Firstborn From the Dead

Preached on July 20, 2025, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Colossians 1:11-28. Please note that I say “Paul wrote…” even though many scholars believe that Colossians is not an authentic letter. That is not relevant to my main thesis, though, so I didn’t bring it up.

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Today’s epistle lesson is a continuation of the opening of Paul’s letter to Colossae. Here, he is laying out who he is and why he’s writing. Paul did not start the church in Colossae, and as far as we know, he never visited them. He is writing because he has heard good things about them and wants to encourage them.

Near the end of today’s passage, we hear a bit about how Paul sees himself. He says, “I became [the church’s] minister according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages…but has now been revealed to his saints.” Paul was once a persecutor of the church, and then had a divine encounter that revealed the mystery of Christ to him. He interpreted this encounter as a divine commission to spread God’s word.

I see some parallels in my life, and I think every preacher would, too. OK, I’m not Paul, but I do feel like something important about God has been revealed to me and I do feel compelled to share it with you all, and with the world. I’ve been meditating on that calling a bit over the past few weeks and especially last weekend when I was on retreat. You may recall that I was formally commissioned almost a year ago, August 11, 2024. Like Paul, I am trying to live into that commission by sharing my thoughts on the divine mystery with you all. So let’s see what we can glean from Paul’s letter.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

That beautiful poem that opens the Gospel of John teaches us that Christ was there at Creation. Paul echoes this when he says, “In him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible.” In both John’s Gospel and Colossians, we see a vision of Christ that transcends the person of Jesus of Nazareth. As our creeds say, Christ is eternally begotten of the Father. Christ was incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, but is something more than just a human being. Christ is God. Christ is the Second Person of the Trinity.

Now don’t worry, I’m not going to try to explain the Trinity again. Suffice it to say that the first Jesus-followers, like Peter, saw him as merely human, but anointed by God to lead the Jewish nation. After his death and resurrection, the more insightful or inspired followers of the Way realized that Jesus was fully human, yes, but also maybe divine. Eventually they realized that he was also fully divine, a part of the Godhead who was present at Creation and will be present at the end of time, the eschaton, the fulfillment of history. Through Christ, all things came into being.

So let’s go back to Genesis. For six days, God created the cosmos through Christ. God created humans in God’s image, breathed life into us, and blessed us. Then God saw everything that had been created and declared it to be VERY GOOD.

Then, the Fall. Through Christ, all things were made perfect, but something terrible happened. The only way humans can truly love is if they are truly free, which means that we are also created with freewill that enables us to choose evil. Despite being created VERY GOOD and having the opportunity to dwell forever in God’s presence, we chose to go our own way and mess things up.

And so, we look around and realize that the world is broken. So very broken. We have terrible diseases like multiple sclerosis—nobody really knows what causes it and nothing can really stop it from progressing. The most we can hope for is to slow it down. And that’s certainly not the only chronic disease that people in this congregation suffer from, just the one that I encounter daily.

Wars continue to rage around the world. One news item this past week is that the US will ramp up its supply of weapons to Ukraine, in an acknowledgement that Russia is the aggressor who illegally seized Crimea and then invaded in an effort to capture more territory, breaking an agreement made back in 1994 during the collapse of the Soviet Union. The people of Ukraine have rallied around their charismatic leader and continue to hold off Russian aggression, but at the expense of perhaps 100,000 lives lost and many more wounded, plus widespread devastation. Russia has paid for its leaders’ ambitions with 1 million casualties. And there’s no end in sight, not really. I don’t see a way out of this where both sides can be satisfied, unless somehow Putin is removed from power.

Meanwhile, war rages across the Middle East. Did you know that there is war in Syria? There was a civil war that resulted in the end of the previous regime, which I thought had then settled down. But this week, I saw that there was a cease-fire between the Sunni and Druze factions in the wake of Israeli airstrikes in Damascus. Meanwhile, Gaza remains a humanitarian catastrophe. On Wednesday, twenty Palestinians were killed at a food distribution center, mostly by being trampled. On the same day, Israeli strikes killed at least 54 others across Gaza. While I’m pretty clear that Russia is the aggressor against Ukraine, the war between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza is far murkier. There has been conflict between Israel and the Palestinians since 1948, conflict that both sides have kept alive for various reasons, mostly related to political power. The latest hot war started because of an incursion by Hamas into Israel, but it is far from clear to me whether Israel’s response has been appropriate—probably not. In both cases, Ukraine and Gaza, the people who really suffer are the powerless, the civilians forced to live in a war zone while great powers fight around them.

Closer to home, we look around and see plenty of poverty and homelessness. Many times, when I learn the back story for a patron at the Mission, I realize that they never had a chance. They didn’t have positive role models in life or a stable home to grow up in. Many of them bear some responsibility for their choices, but others were entirely victims of circumstance. We live in a nation where a serious medical condition can result in debt that leads to homelessness. I mean, if I didn’t have such a good job with such good insurance, Rhonda would be in dire straits.

Even without sickness or poverty, relationships are difficult. In the daily prayer app I use, one of the prompts is to pray for those from whom we are estranged. I have five siblings. I’m close to two of them, have a positive relationship with one, and haven’t actually spoken to the other two in decades. I don’t think that’s too unusual. I wouldn’t be surprised if many of you had similar stories. Maybe not about siblings, but others in your extended family. Things happen, relationships fall apart, and if you’re lucky, you reconcile at someone else’s funeral.

Which of course brings us to the root of all brokenness. Death lingers for us all. Sometimes we know when it is coming, such as when you receive a cancer diagnosis and doctors can predict how long you have. But other times, it comes like a thief in the night. My good friend Wayne had a close encounter two years ago. He had what’s called a widowmaker heart attack in his workshop at home. He was among the fortunate 12% of people who have that kind of heart attack outside a hospital and survive. But if his wife had waited just a few minutes more to check on him, who knows?

Nations can die, just as the Roman Empire did and so many other empires throughout history. I saw this Mark Twain quote recently:

Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are invented.

Institutions can die, too. There’s a forum that I visit where one of the discussion threads chronicles the institutions of higher education that are dying or have closed. Recently, there have been announcements of Siena Heights University, Limestone University, and The King’s College (NYC) all closing, and several others showing signs that the end is near, most of which I’ve never heard of. At the last presbytery meeting, we voted to sell one church building and dissolve another congregation.

But of course, that’s nothing new, really. The New Testament was written in the context of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, which radically transformed Judaism. The church in Colossae to which Paul wrote his letter disappeared after an earthquake hit the city. Everything has a life cycle—birth, life, flourishing, decline, and death.

But death is not the end! Let’s read on: Christ is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. So the correct life cycle is: birth, life, flourishing, decline, death, and resurrection. This life we see is not the end. It is a preparation for the glory that is to come. It is the life we learn with, so that we may fully enter a glorious life in Christ’s eternal kingdom.

We have the hope of ultimate reconciliation in the eschaton. I casually dropped that word in a conversation with my friend Sharon recently and she didn’t recognize it, so maybe you all don’t, either. In ancient thought, there were three basic perspectives on history. One perspective is that everything is random and undirected. The universe just wanders where it will, and chaos reigns. Ugh, what a terrible vision. The second perspective, popular in Greek thought and also in many other civilizations throughout history, is that everything is cyclical. Things get better, then things get worse, but nothing ever really changes. What comes around, goes around. Well, maybe that’s a little more comforting.

But the third perspective is the one that I cling to. It’s the Jewish and Christian belief that history has a purpose. History is going somewhere. As Martin Luther King, Jr., famously said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” And that destination, that ultimate end of history, is the eschaton. Someday, all will be made new. Everything will be reconciled to God.

We have hope that someday, pain and suffering will come to an end. We have hope that someday, wars will end, replaced by shalom—peace, wholeness, and unity. We have hope that someday, we will be reconciled to one another just as we are reconciled to God. And we have hope that someday, this broken world will be refreshed and renewed, transformed into Christ’s eternal kingdom.

I don’t know what tomorrow holds. I do know that I can look back on all the good that I have done, as a husband, father, and engineer, and as a leader in my church, campus, and community. I am proud of what I have accomplished, even if it all comes to an end someday. I also know that I can look forward to a glorious future—if not in this world, then in the next. I can’t promise peace in Europe or the Middle East. I can’t promise that this church will return to the attendance and spiritual energy that it once enjoyed. But I can promise that someday, Christ’s reign will be complete. On that day, peace will triumph over war, love will triumph over hate, and eternal life will triumph over death itself. Amen.

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