Rev. Dr. Clint Burnett

Pentecost+10 2025
Rev. Dr. Clint Burnett
Colossians 3:1-17

Good morning, grace and peace to you this beautiful morning. I bring you greetings from your sister parish in Knoxville, Old North Abbey, and we pray that you are well, and we trust that God and His faithfulness is moving you.

Christ is moving among you, sanctifying you and using you for His good purpose in beautiful, Maryville, Tennessee. Years ago, to prepare for my application to graduate schools, for my doctorate, I had to undertake a standardized test known as the graduate Record Examination or GRE for short, which is a prerequisite for admission to many American graduate programs. Maybe you have had to suffer through the GRE.

The test goal is to measure one’s reading comprehension, understanding of mathematics, writing capability, and critical thinking skills. To prepare for the exam, I purchased an exam prep book from Amazon. I read through it.

I took the practice exam, and in the end, I did not achieve the score that I needed to get into the graduate schools to which I was applying. Therefore, I bought a second exam prep book, and I did the exact same thing. Once again, to reading through cover to cover and taking the practice exam, I did not do as well as I needed.

So, I bought a third exam prep book. Now, this book was exactly like the first two, say for one critical difference. The difference was that at the beginning of the book, the author of the book informed the reader that one’s test score is related directly to one’s perspective about the exam.

Rather than seeing it as a boring, long, and laborious test, the author of the book encouraged readers to see it as an opportunity to learn and to grow and to show off one’s skills. Therefore, when I came to a short story with questions about the migratory habits of seals that tested my reading comprehension, I should not say, “man, another story about the migratory habits of seals. Rather, I should say, “Oh, boy, I get to learn about the migratory habits of seals.”

I must say, after putting this advice into practice, reading through that exam prep book, and taking the practice exam, I finally achieved the score that I needed. Thereupon, I immediately registered for the GRE, took the test, thanks be to God, scored what I needed to score to get into graduate school. What’s interesting is I reflect upon my journey through the GRE, is that, among those three books, my reading comprehension, my understanding of mathematics, my writing capability, and my critical thinking skills did not change that much.

The only thing that changed in the process of studying for the GRE was my own perspective about the test. Now I contribute my success in that test to just that. Instead of dreading it, I embrace the GRE.

I became excited about it, and I looked at it as an opportunity to learn. And a somewhat similar and much more important way, St. Paul and our passage this morning from Colossians, is trying to accomplish the same thing for us, getting us to change our perspective.

His main goal in Colossians chapter 3, verses 1 through 17 is to have readers alter their perspective from an earthly one to a heavenly one, which by God’s grace will result in holy changes in our behavior and for the glorification of God. He accomplishes this objective by doing four things in our passage.

First, St. Paul exhorts us to reorient our area of concentration. Second, God’s grace will produce in us the removal of ungodly vices. Third this will allow us to robe ourselves in heavenly virtues, and finally, number four God and the gospel will reign in us.

Let’s begin with our first observation. St. Paul exhorts us to reorient our area of concentration. The Apostle begins this by noting that because of our baptism into Christ, which he has just talked about in chapter 2, God has put us believers in the highest place of honor in the cosmos. He has raised us spiritually to heaven and seated us next to God, the Son, who is enthroned at God’s right hand.

Let me say that one more time, because of our baptism, he has raised us spiritually to heaven and seated us next to God, the Son, who is enthroned to the right hand of God the Father. Because of this divine and mystical feat, St. Paul encourages us to do two things.

We must search for the things above. The verb has the connotation of action, of actually doing something. And the Bible uses it frequently to describe, for example, in the old Greek version of the Old Testament, how the future king Saul left his father’s house to go out and search for those lost donkeys, which eventually led him to Samuel and his anointing as a king.

Therefore, we must actively seek out heavenly matters in our lives. But once we find these heavenly matters, St. Paul then encourages us to be minded of them.

This verb is one that St. Paul uses a lot, especially in the letter to the Philippians. And it’s really kind of difficult for us to translate, because it has the idea of actually thinking critically about something, and then concentrating on that very thing, and then letting this critical thought and this concentration result in a change of action in our lives.

To drive home this point, St. Paul reminds us that we have died. We have died to sin, and we have died to ourselves and our baptism and then been united with Christ.

To the point that our own lives no longer exist, we are hidden with Christ in God the Father. Now we get a clue about what heavenly things St. Paul is telling us to seek after and to be minded about in Colossians chapter 3 and verse 4, when he references Jesus’ second coming.

Therefore, he is exhorting us to concentrate, to seek out, to be mindful of the gospel story with particular attention to its end-result in goal. The second coming of Jesus, and the establishment of the fullness of God’s kingdom, here on earth, a kingdom of peace and holiness and righteousness. It’s only when we can reorient our area of concentration that, by God’s grace, we can then allow him to remove vices from our lives.

Thus, St. Paul exhorts us in Colossians chapter 3 and verse 5, to put to death, literally, to kill our earthly members, which are parts of our lives that distract us and draw us away from being minded of those heavenly matters. The apostle then provides a not exhaustive list of 11 total vices, which we are to flee from in Colossians chapter 3 verses 5 through 9 These include sexual immorality, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, greed, which he likens to idolatry.

Anger, wrath, evil, blaspheming, vulgar speech, and lying, particularly to one another. These vices only produce God’s wrath, which has started being revealed from heaven and will be completed at the second coming of Jesus. Such behavior should not be part of our lives now, even though St. Paul acknowledges that before we became Christians, we lived in these vices and lived in these sins.

And now, people who have been raised to heaven are to be co enthroned spiritually with Jesus. We whose lives are hidden with Christ in God, are called by God’s grace to put the evil that defined that old person we used to be far away from us. We’re literally to kill it.

This is not something that we do by our own power, but it’s something that God gives us the ability as Christians to do. And if we go back to chapter 2 and verse 15, we see the idea of stripping the rulers and the authorities of this age, probably evil spirits who have dominion over us, of their power over us. St.

Paul uses the same verb in our passage to talk about as stripping off our old man. We can do that because God has already taken away the power of any evil forces in the world to have influence on us if we just tap into that power. This reference to putting to death our old person brings us to our third observation in our passage.

As individuals who are now new men and women of God, spiritually co and thrown next to Jesus, we must robe ourselves accordingly. We are in the heavenly court, spiritually. Therefore, we should dress like.

As part of the new humanity of which Jesus is the first, St. Paul orients us and tells us once again, we are God’s elect, the chosen ones, God’s beloved, and saints in progress. In this new race into which we belong, there is nothing of value in the old race.

The old race is defined by death and sin and Satan. Hence, it matters not to his original audience, whether they be Jew or Greek, whether they be circumcised or uncircumcised, whether or not they are a barbarian or a Scythian, a free person or a slave. And today, in our own context, we might add whether or not someone is an American or not.

A Trump supporter or a Trump detractor, a Democrat, or a Republican, and the list of things that divide God’s people goes on and on. The reason that none of these distinctions matter for us is that as Christians, St. Paul tells us that the Messiah, Christ is all things, and that He is in all things for us.

He’s everything. He’s the only thing that matters. Therefore, at the end of the day, our new ontological existence, the very existence of our new being as Christians, trumps everything from our old lives.

Consequently, instead of focusing on the things that divide us, we must by God’s grace focus on these heavenly virtues of which St. Paul once again provides a non-exhaustive list, but this one is sevenfold. Compassion, mercy, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, and most importantly of all, he says, love, which is the bond of perfection in the church.

Along with these virtues, the apostle notes that we must put on one good work in particular, especially if we’re going to live together in the church, in the community of Christ. We must forgive one another of the sins that we commit against one another. Let’s just pause right there and reflect for just a second.

Since the earliest days of the church, the apostles recognized that God’s people, though spiritually raised and seated next to Christ in the heavenly places, we still are in our old self and sometimes we sin against one another. And instead of being surprised when a brother or sister sins against us, remember, perspective is important. We must look at it as an opportunity for us to be just like our Lord.

St. Paul says he forgave others. When we have an opportunity to forgive, we can be just a little bit more like Jesus.

And finally, this morning, if we reorient our area of concentration to heaven, which by God’s grace will produce the removal of these ungodly vices and allow us to robe ourselves in these heavenly virtues. We can then move on to our passage’s fourth observation. That is, we can let God and the gospel reign in and over us.

This occurs by allowing the peace that Christ produces. That’s what the peace of Christ here means. The peace that Christ produces in our lives to rule in our hearts is peace is not just the absence of strife.

This is not just what we have a ceasefire. This piece consists of safety, of spiritual health, of spiritual prosperity, of tranquility that only can be found in Christ and contentment, that only be found in Christ.

This is why St. Paul finishes the verse by saying, the result of Christ’s peace, ruling, in our hearts is that we might be thanksgivers, or people who live a Eucharistic life for the word here, be thankful, is the plural, adjectival, or just an adjective form of the word from which we derive Eucharist. If we live this kind of life, the gospel message about Jesus will then live in us and provide a song in our hearts that we can then use to teach each other, and we will need to be taught by each other every single day. This will result in our in our fellow Christians living that Eucharistic life, too, for the outcome of our singing is everything that we do, will be done in the name of Jesus, which gives thanks, the same word for Eucharist here, to God, through the word, that God has already done for us, through his Son, in the name of the Father, and of a Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen. Amen.