Eternal God, pour out your Spirit upon us, that we might be sensitive to your presence, attentive to your Word, and faithful always to your way. Through Jesus Christ our Lord we pray. Amen.
 

I have been thinking recently about summer jobs, the kind we had when we were in high school and college. I remember one friend worked at the Ranchers and Farmers Coop, helping customers load hay bales on their trucks. Quite a job in Phoenix in the heat of the summer, but he loved horses and contact with people who owned them. Another friend had a much better job. He was a lifeguard at a city swimming pool. A third friend, whom I thought was very lucky, worked in the pro shop of a municipal golf course; one of the perks of the job was a free round of golf each week. Three sisters worked their family’s grocery store. A studious young woman worked in a law office, another worked in a school district credit union.

When I was younger, my job one summer was to scrape and paint the white wooden fence that surrounded our property. Later when we moved to a new house, I came home from college and built a fence and laid a flagstone walkway for our new home. During college one summer I worked at a private camp in the mountains above Redlands. For several weeks I dug leach lines for a new septic system for the camp. When the campers arrived, I was responsible for the counselors-in-training. Several times I thought about asking if I could go back to digging more leach lines.

I mentioned thinking about high school and college summer jobs to one of our colleagues. She responded, saying to think about such things was a sign I was not adjusting to my new decade of life and my subconscious was wanting to regress. Don’t you just love people like that? You have a couple of pleasant thoughts about a particular subject and they label your thoughts as avoidance techniques, denying present reality, indicative of an underlying subnormal pathology of the emotions. Here I thought I was just having a few pleasant thoughts.

It seems that when Paul wrote to the Colossians his perception was they were over-worked and being run ragged in their efforts to serve their many gods. Paul used what he considered to be a pejorative term, “philosophies,” to describe these many other traditions. It is not that Paul, or the Judeo-Christian tradition, was anti-intellectual. Isaiah states, “Come, let us reason together, says the Lord” (1:18). Paul’s letters demonstrate he is one of the greatest minds of all times. We United Methodists formulate our theology based on scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. Paul is not against wisdom or knowledge, but he is against these philosophies because he sees them as promoting the love of wisdom just to experiment with ideas.

In 1 Timothy 6:10 Paul does not say money is the root of all evil. Rather he says, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” So, here in Colossians he warns against the love of wisdom. It was the love of wisdom that led the Greeks to envision so many different gods. Paul points out that when one is bowing to one god, that person is condemned or disqualified by another competing god. As the Greeks compulsively tried to satisfy every hemi-, semi-, and demi-ruler of the spiritual world they wore themselves out for nothing.

Paul counters the Greek pantheon of gods with the one God of the Judeo-Christian tradition. This is the God made known in Jesus. This is the God who is so good and gracious that Jesus died showing us the extent of God’s love and we are now free of the bonds of sin and death. By his death Christ has given us new life and liberty. In Christ there is no limit to our growth. All the fullness of God dwells in him. There is no need for any of the “philosophies” for they only lure us away from God’s grace in Christ.

Some people complain their bosses increase their workload or expand their jobs but do not provide necessary resources. In Colossians Paul makes clear the necessary resources have already been given for Christian living. The motivation then for faithful living is not fear of punishment, or a sense of duty, or a need to be needed, or a hope of reward, whether in this life (in terms of self-fulfillment) or in the next life. The primary dynamic that governs Christian behavior is rather a living out of our relationship with Christ, an appropriating of what God has already accomplished in Christ. This puts the emphasis where it belongs in Christian living—not on human willpower or effort, but on God’s grace. With thankfulness we respond to God’s grace as Bishop Mel Wheatley stated, “We seek the well-being of the whole being, of each being, including our own being, and thus fulfill the will of the Supreme Being.”

With the understanding that we are living in response to God’s grace, Paul states, “As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, abounding in thanksgiving.” Here, then, are three jobs for this summer:

First, be rooted in Christ. Drawing on an agricultural image, Paul directs us to put down our roots even further into the rich soil that is the love that Jesus has given to us. We are to open ourselves to even greater comfort, strength, power, and energy from Christ’s love. Much like Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet we are to sink our roots deep into Christ. Perhaps this summer we root ourselves deeper into Bible study. We set aside time each day to read a chapter or two, take time for reflection, make some notes in a journal. How might you be rooted more deeply in Christ?

Second, we are to be built up in Christ. Drawing from a construction image, and building on the foundation of Christ, we are to be open to God’s spirit as it expands us, draws our faith to new dimensions, and opens new areas of life where we can receive, but also give the love of God to others. Perhaps we let the Spirit guide us to a new expression of our faith. We work in Sunday school, we join a small group, we start a group. We sign up to help in the Big Mission Project, participate in food ministry, become a SPIN mentor. We follow the Spirit’s lead into a new arena of faith trusting in the Spirit’s guidance.

The third job is we are to be made firm or be established in the faith. Here, I think of muscles, developing muscle tone, and working on our personal conditioning as we grow firm in faith. What can we do to make our spiritual life stronger? What can take our relationship with God from being a crutch we lean on in times of weakness, to becoming a source of strength, stamina, and vigor all the time? What will hone our spirits for the tough times and fill us with joyful, grateful trust all the time? Can we tone our spiritual muscles by trusting God with more and more of our lives? Molly gives us an excellent example of such trust. Not only is she developing and leading the Big Mission Project in mid-city, but she and Matt have moved to mid-city. They are immersing their lives in that community. We firm up our trust by stretching ourselves, by trusting God more and more.

Finally, all three of these jobs are done in thankfulness for the great love we have already received from God in Christ. As we pursue these jobs, we will expand our capacities to receive God’s love and to share it with others.

At one time years ago (here I go regressing again) I thought it would be a great experiment if everyone could have three months off from their regular employment. One month would be vacation, a time of real Sabbath for mind, body, and spirit. The other two months would be time for trying out a line of work different from our usual occupation. It would be an experiment to see how others live. It would be a time to walk, not just a mile in another person’s moccasins, but for two months. It would be a time to see life, other people, and God from a different perspective. It is not at all a practical idea, but might be a great adventure.

Those who organize the lectionary and have placed this reading in the middle of summer are calling us to a similar adventure. They, and Paul, call us in these summer weeks to three jobs: to be more deeply rooted in Christ, to be built up in Christ, and to be firmed up in Christ. These three summer jobs will draw us closer to Christ and closer to grace-filled living with others. Not bad for summer jobs.