“Abundance Mentality”
Preached by John DeBevoise
At Palma Ceia Presbyterian Church
On November 5, 2000
So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.
As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Colossians 3:1-4, 12-17
I went to the Presbyterian Conference Center in Montreat, North Carolina, for three days this week. I go there at least twice a year to meet with a group of other pastors, studying texts. We outline the sermons that we will be preaching all the way through Easter. I am going to be preaching on the Gospel of Luke quite a bit, beginning in January, because it is the lectionary gospel and because, despite how much I have enjoyed this preaching sequentially through the books of the Bible, it means that we have only preached on the Gospels four Sundays this year. And I am thirsty for the Gospels. So I intend to drink deeply at Luke’s well, beginning the first Sunday in January.
When I got back to Tampa, I asked Emalee, “Did I have any phone messages?” She said, matter of factly, “Yes, you had several.” I said, “I did?” She said, “Yes. You had a phone message from John McCain.” Sucker that I am, I sort of bit on it. “I did?” She said, “Yes, I saved it for you. And you had a phone message from Bob Graham, too.” Then she listed several others that I had phone messages from. It was quite a fellowship that I entered into while I was gone. Of course, we are coming up on an election, and I want to remind you that it’s not only an American responsibility, but it’s particularly a Christian responsibility to vote and to be a part of the process of government. I commend it to you.
Fellowship. Saints. The letter to the Colossians speaks of the fellowship by using the word saints. When we use that word, we frequently are referring to somebody in the stained glass window, and we have come to think of it to mean somebody who is better than everyone else. But in the New Testament when they use that word, they mean it a different way. As in this letter to the Colossians, in the first chapter, when the apostle says, “I am writing to the saints, and all of the faithful brothers and sisters in Colossae: Grace and peace to you.”
They use the word saints to mean all of the believers together. Everybody in the congregation. Everybody in the body of Christ, the wider Church. And not only that. In the New Testament when they use this word, they mean it to refer to all of those who are here living with us in this faith. And also those who, having died, now live with God. The communion of saints refers to the long line of the faithful living and dead, together.
Paul, in this letter, says that he is praying with the Christians around him, praying for several things. He’s praying that you’ll be filled with the knowledge of God’s will. He’s praying that the fruit of the gospel will grow in you and bear fruit just as it has been from the beginning of time, says Paul. He says he can see it bearing fruit in you. He’s praying for patience for you. Praying that the Lord will give you patience so that you can persevere in the journeys you’re on. He’s also praying that the Spirit and the Gospel will teach you to give thanks. To be thankful. To be thankful for the inheritance all of the saints, both the living saints and those who reside with God, those who have died, an inheritance, he says, that all of the saints share together.
What is this inheritance we share with the saints? We may not talk about it enough, but our faith teaches us that we, the living, share a very real fellowship with the body of Christ, with all of those who are in that body a communion. And in the vocabulary of faith, this communion of saints has nurtured many of us.
Do I know this communion, this fellowship? I feel I have a deep commitment to be honest in my preaching. So my answer is important here. In what sense do I have knowledge that this concept of the communion of saints espoused by the church, is a fact?
Not in the sense that I have seen the fellowship of the saints in the way I see you seated in the pews this morning. Not personal contact in the way in which I will have personal contact with some of you as you go out the door and greet me today.
Time magazine, in a little blurb this week, talked about an interview with Barbra Streisand on a television show. It reported that Barbra Streisand mentioned in this television interview that she had gone to see a medium, a spiritualist, recently in order to contact her deceased father. When asked by the reporter what happened, she reported that she sensed a presence in the room and it made the table that they were seated around shake. They had a ouija board in front of them, and it spelled out the word Manny, which was his nickname, and also the word sorry. These messages seemed to be meaningful for her. She said she looked underneath the table and she could see no wires, and above it she could see no special apparatus.
This is not the awareness of the communion of saints that the faith is speaking of when it lifts up this doctrine for us. It does testify to the personal existence of believers in Jesus beyond death, and of their community together. But the scriptures witness to an involvement and an engagement with almighty God on their part, that occupies them fully and gives them tasks to do. It testifies to an existence and a purpose of the believers with God that transcends their spending their resurrection energy playing Twister with prophet-motivated mediums, or calling 1-900 numbers.
Our knowledge of their life and our knowledge of our community with them is not based on those sort of anecdotal, highly individualistic, and frankly pointless, encounters. How do we know? How do we know?
Well there is a variety of ways in which this knowledge comes to us, and I am not able to share all of it with you this morning. A great deal of it is in Colossians, but I have to collapse it, unless we miss the lunch that we are going to after the service. So I want to lift up just one of the things that Colossians says about the way in which we have knowledge of this fellowship together. The way that we have this inheritance with the fellowship of saints.
One of the ways that Colossians says we have this knowledge is through leadership. Through the competence and trustworthiness of the leadership we share them. You know, people who share a common leader that they believe in, that they trust, that find competent, they experience a degree of intimacy with each other. That’s what Colossians says.
Colossians says we have a common leader with those who now live beyond this life with God and those who are still the church militant at work here. That leader is Jesus Christ. Colossians says that when you share leadership like that, it builds a knowledge together. Jesus, says Colossians, is the first born of those who have been resurrected into that life. Jesus, Colossians is very clear to say in a world which was disputing about leadership at that time, Jesus is the head of the body. The full communion together. Jesus is the head of the church. Jesus is the leader of the fellowship. We share Jesus as our leader. We have the same Lord that they have. We have the same loving Savior that they have. Jesus, says Colossians, holds everything together, including your fellowship with those who now reside with God.
He reconciles us all. He reconciles us and them to God together. Jesus holds us together, says Colossians. There is a fellowship that comes from having the same leader. An intimacy that comes from having the same leader. Students from Plant High School in the early sixties, talked with me about a certain chemistry teacher that they had. It seems to have built a certain fellowship amongst them to have shared in that teacher together. Soldiers who sometimes have the same commanding officer in combat will talk about a fellowship they knew together that was built in no small part out of having that common leader. Patients who have undergone surgery, the same procedure at the hands of the same surgeon, feel a substantive link, based on that shared experience.
I’ve been reading a book this year about raising adolescent boys, because I am in the midst of that work and joy in my own life. I am trying to raise an adolescent boy. There’s a book that’s been very important to me called Raising Cain. That’s a great title, isn’t it. It’s written by a psychologist named Michael Thompson, who is a man of great faith. He served as a consulting psychologist for a number of high schools, particularly in this day and age where violence among adolescent boys has been such a national problem for us.
Thompson talks about the power of leadership in boys’ lives, and responsibilities that leaders have. In a passage of the book, he talks about going to an athletic banquet. At this athletic banquet, he sees a number of the football players get up and they have a chance to say something as a part of the banquet. To the surprise of many of the adults and parents there, what they begin to say to one another is, “I want you to know, fellas, that I love you. I love you guys. I’ve loved being on this team with you and I feel a love for you.” Thompson says parents come up to him afterwards and ask how it is that adolescent boys move to the language of love like that. he say the question wouldn’t be as difficult if you were present, as he was, in the locker room at the beginning of the season and you heard the coach say to the football team assembled there, “I’d like to ask you all, as coach, what is my most important task this year?” Some of the players said, “It’s to discipline us.” Other players said, “It’s to help us win.” Other players said, “It’s to help us perform at our best.” This particular coach said, “No. My number one priority in coaching you this year is to love you. To love you.”
When you have leaders like that, then you get players like that. That’s what a common leadership does. The characteristics of the leader seep into the team, into the fellowship. We react to each other even as our leader has in us. Colossians says we share a leader, not only with each other, but with the great communion of saints. It’s one of the ways we have knowledge of them, through knowledge of our leader.
The apostle goes on to say when you have a leader like that, you really ought to be thankful. In fact, he says, if you have a leader like that, it’s going to bring gratitude out of you. It may not even be at the moment, necessarily. You may be in the midst of hard work, but it’s going to come forward. Gratitude is always the response, thankfulness, that comes out of having a leader like that.
In this wonderful series of verses from the third chapter, which I am often asked to read, interestingly enough, at weddings, the apostle says, “I am hoping that with gratitude like this, you will express it to each other in the fellowship, both the living fellowship and the fellowship of the saints with God. With gratitude in your heart, sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. That’s what the apostle says. When you get thanksgiving like this in you, it’s going to break out in song! You can’t keep from singing. Remember Jesus told the Pharisees that if he tried to make the disciples be quiet, the very rocks and trees would break out in song.
The communion of saints is marked by a mentality of abundance. An awareness of how much the leader has given us, and how blessed we are. Blessed by this freedom and future as followers of Christ. And this awareness creates a generous spirit. This awareness evokes a rededication of ourselves, and all that we are. And that is a part of what we celebrate today. It is right. It is appropriate for us to celebrate it together with song. With gratitude in your heart, sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do in word or in deed, do in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
You know, I told you at the beginning of this sermon that I could not speak to an awareness of the communion of saints based on a firsthand, personal experience of that fellowship. But that’s not exactly true. Because I have experienced an awareness of the fellowship of the communion of saints around me. Admittedly, that awareness is highly intuitive. If so, then I claim it as the intuition of faith.
Pascal said there are some truths that the heart knows well before the mind. If it is intuitive, then I report to you that it is an intuition that I find is not contradictory to the ongoing work of my reason. Nor wholly separate from my senses. And it is an intuition and a kind of knowing that is confirmed to me by the experience of the fellowship, both those here and those who have already gone to be with God. It is knowledge that I have in much the same way that I know that I am loved. Highly personal knowledge. Intimate knowledge. Difficult to quantify knowledge. But present, persistent, sincere, sometimes much stronger than at others. At the boundary of certainty and trust.
The apostle told us and all of those before us, with gratitude in your hearts for your common leader, sing psalms, and hymns and spiritual songs. And it’s often in the songs that I hear them, the communion of saints. In the psalms and hymns and songs of the fellowship, I hear the voices of the fellowship of the saints. Do you hear them too? In my heart and in my faith, I hear them. In the early songs rising up out of their hiddenness in the catacombs. In chants and alleluias of the early church. In the brave voices of the martyrs. The great swell of the Protestant chorus. The harmonies of monks and nuns.
The choirs of men and women whom the apostle says have put on the new self in Christ, have put aside the old self with all of its mistakes and its sins and things that you need to let go of. The great choir of those who have put on the new self, the new uniform of the leader. Some of the voices are voices I have loved. Some of the voices are voices I have head sing from these various pews. Some of the voices are voices I have harmonized with. The great chorus of heaven and earth. This is what they are singing: Christ, the firstborn amongst us. Christ, the image of God. Christ, the head of the body. Christ, all-in-all. Christ, holding us together in this great communion of saints. Be thankful! Be thankful! Be thankful to God through Christ!
© John T. DeBevoise, 2000
