Joyce Kirby Parker

Colossians 3:1-5, 12-17

I had a running joke with Joyce about estimating figures.  I am pretty loose about details.  Joyce was always very precise about details. Especially when it came to dollars and cents.  So, I would ask Joyce, “How are the pledges doing? Just give me a ball park figure.”  Joyce couldn’t do that.  The next day, Joyce would write me back, “The pledges are $7456.34 behind – as of last Thursday.”  She finally got to the point that she would tell me they were about $7456  behind – but only with a pained expression.

            Joyce was one of those persons for whom estimates wouldn’t do.  But it wasn’t simply some hangup of hers or personality quirk.  I think Joyce’s precision with numbers was an expression of a profound insight:  Christian faith and life is not something lived in general, approximate, non specific terms.  The Christian faith is always lived through specific commitments, and acted out through concrete acts of compassion and charity, mission and ministry.

            The author of Colossians had a similar perspective on the Christian life.  He writes, since you have been raised with Christ – you personally and specifically – since you have been raised with Christ, then LIVE like you have been raised with Christ.  Live with particular and provocative commitments:  live with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.  These are very specific kinds of virtues.  Because the Christian life is about quite specific kinds of values and commitments.

            The Christian life is a covenant filled life:  And covenants are about specifics:  I promise to do this and you promise to do that. In the Bible God makes specific covenants with Noah and Abraham and Moses and David and the Hebrew people.  In the Bible’s New Testament in Jesus Christ God makes a new covenant with us, and calls us to live in covenant with God and neighbor.  The Christian life is about discipleship:  following Christ and his teachings.  The Christian life is about spiritual disciplines of prayer and Bible study.

            The Christian life is acted out in very concrete and specific ways, because the Christian faith is rooted in the very concrete and specific promises of God.  God is not a fuzzy warm feeling, not a generic power or force out there somewhere.  God, the God of the Bible, God our Father, is the God we know through Jesus Christ.  And this God gives us very specific promises. 

God promises to be with us in our grief.  To be with us as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death.  God promises us that grace abounds in the home built on the law and word of God we find in the scriptures.  God promises to be with us always – even to the end of time. God promises that the weary and heavy laden will find rest with him.  God promises us that in his house are many rooms, prepared for us.  God promises us that Christ died for us, so that we might live in Christ. God promises us that nothing can separate us from the love given us through Jesus Christ our Lord.

In Colossians we read, “When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.”  This is God’s promise to you.  In the face of death, this is God’s promise to you.

Dear friends:  receive and act on the promises of God!  And now, may the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which you were called in the one body.  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.  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.  AMEN.

R. Charles Grant

Bon Air Presbyterian Church

July 18, 2005