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So many things separate Christians into groups: denominations, different ways of practicing the sacraments, different understandings of how to organize the church, different attitudes toward social issues like sexuality and money, even different perceptions of who Christ was. With all of that disagreement and separation, what unites us? Is there any common ground among us, other than simply calling ourselves Christians? Are we hopelessly divided, or can we push aside some of these barriers and embrace as brothers and sisters under one Lord?

A little quirk in this passage from Colossians may hold some answers for us. The quirk is highlighted by the way the passage appears in the NRSV translation of the New Testament. In the printing of this passage in the NRSV, there is a small gap between verse 7 and verse 8. It is not a chapter break, of course, but just a small bit of white space. This gap indicates that the NRSV editors thought that a transition occurred between verse 7 and verse 8, so they put a gap. Even though the gap on the page is only a quarter of an inch or so, the gap in subject matter is huge. The gap between what verses 6-7 talk about and what verses 8-15 talk about is significant. This gap has been around from the earliest days of the church. We still live with it. Among denominations, among congregations within denominations, among groups within any congregation, this gap exists, causes friction, and leads to much pain in Christ's body.

What is this gap represented on the page by a tiny bit of white between the blobs of ink that go before and after it? Verses 6-7 encourage us to live our lives in Christ. The NRSV translates it as, "live your lives in him." The image behind the phrase is a common saying among Christians. In any Christian bookstore you can find posters that teach the essence of this phrase from Colossians. Often the saying on the poster goes like this, "If you talk the talk, you have to walk the walk." Colossians exhorts us to walk in Christ. The image of walking makes us think of exercise. We have to keep our relationship with Christ in shape. Walking implies movement. We cannot stay in the same place. Our relationship with Christ takes effort; it is not static. This is sound teaching for all Christians.

The next image in verse 7 comes from the construction industry. Colossians encourages us to be rooted, built up, and established in Christ. To be rooted in Christ is to have a firm foundation. This phrase makes us think of the two builders in Matthew 7:24-27. One built his house on the sand, the other on rock. One house had a firm foundation, the other did not. The basics of prayer, reading scripture, receiving the sacraments, all contribute to a firm foundation. Sometimes we need to clear out space for a foundation by letting go of the past, or coming to terms with the past, so that it does not wreck our foundation. Once we have the foundation, Colossians teaches us to be "built up in him." We are always a work under construction. We may look at our Christian "house" and decide we need to redo the patience room, or remodel the forgiveness wing. We are always under construction.

The final little bit of teaching in this section is the call to abound in thanksgiving. Thanksgiving does not always come easily for us. We have to learn to be thankful. We have to pull thankfulness from within us. We would never say to someone who is in the immediate crisis of grief or tragedy to be thankful, but even in the wake of the disruptions of life, we can choose to be thankful. Being thankful cleanses our souls, lifts our spirits, and eases our hurt. Thankfulness reconnects us to God, even in the valleys of life. Studies have shown that terminally ill people, who know they will not become better physically, can find solace in making note of the things they have to be thankful for.

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

We do not have to be drug addicts to resonate with that description of faith. Even those who have never taken a drink in their lives can find inspiration in those words. Verses 6-7 of this passage are about that kind of faith. Do we draw upon Christ for the resources we need? Are we building our trust and our thankfulness? Do we let Christ cultivate joy in us? We share these things with all Christians, no matter what denomination, or theological position. We seek to grow this kind of faith whether we are liberal, conservative, or something in between. We can set the foundation of our faith, be rooted and built up in Christ, and abound in Thanksgiving whether we would rather read Billy Graham or Bishop Spong!

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.

In the situation behind the letter to the Colossians a heresy has popped up. Behind the heresy is a problem the church confronted early on. Shortly after the beginning of the church, Gentiles began responding to the message about Christ. We should be glad of that, since most of us are Gentiles. The problem we Gentiles brought in was our old belief systems. Gentiles were used to thinking of life in terms of Greek philosophy. Greek philosophers belonged to a number of schools. You may recognize the names of the schools from the ways we used these terms in everyday speech. Among these schools were the Cynic School, the Stoic School, and the Epicurean School. When Gentiles came into the church, they brought these belief systems with them. That was both a good thing and a bad thing. Some of the New Testament writers used Greek philosophy to make a point. If we read the gospel of John we see in the first line, "In the beginning was the word" (John 1:1). There is much Old Testament thought in that sentence, but also some Greek philosophy. The bad thing that Greek philosophy did was to confuse early Christians about how to think like Christians. They had trouble unlearning the Greek philosophy systems.

If you know anything about philosophy, you know that philosophers do their work by asking questions. That is what Socrates did. He would ask a question like, "What is justice?" His students would try to answer. Socrates would point out the weakness of their answers by asking another question. The students would refine their answers. Socrates and his students would keep this up until they came to a better understanding of justice. The question behind the heresy in Colossians is the question, "What holds the universe together?" That is not a question we ask very often, but it was a hot topic to Greek philosophers. One answer to the question is that elemental spirits held the universe together. The Gentile Christians came into the church with the belief that elemental spirits held the universe together. These elemental spirits could keep you from getting to heaven. You had to deal with these spirits now in order to get to heaven later.2

This passage in Colossians was written to squelch the worry about elemental spirits. That's why verse 9 says that the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily in Christ. The elemental spirits are nothing. Christ is all you need. Then the passage reminds the first readers that they have been baptized and raised with Christ. They are Christians now. They don't need to worry about elemental spirits. Christ opens the door to heaven for us.

Even though we don't spend too much time worrying in the same way about elemental spirits of the universe, we do recognize that the evil of the world has a spiritual dimension. We know the natural explanations of the suffering of the world, of disease, of drug addiction, of child abuse, of cruelty, of war. Christians should not argue with these natural explanations of the causes of suffering. We go to the physician for treatment for our illnesses. We also recognize a spiritual dimension to the suffering of the world. That is why we pray for people who are sick. In trying to debunk the belief in the scariness of the elemental spirits, Colossians uses a strange image. In verse 15, the passage affirms that God has disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public spectacle of them. The image behind this phrase is the practice of conquering kings to parade the defeated king and his army through the streets, while those loyal to the victorious king made fun of the defeated army. The passage puts the elemental spirits in a ridiculous light.

How well do we connect to the image of God as one who taunts, gloats, mocks, and even humiliates? Usually, we think of such behavior as kind of immature, sort of like the athletes who do a little dance after a score. Yet that is how Colossians sees God treating the spiritual causes of the world's suffering. We should take hope in that image, because it is an unmistakable image of God's triumph over the suffering we endure now. For all of the things that hurt us now, God will gloat over their defeat, adding insult to injury. We will be the ones standing on the street laughing at the things that used to make us suffer.

This second part of the passage teaches us to be diligent in deciding what we believe. If the first two verses call us to feed our faith as trust of the heart, this half calls us to think through what we believe, not necessarily accepting what we have always heard and thought. We can never agree on everything, but we can agree together to seek the truth, respecting each other's opinions.

What do we do with all of the divisions within the body of Christ? Is there any hope for unity? Can we call other Christians our brothers and sisters, even if we think differently? This passage shows us two things to cling to in that hope. First, we are one in our call to trust Christ in our hearts. We can live and walk in Christ together. We can be rooted and grounded in faith, abounding in thanksgiving together. We can support one another in that effort. I do not have to agree with you to encourage you to feed your faith and trust in Christ. Secondly, we can build on the idea in this passage that one area of thinking that is common to us all is that God is stronger than the evil of the world. God will triumph over evil and suffering. God has ultimately defeated the spiritual dimension to evil and will cause its humiliation. That's a reason to rejoice. That brings us together. That is a message that will feed our hearts and satisfy our heads. Amen.


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1. This quote comes from Mrs. Cheryl Anderson, a member of First United Methodist Church of Farmersville, Texas. It was contained in an email sent to the author and used with permission.

2. For a discussion of the elemental spirits, see Lewis R. Donelson, Colossians, Ephesians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), p. 38.