Don Friesen
In a book entitled, This Blessed Mess: Finding Hope Amidst Life's Chaos (2000), Patricia Livingston describes how her life changed from order to chaos. "Growing up," she writes, "we lived adhering to schedules." Sheets were changed every Monday. Mattresses were turned once a month. Meals were eaten at the same time every day, and dishes were always done right after the final plates were cleared. There was a schedule for washing windows, a schedule for repainting shutters, a schedule for cleaning closets you name it, there was a schedule! An orderly life.
Livingston's life followed a predictable pattern: After high school graduation came college, then marriage to a military man, and soon thereafter, she says, things stopped proceeding in an orderly fashion. Chaos began to creep in. She writes, "As a new Army couple we endured the upheaval of moving ...once a year... Babies were born one after the other, all of them born weeks overdue, none of them sleeping through the night until they were at least two years old. Laundry seemed to breed and multiply in the hamper until the only space not filled with clothes to be washed was filled with dishes to be done or toys to be put away...."
Livingston's life slipped out of the orderliness to which she was accustomed, and little by little she had to let go of her notion of an orderly universe. What was expected often did not happen, and what was dreaded often did! Most unimaginable of all. her thirteen-year marriage fell apart.
Sometimes things fall apart! Sometimes things fall apart, for us, personally, and sometimes things fall apart on a grand scale! I read, this week, of the Krakatoa volcano, which blew apart in August of 1883. It killed 40,000 people, and the tsunamis unleashed by the explosion injured thousands more. Tidal waves that began in Indonesia ended in the English Channel, more than 11,000 miles away. The Krakatoa volcano is among the most violent volcanic events in recorded history. The explosion is considered to be the loudest sound ever heard in modern history, with reports of it being heard 3,000 miles away! The shock wave was recorded on barographs around the world.
Things Fall apart in Colossae
Sometimes chaos happens. It can happen on a small scale, it can happen on a grand scale! And the reason I mention both is that the Apostle Paul's letter to the Colossian congregation may have been prompted by one or the other, or both! Some say that Paul wrote the letter to the Colossians because an earthquake hit the city of Colossae, which was located in the Lycus Valley, an area that was the centre of repeated earthquakes. Colossae and two nearby cities, Laodicea and Hierapolis, were hit by a devastating earthquake sometime in the year 60 or 61 (A.D.). Much of Colossae was destroyed and numerous lives were lost. No doubt the church in Colossae was affected.
There is controversy about whether Paul knew of the earthquake, but if he did then his letter to the Colossians is a letter of reassurance to Christians who were on the brink of, or in the midst of, disaster. I've been in a city immediately after a devastating tornado, but the only earthquake I've experienced is the one earlier this year that shook up Ottawa a little, but did very little damage. I have no idea what it's like to have the ground beneath your feet come apart. If an earthquake prompted Paul's letter, it adds poignancy to his reassuring words that "in (Christ) all things hold together". (Colossians 1:17) A nice thing to hear when everything is falling apart!
If it was not the earthquake an external threat that prompted Paul's letter to the Colossian congregation, it may have been an internal threat. Paul seldom wrote letters just to keep in touch. There was no spam in Paul's day writing materials were scarce, and expensive and so Paul's letters always reveal pastoral concerns that he has about a particular congregation. Even his letter to the Philippian congregation, the most positive of his letters, notes a few concerns, like the quarrel between the sisters Eudoia and Syntyche, for example.
If it was an internal threat, it was not the ordinary kind, like church members not getting along, or wondering what to do in a situation that was ethically challenging. As far as we can tell there were no warring factions in the congregation. It appears that some of the church members had the idea that they needed something additional to their Christian faith. It required supplements. And those who thought this way wanted to develop a spiritual regimen that included certain foods and certain drinks, the observance of certain festivals, and the worshipping of additional spiritual entities or godlets, if you like. (Colossians 2:16-19)
Whatever the threat external or internal it prompted a powerful response from Paul. He chose to respond in this first chapter with a fundamental prologue, in a style that brings the mighty acts of Creation to mind, but with a Christological twist. It's a powerful re-call of the Colossians to the core of Christianity back to what undergirds not only Christianity but the very fabric of the universe.
Things May Fall apart in our Lives
No doubt we can identify with the Colossian believers. Sometimes our lives fall apart. Sometimes we fall apart. Relationships fall apart. Marriages fall apart. Business deals fall apart. Trauma, the loss of employment, the death of a loved one, the discovery of cancer any of these can threaten the coherence of our lives. We may feel like strangers in a world where the values of our youth no longer seem to be valued. We notice that neighbours no longer know or trust each other. Families scatter far and wide. A few in our society grow obscenely rich, while the majority live with never-ending scarcity. We may feel that the world seems to have no centre, no purpose, no direction. In the words of John Donne (1572-1631), "Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone." (An Anatomy of the World, 1611) We become like Raymond in the movie, Rain Man (1988), obsessed with the many little things to arrange to keep our world from coming apart.
Many of us have seen the coherence of our lives eroded, and if things have fallen apart for us, personally, things on a large scale also concern us. Who cannot be moved by the non-stop suffering in Haiti, for example? Who does not tire of the incessant incoherence of the Middle East?
In 1919 a shattered Europe was reeling from the extensive death and destruction of what was called "The Great War". In addition, the Russian revolution was sending shudders through the continent, as was the rise of fascism. William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) wrote a poem in response, which reads:
("The Second Coming," 1919)
Yeats' poem caught the imagination of many. It continues to do so. It is one of the hundred most anthologized poems in the English language. It is referenced in a variety of places, everything from a Stephen King novel, to a Joni Mitchell song ("Slouching Towards Bethlehem," Night Ride Home album, 1991) to a Robert B. Parker paperback. (Spenser series) An Australian filmmaker is even planning a movie adaptation of Yeats' poem.
The line, "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold," resonates with many. Sir Kenneth McKenzie Clark (1903-1983), one of the best-known art historians of his generation but perhaps better known as the writer, producer, and presenter of the BBC Television series, Civilisation, quotes the Yeats line in the last of the series, commenting that there is no centre, nothing to hold together the industrial, electronic and nuclear civilization of our time. His conclusion: One cannot be optimistic.
If Yeats and his contemporaries felt that way in 1919, others have felt it in more recent times. John E. Toews uses Yeats' line when describing his own experience. "I grew up in ...a world that was deeply centred," he writes. "There was a larger cultural synthesis about the nature of reality." (Chapel sermon, October 10, 1994, published in Direction, 1995) It was the ethos that gave birth to the United Nations, the United Church of Christ, the World Council of Churches, and the National Conference of Christians and Jews. Philosophers talked about the unification of all reality. Words like convergence, hominization, and planetization appeared. Some believed that civilization was moving from independent and isolated groups to a state of one unified, universal, interdependent whole. Historian Arnold Toynbee dreamed about a synthesis of world religions but then came the sixties, and the centre began to give way, if not collapse. And Toews goes on to describe what it's like to teach the Scriptures in such a world.
A Hymn to Rival Handel's Hallelujah Chorus!
The Apostle Paul has something to say to William Butler Yeats, to John E. Toews, to Patricia Livingston, to us, as well as to the members of the Colossian congregation. And Paul's response to the things-are-falling-apartthe-centre-cannot-hold refrain is a powerful affirmation of the lordship of Jesus Christ. It's sheer poetry, a hymn of praise to the King of kings that rivals Handel's Hallelujah Chorus. Jesus, Paul writes: "is the image of the invisible God; his is the primacy over all created things. In him everything in heaven and on earth was created, not only things visible but also the invisible orders of thrones, sovereignties, authorities, and powers: the whole universe has been created through him and for him. ...he exists before everything, and all things are held together in him ... he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. For in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven...." (1:15-17, NEB; 18b-20, RSV) Wow! A powerful affirmation of faith!
I wish to make only two simple observations about this poetic masterpiece, firstly, that the view the perspective is long, and secondly, that the view is luminous. The sheer sweep of the Christology in this ancient Christian hymn is as long as it is wide, bringing into its sweep both creation and redemption!
Last week I flew to Saskatoon, my flight broken into two parts: Ottawa to Toronto, and then Toronto to Saskatoon. The flight to Toronto is mostly an ascent, immediately followed by a descent, but on the flight from Toronto to Saskatoon you're up at around 40,000-some feet to avoid hitting any high point in Saskatchewan, I suppose. You're soaring at a very high altitude. Similarly in Colossians, we are soaring at a very high Christological altitude. This is the long view, looking at grand themes in the grand scheme of things, soaring above parochial perceptions and totally off the radar of those with tunnel vision.
After the meetings in Saskatoon Dorothy and I visited her 96-year-old aunt and her 101-year-old friend, Mrs. Sawatzky. Mrs. Sawatzky was singing the praises of Dorothy's mother, saying, "She was the best friend I had in a hundred years." Would that we had friendships that lasted half that long! Paul's view is a much longer one. In a remarkable passage, in a sequence of clauses grammatically and rhythmically bound together in a single movement of thanksgiving and praise, Paul declares the paramountcy of Christ in the universe! His statement extends far beyond the usual range of New Testament conceptions of Christ, far beyond centuries and even millennia!
If Paul's view is long, it is also luminous, soaring high above any pedestrian narrative. Paul is invoking the breathtaking scope of God's love and redemption, and the splendour of God's glory a glory too wondrous to behold and too wonderful to ignore. It is, as Paul describes it in another letter, "far more than ...we can ...imagine...." (Ephesians 3:20) Or as one commentator (Gregory Han) confesses, "I find it difficult to consider how to parse this passage without first basking in the glory of the imagery."
The phrase that captured my attention is in verse 17, declaring that in Jesus "all things hold together". Other translations say that in Christ "all things consist (or cohere) (AMP)," or, in Christ "everything is held together," or, in Christ "all things have their proper place". (TEV) J.B. Phillips translates it this way: "(Christ) is both the first principle and the upholding principle of the whole scheme of creation." A sweeping response to Yeats' contention that "things fall apart" and that "the centre cannot hold". The Colossian affirmation of faith doesn't mean that chaos gets airbrushed out of our lives, but Jesus' life, death, and resurrection lend coherence to our lives, whatever befalls us. It assures us that Jesus has not lost his grip on this world!
Focus on Jesus, in Whom all Things Hold together
What can we learn from this lofty Colossian poem? A very simple lesson is a reminder to focus on Jesus, the One in Whom all things hold together. In 1495 Duke Ludovico of Milan (1452-1508) asked Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) to paint the Last Supper. Working slowly and with meticulous care to detail, da Vinci spent three years (1495-98) on the assignment. He grouped the disciples into threes, two groups on either side of the central figure of Christ. The angles and lighting of the painting draw attention to Jesus, whose head is located at the vanishing point of all perspective lines. Just prior to the unveiling, da Vinci showed it to a friend whose opinion he valued.
"It's wonderful!" exclaimed the friend. "The cup in Jesus' hand is especially beautiful."
At once da Vinci took a brush and drew it across the sparkling cup!
"Why?" asked his friend.
"Nothing," explained Da Vinci, "must distract from the figure of Christ."
Brian Walsh, who visited our church some years ago, recently co-authored a book entitled Colossians Remixed, in which he rephrases Colossians in contemporary terms, and I would like to close with an excerpt from his book, for it focuses on Christ:
(Brian J. Walsh and Sylvia C. Keesmaat, Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire, 2004, pages 85-88)
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
Yeats' poem is so exquisitely crafted that it almost draws you into its elegant despair! In the aftermath of World War I it seemed as if the centre could not hold. Yeats believed that the world was on the threshold of an apocalyptic moment, and so he uses Christian apocalyptic imagery to describe the atmosphere in post-war Europe.
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
In an image-saturated world,
AMEN
A world of ubiquitous corporate logos
Permeating our conscience
A world of dehydrated and captive imaginations
In which we are too numbed, satiated, and co-opted
To be able to dream of a life otherwise
...
Christ is the image par excellence
The image above all other images
...
Image of who we are called to be
Image-bearers of this God
...
Because it all starts with Him
And it all ends with Him
Everything
All things
...
He is their source, their purpose, their goal
...
He is the Sovereign One
...
In the face of a disconnected world
Where home is a domain in cyberspace
Where neighbourhood is a MySpace or eHarmony page
Where public space is a shopping mall or retail outlet
Where information technology promises
A tuned-in, reconnected world
All things hold together in Christ
...
All cohering and interconnected in Jesus
And His sovereignty takes on cultural flesh
And this coherence of all things is socially embedded
In the Church
Against all odds
...
Embodiment of this Christ
...
Around a common meal
In alternative economic practices
In radical service to the most vulnerable
In refusal of the empire
In love of this creation
...
All that was estranged
All that was alienated
All that was dislocated and disconnected
What once was hurt
What once was friction
Is reconciled
Comes home
Is healed
And is made whole....
Quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise noted.