The Great Mystery
Colossians 1:15-28[1]
One of the blessings and curses of our culture is the way
we put everything in a “box.” That was how philosophers and scientists taught
us to make sense out of the explosion of knowledge that began a couple of
hundred years ago. We might not even be aware of the “categories” we use to
understand our world, but of course it is the role of philosophers and
scientists to point out these things to us. Some of us are familiar with the
mail-order catalogues that used to come from department stores like Sears and
Roebuck or J C Penney. I’m not talking about the flimsy little ones we get these
days. These were catalogues that included “everything, including the kitchen
sink”! They were the “Amazon” of their day. But unlike Amazon, where you can
just start typing what you’re looking for into a search box, those massive
catalogues had a huge index at the back. That’s how you found what you were
looking for. The index was an alphabetical listing of all the items for sale
with an indication of the page number where you could find what you wanted. But
even the index was so big it was divided into categories.
I think most of us have just become used to looking that
the world through the lens of a huge “catalogue.” It just seems “natural” to us
to break things down into their parts and sort them into the “right” categories.
But there are other cultures that emphasize the connections all things and all
beings have with one another. It’s a different way of looking at the world. I
would say the world into which Paul wrote the lesson from Colossians for today
was more like that than like our world. I think that’s especially the case with
the way Paul connects Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord with everything and
everyone. Because he is the “is the visible image of the invisible God” (Col
1:15, NLT), he’s connected to all of creation. That includes not only
the world and everything and everyone in it, but the entire universe. I know
that’s hard for us to wrap our heads around, but Paul can say not only that
“through him God created everything” but also that “he holds all creation
together” (Col 1:17, NLT). Paul’s view of Jesus Christ goes far beyond
the simple teacher from Nazareth who died on a Roman cross outside Jerusalem.
He’s that, but he’s also so much more.
What makes the difference here is Jesus’ resurrection from
the dead and his ascension to the right hand of God. That pointed the Apostles
back to Jesus’ existence as God’s son from all eternity, and therefore his role
in the work of creation. But it also convinced them that Jesus is the one who
rules over all things in God’s name now, and who one day will bring all God’s
plans to fulfillment. This is the “great mystery” that belongs to Jesus the
Christ. We see this in our lesson from Colossians as well: the purpose of
Jesus’ death and resurrection was for God to “reconcile everything to himself”
(Col 1:20, NLT), or as version we read for today puts it, “so that all
beings in heaven and on earth would be brought back to God” (Col 1:20, CEV).
We might say, “all beings in the whole universe.”[2]
Again, that language might sound strange to us. There are
some places in the New Testament where the language of the Gospel, including
Paul’s preaching and teaching, seems to limit salvation to only a few. In the
Jewish world, salvation was for Jewish people, and only for Jewish people. All
the gentiles, or the “heathen,” were condemned for their ignorance. Unfortunately,
there have been many theologians up to this day who have promoted that mindset.
Tertullian, a Third-Century teacher said it first, “extra ecclesia nulla salus
est.” That means “outside the church there is no salvation.” Only those in the
church experience salvation, and no one else. That line of thinking was carried
on by some of the most influential theologians in the history of our faith, and
many believe it to be the “received truth” of the Christian faith to this day.
But there have always been other Christian scholars and
teachers who have taken the language of our lesson for today more at face
value. While we cannot ignore Jesus’ real humanity, there is much more to who
Jesus Christ is. Paul alludes to this in our lesson for today when he tells
gentile believers that God’s “wonderful and glorious mystery” is that “Christ
lives in you, and he is your hope of sharing in God’s glory” (Col. 1:27, CEV).
What we may have a hard time imagining is just how hard it would have been for
any Jewish person living in the First Century to say that about any Gentile
person. I agree with a number of others who think that the fact that people who
would have been assumed to be permanent outsiders responded to the Gospel in
faith made the Apostles rethink a lot about their faith, especially whom they
included and whom they excluded.
For too many people, the church in our culture has been
known primarily for whom we exclude, especially to those who are outside the
church. I would say this is another reason why some people avoid church so much
these days. But I believe that we can take seriously the hints that in Jesus
Christ, God is up to something bigger than perhaps we’ve ever dared to imagine
or dream. That “something bigger” is nothing less than fulfilling the promise
of the resurrection that says that “In Adam all of us die. In the same way, in
Christ all of us will be made alive again” (1 Cor 15:22, NCV).
Paul says it a little differently elsewhere: “Adam’s one sin brings
condemnation for everyone, but Christ’s one act of righteousness brings a right
relationship with God and new life for everyone” (Rom 5:18, NLT).
And in our lesson from Colossians for today, we hear the astounding statement
that the Gospel ultimately extends to everyone and everything in the whole
universe! Paul calls this the “mystery of Christ.”[3]
What difference does this “great mystery” about God’s work
through Jesus Christ make for us in our daily lives? Well, for one thing I
think it calls us to be open to the fact that our faith contains more than we
can put into our “boxes.” God is bigger than we can imagine or conceive. And in
our lesson for today, we learn that so is Jesus Christ! Despite what the psalmsinger
said, God does not resolve the problem of injustice in our world by “breaking
down forever” the villains (Ps 52:5). In Jesus Christ, God resolves the problem
of injustice by reconciling all things to God. God undoes the evil of those who
arrogantly presume to abuse their power, as the prophet Amos describes. But he
does so by “making peace” through Jesus’ death and resurrection. Essentially,
he brings us all, oppressed and oppressors alike, back to God. That version of
salvation is hard to put into any “box.”
I would say another important lesson for us is that that
we, as members of Christ’s “body” on earth, all participate in this “great
mystery” right now. And more than that, we all have a role in fulfilling God’s
big plan to save the whole creation. If you doubt that, perhaps your Jesus is
too small.[4] Part of this great mystery is that every time we act with integrity and
kindness, every time we seek to make love for God and love for others the
principle of our lives, everything we do in this world to spread just a little of
the justice, freedom, and peace of God’s kingdom to someone who needs it, we’re
contributing to the fulfillment of God’s big plan. That’s not because we’re
anything special, but rather it’s because Jesus Christ who reigns over all
things as Lord even now is working in and through us to
fulfill God’s big plan to save the whole creation. It may be hard for us to
wrap our heads around all this, but I think our Scripture lesson calls us to
marvel at the wonder of it all, and to be grateful that we have the chance to participate
in something so awe-inspiring!
[1] ©
2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 7/20/2025 for
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.3:756 speaks of “the alteration of the
whole situation of man and his cosmos as already accomplished in Jesus Christ” as
he is in the process of fulfilling God’s determination ” to reconcile everything
to himself” (Col. 1:20). Some would dispute this theme in Barth’s Dogmatics. It’s
true that he takes a different approach in the earlier volumes. But it seems
unavoidable to recognize it in volume 4. It would seem that Barth underwent a
transition in his thinking about the extent of salvation during the twenty plus
years of writing the Dogmatics.
[3] Jürgen Moltmann in Sun of Righteousness, Arise!: God’s Future for Humanity
and the Earth, 140, quotes Christoph Blumhardt, a 19th century
German theologian who believed the impact of God’s redemption extended beyond individual
salvation, as saying that this is his “confession of hope”: “That God might
give up anything or anyone in the whole world—about that there can be no
question, neither today nor in all eternity … The end has to be: Behold,
everything is God’s!”
[4] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic
Dimensions, 276: “in personal faith a rebirth is experienced which will one
day extend to heaven and earth; and the church prefigures and foreshadows the
temple of the Holy Spirit which the whole cosmos is destined to become. It is
only the cosmic dimension which gives the human, historical experiences of
Christ their all-embracing meaning. We can only think of Christ inclusively. Anyone who thinks of Christ
exclusively, not for other people but
against them, has not understood the Reconciler of the world” (emphasis
original). Cf. also ibid., 278: “Christology can only arrive at its
completion at all in a cosmic christology. All other christologies fall short
and do not provide an adequate content for the experiences of the Easter
witnesses with the risen Christ. If Christ is the first-born from the dead,
then he cannot be merely ‘the new Adam’ of a new humanity. He must also be
understood as the first-born of the whole creation.” He continues to discuss
Karl Barth’s “cautious consideration” of this “possibility” in the passage
cited above and intentionally “develops” it. As a result, he concludes, ibid.,
285: “the church must be seen as the beginning of the reconciled cosmos which
has arrived at peace.”
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