Reimagined in the Image of the Invisible God
Have you read Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat’s book “Colossians Remixed”? It’s brilliant. In fact, I loved it so much I decided my congregation needed to hear it, so the sermon below is a repackaging of pages 79-95 for my church community. I’ve since forgotten where my words started and theirs ended, but I credit any wisdom or beautiful turns of phrases to them.
The church was born in the midst of Empire. In the midst of Roman soldiers marching down narrow streets, in the midst of the Roman taxes upon taxes, Paul traveled on Roman roads all across the empire, proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom of God. Everywhere he went, he went first to the Jews, proclaiming the Messiah had come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who had died and was raised to life again, just as the Scriptures foretold. And when he was kicked out of the synagogues, Paul proclaimed Messiah Jesus to Gentiles, calling them to worship the one true God.
Paul was a Jew. But he was also a Roman citizen. Paul used his status in the empire to protect the believers traveling with him. But he also used his status to subvert the empire, proclaiming Jesus as King. Everywhere he went, whenever he preached, riots broke out and it wasn’t long before Paul’s life was threatened. In Acts, a man outraged by Paul’s message shouts, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also!”
Why was Paul’s mission so explosive? What was so subversive about Paul’s teachings? Paul never wielded a sword, he never sought his own political power. All he did was tell a story - the story of Jesus Messiah. And that story captivated the imagination of many who heard it.
A story that shapes imaginations sounds so childish, so insignificant. But it’s not. Keesmaat & Walsh write, “...empires maintain their sovereignty not only by establishing a monopoly of markets, political structures and military might but also by [captivating] the imagination of their subjects. Indeed, vanquished peoples are not really subjects of the empire until their imagination has been taken captive. As long as they continue to have memories of life before exile, as long as they harbor dreams of a social reality alternative to the empire, they are a threat to the empire. Their liberated imagination keeps them free even in the face of violent military repression” (82).
In Paul’s day, symbols of Roman power were literally everywhere -- “in the market, on coins, in the gymnasium, at the gladiatorial games, on jewelry, goblets, lamps, and paintings. The Sovereign rule of Caesar was simply assumed to be the divine plan for peace and order of the cosmos. ... under such conditions it became hard to imagine any life alternative to the empire” (83).
But in the Spirit of the prophets who came before him, Paul countered imperial images with radical and provocative poetry. In just 3 stanzas in our Epistle reading, Paul subverts every major claim of the empire. Caesar is not the image and son of God. Jesus is. Caesar does not bring true peace, Jesusdoes. Caesar does not hold all things together. Jesus does - everything that is, seen and unseen, including the Roman Empire. Including our friends and enemies, tornadoes and crawling beetles, all things hold together in Christ. And all these things God is reconciling in Christ through the blood of his cross.
Paul had been captivated by the Good News story of Jesus, and so could not be held captive by the empire. And we must hear that word afresh today in order to be set free. Walter Brueggemann says that “the key pathology of our time, which seduces us all, is the reduction of the imagination so that we are too numbed, satiated and co-opted to do serious imaginative work.” If this is true, then it is the responsibility of Christian proclamation to empower the community to reimagine the world as if our resurrected and wounded Christ, and not the powers, were sovereign.
But how do we do that? How do we let our collective imagination be shaped as followers of Jesus in such a way that we are set free from the constricted imagination of the empire? Keesmaat and Walsh recommend starting with poetry. To follow Paul, who was following the prophets. To write and proclaim subversive poetry that provides an imagination alternative to the empire’s.
Here is Walsh and Keesmaat’s own poem riffing off our Colossians 1 text for our own time and place.
Christ is the image of the invisible God
The image of God
A flesh-and-blood
Here-and-now
In time and history
With joys and sorrows
Image of who we are called to be
Image-bearers of this God
He is the source of a liberated imagination
A subversion of the empire
Because it all starts with him
And it all ends with him
Everything
All things
Whatever you can imagine
Visible and invisible
Mountains and atoms
Outer space, urban space and cyberspace
Whether it be the Pentagon, Disneyland, Microsoft or AT&T
Whether it be the institutionalized power structures
Of the state, the academy or the market
All things have been created in him and through him
He is their source, their purpose, their goal
Even in their rebellion
Even in their idolatry
He is the sovereign one
Their power and authority is derived at best
Parasitic at worst
In the face of the empire
In the face of presumptuous claims to sovereignty
In the face of the imperial and idolatrous forces in our lives
Christ is before all things
He is sovereign in life
Not the pimped dreams of the global market
Not the idolatrous forces of nationalism
Not the insatiable desires of a consumerist culture
All things hold together in Christ
And this sovereignty takes on cultural flesh
And this coherence of all things is socially embodied
In the church
Against all odds
Against most of the evidence
The church is
The flesh-and-blood
Here-and-now
In time and history
With joys and sorrows
Embodiment of this Christ
As a body politic
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
The church reimagines the world
In the image of the invisible God
In the face of a disappointed world of betrayal
In a world in which all fixed points have proven illusory
A world in which we are anchorless and adrift
Christ is the foundation
The origin
The way
The truth
The life
In the face of a culture of death
A world of killing fields
A world of walking dead
Christ is at the head of the resurrection parade
Transforming our tears of betrayal into tears of joy
Giving us dancing shoes for the resurrection party
And this glittering joker
Who has danced in the dragon’s jaw of death
Now dances with a dance that is full
Of nothing less than the fullness of God
This is the dance of the new creation
This is the dance of life out of death
And in this dance all that was broken
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
All things are reconciled in Him.
And it all happens on a cross
It all happens at a state execution
Where the governor did not commute the sentence
It all happens at the hands of the empire
That has captured our imagination
It all happens through blood
Not through a power grab by the sovereign one
It all happens in embraced pain
For the sake of others
It all happens on a cross
Arms outstretched in embrace
And this is the image of the invisible God
This is the body of Christ.
// Now, many of us think poetry is over our heads, we think we can’t understand it, or write it. But whether you’ve been aware of it or not, we’ve just spent the last 20 minutes singing and reading poetry. The church teaches us poetry in prayer, song and Psalms. It teaches us the dance of the Spirit that brings the ancient Scriptures to speak to our own times. So poetry is not above you, you are already proclaiming it, living it. What would it look like for you to image Christ, to bring that healing, that reconciliation, that flourishing life out from this place to the world?
Like Paul, we too live in an age of Empire. And while it may look like the world is in the grasp of empire, Paul reminds us today that we are subjects of a different King: Messiah Jesus. And it may just sound like a story, but it has captivated our imagination and has turned the whole world upside down. All around us thrones, dominions, rulers and powers exert their control, but we proclaim with Paul that they are not the source of true life, they cannot heal or redeem, any power they may have is merely derived and distorted from the true source of all things, Jesus Christ. Their sovereignty is false, and that means we need not give them the absolute obedience they demand. We are subject to another ruler, bow before a messianic throne, live in the dominion known as the Kingdom of God, and are shaped through the Holy Spirit to bear the power that raised Christ from the dead, who is the real image of God, not Caesar. Not the White House or Wall Street or the Pentagon. Jesus.
And if you go out proclaiming this good news on Roman roads like Paul - if you take it with you out the doors of the sanctuary and into your life and your neighborhood, if your imagination is flung open to the self-giving power of love in Jesus Christ to reconcile, you too will live the poetic story that turns the world upside down. The church is a community in refusal of the empire which bears the image of another Lord in its daily life. Because this is a body subject to a head whose Lordship overrules Caesar’s, the church replaces the body politic of the empire.
What is it that seeks to captivate our imagination that we must resist? How are we called to turn the world upside down? What poetry needs to be spoken, songs need to be sung to crack open our imaginations to the way of Jesus? How can we harness the power of the empire as Paul did, only to undermine it?
Here’s my attempt to proclaim this word into the life of my own church.
Christ Community Church,
You are the flesh and blood
Here and now
With joys and sorrows
Embodiment of Christ.
As a body politic
We gather each week around a common meal
Receiving Christ’s resurrection and wounded image into our own broken bodies
Becoming bread and wine for the world.
With upside down economic practices we
Share our possessions with one another and the poor
Serve the most vulnerable
Refuse to serve the violence of empire
And instead live in love for God’s creation a Gospel of peace
And by doing so, we are reimagining the world
In the image of the invisible God.
Amen. 