You take things for granted growing up in New York.  Like the Statue of Liberty.  One hundred fifty-one feet of green-stained bronzed woman.   She stands sentinel over the harbor and welcomes seafaring immigrants to America.

But Lady Liberty had a precursor which inspired Auguste Bartholdi’s grand figure.  One of the seven wonders of the ancient world was the Colossus of Rhodes.   Erected in 282 BC on the shore of a Mediterranean island off the coast of Greece, the Colossus of Rhodes was a sight.   That bronzed giant functioned as a lighthouse for ships and a tribute to the Greek sun god Helios by the islanders.  One hundred ten feet tall.  The thumb of the giant was so large that rare was the man who could reach his arms round it entire.   It must have been intimidating to enemies who thought about invading these proud peoples.   Three city-states on the island had joined together to form an empire with trade and political alliances with Egypt.  The Colossus must have seemed to tie together heaven and earth, ensuring the people they would always prosper and be protected by their god.

But a fateful earthquake hit Rhodes in the year 226 BC and crippled Colossus at his weakest point—the knee.  He promptly fell to the ground and splashed into the sea.   The Rhodians consulted an oracle that warned against rebuilding, so it lay untouched for a thousand years.

Now the coincidence of the name Colossus and the text today from the New Testament book of Colossians is nothing but preacherly contrivance, don’t you know?!   The small town of Colossae actually got its name in a less glamorous way—from a kind of wool that was sold by its merchants, the color of which was called colossinus.   But inside this text today we have a picture of a far more colossal figure than that fated fragile image made by human hands.  Christ is the cosmic Colossus of creation, Paul says.  And the fate of the world is in his hands.

We are looking these four weeks at the church as a colossal community.   If we are to understand the church properly and our proper place in it, we must begin and end our thinking with Christ.   In him we come closest to the pole of the magnet.  Here in his church is where the attraction is strongest.   Here is where the One who makes meaning of life is found time and again.  For Christ is the head of the church, which is his visible body.

So let’s follow Paul where he wants to take us.  We’ll follow him in thinking about who Christ is, what he does, and how we are to join him in his work on behalf of the world.   Big stuff.   Are you up to it?

Christ is the image of the invisible God.  He is the icon of God; that’s the Greek word for image.   If you think in computer terms, you get the sense.  Christ graphically portrays the character of God before our eyes.   And by highlighting him and double-clicking our way down the path after him, he is our shortcut to the deepest truths about life.

We see God best by looking to Christ, Paul says.  Now this might startle us.  I mean, if you were asked what things about the world as you know it might be a hint of and pointer toward God, what would you say?   Here are some of mine: a baby’s smile; the giggle of a little girl; a perennial periwinkle; a nursing mother; the unabashed love of a person who gives up everything to say I do to you; the teacher who helped you see how water evaporates and told you you were smart;  Mozart; Monet; Michelangelo.  I can imagine God through these. 

But if you could suspend faith for just a minute, and if I told you the best way to picture God is by imagining a man reared in a small stop in the road in Palestine 2000 odd years ago, who never owned more than the shirt on his back, who traveled about as a spiritual teacher and died as a criminal on a cross outside of Jerusalem, would you go for that?  And yet that is just what Paul and John and the New Testament as a whole all sayBut that isn’t the whole of it.  Try to get your mind round this: The cosmic Christ is more than meets the eye, though.  He is the ever-abiding colossal presence in creation.  He is more than just Jesus.  Jesus of Nazareth, the single human being that lived for only 33 years, was just one stage of the bigger picture of Christ.  Before the fleshly life of Jesus, Christ was at work in the world revealing who God is.  And after Jesus’ earthly life, Christ is still at work doing just that.   Even now.   Christ is the beginning and end of all things.  Everything was made through him.  Everything that is is bracketed between his arms outstretched.     He holds all things together.  So whatever happens in the world has some reference to him.  It affects him, and he affects everything else.When we speak of Christ in the church, we almost always speak of him in connection with Jesus.   And since they are one and the same, we aren’t wrong about that.  But that same Christ had a hidden prehistory too.  He was there at creation shaping mountains and blowing wind across the waters.  He was the hands of God that sculpted the first man and woman from the earth.  

When God spoke out of a burning bush, Christ was the one making God known to Moses.   When the sea parted and Israel was led out of slavery in Egypt, Christ was leading the way.   When the children of Israel needed water in the desert, Paul says in another place, Christ was the rock that followed them around, turning into a fountain of cold refreshment.   And ever since Jesus disappeared from the scene, any knowledge of God we have had— whether it has come from splitting an atom or an infinitive, from staring at the Mona Lisa or Lisa Marie, from weeping at a grave or laughing at a knave—Christ is the one who has given us our glimpse of the true nature of things.

There’s an old fable about a young guppy that swims up to an old fish and asks, Sir, I have heard about something called the ocean and would like to see it.   Can you tell me where I can find the ocea?  The old fish shakes his gills and swims on.  You don’t find the ocean, lad; the ocean finds you. You are swimming in it.

If the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross matter for everyone and everything, then Jesus must be the cosmic Christ in the flesh.   All suffering and death find their meaning in him and his cross.  And all joy and life find their source in him and his resurrection.   The cross and resurrection of Jesus were the chief signs of how God was always and is always relating to the world— through suffering and overcoming love.

But if it was hard to see God before Jesus, and if Jesus is now no longer on the scene in the flesh, how is the world to see God and know the effects of Christ?   This is where we come in —through his church.

The work of Christ was not only to reveal God to us; it was also to reconcile us to God and to each other.  Whenever reconciliation happens, it is a revelation of the God who is at work in the world through Christ.  It is a work that God has been up to since the beginning of creation.   Always loving in a longsuffering way, making peace with us by his presence and calling us to peace with one another.  We once were enemies, Paul says, but now we have been made friends of God.   It wasn’t our idea.   What’s more, Gentiles and Jews were separated from one another as enemies, but they have become one people now in Christ.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner tells this story:

“It was Munich in Nazi Germany. One of my rabbinic students told me her great-aunt, Susie, had been riding a city bus home from work when SS storm troopers suddenly stopped the coach and began examining the identification papers of the passengers.  Most were annoyed, but a few were terrified.  Jews were being told to leave the bus and get into a truck around the corner.

“My student’s great-aunt watched from her seat in the rear as the soldiers systematically worked their way down the aisle.  She began to tremble, tears streaming down her face. When the man next to her noticed that she was crying, he politely asked her why.“

‘I don’t have the papers you have. I am a Jew. They’re going to take me.’    The man exploded with disgust.  He began to curse and scream at her.  ‘You stupid [witch],’ he roared. ‘I can’t stand being near you!’

“The SS men asked what all the yelling was about. ‘Damn her,’ the man shouted angrily.   ‘My wife has forgotten her papers again!  I’m so fed up. She always does this!’

“The soldiers laughed and moved on.  My student said her great-aunt never saw the man again. She never even knew his name.”

Whenever we stand up for people who are in danger, whenever we make peace with those who are supposed to be our enemies, whenever we fight for the life of innocent people and bring reconciliation or peace to the world in whatever measure, we make God more visible, and we complete what is lacking in Christ’s sufferings.   It’s an odd phrase Paul uses to describe his and our servant mission in the world as the church of Jesus Christ.   But it is not a matter of adding to Christ’s cross as if he was wrong when he cried, “It is finished.”   We join him in his work of bringing peace and reconciliation and forgiveness to the world.

A few weeks ago, as most of you know, there was an article in the Dallas paper on me.   It was a complimentary piece, touching on things that are important to me and this church.   One place was a bit fuzzy.   The writer described my view of salvation and seemed to quote me as saying that that is God’s business not ours.  Well, of course salvation is our business, precisely because it is God’s business.   The point I was making is that only God can judge.  But curiously enough, in the weeks following, I have had dozens of inquiries from people all over who have questioned me about my view of salvation.  I don’t mind, really, since it gave me a chance to clear it up. 

But I find it odd that not one single person has asked me about my view of the church’s role in social justice, or in racial and religious reconciliation.   The only thing they wanted to be sure I got right was that Jesus is the key to salvation.   But salvation always involves all of the suffering love of Christ for the world. Well, fine, but unless we are at work in the church being Christ’s suffering servants for the hurting and lonely people of the world, we can preach Christ all we want, but his full work of salvation will be lacking.  Unless this church is a colossal community of grace and healing, Christ will not be evident in it.  Will you help make Christ evident in this—his— church?