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Colossians 3:12-17
May 25, 2014 • Portage First UMC
Well, as you heard, this past week was our spring rummage sale here at the church, and thanks to the hard work of so many people, $—— was raised and over the next few weeks, that money will be disbursed to several different mission projects and agencies. I am always amazed to see the way the rummage sale (this was my 18th) comes together and everyone works together for the greater good. And in the midst of it, you can see a microcosm of life as people put aside differences, work through disagreements and even maybe forgive one another as they seek to accomplish a singular goal.
I thought about that as I watched people stream in to find the best bargains on Thursday morning. Amazingly, even with the limited space, folks seem to be able to be cooperate and treat each other relatively kindly in order to be here, to shop, to participate. But that, then, made me wonder why we sometimes have such difficulty doing the same thing in our homes and in our relationships of various sorts. Why do we often insist in “jostling” one another around? Or, to use the popular question, why can’t we all just get along?
This morning, we’re continuing our series of sermons on covenant and relationships, and while we’re been focusing especially the last two weeks on marriage, this morning we’ll be focusing on something that is equally applicable to any sort of relationship, because this morning we’re going to talk about conflict and how we get along with others. We live in an increasingly polarized society. What used to be termed “political correctness” seems to have become “this way or else.” We’ve watched as people lost jobs or speaking engagements for simply saying the wrong words. Just a word or two misspoken in the wrong place at the wrong time can bring down a flood of ink or pixels of disapproval. We live in a world where it seems you’re either “with us” or “against us,” you’re either “right” or “wrong,” depending on the prevailing opinion at the moment. The only thing that isn’t tolerated is to have a different opinion. Our world seems to thrive on conflict, and while it might be enjoyable to watch that play out on television in a drama program or a reality show, when conflict invades our lives, it’s anything but fun. It’s painful. It’s hard. It leaves people hurting. Many couples and many friendships have been broken in the wake of a simple disagreement. I remember the first fight Cathy and I had after we were married. I can’t tell you what it was about, but I can still see the scene in my mind’s eye. We were both left momentarily feeling like maybe this marriage thing wasn’t the best idea. And yet, we worked through that one—and the other arguments we’ve had over the years. Some do not. Sometimes that first fight, that initial conflict, is enough to send a couple flying in opposite directions. What if there were some actions, some behaviors, some attitudes that we could adopt that would see us through most conflicts? And what if those behaviors and attitudes and actions could be summed up in just three simple words? That’s what we want to look at this morning: three words, three attitudes for healing the relationships in our lives.
Paul was probably in prison in Ephesus when he wrote this short little letter that was directed to the church at Colossae. This city was about a hundred miles inland from where Paul was (Wright, Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters, pg. 142), but it was on an important travel route and had become wealthy from trade and textiles. It was known particularly for a purple wool made there called colossinus. Paul had not planted the church at Colossae, but he had met people from there and knew about the church (Archaeological Study Bible, pg. 1935). Half of this letter is doctrinal in nature; it spells out generally what Christians believe. Paul probably wrote that to help counter some false teaching that was going on in Colossae. And then the second half is all about how to live it out, practical Christian living. So what we read in chapter three this morning isn’t exclusively for marriage, because it really applies to all sorts of situations in our lives. Any place there might be conflict, these words Paul wrote can be applied. And we know that if there is more than one person in the room, there is the potential for and the probability of conflict. (Some of us don’t even need that second person; we’re good fighting with ourselves!)
So Paul emphasizes how we are all in Christ. “There is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, slave or free” (3:11). The differences aren’t what is important. When Jesus comes into our lives, we become, as Paul puts it, “God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved” (3:12). Therefore, he says, treat each other this way, with three simple words. The first is this: “clothe.” “Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (3:12). They say that “clothes make the person,” and we make a choice every day how we’re going to represent ourselves. I had an event a few weeks back and I wasn’t sure how to dress for it. So I asked the person who had set it up, and he said, “Well, I used to tell people to dress like they were going to church, but since most people don’t dress up for church, I tell them to dress like they are going to meet the president.” What we wear tells others something about us, whether we intend for it to or not. We choose what we want to wear, and that’s why Paul uses that word “clothe” here. Since we are God’s “chosen” people, we have to choose what we’re going to wear spiritually, how we’re going to represent ourselves to others. As one author put it, we are to be “living advertisements of what God’s grace does in human lives” (Garland, NIV Application Commentary: Colossians/Philemon, pg. 210).
So what are we to clothe ourselves with? What must we put on? The first thing Paul mentions is compassion. The English word comes from two Latin words and it means “to suffer with.” But literally Paul says we should be clothed with “bowels of mercy.” In other words, he wants us to feel it in our gut. Compassion is more than just having a sad feeling when something bad happens to someone else. It’s more than sympathizing with someone else or their situation. Compassion is being kicked in the gut by the difficulty of the other person’s situation. Now put this in perspective. Paul lived in a world where there was no provision for the elderly, where the maimed and the sick were left to die and mental illness was viewed with disgust (Barclay, The Letters to the Philippians, Colossians and Thessalonians, pg. 157). Paul wants these Christians to be affected by the suffering around them, and more than that, to suffer with those who are hurting. After all, we serve a suffering savior, a Christ who went to the cross for us. When we clothe ourselves with compassion, we enter into the hurt of others. So when your friend or your spouse, is hurting, we stop everything and enter into that. We don’t stand at a distance and hurl platitudes. Like Job’s friends, we come and sit in the dust with them (Job 2:11-13). We suffer with those who are suffering (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:26).
Next, we “clothe” ourselves with kindness, which grows out of compassion. This is what moves us, in a time of need, to make a casserole for the one who is grieving or who is recovering from an illness. It is “gracious sensitivity toward others that is triggered by genuine care for their feelings and desires” (Garland 210). It’s when the other person’s good becomes as important to you as your own, and it’s found in increasingly smaller quantities in today’s world. There’s a beautiful story in Genesis 26, about Isaac, the son of Abraham, trying to find a place to settle with his flocks, and he digs wells, only to find that they are on someone else’s land. Now, today, we would file a lawsuit and squabble over who owns the land. Or we would get in a loud shouting match about who dug the well and so on. But Isaac didn’t do that. Isaac, in kindness, simply gave the well to the one who claimed it and settled elsewhere. He moved on until he found a place where he and his family could settle in peace (Genesis 26:17-22). Kindness motivates us to work for the best for both, and treats the other person’s needs as being as valid also. This does not mean you allow yourself to be run over all the time. Kindness calls us to work together, whether in a friendship or a marriage, to find the best solution. But we’ve got to be willing to admit that maybe I’m not right all the time, and that brings us to the next thing Paul calls us to put on: humility.
In Paul’s world, in Colossae, getting ahead was valued. In fact, in the ancient Greek language, there was no word for humility (Barclay 158). We probably would not even have a word for it were it not for the Christian faith, because it was first from the Jews and then from the Christians that the Roman world, out of which our culture has grown, ever heard about this idea of humility. In the first century, as in ours, bragging about yourself constantly was considered normal, because you were always working to make sure you were one step ahead of the other person. Doesn’t that sound a lot like the world you and I live and work in? That sort of behavior has detrimental effects on a friendship, and it has detrimental effects in the church (Garland 210-211). Humility, by contrast, is a remembrance of who we really are. Humility is not thinking poorly of ourselves; humility is thinking rightly of ourselves, seeing ourselves as God sees us: we are not self-made people. We are creatures made in God’s image. We are an incredibly valuable child of God, but so is that other person. Whether a friend, or a boss at work, or an annoying neighbor, or your husband or wife, they are created by and loved by God, just as you are. When we “put on” humility, we remember who we really are. We do not come to each other in arrogance, but in humility.
That, then, allows us to also put on gentleness. Gentleness is the willingness to make allowances for others (Garland 211). In conflict, it’s being willing to help rather than condemn. Aristotle defined it as the balance between too much and too little anger (Barclay 158). And sometimes we may need to step out of a situation for a time in order to find that balance. Some of you know Cathy and I worked with a team on the west side of Chicago during the summer of 1988, and it was a hot summer, we were far from home (not so much geographically, but certainly culturally and socially), and we had a whole team of eleven people sharing a three-bedroom apartment. One day that I’ll never forget is when things just got to be too much for me. I had misunderstood the culture, I had made assumptions that were not valid, and I was angry. I was really angry, and after saying a few words to one of the workers at the mission, words that I shouldn’t have said, I got in my car and started driving west. I had no destination; I just knew I needed at that moment to get out of there. I drove and drove and prayed and prayed and allowed God to help me put on kindness once again. I finally stopped at some store, bought a candy bar (I think it was a Snickers), and drove back. I’m not particularly proud of that day, but I am thankful that God reminded me of the need to make allowances for the faults of others, and I need to do that because I need them to make allowances for my many faults. Kindness in a relationship, and especially in a marriage, allows us to not be bothered by the small stuff, and we’re going to come back to that in a moment.
Kindness, then, leads us to the last garment Paul mentions: patience. If you know of a relationship—friendship, dating, marriage, or anything like that—that does not require patience, then I’d like to hear from you after the service. Every relationship I’ve been a part of has required patience on my part and on theirs. Patience is the willingness to endure wrongs and not strike back in revenge (Garland 211)—because that’s not our place. God says vengeance is his job, not ours (cf. Romans 12:19). Patience enables us to work through things rather than smash through them, and it’s also something in short supply these days. So these are the clothes we put on every morning; in fact, it’s not a bad idea to write these words down and put them somewhere you’ll see them in the morning. As you put on your shirt and pants and shoes, spiritually put on “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” at the same time. How might just getting dressed in that way change the way you interact with those most important relationships? Paul’s first word to us this morning is “clothe.”
Then we come to verse 13: “Bear with each other,” he says. Once you’re clothed with the attitudes of the spirit, you are enabled to “bear” the things that come your way. Now, that sounds like you just put up with stuff…and to some extent, that’s what Paul is getting at. Some of those things we fight over don’t really matter all that much in the long run, especially in light of eternity. Sometimes we would be wise to ask if this thing that upsets us so much is going to matter one bit beyond this life. Especially when it comes to husbands and wives, some of the things we get angry over, some of the things we hold grudges about, some of the things we hold against each other start out as little annoyances that we would be better off just to “bear.” Just put up with. It’s not worth getting angry about. The word Paul uses has the meaning of standing still, standing up. It’s like when the wind is blowing against you, you stand. When things aren’t going your way, you endure. It’s the image of Jesus, standing before Pilate: the savior who could have called on the heavenly host to defend him instead stood there and “bore” what came his way for the sake of the other. The “other” in that case was you and me.
So, let’s be honest: there are things about other people that irritate us. Spouses aggravate us. Often, in a wedding, I’ll warn a couple that there will be days when you don’t like each other all that much. He will leave his socks in the middle of the floor. She’ll be late to a meeting. He will work late and forget to call. She won’t cook like your mother does. There are no perfect people, and there are no perfect spouses, and there are no perfect dates, and there are no perfect friends. Let’s just affirm that and understand that the perfection we want and expect does not exist. People mess up. People make mistakes. And people have habits that irritate us. Research says that for women in particular, it’s men’s inattentiveness that drives them crazy. Wives, in particular, wish their husbands would help more around the house, would share their feelings and weren’t so short-tempered. For men, the big one is the moodiness of women (or perceived moodiness). Other things includes our perception that women aren’t as interested in physical intimacy, or that our wives nag us, or that they overreact to what, in a man’s mind, is a simple situation (Hamilton, Love to Stay, pgs. 106-111). But the big thing in any sort of relationship that both men and women are bothered by is negativity. If we’re at work or at church or at other social functions, we tend to avoid people who are negative all the time. We reason that we don’t need that in our lives. But at home, it’s harder to avoid, and that’s where it tends to show up more. I know a woman who, as a child, would bring home straight A’s and her father would ask why they weren’t A+’s. We’re more quick in our homes to criticize, to judge, or at least we sound that way. We think we don’t have to turn on our filters, but counselors will tell us that people remember the negative comments five times more than the encouraging comments. “Bearing” in this situation is not about just putting up with it. It’s about being the person who exudes hope. It’s about changing the course of the relationship by filling it with hope and encouraging words.
This past week, as most of you know, Cathy and I celebrated our silver anniversary, and during this week I’ve been remembering a lot. There were and are things she does that drive me crazy, just as there were and are things I do that drive her crazy. But I realized that, somewhere along the way, it wasn’t helpful for us to fight or get upset at every little thing that irritated us about the other. We would never have made it twenty-five years if we did. Rather, we have learned to be people of hope, to be people who bear with the other. In every situation, you have to ask: is this irritation something worth real conflict? Is this going to matter in the long run? Is this a habit that is threatening to our relationship or is this something I can “bear”? When we are clothed with the character of Christ, we can “bear with” many things we wouldn’t have thought we could otherwise.
And that brings us to Paul’s third word. It’s so important that he mentions it twice in this brief passage. Paul says, “Forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (3:13). The word translated as “grievance” means “blame or accusation.” Basically, if there’s anything between the two of you, anything that is hurting the relationship, your calling is to work on forgiveness. He doesn’t give another option. This is a command. Jesus didn’t give an option either. In the Sermon on the Mount, as he’s explaining what life in his kingdom is to be like, he gives a model prayer, one we pray every week here, and it includes this request: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). And then, after the model prayer, to drive the point home, he makes it clear what rests on whether or not we forgive: “If you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (6:14-15). That sounds harsh, which is why, as I’ve said many times, I wish Jesus hadn’t said it, but he did. And he’s getting at the same thing Paul is. The way we forgive is to be the same way God forgives us, and if we aren’t able to forgive freely, as God forgives us, then we can’t really experience the joy and freedom and power of healing and hope that only comes when we forgive. It’s not that God refuses to forgive. It’s that we block our ability to receive his forgiveness by our own hard hearts. And you’ve known couples who do just that, who shut down, whose heart becomes so hardened toward each other that they no longer even want to forgive whatever the grievance might have been. They might not even remember what it was! As individuals we do this, too. The longer we refuse to forgive, the harder our hearts become toward that other person and the less likely it will be that forgiveness will take place. It's not impossible, just less likely because we become entrenched in our own right-ness. That’s why Jesus and Paul both stress the vital importance of forgiveness in any relationship. There is power in those words, “I forgive you.”
Clothe yourself with the character of Christ. Bear with one another in the midst of irritations. And forgive the things that stand between you. The secret to facing conflict head on, whether in a marriage or any other relationship, is to behave and act and live like Jesus. As N. T. Wright puts it, “Christian behavior…makes you more human, not less” (Wright 181). Three simple words: clothe…bear…forgive…and we will become more who God intended us to be from the very beginning.
Now, the point of all of this is not so you can go home and point out to your spouse or to your friends how much they need these three words. You’re not supposed to say, “You need to clothe…bear…forgive.” That misses the point. Do you remember when I said that none of us are perfect? Paul wasn’t intending the church at Colossae to say, “Hey, yeah, those Corinthians really need to get it together. If they did this, it would all be better.” No, he’s telling the Colossians that there are areas where they themselves need to clothe, bear and forgive. So to us, he would say that it’s not about straightening out your friends, your date or your spouse. What is it you need to take action on in order to be a person who is more like Jesus? If you say “nothing,” you’re in denial; none of us are perfect and none of us are all God wants us to be yet.
In terms of marriage, some experts suggest that couples do a regular “marriage performance review,” much like most of us have at our jobs. The two of you, separately, would list maybe five things about yourself you’d like to work on, things that will enhance the relationship or lead to greater intimacy. Then, together, you talk about what it is that you need or want or are willing to do in order to bring greater harmony to the marriage. It's sort of like the way we set goals at our jobs; what will allow you to be a better husband or wife? What is it that you need to put on, clothe yourself with? What is it you need to bear? And, most importantly, what is it you need to forgive, or what do you need to be forgiven for? As a reminder, next Sunday evening, we are going to have a Covenant Renewal Service over at Crossroads, and our goal in that time is for it to be a new beginning from wherever you are in your marriage right now. Good, bad, indifferent…this is a new start, a chance to begin again. That will take place, as I said, next Sunday evening at 6:30 over at Crossroads. And that’s why this week is a good week to sit down together, to see how things are really going, to begin to clothe, bear and forgive. Is there anything standing in your way that needs to be forgiven? Is there anything you need to hear from the other? It may not be easy to hear those things, but it is necessary. Maybe this song will say it better than I can. Listen to this with your heart.
Broken…together…is a good way to be. Clothe…bear…forgive. Now, next week, we’re going to look at the rest of this passage from Colossians, because when we learn to clothe, bear and forgive, we are led into a place where, Paul says, the peace of Christ will live, the message of Christ will dwell, and the worship of Christ will become our lifestyle. Those are things we need to go the distance in any relationship, and so that’s where we’re headed next Sunday. But today, for just a bit, I want us to pray, to open our hands on our laps and ask God what it is that we most need to receive from him to experience healing, wholeness and hope. Let’s pray, shall we?
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