Rooted in Christ and His Apostles

TranscriptioN

Well, good morning again, everybody.

It is good to be with you. Seeing some of you after coming back from several weeks of being gone is a delight and a joy to my heart as well, so I am glad to be here with you, my friends. And as I mentioned before, if you're new or visiting, I'm Father Morgan Reed.

I'm the vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church, and if you're new to Anglicanism, that's an Anglican way of saying the senior pastor of a new church. So, we are in a series in the book of Colossians. We were just in chapter 1 for a few weeks.

Today we're getting into chapter 2, and this really gets into the meat of what St. Paul has to say to these churches in the Lycus Valley, in Colossae, and in Laodicea. These groups are tempted to move away from the faith that had been handed down to them from Christ through the Apostles. If you have bad soil, then whatever plant you want to grow in that soil is not going to grow.

You've got to test the soil. You've got to amend the soil if you have a type of plant that you want to put in it so that that plant can flourish, that you're hoping is going to grow. And our passage this morning in chapter 2 of Colossians reminds us to root ourselves deeply in good soil. Namely, the good soil here is Christ himself, as we understand him from the faith that's been handed down to us through the Apostles in the church.

And the reason why we need to root ourselves in that is to the end that we're delivered from the present evil age. If you want to experience the salvation of God in your life right now, from this present evil age, you have got to be rooted in the faith of the Apostles that points us to Jesus. So St. Paul, he's encouraging these believers, and he uses the language of rooting—to put roots deep down into the soil of the faith that's been handed down to them from the Apostles, of which he is one of them, obviously.

What he says to them is almost like a thesis to the letter in verses 6 and 7: "As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him." They hadn't been following Jesus for those three years of Jesus's ministry. They're totally dependent on the testimony of others to understand who Jesus is.

So he says, "Rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving." Paul is concerned that these believers are built up in the faith that's been handed down to them. And the issue arose with these particular Christians that there were some teachers who had come in and were offering a rival tradition of who Jesus was and how to follow him, and this was threatening to resubjugate them to the thing which they had been freed from. And I think it's likely a reference to something like proto-rabbinic Jewish teaching—because there was no rabbinic Judaism back then, but sort of the roots of it—where these Christians were starting to go back to the law of Moses, and in this Jewish-flavored error, they're moving back into places where they're starting to follow the law in order to grow in Christ.

This is a problem that he is addressing. So, the elemental principles here are what he's addressing and are referred to in other places in the New Testament as these Jewish ceremonies and rituals. I think it's in the book of Hebrews as well.

These serve the purpose—these elemental principles—in the providence of the life of the people of God to bring them to Jesus. But once Christ came, these elemental principles no longer held the power that they held. They were useful to bring people to Christ, but to continue to hold on to those things as the means of growth in Christ, after coming to a knowledge of who Jesus is, makes those things into an idol and begins to pervert the testimony of those who were following Jesus as Apostles. So what is the faith handed down? This is the question that sort of arises naturally in Colossians 2. What is the faith that's been handed down? The idea of passing down authority through time and people is not foreign to Judaism.

If you read the document called the Pirkei Avot—the Sayings of the Fathers in Judaism—there is this idea that the seat of Moses had an authority, and it was passed down to Joshua through the laying on of hands. And you can sort of take this line all the way down to the prophets, to certain people in the Second Temple period, all the way down to, in Jesus's day, the Pharisees. I know that we often talk about the Pharisees as the bad guys, but actually, these were the ones who rightly sat in Moses's seat and were given authority to interpret the law authoritatively for the people of God.

And so, this authority to sit in Moses's seat was a real one. When you read the Gospels, Jesus—he never questions their authority to interpret the law. He questions their abuses of the tradition that they've established.

He points out their hypocrisy in not living up to the laws that they've rightly written down, or the ways that they misprioritize one law over another to benefit themselves and not the community and following God. In some ways, where he says, "making them twice the son of hell as you are," the idea is they're locking people out of the kingdom by misprioritizing and being hypocrites—but not necessarily in their interpretation of the law and applying it to the people of God. So, Jesus, though, has a greater authority than Moses.

He is a new Moses, making a new people. And so, this proto-rabbinic tradition was a good tutor to bring people to Christ, but once Christ has come, the old tradition has to give way to the new tradition that is in Christ. And that tradition—if you think about it—Moses saw the face of God and passed on the tradition to Joshua, the seventy elders, etc. Now we have Apostles who behold the face of God, and they are ordained to then pass on this tradition through the laying on of hands moving forward.

And so, this is where in the New Testament we get the bishops—the overseers—who are carrying on the work of the Apostles in these different regions, like Timothy, who receives the laying on of hands. He oversees several churches with different presbyters. And this might be new to you, but this is actually part of my own journey into the Anglican Church—why I found this really important and helpful.

In my studies, I was reading a lot about a topic called canon criticism. Canon criticism. It's a really fun field.

And it is. And so, it's the study of how the Bible was put together and who kind of calls the Bible the Bible at any given time. It's a fascinating field.

And what impressed me in canon criticism, when you get to the New Testament—what we call the New Testament—is that St. Paul's letters are actually the earliest Christian writings we have, right? Bible or not. His writings are some of the earliest we have. And his writings are about 20 to 30 years after the resurrection of Jesus.

So that makes them older than the rest of the New Testament. Which means: How did the church govern itself for 30 years when there is no New Testament? Right? How does the church govern itself when Paul hasn't even written letters yet—for 30 years? And then, if you think about it, St. John the Apostle—he's writing in like the 90s AD—so 60 years later. He's the last of the Apostles. The book of Revelation is one of the latest.

You know, if he's writing in 90 AD, that's 60 years later. So, if you think about it, St. Paul's letters are earlier than any of the Gospels. And then St. John's writing over here.

So, for like 90 years—no, 60 years, sorry—for six decades, the church is trying to figure out how to govern itself without a completed New Testament—20 years of those with no Gospels or letters—just the testimony of the Apostles. How does the church do this? Because I guarantee you, there was no shortage of heresies that were cropping up in 60 years. You know, just look at the last 60 years.

We're really creative with ways that we invent false teaching. So they were no different than we are in the early church. And so, it must have been that there is some tradition with the Apostles that is given to them by Christ, that they can discern the work of the Spirit and name it, even in the time where there is no New Testament written down.

Even the process of accepting things as the work of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is a work of the Holy Spirit. When we talk about accepting the Bible and the books of the Bible, these books are collected, circulated. How is it that the next generation is going to arbitrate these new scenarios they're running into as people keep creating new teachings?

This is one sort of aside:

Even Paul's letters—what they call the 13, which includes Hebrews, whatever—but Paul's letters that are collected, tradition says that—you guys remember Philemon? Who's the slave in Philemon that's being asked to be freed? Anybody know? Onesimus. Good, I heard a couple of Onesimuses out there. Tradition has it Onesimus becomes a bishop, and he's the one responsible for collecting Paul's letters that we have in the canon now.

That's a fascinating thing. Can you imagine Philemon finding out that his slave is now a bishop, right? This is the radical work of the Holy Spirit. So, thinking about the church, situations are going to arise.

Like, people are going to start to think, “Oh, Jesus only was an apparition when he died, because flesh can’t—or God can’t—suffer.” Or, “Jesus must have only been spiritually resurrected, not physically, because the body’s evil.” Or just the idea that the body itself—flesh—is evil. These things are all cropping up in those first 60 years. And how do you deal with those?

The answer is that the Apostles had written about them, laid hands on people to write about them, to carry on this testimony of Jesus in this apostolic work. And so, for me, like, I still believe that the Bible was a primary authority, but for me, there had to be other sources of authority in the church than just my own mind.

This—you know—modern, at-the-time American, Reformed Evangelical interpretation of the text. There had to be more authority than just that, right? And so, that train of thought landed me safely into the harbor of the Anglican Church. We need bishops who are in the apostolic tradition to help us navigate what the Scriptures say about various topics.

If you want to read more on that, I highly recommend a book. If you're going to be in the catechism, in the confirmation class in the fall, this is a good one to add to your reading list. It's called The Gospel and the Catholic Church by the late Archbishop Michael Ramsey, who was the Archbishop of England in the 20th century.

One of our values at Corpus Christi Anglican Church is to live out the church’s tradition, and that looks like reading Scripture with the church, which can be noticing how Scripture interprets itself—Old Testament to Old Testament, Old Testament to New Testament, New Testament to New Testament, right? Peter even says Paul's letters are hard to understand, right? It’s fascinating. How does Jesus read the Psalms? How does Paul use the Law and the Prophets? Go beyond that.

Start reading the second generation of bishops. I call those the friends of the Apostles. These are the Apostolic Fathers, like Saint Ignatius of Antioch or Clement of Rome or the next generation after that, like Polycarp of Smyrna.

These people's writings are freely available online. There are other important works in the early church, like the Didache, the Epistle of Diognetus, the Epistle of Barnabas. These are really important.

The church has kept them for us. Pray with the church—so read with the church, pray with the church. Keep the church’s calendar as part of your rhythm.

Keep rhythms of prayer as you’re able to—not in a legalistic way, but expecting the Holy Spirit to speak by creating opportunities in your life for him to do so. Structure your life with the intention of a monastic, and make habits of prayer that fit your life situation with what God has entrusted to you. But all of these habits of prayer that we enter into with the church are to draw us into the love of Christ.

It’s sort of like in St. Benedict’s rule—it’s to establish a school for the Lord’s service. So be little Benedictines, right? We're all, in a way, oblates who are trying to create a school for the Lord’s service as a church. Partake of the sacraments with the church, and receive God’s grace to live out his calling regularly.

So, to discover the apostolic witness of the faith that was once for all handed down to the saints is to learn the work of the Holy Spirit. Those two are not separated. I’m gonna read a little bit here from St. Ignatius of Antioch.

He’s one of my favorite Apostolic Fathers. He’s writing this at the latest 105 CE—so we’re talking within 15 years of the Apostle John going to be with the Lord. He says this in his letter to the Ephesians:

“Thus it’s proper for you to run together in harmony with the mind of the bishop, for your council of presbyters is attuned to the bishop as to strings of a lyre.
Therefore, in your unity and harmonious love, Jesus Christ is sung.”

So you have this connection of obeying and reading and living with the church for the sake of seeing Jesus more clearly—and in this case, singing him, which I love, that imagery. So we need to root ourselves in the good soil of Jesus Christ and be strengthened in the faith that was handed down to us.

St. Paul moves on in verse 11. He says that they have experienced a spiritual circumcision, which is a reference to their baptism, and he names two things that stand against humanity in this, that keep people from experiencing the life that’s found in God. The first is in verse 14.

He mentions a record that stood against us with all of its legal demands. And it’s as though God has taken this record of debts that’s written against humanity, and he’s put that contract above the head of Jesus, where Jesus has this “King of the Jews” title. It’s almost like the contract is there as well, and when Jesus dies, in a real way, as people die with him, the record of sin is dealt with so that people can now experience the new life that’s in Christ. It’s not an arbitrary exchange of roles—like our sin for his righteousness, necessarily, on an individual basis—but as the Christ, Jesus is made the true representative of his whole people.

Remember, we talked about the individual and the corporate being alternated in Jewish thinking. Jesus is made a representative of his people, and so he can rightly destroy the contract that’s held over his people. This is in the Church Fathers—they talk about him tearing up the contract into pieces—and that’s how God makes new life possible.

It’s not brought about through the law of Moses—that law which was keeping Gentiles from experiencing the life fully in God’s family. It’s not found in that anymore. Jesus and Jesus alone tears up the contract, and he brings new creation, and he creates a new people.

And the second thing that stands against us are the rulers and the authorities—not earthly ones necessarily. These authorities and rulers in this world are ones that we cannot see.

Right, in the Nicene Creed we talk about things visible and invisible. These are rulers and authorities we can’t see. Their authority is derived, in one sense, from God—it’s not self-generated.

It’s also very distorted and perverted, and in their perversion, they work against humanity becoming all that God has made it to be, and they work against humanity enjoying the divine life that they were created to experience and participate in. And so, by participating in the victory of Christ, we also participate in the victory over the powers that stand against us. There’s one writer, and I really like the way that he connects these two ideas of powers and the contract.

He says it this way:

“It might even be said that he took the document, ordinances and all, and nailed it to his cross as an act of triumphant defiance in the face of those blackmailing powers that were holding it over men and women in order to command their allegiance.”

So what has bound us to sin no longer has authority to do so anymore in the cross of Christ. The powers and the authorities do exist in some obvious places—like when Christians give credence or allegiance to things like karma, horoscopes, astrology, fatalism, fortune-telling.

There are all kinds of perversions that we can name and create. We create new ones on a weekly basis. There are all kinds of things that are perversions of divine power.

And that was more obvious—and it can even be influence over politicians. This was really obvious in Rome to whom the groups that Paul’s writing, because in those days you actually had to sacrifice to the local deities for the welfare of the people. This is why Jews and Christians become the scapegoats—because they refuse to offer sacrifices to the local gods.

So, when famine hits, who’s responsible? Those people who won’t sacrifice to the local gods. So you can sort of see it more obviously in Rome, but it’s still true today. And so, the powers are often subtle.

If you go back to the Garden of Eden and you think about the serpent's words to Eve, they're almost true, and they're slightly wrong. And it's that slightly wrong part that makes things that are forbidden look good. And so, the powers and the authorities work slowly, methodically, deceptively to draw image-bearers of God away from the love and presence of God.

That's what they do. Here's a hypothetical example. Someone's grown up fairly poor, and they've become determined not to live like that as an adult.

And so, this person worked hard, they made a lot of money, they lived lavishly, and they let their family do the same. The children of this person didn't work as hard, but instead they became quite entitled. And the result of that scenario is that now the kids, as they grow up, they're gonna have to either rely on Dad, find a job that pays very highly without having the skills to find one of those jobs, or they're gonna have to marry somebody of wealth or something else.

But those are kind of your options, right? This man was so determined not to be like his own father, and that drove his whole life narrative. And instead, what he should have done is started to look backwards and name things honestly. He could have worked on asking what harm was there, what good was there.

Was it that maybe he lived in a scenario where his father actually did make a lot of money, but spent it on things that didn't benefit the family? That would be a place of harm to start naming. Was it something else? Was there a time in his childhood where he became aware that he was living in poverty? What friend told him that? What teacher told him that? How did he feel about that? Where was there goodness in the ways that he grew up? Where was there harm? That's a much harder thing to do than to adopt a narrative of, I am just not going to be like this person. Instead, he was determined not to be like his father without actually knowing what that meant.

And so, it caused a whole mountain of other problems. There are subtle lies that undergird this man's life, that are drawing him away from the love of God and the right use of creation, that are a result of wanting to respond to something that caused him harm. We all have places like that man, where we've given in to these subtle voices of defeated powers.

Things that are drawing us into the kingdom of darkness—things that draw us away from the love of God. So we have to do the hard work of naming things honestly, to get rid of them, to in a sense practically tell those authorities they have no more authority—to bring these truths before the cross of Christ. So as we conclude, let me tie together for us this sort of spiritual warfare aspect and the apostolic tradition.

The Colossians didn't have to appease elemental powers or elemental laws or give in to falsehoods that draw them from the love of God—and neither do we. God had made a mockery through the cross of those very authorities and powers that had lifted Jesus up onto the cross. Falsehoods and the powers of darkness—they're fought against by this vision of Christ. Knowing Christ, and Christ centrally, Christ over all—this Christ that has been handed down to us through the apostolic faith.

And so, we have to be rooted in what points us to and clarifies who Jesus is. That's what establishes us, that's what strengthens us, and that's what brings us into the abundance of thanksgiving that God has for his people. Jesus is central. And so, my encouragement this morning is to get to know Jesus in the Scripture and through the church's interpretations of the Scriptures.

Get to know him in the prayers of the church. Get to know him in the sacraments, where the Holy Spirit meets you in communal worship. And get to know him in the lives and in the writings of the saints that have gone before you—those that the church has deemed worthy of being part of this great tradition of which we're all a part. So grow in Christ with the church, in a faith that can't be shaken. As I conclude, let me pray for us, and I'll pray for us one of the ancient prayers of the church.

O God, who art the unsearchable abyss of peace,
the ineffable sea of love,
the fountain of blessings,
and the bestower of affection,
who sends peace to those that receive it:
Open to us this day the sea of your love,
and water us with the plenteous streams from the riches of your grace.
Make us children of quietness and heirs of peace.
Enkindle in us the fire of your love,
sow in us your fear.
Strengthen our weakness by your power,
and bind us closely to you and to each other
in one firm bond of unity,
for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited using ChatGPT.