to say, “You are stealing from both God and your child when you refuse to bring the child to worship, Christian education, and to be catechized (trained) in Christ.”

P: The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,

C: the world and those who dwell therein (Psalm 24:1).

Martin Luther takes no prisoners when writing on the 7^th Commandment against stealing. He declares: “Now, since this commandment is so far-reaching… it is necessary to teach it well and to explain it to the common people. Do not let them go on in their greed and security. But always place before their eyes God’s wrath, and instill the same. For we must preach this not to Christians, but chiefly to hoods and scoundrel. It would be more fitting for judges, jailers, or Master Hans (the executioner) to preach to them. Therefore, let everyone know his duty, at the risk of God’s displeasure: he must do not harm to his neighbor nor deprive him of profit nor commit any act of unfaithfulness or hatred in any bargain or trade. But he must also faithfully preserve his property for him, secure and promote his advantage. This is especially true when one accepts money, wages, and one’s livelihood for such service” (Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions, 385:232-233).

Luther helps us to grasp what our heavenly Father wants from those who are His own purchased at great cost on Calvary’s tree. We are to live in all of our many vocations in this life as managers of the creation the Triune God makes and owns. The daily dying to self is difficult work.

Parents (those who raise us) sacrifice their lives to bring us safely to adulthood. We, in turn, are bound to sacrifice our lives to care for them as they age. Life is difficult, but that’s where joy is.

Talents are given to bless our neighbor to the glory of God. The slow, careful honing of gifts is often tedious. Parents and mentors push us to be better not for their glory but for God’s. We must learn discipline, sacrifice, and devotion to the good, the true, and the beautiful. Not to do so is stealing, but so is the use of gifts only in the service of vanity and greed.

The preacher who only uses old sermons and doesn’t wrestle weekly with God’s Word is a thief. Likewise, the teacher who uses old notes and never newly digs for buried treasure. Refusing to keep vows made to the Lord of the Church on the day of ordination and installation is theft. But, again, changing the historic vows to reflect one’s revisionist makeover of the Christian faith is theft that does not go unseen and will not go unanswered for when the Lord returns in glory for judgment. There is only one Church and not this church, our, or my church. Caveat emptor!

P: The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,

C: the world and those who dwell therein (Psalm 24:1).

I never met my paternal grandfather, born in the 1880s, who committed suicide in 1924 when my father was twelve. He was clinically depressed, despondent, and doubtless felt a failure in life. In that moment when he placed a shotgun against his chest and pushed the trigger with a stick, he could not see his beautiful Sicilian wife, his two growing boys, or his baby daughter. They needed him, and he not only stole a husband and father from them. He stole a huge chunk of the rest of their lives and left emotional ripples across generations of grandchildren and beyond. Who failed to recognize the satanic, siren song whispering in his ear? Who could have helped?

Eighteen percent of young people considered suicide during the Covid shutdowns. Many fled to the usual suspects of substance abuse, sex, and state-sponsored saviors. So, a lot of thievery has been visited upon the public, but, the abdication of personal responsibility is also a type of theft.

Baptized into Christ, we are not our own. In every relationship and every vocation, our dear heavenly Father is calling us still: “Man. Woman. Where are you? Do you know Whose you are right now? This is my good creation and everything in it. Take care. Take very good care.”

Father, grant that what we say with our lips, we may believe in our hearts, and what we believe in our hearts, we may show forth in our lives. Through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

©Samuel David Zumwalt, STS

szumwalt@bellsouth.net

St. Matthew’s Ev. Lutheran Church

Wilmington, North Carolina USA

Bulletin insert

Holy Baptism: The Seventh Commandment

Praying

“Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your Church, and, because it cannot continue in safety without your help, protect and govern it always by your goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.” (The Daily Prayer of the Church, 618).

Listening

Colossians 3:1 “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above …”

St. Augustine [Late 4th – early 5th century Bishop of Hippo Regius, Algeria]: “Because the inner man, too, if he is certainly renewed from day to day, is surely old before he is renewed” (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Colossians, 45).

Colossians 3:3 “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

St. Ambrose [4th century Bishop of Milan, Italy]: “This is the meaning of flight from here – to die to the elements of this world, to hide one’s life in God, to turn aside from corruptions, not to defile oneself with the objects of desire and to be ignorant of the things of this world” (46).

Colossians 3:5 “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, ….”

St. John Chrysostom [Late 4^th – early 5^th century Patriarch of Constantinople, Turkey]: “Does Paul write as though these things were in us? There is no contradiction. It is similar to one who has scoured a statue that was filthy, recast it, and displayed it new and bright, explaining that the rust was eaten off and destroyed. Yet he recommends diligence in clearing away the future rust… It is not that rust which he scoured off that he recommends should be cleared away but that which grew afterwards” (47).

Colossians 3:8 “But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander….”

St. Ambrose: “The intention is that God may be all to us, if we live after his image and likeness, as far as we can attain to it, through all. The benefit has passed, then, from the individual to the community; for in his flesh he has tamed the nature of all human flesh…” (48).

Colossians 3:11 “… but Christ is all, and in all.”

St. Gregory Nazianzus [4^th century Patriarch of Constantinople, Turkey]: “But God will be all in all in the time of restitution; not in the sense that the Father alone will be, and the Son be wholly resolved into him, like a torch into a great pyre, from which it was pulled away for a short time and then put back… when we shall be no longer divided (as we are now by movements and passions) and containing nothing at all of God, or very little, but then we shall be entirely like God, ready to receive into our hearts the whole God and him Alone. This is the perfection to which we press on. Paul himself indeed bears witness to this” (49).

Reflecting

Do I now understand what a new and radical way of life the practice of Holy Baptism is?

Learning

Christian Questions with Their Answers

After confession and instruction in the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the pastor may ask, or Christians may ask themselves these questions:

What are the Words of Institution?

Our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night when He was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to the disciples and said: ‘Take, eat; this is My body, which is given for you. This do in remembrance of Me.’ In the same way also He took the cup after supper, and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them, saying: ‘Drink of it, all of you; this cup is the new testament in My blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”

2. Do you believe, then, that the true body and blood of Christ are in the Sacrament?

Yes, I believe it.

3. What convinces you to believe this?

The Word of Christ: Take, eat, this is My body; drink of it, all of you, this is My blood.

Doing

Pray for every unbaptized child you know and for the child’s parents, too.
Pray for your unchurched loved ones and friends. Invite one or more of them to worship.
Discuss with your spouse, your family, or a friend the importance of and great need for self-examination before receiving the Sacrament of the Altar. If you have never considered making a private confession before a pastor, please do so… not for the pastor’s sake but for yours.
Set aside time daily, preferably first thing, but when you are able to focus, to hear the Word of God, to reflect upon that Word, and to ask the Holy Spirit to grant you grace to be shaped by and conformed to that Word. Devotional booklets are also available in the narthex. Daily lectionary readings are on p.189 in the front of the Lutheran Book of Worship (Year Two, Week of 8 Pentecost).
Review this week’s section of Luther’s Large Catechism on the Seventh Commandment and read next week’s section on the Eighth Commandment and the preaching text (Hebrews 11:1-16). https://bookofconcord.org/large-catechism/.

For Husbands and Wives

Repeat daily: “I (name) take you (name) to be my wedded wife (husband), to have and to hold from this day forward; for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; to love and to cherish until death do us part, according to God’s holy ordinance, and thereto I pledge you my faith.”