Years ago I remember watching an animation. It started by looking at an ordinary human being, rowing a boat. It quickly zoomed out, flying away from the person, showing them on the lake, the lake in the city, the city in the country, the country on the planet, the planet in the solar system, and on to the far reaches of the universe. Then we returned to the person, zooming into the person’s body, showing us the detail of skin and blood vessels, and even further, to cell and molecule and atomic level. We then zoomed out, back to the person again, rowing the boat. But now you saw them in a new light, immensely complex, and in a new context, within an infinitesimal universe. The film is called Cosmic Zoom, and it’s on YouTube. I’m pleased to say that, having seen it as a child (it was made in 1968) I remembered it pretty well.
I was reminded of it because of the first chapter of the Letter to the Colossians, our second reading this afternoon. It has a similar feel, ranging from the day to day life of a new church: messages sent from Colossae to Paul via Epaphras, to the outer reaches of the universe and of human longings and imagination: Christ, the image of the invisible God, the maker of all things. Paul knows the people he is writing to, and wants to support their ordinary daily life in Christ. And he knows the God he is commending them to, and Christ the head of the church. Our daily life has to be seen in its detailed complexity, and in the context of the whole spiritual universe.
The beginning of Colossians appears at various points in the church’s pattern of Bible readings, and often at this time of year. It’s a passage which will help as we use the end of one year and the beginning of another to put ourselves into context, and to use a review of the past to enable a plan for the future. I’m trying hard to avoid using the word ‘resolutions’, but you know what I mean. What Paul is doing here is praying for the new church he has helped to bring into being. Praying is about the future as well as the present. When we pray we are imagining things as they should be, as we would like them to be. To quote Frank Senn, the Lutheran liturgical scholar, intercession is about ‘the world done aright’.
It’s worth unpacking this a little. When we pray that something should change – that a person might be healed; that a violent confrontation might become peaceful; that an injustice may be righted – when we pray in this way it is because we have a vision of the world as it should be. We are made for health, not illness, peace not war, right not wrong. To pray for these things is to align ourselves with God’s vision for the world as it will be, with the values and practices of God’s kingdom. Far from being the fulfilment of selfish desires, true prayer is about going beyond ourselves to discovering life in all its fullness. True prayer is about finding God’s desires, not our own.
To make resolutions is to desire a future and to create practices which will bring that future into being. Those resolutions need to be put into context too. Paul prays that the Colossians will be ‘fruitful’, not so that they can pile up wealth and success and be filled with pride, but so that what God will for the world will be brought to fruition. His prayer is that they will grow in ‘every good work’ and in ‘the knowledge of God’, that they will be able to cope with whatever is thrown at them, so that they will know the hope of the church and of the saints, the light and life of God. To put this into context he gives them that amazing universe wide vision of Christ, the ruler and creator of all things.
Why be fruitful? For the sake of the Christ who holds everything in his hands. Why grow in good works? For the sake of the one who is the head of the church. Why endure all things with patience? For the sake of the one who was the firstborn from the dead. Why give thanks to the Father? Because the fulness of God was pleased to dwell in his beloved Son. We might apply that to our own resolutions as a church, and as individuals. Why seek to welcome new people as disciples? Why feed and shelter the homeless? Why welcome a refugee family? Why look for young people to make a commitment of faith? Why engage with this community and contest for the role of faith in the public square?
Not because it will make us feel better, however much I’d like to slap some positive statistics in front of the Daily Mail and say ‘what about this, cynical media.’ Not because we’ll be shown to be a success, and gain affirmation and self satisfaction. Why resolve to do all this? Because in prayer we align ourselves with the love and literal passion and demands and challenges of the God who is in and over all things in Jesus Christ. This is the big picture. And just like that animation, in the Kingdom of Heaven the macro and the micro are one and the same. Thanks be to God.