Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; Exodus 15:1-18; Colossians 3:12-17
Tuesday 14 April by Rev. Jerry Eve
Today, we have the same psalm as yesterday, as well as two different passages from Exodus and Colossians. I want to major on Colossians.
Colossae was in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), and is said by the ancient Greek historian, Herodotus (c. 484 BC – c. 425), to have been a great city. Ruined today, it was somewhere, although he had never actually visited the fledgling Church there, Paul clearly felt he had a spiritual responsibility to oversee. The actual founder of the Church seems to have been Epaphras (see Colossians 1:7) who, legend has it, was Colossae’s first bishop.
The letter claims to have be written from gaol, and there’s a link between it and the last of the Pauline epistles, Philemon, which was also written from gaol. in its sole chapter, it tells the story of a slave called Onesimus who has run away from his master, called Philemon, and become a Christian and key member of Paul’s missionary team. Philemon (and therefore, Onesimus) was (were) probably from Colossae, and It’s interesting, I think, that along with Paul’s main messenger, Tychicus, Onesimus has also been given the task of delivering Paul’s epistle to the Colossians (4:9).
I wonder if this was along with Paul’s epistle to Philemon. If it was, then Onesimus’ return (knocking on Philemon’s door) must have been a tense moment. Legend has it, though, that Philemon became Colossae’s second bishop, and Onesimus a bishop elsewhere, so we have to believe that it all ended happily ever after. Forgiveness is a theme in Colossians, but more than that is Paul’s concern that there are false teachers abroad in Colossae
Heresies did crop up from time to time, and had to be countered by Christian apologetics. Among the main ones were: 1) Gnosticism, the idea that you need specialist spiritual knowledge to be saved; gnostics believed that material existence was flawed. 2) Marcionism, a doctrine that rejected the whole of the Old Testament, claiming it presented a false view of God, and 3) Docetism i.e. a belief that Jesus only ‘seemed’ to be human.
I remember HIV and AIDS in the 1980s, and ‘false teaching’ then claiming that the virus and accompanying disease were sent as a punishment by God for all those who practised certain lifestyles. Fortunately, the overwhelming response by Christianity was one of compassion instead. I myself, for example, was involved in a Church-led project to lend practical help to those with the virus.
Moments in history such as the one we are currently living through are ripe for heresy, and Colossians in its emphasis on ‘union with Christ’ (and nothing more or less than that), I think, is a very good corrective for us – at any time!
Let us pray:
Amen
(7th or 8th century, translated by John Mason Neale)