What is more Important than Christ for you?

July 27, 2025 Colossians 2: 6-19 What is more important than Christ for you? 7th Sunday after Pentecost Year C Prelude Greeting Call to Worship (in response to Psalm 85) One: In the heat of summer we gather, seeking to be restored by God to our full humanity. Many: May God revive us, so we might rejoice in each day of life. One: Today may we hear as God is still speaking peace to us and to the whole of God’s creation. Many: Today may we recognize where steadfast love and faithfulness meet. One: Even as we worship, we trust the Lord will give us what is good. Many: Together let’s celebrate God’s salvation for each and for all! (Disciples of Christ Center of Faith and Giving) Opening Prayer God of our salvation, as we gather today, renew in us a deep awareness of your desire to make a path for us. You yearn to speak peace to us and to the world you have created. In our worship, we claim your promise to forgive us and draw us back to you. So speak your steadfast love to us once more, that your glory may dwell in us and in our land. AMEN (Disciples of Christ Center for Faith and Giving) Song I want Jesus to Walk with Me UMH 521 A Sermon for all Ages Established in the Faith By Lois Parker Edstrom The Bible teaches us to become “established in the faith” (2:7). Do you have an idea of what this means? We know that “faith” is our belief in God. It means that we accept his love. What does it mean to become established in the faith? That may be a difficult question. Let’s think about other things that become established. I think of schools. Schools don’t just happen. Someone has to have the idea to build a school. Then work needs to be done to actually build the school. The school needs to have good teachers and a plan to offer important classes and teach many different things in an interesting way. After all of this has happened and continues for a period of time, we can say that a school has been established. People continue to come to the school to learn exciting new things; the school grows and becomes better and better. To become “established in the faith” first you decide to accept God’s love. Then you must decide to study and pray and become strong in what you believe. Each day, as you give thanks for God’s love, and share that love with others, you become established in your faith. You grow and learn more and more about God. Just like a plant that grows in good soil, you become “rooted and built up” in God (2:7). You become established in your faith. Scripture quotations from the World English Bible Copyright 2012, Richard Niell Donovan Colossians 2:6-7 hand movements • Therefore as you have received – cross hands over heart • Christ Jesus the Lord – spread hands out • So walk in him – walk with hands • Rooted and built up in him – 2 opposite fist • And established in the faith – open hands with fist • Just as you were taught – bring palms together • Abounding in thankgiving – hands in the air • Walk with him – walk with hands Affirmation of faith (from The Confession of 1967) In Jesus Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself. We confess that Jesus Christ is God with us, the eternal Son of the Father, who became human and lived among us to fulfill the work of reconciliation. We believe that the risen Christ is present in the church by the power of the Holy Spirit to continue and complete his mission. This work of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is the foundation of all we say about God, ourselves, and the world. (Presbyterian Outllook) Passing of the Peace Prayer for Illumination Almighty God, your Word is our comfort in distress. It holds your prom- ises that give us life. Give us ears to hear your hope and call. In the name of Jesus Christ, your Word made flesh, we pray. Amen. (Presbyterian Outlook, Philip Gladden) Scripture Colossians 2:6-19 Sermon What is more important than Christ for you? Quite frankly, I know a lot of people who just don’t care for Paul’s teachings. Sometimes he can be a little dated, and patriarchal in his teachings. He truly believes that everything that he says is just for males. It is Paul who says that women should be silent in church. If they have a question, then they should discuss it with their husband when they get home. He says that women are not allowed to be teachers, especially not to men. And now in this scripture passage he says that we have all been spiritually circumcised through Christ. He says that we have been circumcised not by human hands, but the whole body was removed by Christ. I am not even sure of what that means, and for half of the population that is just not a helpful metaphor. I think that Paul is really trying to help us to think of ways that we are connected to the divine in our lives. What are the things that put us in touch with Christ? Luckily he goes on to use to other important ways to connect to Christ – baptism and prayer. Baptism is a sacrament – a sacrament is something that opens the door for God’s grace to work in our lives. Now I move to a very crucial point in our understanding. Baptism is not only a means of grace for the one baptized. It is a means of grace for the whole church. Whether it is the baptism of an infant or the baptism of an adult – the entire congregation celebrating that baptism goes back to the memory and meaning of their own baptism. Examining themselves to see what degree they have kept the faith into which they were baptized, and how firmly they have clung to the cross which purchased their salvation. In a practical sense, the whole church undergoes baptism whenever some person is baptized. I plead with you – to capture that meaning of baptizing. When we baptize an infant, as we’ll do later today in the church, or when we baptize an adult or a young person – we should do, each one of us, should do within our own consciousness again what we may have experienced unconsciously when as infants we were baptized. Or we should recall when we self-consciously made our decision of faith, our commitment to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. That means, my friends, that you are never a spectator to baptism. Never. You assist in baptism. You not only assist, you participate in baptism. We take up our baptism again, remembering who we are, named as God’s people. Dear old Martin Luther, whenever he was depressed and undergoing strong attack from the devil, or sensed his courage and spiritual strength failing, he would lay his hands on his head and say aloud to himself, I am baptized. And so do we, and our identity through baptism becomes a means of grace. I close with this. In the earliest baptismal liturgies, after the person had been baptized, he or she appeared before the bishop. The bishop embraced the new Christian then did something of great significance – the bishop dipped his finger into oil and made the sign of the cross on the Christian’s forehead. This was known as the signation, the signature. The sign of the cross upon a person’s forehead was like a brand to show ownership. As sheep are marked to show ownership, so Christians are marked by baptism to show who owns them and to what flock they belong. By baptism, Christians are branded to show who chose them and who now owns them. Remember your baptism. Maxie Dunnam, MaxieDunnam.com, by Maxie Dunnam When we are baptized, not only do we put Christ on like a garment. But we are also given a new spirit, new energy and we have access to an unlimited supply of inspiration and support to help us with any situation that we may face in life. Baptism gives a purpose in life, and a legacy to pass on to others. Prayer is another way to connect to the divine. Prayer is our way of communicating with God and listening to what God has to say. There is a bumper sticker which says ‘Life is fragile, handle with prayer”. There is evidence that many people in America heed that advice. While 42 percent of Americans state that they attend worship. More than half of all Americans say that they pray at least twice daily. 75 percent say that prayer makes a difference in their life. And nine out of ten say that they have prayed at some point in their lives. While the statistics are great. They do not reveal the attitude which some people pray, or to whom the prayers are address to. Many people who say that they pray, do not know how to pray as Jesus instructed us in the bible. Just like many of the people who drive cars everyday, still don’t know the rules of the road. When it comes to genuine prayer where are feel connected to God, we still have a long way to go. Paul wants us to think of the ways that we connect to the divine. There is prayer, baptism, there is worship, or mission service, or fellowship, forgiveness, love, grace. Anything that helps us to grow in faith – helps us to connect. This part of the passage above the white space is about matters of the heart. These two verses are about our relationship to the risen Christ. They are about building our faith, a sense of trust that comes from within us. A recovering drug addict, writing to her pastor about the faith she and her husband — also an addict — had found, described faith in terms as eloquent as we can find anywhere. For us, faith is not a warm, comforting, fuzzy, feel good. Faith was gritting our teeth, walking through the agony and helplessness of addiction recovery, and continuing to put one foot in front of the other, doing what we were told was the right thing to do, and trusting, praying, and hoping that God was in control, that our tortuous journey would end, and that on the other side was a life worth living. Faith happens when we are at our most desperate moments, and we hold our heads up, doing what we hear God tell us in our hearts, and trusting that he will take care of us. Faith is not smarmy and glowing with happiness. It is an action, not words. It is a very small space we go to within ourselves, among all the bad emotions and feelings and self-loathing — a place that we cling to, while listening to that small voice, the voice of a loving, forgiving power greater than ourselves, outside of ourselves, that will, eventually heal the bad, walk us through the emotions, help us feel better about who we are and what we stand for.1 I was watching a news story this week about two nuns who has started a ministry to help migrants in Chicago to get established. One of the nuns passed away and the other wanted to give a tribute to her. She talked about how committed she was to the ministry. She talked about her faith in Christ. She said that the last words that she has said to the nun as she was dying to hospice – when you get to heaven and you are face to face with Christ. Pray for us, pray for the ministry and whatever you do, don’t take no for an answer. Pray fervently and tell God, that God has no choice but to bless us. Tell God that there are some faithful people who need you down here on earth – and tell God that God has to help him. I was impressed, because it taught me that is what prayer, baptism and faith is all about – not taking no for an answer- trusting in God in all circumstances. What are the ways that you connect to the divine in your life? What are your prayers? Where is your faith. Paul really didn’t mean any harm in his teaching. He wanted us to just get in touch with our faith and the ways in which we know that God is there. He wanted to make sure that when we go through life, that we are deeply rooted in christ when challenges come. Life is not easy and if we are not careful we can easily become discouraged. We can easily wonder if God really cares. Paul reminds us that Christ was there, granting us grace way before our problems came along. And that we should not only remember our faith, we should put Christ first in everything that we do. A recent pew research center study projects that the number of Christians in the US might decrease from 64 percent to between 54 and 35 percent by 2070. At the same time, the number of religious nones is expected to rise from the current 30 percent to somewhere between 34 and 52 percent. Christianity faces a lot of challenges. Faith is no longer becoming important in our society. There are many reasons why the church is no longer relevant. – the secular world is taking over, politics is creeping into the church, people are distrustful of clergy and others, church scandals are rampant, people are disillusioned with religion. The reasons mount up each day. But Paul’s message to us, there is nothing new under the sun, those things were happening back then. Paul tells us that the greatest way to stop that – is to stay established in the faith. Our children’s sermon tells us – to live in Christ Jesus the Lord in the same way as you received him. Be rooted and built up in him, be established in the daith and overflow with thanksgiving as you were taught. Verses 6 and 7 tell us to live in the faith that we were taught. Verse 8 tells us to not get caught up into our own beliefs. When we get discouraged, then we start to accept that is just how life is and there is nothing that we can do about it. We start to believe the statistics. And we forget not to take no for an answer. Our own faith starts to have to compete with other things going on in the world. How can we get others to come back to church? First, we have to stay rooted in our on faith. Before God can make a difference in someone elses life, God has to be the center of our life. Prayer, fellowship, study, worship, social justice, and helping others are wonderful as long as they don’t become a means to an end. Everything that we do has to be in the name of Jesus Christ. We do it not because it is important, but because Christ calls us. Christ is the center of everything that we do. Christ is the anchor of our lives. A few months ago I received a letter which illustrates this in a poignant way. Let me say something parenthetically before I share the letter. This past week, dear Dr. Grant, founding pastor of this church, our Minister Emeritus, said to me with tear mists of joy in his eyes -- "A revival is taking place in this church." I believe that friends. Persons' lives are being changed. Persons are seeking to bring their lives into harmony with God's Will -- they are changing their life styles. Literally, miracles are taking place in our midst -- This letter witnesses to one of them: "Dear Maxie: I am writing you this to let you know I heard your sermon on "With or Without Miracles" on Christmas. God has done a great miracle for me everyday. This past fall I attempted suicide. I thought life was not worth living and that I had no purpose for being alive. But since then I have had people come forward and tell me how I have shown them to go on when things get tough. They have told me I have courage that many people don't have. And these people knew nothing about my attempted suicide. And God has given me friends that each day watch out for me. I still don't know why I am here but I know that God has a plan and a purpose for me or else He would have let me die this past fall. He would also not have sent friends to me that told me they love me and that I make a difference in their lives. So I thank God for working a miracle in my life by saving it and for giving me the miracle of friends. So God does exist and He does come through when you need Him the most. I had rather not leave my name, but I am a Christian that is fighting for life with the help of God. The past is dead, the future is alive -- and I praise God!" So, to live a life hidden with Christ in God, we are united in Christ's death. I like that In Christ, the past is dead, the future is alive and I praise God! So it is with us: cross-centered purpose gives us meaning. Viktor Frankl was a psychiatrist who spent two years in a Nazi concentration camp. Out of that experience he discovered and developed logotherapy, a therapeutic approach to healing and health, by discovering meaning. Meaning, he says, comes from three sources: love, suffering, and doing a deed. All of these are gathered upin the cross and in the cross-life to which we are called. No wonder Paul could sing, "I rejoice in my sufferings" (v. 24). Because of the love he had received from the cross, his purpose was to love, even if that called for suffering. The cross was the driving force of his life.His burning desire was for all persons to experience the love of Jesus Christ which he had experienced. The cross gave him meaning for it gave him the cause for which to live and die. Finally I want to leave you with this poem to ponder You remember that old poem: Christ has no hands but our hands to do His work today; He has no feet but our feet to lead men in His way; He has no lips but our lips to tell men how He died; He has no help but our help to bring them to His side. What Christ has been and done for us, we must be and do for others. Let everything that we do be in the spirit of Christ. Let’s Pray……. Song It is Well with my Soul UMH 377 PRAYER OF INTERCESSION Just God, we sense your anger at the injustice that thrives in the world. We share your grief at the discord that rages among your children, the rejection of those who bear your image, and the oppression of those you know by name. We turn toward you for strength and guidance to turn away from the norms of this world, the lure of self-righteousness, and the appeal of comfort over justice. Embolden us to believe that another world is possible and empower us to participate in its creation. Amen. Written by Rev. Dr. Cheryl Lindsay, Copyright 2022 Faith INFO Ministry Team. https://www.ucc.org/worship-way/after-pentecost-c-july-24-2022/. Lord’s Prayer Stewardship Moment What are the ways that we connect to the divine power in our lives, what the are ways that we can feel close to God. We can care about the things that God cares about, we can follow the teachings of Jesus, we can put God first, we can worship God with all that we are. We now come to our time of giving, and we have a chance to do all of those things. We are in the misdt of summer and our stewardhip drive. There are many avenues to give to God and to make a difference. We can give what we have – and know that God’s blessings and grace makes the most of it. Jesus often makes comparisons from the lesser to the greater. In Luke 11, we hear the comparison from the way parents give to children to the ways God will give the Spirit to all who ask. Think of the best parents you know… (Your own parents? Perhaps your children as parents or others right in our midst?) Now, let’s make the comparison. As marvelous as THESE parents are as they provide for their children, how much more will God provide for those who seek God’s favor? Because God loves and provides for us, we’re invited to share that love, translating abundant agape into our morning tithes and gifts. See? These symbols of coin, check and electronic deposits come from the labor of our hearts, hands and minds. When collected, they allow us to care not only for our church community, but for others who yearn to share in God’s abundance. With joy-filled spirits, let us share in our morning offering. Prayer of Thanksgiving God, thank you for our daily bread, and for so much more which you provide. Thank you for this opportunity to return a portion of what we’ve been given. Open our eyes to see your love made visible. Open our spirits to respond in love to the needs which surround us.9 May we clearly see each sister and brother in Christ and respond to each one in love, remembering all are made in your image. AMEN (Disciples of Christ Center for Faith and Giving) Announcements Sharefest Closing Prayer for Facebook Go, into the world Proclaiming the many names of the Sovereign God Living the lessons of Good News Sharing in support and solidarity Opening doors And giving good gifts (United Church of Christ Worship Ways, Cheryl Lindsay) Community Time Joys and Concerns The results of the vote Pam’s brother. Benediction Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen. (Presbyterian Outlook, Philip Gladden) Additional Illustrations Rehearse what I’ve said. To be alive in Christ means: 1) not only is the presence of God in Jesus Christ only to be experienced on occasion, the indwelling Christ is to become the shaping power of our lives; 2) what Christ has been and done for us, we must be and do for others; and 3) the working power of God in the past is to be brought into the present. Someone wrote of Mother Theresa: “She gave her life first to Christ then through Christ to her neighbors. That was the end of her biography and the beginning of her life.” So I’m going to continue my ritual, “Maxie, the secret is simply this, Christ in you, yes, Christ in you, bringing with Him the hope of all the glorious things to come.” Maybe -- just maybe -- my biography will end and my life will begin -- as I become more alive in Christ. MaxieDunnam.com, MaxieDunnam.com, by Maxie Dunnam I heard a cute story about one pastor who told his congregation that there were 700 different sins listed in the Bible. That afternoon he received three dozen requests for the list. Everybody wanted to know what they were missing out on! Paul tries to turn this whole thing around and calls the people to forget the notion of rules and to simply begin living in relationship to Christ. Paul tells them that rules have no ability to change the heart, but a life that looks to Christ will soon turn around and reflect his glory. Think about a person in your life that you care deeply about. Haven't you made it a point to learn all about them? Don't you want to spend time with them, listening to what they have to say? It is natural to want to be with the one you love and know all about them. So it is with Christ. When you stop wanting to know all there is to know, you better watch out. It is a sign that the embers of love are beginning to burn out. Paul reminds us that if we want to find out what pleases God, then we need to be sitting at his feet. In his book, The Gospel For The Person Who Has Everything, William Willimon tells of a young friend, age 4, who was asked on the occasion of his 5th birthday what kind of party he wanted to have. I want everybody to be a king and queen, Clayton said. So, he and his mother went to work, fashioning a score of silver crowns – cardboard and aluminum foil, purple robes – crepe paper, and royal scepters – sticks painted gold. On the day of the party, as the guests arrived, they were each given a royal crown, a robe, and a scepter, and were thus dressed as a king or a queen. It was a royal site - all kings and queens. Everyone had a wonderful time. They ate ice cream and cake, they had a procession up to the top of the block and back again, and then when it was all over, everyone knew it had been a royal, wonderful day. That evening as Clayton’s mom tucked him into bed, she asked him what he wished for when he blew the candles out on the birthday cake. I wished, he said, that everyone, everyone in the whole wide world could be a king and a queen. Not just on my birthday, but everyday. My friend Willimon closed this story by saying, well Clayton, baptism shows that something very much like that happened one day at a place called Calvary. We who were nobodies became somebodies. Those who were no people became God’s people. The wretched of the earth became royalty. Two or three years ago, I saw the death door at St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome. Some of you may remember that the great Pope John XXIII, bless his memory, commissioned the eminent artist, Geacoma Manza, to sculpt a new door for that great basilica, and the artist depicted on that door a series of death scenes. There was death by falling, death in war, the martyred death of Peter upside down on the cross, and others. Death by drowning is there, death by water. And I reasoned as I looked at that door, that this was behind the sculptor’s theme – we enter the church by death. Baptism – our acted entrance into the church is by water. So death by water is a challenging and authentic understanding of baptism. The early church even built its baptismal fonts in the shape of tombs to make that meaning graphic. So we cannot underscore the meaning of baptism too much if we’re going to save ourselves from approaching casually that event in a person’s life which is so crucial. Being buried with Christ in baptism – having the sign and the seal of our salvation placed upon us with water and the laying on of hands. Haven't we all known Christians with whom we disagreed, but whose trust, thankfulness and joy we admired? Haven't we known people who faced grief, or disability, or some setback in life with courage and serenity? Didn't they inspire us, even if we didn't see eye to eye with them on every point of biblical interpretation or theology? A pastor friend once told me of a woman named Betty who came to every Bible study the church offered. She and the pastor frequently disagreed on interpretation, but my friend said that her faith was moving. She had arthritis, causing pain with every step she took. Nevertheless, her face glowed with a deep joy that came from within. She taught her pastor that verses 6-7 unite all Christians. Now, if we leap across the chasm between verse 7 and verse 8, we are in different territory. We are not so much in the realm of our hearts as in the realm of our heads, our intellect. We are not talking so much about the sense of trust, joy, and faith that we feel deep in our souls as we are about what we think in our heads. What we think in our heads is not totally unrelated to what we believe in our hearts. If we believe in an implacably angry God with our heads, we may feel the wrong kind of fear of God in our hearts. We will not have the fear of God that is healthy respect, but the fear that sees God as unapproachable. Nevertheless, two Christians can have different belief systems and still have deep faith in their hearts. Here, Colossians urges us to be careful about what we think. When we probe to the core depths of our being, when we get down to the base level of our identity, we discover four absolute needs, apart from physical survival needs. There are burning emotional/spiritual/relational needs which, when unmet, leave us less than whole, often crippled, sometimes sick to the point of being cut off from reality. The needs are common to all persons. Even though we may not use the same words to label them, the reality is the same. The needs are 1. To receive forgiveness 2. To love and be loved 3. To experience community 4. To have a cause for which to live and die. Other descriptions of our needs -- acceptance, affirmation, security and freedom, purposefulness and self-esteem -- are rooted in these four. The Cross meets us at the point of these deepest needs. Let's explore these. One day, another girl at the orphanage came to the superintendent to report that the girl was sending notes to someone on the outside. The superintendent thanked the child for the information, and asked her to come and tell them if it ever happened again. Two days later, the girl returned. She reported that a note had been place in the crook of a tree just outside the door of the building. Hastily, the superintendent called one of the social workers, and they raced outside to the tree. She grabbed the note and tore open the envelope. As she read the contents of it, her face fell and her shoulders sagged. She passed the note to the social worker. It read, simply: "To whoever finds this, I love you." (Bauknight, "Love is Linkage!", September 21, 1986). Dr. Parker Palmer, one of the creative leaders in spiritual formation and Christian community, told a group of YMCA workers "about a good friend of his who labors in an especially difficult assignment at the New York Catholic Worker House. One day Dr. Palmer said to her, "All the facts that I can gather and all the feelings I have feel me this work you're trying to do is just impossible. There's no success in it. There's no gratification. The tide keeps rolling over you. Why do you keep doing it?" Looking earnestly at him, the woman answered, "Parker, the thing you don't understand is this: Just because a thing is impossible -- that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it." (Discovery YMCA, July/August 1985, p. 15). The Cross calls us to take up our cross, to pray and live the petition "Thy Kingdom come". This meets our need for a cause for which to live and die. Four of our deepest needs: for forgivenessfor lovefor communityfor a cause for which to live and die. ...all met in the Cross.Do you see it?Do you feel it? Try to picture it, again with Charles Wesley: Behold him, all ye that pass by,The bleeding Prince of life and peace!Come, sinners, see your Savior die,And say, was ever grief like his?Come, feel with me his blood applied:My Lord, my Love, is crucified.("O Love Divine, What Hast Thou Done") And how will we respond: Hopefully, with Isaac Watts, in total commitment: Were the whole realm of nature mine,That were an offering far too small;Love so amazing, so divine,Demands my soul, my life, my all.("When I Survey the Wondrous Cross") Maxie Dunnam, by Maxie Dunnam Mickey Rooney, the famous American actor, made witness to this in a television interview. Rooney has been crass, crude, often drunk in such appearances, usually angry and insulting. But the interviewer knew something had happened, and questioned Rooney about his recent past when he hit bottom emotionally and financially. Rooney calmly answered, "I don't mean to sound ecclesiastical, but recently I gave my life to the Lord Jesus Christ and now my past is gone." I heard a story recently about a boy who was walking home with his mother from church one Sunday. He had obviously listened to the preacher because he said to his mother, "Mommy, the preacher's sermon this morning confused me. Can I ask you something?" "Sure thing," replied the mother. "Well, he said that God is bigger than we are. Is that true?" "Yes, that is true," the mother replied. "And he also said that God lives in us. Is that true, Mommy?" Again the mother replied, "Yes". "Well," the boy continued. "If God is bigger than us, and if God lives inside us, shouldn't He show through?"