Being Clothed With Christ

Colossians 3:9-17

*Acts 4:32-37 (said together in bold)

John 14:15-27

Did you know that the Christian faith is an immensely practical one? We might not always feel it, because what we do here can feel very different than what happens in the world and even if we wanted to it can feel difficult to replicate this in our daily lives. In some ways, this stark difference is on purpose. As we heard in our passage from John, we are different from the world; we have a relationship with Jesus Christ and that fundamentally changes everything. So, church and the practices that we embody are meant to help us realize and live into that change.

If we even take a general overarching look at our service, what we do together every Sunday we will see that it is trying to shape our hearts and practices for the rest of our lives. This is where we learn how to live in God’s Kingdom. It starts with a welcome and a drawing close to God as we invite God to draw close to us. Then we read from the Bible, which is us sitting at the feet of Jesus to hear and learn from Him as we receive His Holy Spirit. We pour over and explore that word in a sermon - bringing it to life in a new way in our present reality. In the creed, we confess who God is as the source and centre of all things. We pray, turning to God with all our needs, our hopes, our glory, our thanks. We confess our sins, recognizing that we are not good enough and we need God - yet through his grace and forgiveness, He makes us good enough. Then, we offer each other God’s peace - in a way the world can never offer it. Now, having seen how much God gives us, we know we can trust him, so we give back to him generously in the offertory and we give him earthly things in the bread and the wine, so that he might enter in and make it Holy. So, we tell the story of God’s saving work through history at communion, culminating in Jesus inviting us to His table to consume, be filled by, and be shaped by His life. Then we go out, filled with Jesus’ holiness, empowered, guided, and sharing God’s love in His community and beyond. All of this is wrapped and enveloped by praise in hymns, psalms, prayer and so much more. Praise that acknowledges the height and wonder of God as the one who is the fundamental good of all things and loves us enough to change things for good. I could go on further, but each of these is a sermon unto itself.

I wanted to go over our service briefly because what we do together here on a Sunday isn’t something that we do just because we think we should. Sunday worship is something we do for many reasons. A big one is because our worship is constructed of practices that should shape our whole life. Confession, praise, welcome, sitting at the feet of Jesus, passing on a heavenly peace, etc. should all be things that we never stop doing. What we do together is helping to shape us to be like Jesus and to live in and fit in His Kingdom. We have to be purposeful and practical about it - so that we can draw this reality into our daily lives. Coming on a Sunday is an important step, but in some ways, it is just the first step, after baptism, to living this new life in Jesus.

My hope for us over Lent and into the days, months, and years following, is that we together might take practical steps to grow in our faith. This sermon series is a part of that, but I also want to urge you to join our Lent Bible Studies and come to the day-long retreat in two weeks. We are going to be looking at practical ways for us to do this work of knowing and becoming more like Jesus Christ.

We get a helpful image in our reading from Colossians. Paul tells us that we have put off the habits of our old self and now we have been clothed in Christ. I imagine it like we have been wearing the wrong clothes. We have walked out to subzero Canadian weather only wearing a rain jacket, or something fancy, or something skimpy, or rags. We sadly see this unfitting clothing and maybe even do it, even when we know it is ridiculous. Yet, it is like Jesus has come to us offering us the most comfortable and warm jacket that we have ever seen or known. I once lived out an example of this. When I was an actor, I did some shows in Qatar, in the Middle East. A big part of it was wearing a costume that was covered in mirrors. I will tell you that this costume was immensely impractical, especially for the Middle Eastern heat and for any kind of freedom. I always looked forward to getting it off and getting into something more fitting.

This is not unlike our relationship with God. We have clothed ourselves in a lot of things. If you think about this metaphor spiritually and relationally: it is like sometimes we wear armor because we have been hurt. Sometimes, we wear shorts in winter, because we would rather have our freedom than God’s warmth. Sometimes, we wear fancy but impractical things because we want attention, but don’t trust our simple relationship with God. Sometimes we wear rags because we don’t have anything else, not recognizing that God has given us more. There are so many spiritual and social practices that we have and do practice that don’t come from faith - that don’t come from Jesus Christ, so we need to shed those practices and instead take on God’s so that we might become clothed by and be like Him.

Here is a practical problem though. One that we experience daily. Just because we have been clothed by Jesus. Just because we have a relationship with Jesus, doesn’t mean that everything has just changed. The world around us is still broken, let's face it, we are still too often broken. I imagine it this way, when we are clothed by Jesus, it is like a child putting on their parent’s clothes, they might not fit, but they have the opportunity to grow into them. I remember in high school going to one of my first formals and putting on one of my grandpa’s suits. It was baggy and didn’t quite fit, but there was something special about it. There was an honor, dignity, and specialness that I knew I wanted to grow into. Guess what? Every year I would put it back on and find that it fit a little better.

It is the same way in our faith. The clothing of Jesus Christ doesn’t quite fit yet. Yet, the simple fact that we are wearing it means that we are being marked, protected, warmed, welcomed, given glory, honor, holiness, and a shape to grow into. Yet, we have to be purposeful about how we grow. We know that if we eat the wrong things, push our bodies in the wrong way, or don’t listen and learn, our growth can be stunted, or we can grow in negative ways, or we lose the growth we have gained.

So, the first thing is to depend on God for our growth. We need to depend on His guidance, His wisdom, and His faithfulness if we ever hope to live into it. Ash Wednesday was an important reminder of the humility that is needed to do that. Our service every Sunday is also a helpful reminder of what that dependence on God looks like. The big question is how do we integrate our experience and practice here in this moment into our daily lives. Our lives by necessity cannot look like a Sunday service, but our lives can be injected with the elements of it.

We read that passage from Acts together. That talked all about the early church. This ideal reality where they lived, worked, and worshipped together in a way that cared for everyone and brought people to Jesus. It was like their worship and community were spreading themselves into their homes and slowly overturning the order of things in the world around them.

This reality that they lived in is something we may be scared of, but it is also something we hope for. We might be scared of sharing everything, or for faith to become our life, or to share and practice our faith in public, but we do hope for a world where all people are served and cared for, we do hope for a world that might live out God’s love, we do hope for a community, a family that we might be safe in and supported by. The difficult thing is that these hopes and fears come hand in hand. We have to trust God, despite our fears. We need to put on the practices and do the things that might be uncomfortable for us because they will shape us, our community, and the world to be more like Jesus.

Five areas will help us think practically about our faith. We can see all of them in Acts chapter 2. Number 1 is Worship: in vs 47 - they ate with gracious hearts, they praised God. Number 2 is discipleship: in vs 42, and 46 - they devoted themselves to the apostle's teaching, breaking of bread, and prayers. Number 3 is fellowship: in vs 42 and 46 - they devoted themselves to fellowship and spent time together in the temple courts. Number 4 is Outreach, which is both giving and serving: in vs 43-45 - the disciples did signs and wonders, they shared everything in common (no possession was considered one person’s alone, and they sold their possessions and goods to distribute to anyone in need. Number 5, is Evangelism and this makes up almost the whole remaining portion of Acts 2 as you will remember at Pentecost the Holy Spirit drives them out to proclaim the gospel and bring people into the good news and God added to their number daily.

All 5 areas, Worship, Discipleship, Fellowship, Evangelism, and Outreach are important parts of a healthy life and church. We as individuals are probably better and more active in some than in others, just like we as a church are too, but the hope is that we grow in all of them, because they are all things that Jesus did and calls us to live into too. We as a church and individually are going to spend time looking at what we have been doing, but also where we are called to grow next.

Jesus has called us to not just an improved life, but a transformed life. He comes to us in all of his faithfulness and invites us to take a single step at a time. At our first step He clothes us, in our second step He welcomes us, and in our third step, He fills us. As the Holy Spirit fills us, let us follow Him, practically, creating habits and practices that help us in our daily lives to realize this new life He has prepared for us. We are already being transformed, we just need to join in the work. As we do, we will see God transform our lives, our communities, our workplaces and so much more. AMEN