Sermons

“The Fullness of God”

Isaiah 65:17-25; Colossians 1:15-20 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – November 24, 2019

 Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words, that our gratitude might find rest only in you.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Who is this Jesus, whom we proclaim as Lord and Savior?  Who is this Jesus, in whom “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell”?  There are a lot of words there in those six verses in Colossians, with a bunch of abstract concepts trying to explain Christ to us, but that was the part that grabbed me.  “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.”  It sounds so complete.  And mysterious.  And satisfying, like the perfect ending to a really good story.  And heavy.  Surely, it must have felt a little heavy at times, carrying around all the fullness of God.

As I said, there are a lot of other phrases in this passage that are trying to help us understand the eternal nature of Christ:  “firstborn of creation”, “firstborn from the dead”, “image of the invisible God”, “head of the body, the church”.  But those are mostly things about Christ that make him singular, special, different from us.  When we get to “head of the body, the church” we are reminded that we are called to emulate Christ, though not in any sort of “firstborn from the dead” kind of way.  If we’re called to follow Christ, to live our lives in Christ-like ways, those sorts of phrases aren’t going to help us much.  But “in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” has promise.  We could, potentially, make God more fully present in our lives.  Or we could try to, anyway, if we had a clear picture of what the fullness of God looks like.

Colossians, however, doesn’t offer us much help in that regard.  So let’s turn to the lovely passage we heard from Isaiah and see if we can get a better idea of what it might mean to live out the fullness of God.  Isaiah 65:17-25 is one of those sections of scripture that we sometimes refer to as the “peaceable kingdom” passages.  But we’re used to the peaceable kingdom scriptures being mostly about animals, aren’t we?  Sometimes I think we prefer them that way!  And Isaiah 65 has some animals: the wolf and the lamb are feeding together, the lion is eating straw, the serpent is eating dust.  But there’s no cow or bear or adder or baby goats.

What we have instead are people and some very clear descriptions of how those people are living.  One could even say the point is that they are living.  They’re not dying young, and they’re not merely surviving.  They’re building houses and living in them.  They’re planting crops and eating them.  There is a very clear absence of two things:  poor people and rich people.  Nobody is not living in a house.  And nobody is living in a house built for them by “mere” laborers.  Everyone has access to what they need to support their families, without working themselves into an early grave.  This is a pretty succinct description of what theologians often call “God’s economy”, meaning the way God desires for our material world to be set up and distributed.  Or as it implies in Isaiah 65:17, it’s the way God plans to arrange things when the ‘new heaven and new earth’ are created.

This economy of equity and righteousness is clearly part of the fullness of God Jesus would have been carrying with him, since it was pleased to dwell in him.  And I have to say, I thoroughly convinced it would have been a heavy burden.  Not because the vision itself is anything less than beautiful and lovely, but because it’s so far removed from the present or past realities in which we and Jesus have found ourselves.  The jarring chasm between the abundant sufficiency of God’s economy and the rampant and cruel disparities in our society is enough to make us want to give up.  Carrying that around with us is exhausting.

I bring all of this up because Thanksgiving is on Thursday, and I’m having a hard time with gratitude.  It’s not that I’m not grateful for the many wonderful people and things in my life.  I am.  What I’m having trouble with is the ‘why me’ question.  Or more specifically, the ‘why me and not someone else’ question.  Why should I get to have this safe and warm house, and a shower of my own, and a nice, comfy bed, when so many people don’t?  Why should I get to hop in my car and easily go pick up whatever I want for lunch?  I’ve been feeling haunted by homeless people lately.  And not homeless people in general.  Homeless people with names.  Jody and Bryant and Katie and Mary.  Homeless people with names and stories and problems far beyond my capacity to imagine though I’ve started to get a glimpse.  I don’t think I’m the only one.  Others of you have been losing sleep as well.  Is this what it was like for Jesus to walk around with the fullness of God dwelling within him?  Jesus, who himself might have been homeless, except that the movement that was building up around him meant that doors were always opening and beds offered?  Did he walk around with constant, low-grade soul disturbance because of the difference between “on earth” and “as it is in heaven”?

I got a massage a couple weeks ago, and it took me a while to get over feel guilty about it and relax.  It was actually Isaiah 65 and similar passages that helped me out.  “It’s not that God doesn’t want this for you,” I told myself.  “It’s that God wants this for everyone.  God wants every body to be cherished and cared for.”  So I decided to pray on that, as I received the gift of healing touch.  I prayed on the vision God has for our world, so often laid out in scripture, where everyone’s body is tended to and fed and clothed and given succor.  I wonder now if the prophets included these visions in their writings because they, too, were haunted by the suffering of the least of these in their midst.

Is this gratitude?  It might be.  For me at the moment, it’s a restless gratitude.  I can be grateful for the blessings in my life, in ways that bring me strength and joy, without slipping into a self-satisfied contentment that encourages me to close my eyes to the suffering of others.  We can give thanks for what we have, and still recognize the world is not as it should be.  Indeed, our efforts to bring the fullness of God more completely into being can be motivated by the gratitude we have for the ways in which God’s abundance is already present in our lives.  When it rains, we can give thanks for how the earth is being nourished, and even enjoy the refreshment it offers us, while still praying and caring for those who are living wet and rough on the streets.

We struggled with this a little at our Board meeting this week.  We are all so proud of how our Welcome Saturday ministry has grown, and how it’s touched so many lives, and brought so much joy and hope.  But this last month, we were also painfully confronted with how insufficient bacon and hot showers are in the face of certain conditions.  We were reminded just how much of a band-aid our efforts are when compared with the actual wounds people are walking around with.  Who can we call, we asked?  And then we had to sit with the reality that there is no appropriate place to call upon.  Our society has not yet decided to care enough to develop the resources that would help in such situations.

I think we are at a pivotal moment, as we grow in this ministry.  We have developed relationships, and they are changing us.  Like most churches, we have gotten very good at charity, but have shied away from things that seem like politics.  But when our new friends – living on the streets, struggling with addiction, facing physical danger – are failed by our society, advocacy suddenly feels a lot more personal and spiritual than it does political.  How can we move forward, glad and proud of what we have accomplished, but unsatisfied with the bigger picture and determined to make it better reflect the fullness of God?

We want to be happy.  We want to enjoy our holidays and take a moment to relax and not worry about things.  But Jesus calls us to a restless gratitude, rather than a complacency made possible only by living in denial.  If we are going to seek the fullness of God, we are committing ourselves to “on earth as it is in heaven”, which it isn’t yet.  So yes, we will give thanks and sing!  We will rejoice and count our blessings!  But our thanksgiving is a restless, motivating gratitude, moving us toward the prophet’s vision of God’s economy, where every body is fed and cared for and beloved.  Our thanksgiving is a spiritual practice that leads to sharing our blessings, rather than hoarding them.  May it be so.  Alleluia and Amen.