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The city of Colossae was located in the centre of what is now modern day Turkey. “Was” being the operative word as the city ceased to exist sometime toward the end of Roman times. When Paul wrote his letter to the Christians there one assumes it must have been a reasonably healthy community.
The scholars think that one of the major issues faced by the Colossian Christians was a tendency amongst some of them to believe that there were cosmic forces other than the God of Jesus which should be given a billing equal to the God of Jesus.
Paul writes to encourage them to put Christ at the centre of their lives and in today’s passage Paul under girds this argument by reminding his letter’s recipients that conversion to Christ/following Jesus should make a difference to their daily living.
3 Your
old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life—even
though invisible to spectators—is with Christ in God. He
is your life. 11 Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free, mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in Christ. |
Now this exhortation of Paul’s well and truly impacts upon us.
Indeed Paul’s words impact upon us at both a personal and communal level.
We as individuals are called to cling to Christ – to put him at the centre of things.
We as a community of Christ are called to cling to Christ – to put him at the centre of things.
And for us as individuals and as a community this means living in a way that actually looks like we have been converted!
People should be able to see the difference.
Like many people in this community Jenny and I recently went to see the movie Amazing Grace which is the story of that powerful advocate for the abolition of the slave trade, William Wilberforce.
One of the key themes of the film which connects with Paul’s argument in today’s passage is that a commitment to Christ involves making a concrete difference to the shape of this world.
Wilberforce in many ways certainly did just that and one of the people who encouraged him to make a difference, to remain in Parliament and fight for the abolition of the slave trade, was John Newton of hymn Amazing Grace fame.
And it is Newton, who only plays a limited role in the story portrayed in the film, about whom I would like to reflect a little this morning, because he in many ways reflects the kind of change, the conversion about which Paul wrote.
John Newton is a most interesting character with the emphasis on “character”, he was the son of a sea captain and eventually became one himself.
He went to sea with his father when John was only eleven. By the time he was nineteen he had sailed on many merchant ships, missed a ship for Jamaica because of his love for a lass in Kent – one Mary Catlett, been press-ganged into the Royal Navy, saw naval action in a battle with the French, deserted in an attempt to return to the arms of his girl-friend, was recaptured, flogged and ended up on a slave-trading vessel.
Soon after joining this slave trading ship Newton, as he later admitted, became caught up in the regular and systematic abuse of the slaves which included the rape of the female slaves. In his memoirs he wrote, “I was exceedingly vile indeed … I … sinned with a high hand.” 1
A recent author notes that it was not only the slaves who experienced the dark side of this man, “Wild and rambunctious, Newton antagonized his fellow crewmen and taunted his … captain.”2
Newton and the ship eventually parted company and he spent some time in Sierra Leone as the servant of a slave trader before managing to return to England in search of the love of his life, Mary Catlett, who he did eventually marry.
It was on this trip home that the story of his conversion really gets going, a conversion apparently partially triggered by the reading of Thomas a’ Kempis’ book The Imitation of Christ. Most people have heard something of the story of this trip during which a storm blew up, crew members were lost overboard and the ship itself nearly sunk. Newton worked the pumps for nine hours straight and cried out at the point where he could not go on, “Lord have mercy on us.”
Not long after
this the storm abated but Newton remembered his cry of help to God
and saw God’s hand in his deliverance:
“…The Lord had wrought a marvellous thing; I was no
longer an infidel; I heartily renounced my former profaneness …
I was quite freed from the habit of swearing.” When they reached
shore, he began to attend church and he developed a daily pattern
of spiritual discipline which involved prayer and reading the Scriptures.3
But as he was later to write, “I was greatly deficient in many respects …I cannot consider myself to have been a believer (in the full sense of the word) till a considerable time afterwards."4
The truth was that for six or more years after the experience of God in the storm on the ship he continued to be heavily involved in the slave-trade … indeed he was a ship’s captain for most of that time, keeping a log of his profits from the trade of human beings on the very desk at which he read his Bible.
After leaving the sea, to cut a long story short, he eventually became an Anglican Priest and had a most influential ministry as rector of the church of St Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street, London.
And it was in those years after leaving the sea that he “who was blind did indeed see”: he saw that the gospel had implications for the way he treated all God’s people not just some; he came to see the slave trade as evil. In the film Amazing grace, Newton is depicted as being haunted by the faces of the thousands of people he personally transported on the hell ships to a land of misery. He became an opponent of the very trade in which he had once engaged.
Newton not only influenced people like Wilberforce to fight against it, but he wrote a tract, a no holds barred description of the trade and a personal confession, Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade, which proved significant ammunition in the battle to abolish slavery.5
As two people have said to me in recent days, there is a tendency to wonder why such a strong word as “wretch” appears in Newton’s famous hymn, but when you know his story it is indeed appropriate, he was indeed one who was wretched in many ways but was saved by the love of God.
Paul encouraged
the Colossian Christians to see that following Christ means living
a life that truly reflected the change that Christ brings to the
life of the believer.
11 Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious
and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth,
slave and free, mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by
Christ, everyone is included in Christ.
Living the way of Christ is more than just naming him Lord once, it is an ongoing journey of conversion.
John Newton is a wonderful example of this. He did indeed sense the embrace of God’s grace in that storm on that ship, but it was not till years later that the full implications of that grasped him.
Sisters and
brothers,
I challenge
you to be always open to the converting love of God in Christ.
If you have never claimed Jesus as the Lord of all things, perhaps today is an opportunity to do just that.
If you named Jesus Lord many years ago, or have always known Jesus as Lord, maybe today is a day to ask what in your life needs some further conversion to his path of love and joy.
As a way of affirming our faith let us now sing Newton’s hymn. But before we do that I would like to make three comments about the words we sing.
First of all the words we sing are indeed from the pen of Newtown.
Secondly there are two verses we do not sing which appear in the hymn book, Olney hymns, which he authored:
| Amazing
Grace Amazing grace, how sweet the sound That sav’d a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see. ’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, And grace my fears reliev’d; How precious did that grace appear, The hour I first believ’d! Thro’ many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come; ’Tis grace has brought me safe thus far, And grace will lead me home. The Lord has promis’d good to me, His word my hope secures; He will my shield and portion be, As long as life endures. Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail, And mortal life shall cease; I shall possess, within the veil, A life of joy and peace. The earth shall soon dissolve like snow, The sun forbear to shine; But God, who call’d me here below, Will be forever mine. John Newton, Olney Hymns (London: W. Oliver, 1779)6 |
Thirdly while I had not known about these two verses until a few days ago, I did know that many hymn books include another verse. This verse did not come from pen of Newton but from a John P. Rees who lived during the 19th century7
When
we’ve been there ten thousand years, Bright shining as the sun, We've no less days to sing God’s praise Than when we’ve first begun. |
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Amazing
grace, how sweet the sound
That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
May we see how Christ loves us, may we see how Christ would have
us live.
Resources:
1 Adam Hochschild, Bury the chains, the British struggle
to abolish the slavery,
Pan Books, London, 2005; p.16.
2 Op. cit., p.17.
3 Adam Hochschild, op. cit., p. 18.
4 John Newton, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Newton
5 From Adam Hochschild, op cit., p.131 and John Newton
Wikipedia article op. cit.
6 Amazing Grace, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazing_Grace
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