SAVING PRIVATE RYAN & ME
Colossians 1:1-14
This morning we are looking at Colossians -- a brief New Testament book that you can easily read in less than an hour. The book was written by the apostle Paul and it is a letter, one that Paul wrote while he was in prison. Paul wrote this letter to a group of Christians he’d never met. In all of his travels, he never visited the city of Colosse (1:4-8, 2:1). Christianity was brought to that city by a man named Epaphras, a native Colossian (1:7). Epaphras visited Paul in prison and he had some news about the Colossian Church.
The good news is the people of that church have great faith and are working to spread the Gospel. The bad news is, people outside the church are trying to shape and influence the church.
Here it is 2000 years later and we are going through pretty much the same thing today. The world is trying very hard to tell the church what we should believe and what we should teach. The world is telling us that it is arrogant for us to teach that Jesus is the only way to God. What is happening today was happening in the city of Colosse.
The world was telling the church that Christ was not both divine and human. The world was telling the church that people must be saved by what they do, not simply by faith in Jesus. And that church was listening to the voice of the world, rather than to the Word of God.
So Epaphras, who actually founded the church in Colosse, visits Paul in Rome and tells the apostle about what is happening in the church -- the good news and the bad news. And Paul sits down and begins to write this letter. He doesn’t begin the letter in the style of our letters today – “Dear Colossians,” but rather he begins the letter in the style that was used back in Paul’s day. He starts like this: (READ COLOSSIANS 1:1-14)
Now, isn’t that a nice beginning to a letter? Paul begins by reminding them he prays for them, he praises them for all the good in their church, he reminds them of the inevitable pitfalls. At this point Paul hasn’t started dealing with the bad news that Epaphras has brought to his attention -- that the church is struggling to keep its faith pure of outside influences. Instead, he builds them up and encourages them in verse 10 to “lead lives worthy of the Lord.”
Lead lives worthy of the Lord -- easier said than done.
In the movie, “Saving Private Ryan,” actor Tom Hanks plays an army captain who is among those American soldiers who took part in the D-Day Invasion of World War II. Shortly after the invasion, this captain is put in charge of a special mission – to save Private Ryan. Ryan’s brothers have all been killed in different battles; only he survives among his siblings. The military decides Private Ryan must be located and returned safely home to his family.
But the search is not easy. Many of the men in the group are shot and killed along the way. The cost is incredibly high. At one point, the character played by Tom Hanks talks to his men and in frustration says, “This Ryan had better be worth it. He’d better be a genius or something. He’d better live a long life and do something like invent a longer lasting light bulb or something.”
Finally, they find Private Ryan. But before returning to safety, the captain is shot. Mortally wounded, he looks up at Private Ryan and with his last breath, says, “Earn this.”
The captain died for this private, and the private had better live up to that honor.
Christ died for us, and we’d better lead lives worthy of that honor. Our lives should reflect that the sacrifice made by Christ was worth His life. Just in 3 verses from today’s passage in Colossians (12-14), Paul lists five benefits God secured for us when Christ died on the cross: (1) he made us qualified to share his inheritance and be part of his kingdom; (2) he rescued us from Satan’s domination and made us his children; (3) he brought us into his eternal kingdom; (4) he bought out freedom from sin and judgment; and (5) he forgives all our sins.
In light of all those things, it is a tall order -- to live up to that honor. In the movie clip, we get a tiny glimpse of this. No one wants to sacrifice his or her life for nothing. We would want it to count for something. We would want the person for whom we died to live a life worthy of the life we exchanged for death.
So -- Christ died for you. Our lives better be worth that sacrifice. How do we do that? How does one lead his life in a manner that is worthy of the Lord?
First, we must have a foundation, one of knowledge and understanding. Time and again, the Bible affirms the value of these two important things.
Psalm 119, which Vivian read part of, is one example of the Bible’s affirmation of knowledge. This Psalm is a temple meditation, a prayer in which the writer asks God, in verse 66, “Teach me good judgment and knowledge.” (This Psalm would be a good one for you to read this week—it encourages us to stay true to God no matter how bad the world becomes and reminds us that obedience is the only way to achieve real happiness.)
Proverbs is full of truths about learning and understanding: 1:7 “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: fools despise wisdom and instruction.” 2:6 “From [the Lord’s] mouth comes knowledge and understanding.” 2:11-12 “…understanding will guard you, it will save you from the way of evil…” There are 39 verses about the importance of knowledge, just from the book of Proverbs!
When I first felt God calling me to set-apart ministry, I denied that call for two years. I told myself it wasn’t really God calling me to serve Him, I made all kinds of excuses to ignore what I was feeling. On that day when I wrestled with God and said, “Ok, Lord, I accept your call on my life, but you are going to have to make all this happen,” God spoke to me clearly through one verse from Proverbs that guided me through the next several years. 23:12 “Apply your mind to instruction and your ear to words of knowledge.” Good advice no matter what stage of life you are in!
Use your mind. Read His Word, the Holy Bible. Study. Learn. Grow in knowledge and understanding. Learn all you can about God’s world, and God’s Word. That’s a perfect place to begin. But it takes more than knowledge to live in a manner worthy of Christ. We need action--taking what you learn from God and putting it into the actions of your day to day living.
In the words of Jesus and the Apostles, this was called “bearing fruit.” You can grow a good plant of some sort, but if you are a farmer, you expect that plant to produce some decent fruit of some sort. Otherwise it is worthless. God has planted us. He expects us to produce decent fruit in our lives.
Most of my life has been spent in Indiana, and many people here take advantage of the wonderful soil and plant these beautiful gardens. Throughout the years I’ve planted tomatoes and green beans, zucchini and cucumbers, green peppers and potatoes, carrots and radishes. And they would grow. They would produce great crops (especially the zucchini!). “Bear fruit¨ as the Bible would say. Once in a while, I would plant something that failed -- and that failed miserably.
Muskmelons, for example. I love muskmelons but I just never could grow any. I had beautiful green leafy plants spreading out all over their part of the garden. They even had pretty golden blossoms. But I never had one single melon. Not one. One year I planted a whole bunch of those things, hoping to get just one or two melons. Not one single melon ever grew in my garden.
In the same way as my own expectations, God expects us to produce some decent fruit in our lives. He expects us to do great things that are worthy. We don’t earn God’s love or salvation that way – God freely gives it to us by His grace. But having experienced God’s love and promise of salvation, we ought to respond by living and walking a life worthy of the honor Christ gave us when He died for us - we ought to want to produce a life that “bears good fruit.¨
Are you producing fruit in your life?
In these first 14 verses of Colossians, there are three beautiful ways we can have an impact that goes far beyond our neighborhoods. The first is generosity. Verse 11 says “May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience while joyfully giving thanks to the Father.” Those who can "joyfully [give] thanks to the Father" have succeeded in cultivating generosity. Possessing a "generous spirit" enables believers to participate in the reckless extravagance that characterizes God's own generosity toward creation.
Cautious, careful keeping track is not one of God's strong suits. Neither should it be ours. In some cultures, gifts that are extremely expensive or highly valued are interpreted as inappropriate. They put the gift's recipient at a permanent disadvantage, embarrassing the recipient and threatening the person's social status. In the Christian tradition, generosity is a virtue that can never be overdone. No matter how great our gifts, how open our spirit, we can never approach the extravagance of God's gift of Jesus Christ for our salvation.
A grateful spirit cannot be stingy. When practiced as a Christian virtue, generosity is extended without boundaries: to the poor, the outcast, the stranger and even ourselves. (How many of us are generous to ourselves???)
Christian generosity is generosity to a fault. It extends itself across all the cracks and fissures that riddle our families, our churches, our communities. Christian generosity seeks to find the cracks and fill them in, fill them up with love.
The second way we can practice bearing fruit is through tolerance. When Paul urges the Colossian Christians to "endure everything with patience" (v.11), he is advocating the use of tolerance. Christian tolerance hoes a careful path between uncaring apathy and dismissive judgment.
Tolerance is not apathy, it doesn’t mean not caring: You don't "tolerate" a toxic waste dump slowly leaking into the town’s soil and water supply. Neither is tolerance a rejecting write-off: You don't "tolerate" your teenage son or daughter experimenting with drugs.
Being tolerant enables us to see ourselves in other people, in other situations, and to realize that we are in this together. Tolerance helps us see how intimately we are all connected by producing empathy for each other. We cannot purposely separate ourselves from people or things we don't like or don't agree with. No matter how much someone makes you grit your teeth, no matter how much we may disagree with or just plain dislike another, the virtue of tolerance reveals that as fallen, frail human beings, our fates are still tied to each other. As human beings, we have far more in common than we will ever have differences. We may disagree, but we can do so generously and charitably.
Having won the battle for tolerance within, it becomes easy to cheer and clap on the outside.
However, God's steadfast faithfulness is not blanket acceptance or approval of our poor performances in life. Divine tolerance is bound up in the faith, love and hope that God extends to us through Christ. Practicing tolerance in our own lives is only possible when we, too, find its basis in the power of the trinity.
--In faith you can tolerate the constant interruptions in a carefully planned day of work, with the faith that every day and every encounter is meaningful in its own way.
--In love you can tolerate the glances cast your way because you are "different" (black or white, male or female, young or old, disabled or divorced), loving the uniqueness of each of us as a child of God.
--In hope you can tolerate teenagers' moods and music, with the hope that they are growing into their future.
Someone once said, “Intolerance is the real midlife crisis, for intolerance is the trait we cultivate in midlife when broad minds and narrow waists inexplicably exchange places.” Let us work toward tolerance with the honor of Christ’s death for us in mind.
Perhaps the greatest thing we can develop to impact our worlds is the final one mentioned in today's text--forgiveness. Paul begins describing in verse 12 the most miraculous example of forgiveness that has been experienced -- that God has "enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light." It is only this act of the Divine Will that makes it possible for us to be "transferred ... into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins" (v.14).
Forgiveness is not natural. Ask the baby bird that stretches too far and falls out of its nest to be snatched up by a waiting cat; ask the hibernating squirrel whose tree is blown over in a winter storm; ask the starving residents of a lightning-burned forest: Nature is unforgiving. One mistake and you're out -- toast -- dinner for someone else. In nature, the "circle of life" Elton John sang about in Lion King is based on death. And let us not forget the unforgiving nature of the El Niño storms.
Forgiveness is not natural, it is supernatural and Spirit-driven. God's forgiveness breaks the rules of nature and casts aside the judgments of creation. There is no earthly reason for God to extend the gift of divine forgiveness our way. There is only a heavenly reason -- the power of love.
Just as the virtue of tolerance should not be confused with apathy, neither should the virtue of forgiveness be confused with condoning. Wrong behavior -- cruelty, deceit, injustice, hate -- none of these behaviors are condoned through the act of forgiveness. But none of these behaviors can be altered or undone without the act of forgiveness. Only when we learn how to forgive can the healing power of love be released to work against these evils.
How wrong that old movie Love Story was when it claimed -- "Love means never having to say you're sorry." Extending and accepting forgiveness is the very essence of love. It is the Christian virtue most rooted in love, the most dependent on faith, and the most embedded in hope.
Do you know that when you forgive, the muscular tensions that you had come to assume were normal are eased” You are less vulnerable to infection or to far more serious illnesses? Your immune system lifts, your face muscles let down, food tastes better, the world looks better, and depression radically diminishes?
One last thing about forgiveness: we often forget to include ourselves among those who need to be forgiven. This is not just letting ourselves "off the hook." Through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we are indeed already forgiven. But we must always account for our own actions. When we do wrong, we are required to "own up" to what we have done. Without taking that first step, we continue in a state of personal unforgiveness, a state which is self-destructive and blocks our ability to extend genuine forgiveness to others. Forgiving ourselves spills over into the lives of all the others who would seek to hurt us -- making their blows ineffectual.
At the end of the movie, Saving Private Ryan, the scene jumps out of World War II and suddenly it is 50 years later. Ryan is now an old man visiting the cemetery near the beaches of Normandy.
The war is long over.
The place is no longer violent, but peaceful. He kneels down at the tombstone of the army captain who gave his life so that Ryan might live. He breaks out in tears. His wife is at his side and she reaches out to try to comfort him. Ryan looks at her and asks, “Have I been a good man?¨
The question he really is asking is, “Have I lived a life worthy of this man’s sacrifice?¨
It’s a question for us. Are we living a life worthy of Christ’s sacrifice for us? How well do we practice forgiveness? Generosity? Tolerance? Let us commit to doing better.
PLEASE PRAY WITH ME:
O God, stay with us; let no word cross our lips that is not your Word, no thoughts enter our minds that are not your thoughts, no deeds ever be done by us that is not your deed.
Amen.
TAKE THESE WORDS WITH YOU:
The seeds of gospel truth have been planted in you. Go now to share your faith in Jesus and your love for each other, so that the gospel might grow in you and bear fruit throughout the world. May you be filled with the wisdom of God, the power of Christ and the patience of the Spirit, now and forever. Alleluia. Amen.
