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Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19)
Proper 12C
Few phrases seem harder to learn and say than, “Thank you.” After all, few responses mature more slowly than thanksgiving. In fact, gratitude hasn’t yet fully ripened in me, even after nearly more than sixty-one years’ worth of reasons for feeling it. I, after all, naturally assume that I deserve nearly everything I have. So…
Colossians 1:15-28
Proper 11C
If the first four verses of this Sunday’s RCL’s Epistolary Lesson don’t make its preachers and teachers’ heads spin at least a bit, we’re probably not paying enough attention to them. In verse 15, after all, Paul insists, probably no more than 20 years after Jesus ascended into the heavenly realm, he’s “the image of…
Colossians 1:1-14
Proper 10C
When my family and I first moved to the Washington D.C. area to serve the church I pastor, a wise colleague told me to read a lot of books. He said members of area churches like it when their pastors quote books. “They’re smart people who like to learn things,” my colleague told me. The…
Colossians 3:12-17
Christmas 1C
Some people who proclaim Colossians 3 this week are old enough to remember a kind of worship battle that largely preceded today’s battles over music. Some of those battles were fought over appropriate clothing for wearing to worship. During the 1960’s and 70’s my dad always wore a suit and tie and my mom wore…
Colossians 3:1-4
Easter Day A
No one likes being accused of “being so heavenly minded as to be of no earthly good.” Karl Marx has his own version of this (religion = narcotic) as have any number of cynics and critics of faith. Yet there it is in Colossians 3: if you have been raised with Christ, set your minds…
Colossians 1:11-20
Proper 29C
Let no preacher be blasé about these verses from Colossians 1. Let no one miss the punch, the power, the sheer wonder of what Paul says here. Those who have long known the fundamental beliefs of the Christian faith could, I suppose, skate over top of these verses altogether too lightly and swiftly without noticing…
Colossians 3:1-11
Proper 13C
In his book The Divine Conspiracy Dallas Willard claimed we live in a strange time when trite slogans fill our lives. We live in a world where one of the best-known jingles of the last quarter-century was “Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Meyer wiener. That is what I really want to be. For…
Colossians 2:6-15 (16-19)
Proper 12C
Sample Sermon: One of the finer films from the 1980s is Bruce Beresford’s Tender Mercies. The film chronicles the story of Mac Sledge, a one-time country-western singing star whose life later dissolved into a fog of alcohol and shiftlessness. Divorced from his wife and estranged from his only daughter, Mac staggers through life until one…
Colossians 1:15-28
Proper 11C
“To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.” That is the final verse of Colossians 1 and it pretty much says it all. “Strenuously contend” is what the latter half of this opening chapter conveys, and then some! From Colossians 1:15 through Colossians 1:23, Paul writes exactly…
Colossians 1:1-14
Proper 10C
Paul is just getting warmed up. He is about to launch into one of the single most exuberant sections in any of his letters (this will be next week’s Lectionary text) and go on a verbal tear of breathtaking proportions. But first things first: he needs to greet, give thanks for, and give encouragement to…
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