Colossians 2:6-19 NRSV
2:6 As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him,
2:7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
2:8 See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ.
2:9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,
2:10 and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority.
2:11 In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ;
2:12 when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.
2:13 And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses,
2:14 erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross.
2:15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.
2:16 Therefore do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths.
2:17 These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.
2:18 Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking,
2:19 and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows with a growth that is from God.
I get fascinated with the process of development as I get older. I think about what goes on behind the scenes before we see the big show. When I listen to a musician play an instrument, I wonder about the hours of practice they put in before the performance. When I see an actor on the stage, I wonder how long did they rehearse? I will look at a business being successful or relocating to a new city, and I wonder about the negotiations that took place to get the company there.
Why? Because I learned that no matter where you see someone standing, they did not get there by themselves and did not get there overnight. We are looking at a finished product without knowing how much work it took to get there.
For that very reason, I appreciate trees more now than I did in the past. I have learned that trees work together. Suzanne Simard, an ecologist, has studied trees extensively and discovered that underground, trees communicate with one another with their roots and fungus underground. Trees in the sunlight send nutrients to trees in the shade. Trees will let other trees know if there are bugs nesting in them so that the other trees can produce more sap to keep bugs from climbing the other trees.
Mycorrhizal (Mike oh rise ah) networks create a community in the forest. In them, a fungus assists the trees by helping to supply their needs, and the trees help the fungus by providing it with sugar.
The bottom line is this: Trees are not competitive organisms. Instead, “each tree invests in the well-being of the forest as a whole
When Paul was writing to the followers of Christ in Colossae, the apostle Paul sounded a great deal like a forest ecologist: “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him” (Colossians 2:6-7). Christians are not to live as isolated individuals but to be rooted in Christ, nourished by Christ, and built up in Christ. Paul was writing his letter to the Colossian church because deceitful philosophies were going around and other views on how religion was supposed to operate. People were promoting the deceitful philosophy that the knowledge of God was supposed to come from within the individual. Paul, however, is saying that knowledge of God comes from God.
Paul is preaching against the myth of the self-made person, the rugged individualism, and the thought that we all suffer alone and the only way out is to do it yourself. Paul says that we have to do more than just live together; we ought to communicate and help one another on the Christian journey.
Paul is saying this Christian Journey is not an individual journey but a communal one. We are in this together, with one another, loving and helping one another. Not only are we supposed to work together, but we are supposed to work together right now. Paul says not to worry about ascending to God. Paul wants the church to take action right now to help your neighbor live in gratitude.
We begin by being rooted in Christ. Nothing is more important than Christian formation, which starts in childhood and continues until our lives on this earth end. Most of this happens in the home, where parents are challenged to show their children. Christlike love and spouses are to be as faithful to each other as Christ is to the church. The church can help families do this by assisting them to form the qualities that Paul lays out for the Colossians: “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” (3:12).
Then we communicate with each other. Like the fungal fibers, we carry information between different parts of the body of Christ. This is done best in face-to-face conversation, but it can be done carefully and gently through other forms of communication as well. We must be willing to speak to one another, not just the pastor. It is much easier for 100 people to have conversations with one another than for the pastor to have 100 different conversations.
“Faith communities speak lovingly but truthfully to their members,” wrote journalist Robin Givhan in a column about congregations. “In that way, they are, one hopes, like family. None of that is possible without a willingness to take a risk, to open oneself to a wounded ego, slings, and arrows, a broken heart.” When we do this, we try to take people at their word and avoid being judgmental. We make room for everyone’s flaws and failures and try to build each other up.
Then we nourish each other and sacrifice for each other. Mycorrhizal fibers carry water, carbon, and nitrogen from tree to tree. In the same way, we are to carry encouragement, guidance, and support from person to person. We do this when we lift the spirits of people who are feeling discouraged, mentor teenagers, struggling with their faith, and support people who have lost their spouses.
As members of the Christian community, we invest not only in the welfare of individuals but in the well-being of the church as a whole. This involves gifts of time, talents, and money given in support of the mission and ministry of the church. In all of this, we follow the sacrifice of Jesus, who was killed when people “put him to death by hanging him on a tree” (Acts 10:39). Growing deeper and larger: That is “a growth that is from God” (v. 19). We grow deeper when we study and reflect on the Bible, when we ask the Holy Spirit to help us pray “with sighs too deep for words” (Romans 8:26), and when we enter deep-spirited friendships with people around us.
But we also need to grow larger by planting seeds in the community around us. We do this by sharing the gospel through podcasts, blogs, and live-streamed services of worship, and we do it by knocking on doors and getting to know our neighbors. And we do it best by sharing the love of Jesus with our family members and friends.
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