“The music seemed to come from all around us,” said one of the participants at the recent “Lower Keys Underwater Music Festival”. The music festival held underwater at Looe Key Reef featured special underwater speakers that blasted some “underwater hits” like “Yellow Submarine” from the Beatles and “Under the Sea” from the Little Mermaid soundtrack.
That notion of the “music seeming to come from all around” is one of the draws to the show – a different kind of listening experience given the difference between the soundwaves transmitted underwater as opposed to through the air. “Coming from all around” is a good way of understanding some of what Paul is trying to explain to the Colossians in his letter to them.
Paul was writing to the Colossians, a church he had never visited, after hearing of his disciple Epaphras’ work in getting that church started. He recognizes the challenges that face the Colossians – challenges to see the gospel as just an “add on”. The Colossians were challenged to either see Jesus as an “add on” to the Roman pantheon of pagan gods, or to see Him as just an “add on” to the anxiety ridden law following of that day’s Jewish synagogues. We too, are challenged to see Jesus as just an “add on” to our lives, not as something integral to all of life.
In response to this, Paul counters with a picture of Jesus that “comes from all around”. Paul shows the Colossians a way to think about Jesus that is impossible to separate out. He fills up the entirety of civic life, family life, and every other part of life. For Paul, there is no category of life in which Jesus does not appear.
Over the next few weeks, we will be looking at Paul’s letter to the Colossians in our new sermon series, “When Life Appears.” We will talk about how we can have blinders to our new life when we only let Jesus into a little bit of our lives. Instead of a categorized Christ, we will see how Jesus invades and redeems every fragment of our lives and pulls them all together in His love for us shown in the Gospel. See you Sunday!