Above and Below
Colossians 3:1-11
Emmanuel Baptist Church/FOCUS Worship; August 3, 2025
Rev. Kathy Donley
Image: Dr. Ezzideen Shehab
“Since you have been raised with Christ,” Paul writes. Earlier, he referred to going under the waters of baptism as being buried with Christ, joining believers to Christ’s suffering and death. You were buried, he says, but now “you have been raised”. Buried with Christ, but also raised as Jesus was raised from death in resurrection.
In this letter to the Christians in Colossae, Paul is addressing some kind of crisis, but we don’t know exactly what. And, as is true our churches, there are probably multiple concerns. Colossae was part of the Roman empire. Being under the authority of Rome was complicated for early Christians because they believed that Jesus, not Cesear, was Lord. That Jesus is seated at the right hand of God, exalted, above all earthly rulers like Caesar.
Paul claims that in Christ there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, slave or free. The gospel erases ethnic, religious, cultural and economic divisions. It collapses all the ways that Empire seeks to sort and divide and control. The new way of life, the new aliveness offered by Jesus erases boundaries, like those between citizens and undocumented persons, distinctions based on national origin or employment status.
So, on the one hand, the Colossians struggle against Empire, trying to live out the love and power Jesus offers in the face of a culture directly aligned against them. And, on the other, within the church, there are emerging philosophies with special rules about how to practice their faith. Paul says that he writes so that no one will be deceived by plausible arguments. He emphasizes the fullness of God which resides in Christ; they already have all that they need in Jesus and what he taught.
They lived under an earthly power which ruled by intimidation and fear and violence, in a culture bent on greed and insatiable consumption by those at the top. To me that sounds a lot like our current social and political context.
And when the Colossians turned to religious leaders for wisdom, they were sometimes met with hollow and deceptive arguments like we are. Do you know that it is popular among some Christians now to say that empathy is a sin?[1] The hollow argument there is that too much compassion clouds your judgment. Empathy apparently leads you to advocate for the human rights of trans folks or to protest the government’s abduction and deportation of parents and children. But sure, the sin we should be repenting of is compassion.
The fact that we are living through such a time has me keenly interested in this message. Since you have been raised, since you are people of resurrection, since you are baptized – remember who you are. Set your mind on that reality. Do not be disheartened by the horrors of empire. Do not be deceived by false narratives or twisted teachings masquerading as new Christianity. Remember who you are – buried and raised with Christ. Remember what you know – a reality that is deep and true.
“Set your mind on things above,” Paul writes. Orient yourself to what is eternally true. The sense of the verb is that we have to do this repeatedly. Don’t focus on the latest absurdity, don’t engage in political ping-pong to get your bearings for the day. Over and over again, make it a habit to set your mind on things above. We are to seek the things above, because our starting point, our source, is the risen Christ whose power is self-giving love.
This text has sometimes been twisted. People have used it to claim that we only need to worry about being spiritual, and not to be concerned about what might be happening here on earth. That is absolutely not what Paul intends. Because if we orient ourselves around Jesus, if we remember that we are buried with him, we know that he was deeply involved in the earthly life, that he endured the worst human suffering while demonstrating the peace and justice of God’s reign. We reject a false binary between above and below, between the earthly and heavenly, because Christ is in every little bit of it. Through our baptism, we identify with Jesus, and this calls us to “participate in the suffering of God in the life of the world”[2]
Ezzideen Shehab is a 28-year-old Palestinian doctor. He worked in the Arab Baptist Hospital in Gaza until it was bombed and closed. After that, Dr Ezzideen opened a clinic in northern Gaza that offers free medical services to a population repeatedly traumatized and wounded by relentless war and hunger. In addition to immersing himself in caring for his people, he writes about what he sees, bearing witness to their immense suffering.
About two weeks ago, he said that Fridays in Gaza used to be holy. Fridays were the days when your father came home with some meat, fish or a piece of chicken and the family smiled across the table, gave thanks to God, and felt human. Even the poorest families did this, enduring hunger all week for the hope of that meal and the illusion of normal life. But then he wrote,
“Today is Friday. And I walked through the streets of Gaza, not to celebrate, not even to feed, but to hunt for rice. Rotten rice. Gray grains that stick to your fingers and taste like nothing. Anything. Anything at all to fool the stomach into silence.
My brother searched one market. I searched another. We returned with crumbs. We paid with the last coins we had. They ask for gold in exchange for ash. And we pay it, because the children must eat, and because we no longer dare to say what is fair. But I have not come to speak about rice. I have come to confess what I saw.
A truck passed by. It was empty. Its floor was covered in a thin layer of flour dust. Just dust. Not bags. Not bread. Only the trace of something that might once have saved a child.
And then I saw them. Not rebels. Not criminals. Children. They ran, ran like hunted things, toward that truck. They climbed it with hands that have never held toys. They fell to their knees as if before an altar. And they began to scrape. One had a broken lid. Another, a piece of cardboard.
But the rest, the rest used their hands. Their tongues. They licked it. Do you hear me? They licked flour dust from rusted steel. From dirt. From the back of a truck that had already driven away.
One boy was laughing. Not because he was happy, but because the body goes mad when it is starving. Another was crying, quietly, like someone who no longer believes anyone is listening.
And I stood there. With all my shame. With my hands in my pockets, like a man waiting for a bus. Like I wasn't watching the end of the world. I wanted to scream. But what scream can reach Heaven, when Heaven itself is deaf? What words can I offer?
What words can explain the sound of a child's tongue scraping against rust for a taste of flour? There are no metaphors left.
There is no beauty in this.
Only sin.
Only crime.
And we are all guilty.
You. Me.
The ones who sent the truck.
The ones who sent the planes. . .
This is the twenty-first century. But history has not moved forward.
It has swallowed its own children and called it progress.
I don't want to write this. I want to unsee it. I want to forget the boy who licked the floor. But I can't. Because I saw him.
Because he is real. Because he is more real than all the words l've written. And because if I forget him, then I am no longer human.”[3]
Friends, this is the world in which we find ourselves. A world where entire Palestinian families have been erased and thousands remain buried beneath the rubble, while those unaffected casually debate whether or not this meets the technical definition of genocide. A time when compassion is called sin and many American Christians are publicly celebrating the unlawful imprisonment and torture of human beings made in the image of God. Christ have mercy.
Almost a hundred years ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was distressed by German Christians’ lack of action to defend human life and their distortion of Paul’s instruction to “seek the things that are above.” In a sermon on this text he said,
“Today, immensely important things will be decided by whether we Christians have strength enough to witness before the world that we are not dreamers with our heads in the clouds . . . that our faith really is not the opium that keeps us content within an unjust world but that we, especially because we set our minds on things that are above, only protest all the more tenaciously and resolutely on this earth.”[4]
From a world like ours to a people like us in a time like ours, the letter to the Colossians still speaks. Since you have been raised, since you are people of resurrection, since you are baptized – remember who you are. Don’t you dare give up in the face of the horrors of empire. Do not be deceived by false narratives or twisted teachings masquerading as new Christianity. Keep setting your mind on things above and with that mindset, loudly and courageously protest the suffering below.
Remember who you are – buried and raised with Christ. Remember what you know – a reality that is deep and true. Thanks be to God.
[1] https://albertmohler.com/2025/02/19/joe-rigney/
[2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison
[3] Dr. Ezzideen Shehab, July 11, 2025 https://x.com/ezzingaza/status/1943758629791768682
[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his sermon The Things that Are Above, delivered at Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Berlin, June 19, 1932