These sound like they could be “values.” Colleges are keen on values. Values are the warm, fuzzy stuff about which people can feel good. One thing about values is that that few people take the time to define them, and even fewer want to check to see if their values are really lived out in concrete action. But we really haven’t much of a clue about what values are actually being embodied and passed on by the great and not-so-great colleges and universities. So if you start with some values that sound good and about which you needn’t be specific, and which no one is going to measure, you have an unbeatable combination—at least for public consumption. Like a brand name outfit.
But if you check the list in the passage for today’s meditation, you will note that each item describes the quality of relationships between persons: “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness . . . patience,” forbearance, forgiveness, “love,” and thankfulness. The good news is that you need not select and commit to any set of values. You have been embraced by a concrete person—Jesus Christ—who will be your guide as you go.
Prayer: Let me wear my finest “clothes” every day and let them shine so they are visible. Amen.
24 – Gimme That Full-Time Religion
Colossians 3:16–17 — (16) 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. (17) 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.
You are in a hurry, in every way: to get to class, to get a date, to finish college, to own a boat! So is everyone else. In a hurry. Your professors, classmates, everybody driving on Main St. There is so much to do. And you would like some time off, just to relax, just for yourself. The nostalgic view of a typical college prof’s office is one in which the shelves are filled with books, the desk piled high with papers cascading off onto comfy chairs occupying what little floor space is not littered with more books. It suggests that learning is a leisurely enterprise. A more recent, up-tempo view might show a full-time student, hurrying to her full-time job with a quick stop to attend to her full-time family. The old-fashioned, Hollywood vision of college may be losing ground to a newer picture of learning as a hi-tech process in which a rich array of electronic devices operate under fingertip control by the instructor who arrives hurriedly just in time to throw the master switch from a sterile office cubicle shared with some graduate students.
Just if it weren’t getting too crazy, here comes Paul exhorting (suggesting? commanding?) Christians to “teach and admonish one another.” You’ve got to be kidding! Isn’t there already too much work—getting ready for class especially—to have to think about helping other Christians improve their “wisdom”? (You may not have thought college would be a vacation, but nobody seriously promised you that added responsibility.) For Christians, college is a gift intended to keep on giving—and demanding even more! This is a call to a rigorous and mutually up-building free-for-all in the context of the Christian’s life with no holds barred. There is no limit on the toughness of the intellectual wrestling. The program Paul proposes to the intellectually curious in Colossae is one that is tough in terms of intellectual discipline. Criticism within the context of friendship depends on active participation of all members of the community in mutual correction of one another—in love, of course. Are you up for it?
Prayer: Let me instruct others gently and let me receive admonishing thankfully. Amen.
25 – What about Those Family Values?
Colossians 3:18–21 — (18) Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. (19) Husbands, love your wives and never treat them harshly. (20) Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is your acceptable duty in the Lord. (21) Fathers, do not provoke your children, or they may lose heart.
You have a “job description” to follow. It is in your course syllabi and school catalogue. These “position descriptions” govern your place and are used to evaluate you and are always derived from secular (worldly) sources.
Paul’s inclusion of what biblical scholars call “household orders” is instructive since it acknowledges that Christians have the same mutual relationships and obligations everyone else has. Christian freedom doesn’t cancel worldly relationships and obligations. On the contrary, it gives you opportunity to let God transform your secular job description into one serviceable for a servant of Christ, applicable at work, study, and play.
The relationships given the most attention in Paul’s list are the up-to-down ones—husband, father, master. These are the ones that require the most caution because they are the most powerful and therefore most likely to abuse. The lists of household arrangements incorporated into the New Testament (also found in 1 Peter and Ephesians) are taken from pagan and Jewish sources and are given a Christian “spin”; for example, Jesus Christ is to be present in every relationship. Even though Christians now see themselves in new, fictive families, the social and biological family is still a reality for them. Paul wanted you to know that despite the revolutionary character of the new faith, Christians were not primarily here to tear things down.
The practice of Christians loving one another while they find themselves on the bottom end of an unequal relationship is the issue here. Is it possible to live according to Christ at the down end of an up-down relationship as well as at the up end? Paul pushed the envelope in mentioning women first. And even children! They were almost never mentioned in the pagan lists. Paul, however, addresses children as moral agents in their own right. Each person in any relationship deserves an appropriate response from the other; each stands in need of God in Christ.
Prayer: Help me to see Jesus in every relationship and to do each task in Christ. Amen.
26 – Living on the Margin
Colossians 3:22—4:1 — (22) Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything, not only while being watched and in order to please them, but wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord. (23) Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord and not for your masters, (24) since you know that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you serve the Lord Christ. (25) For the wrongdoer will be paid back for whatever wrong has been done, and there is no partiality. (4:1) Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, for you know that you also have a Master in Heaven.
It is easy to get annoyed at Christianity in general and the Bible in particular for not having more of a social conscience and a clearer program of social reform. That annoyance is particularly present when you read this passage about slaves. But the goal of Christians in the New Testament was forgiveness and love, not social change. Paul recognized that regardless of one’s legal status as slave or free, everyone answered to someone in more authority. We are all “slaves,” serving and answering to one or more masters.
The question this passage raises for you is: how do you live in a setting defined by hierarchies and up/down responsibilities. You live “in” but not “by” or “of” the world. Your relationship to Jesus and your existence in a new kingdom may trump but does not eliminate your life in this world.
As a college student you are definitely in the “down” end of most of your defining relationships: subject to college rules and regulations and responsible to your professors to do your school work.
But the body of Christ (the church) is truly a new kind of community. While members may still live in their biological/legal families, your Christian commitment, your transfer to the fictive family of Christians (a newly invented and established family in Christ), and your “re-citizenization” into the kingdom of light combine to provide a powerful framework in which you will be able to meet the challenges of both those relationships in which you have responsibilities of obedience (the “slave” ones) and those in which you are in charge (the “master” ones).
Prayer: May I serve you in all things whether I’m