"Bible - The Musical: The Christ Hymn"

What do Bill Wenzel, Mark Hidebrand, Jonathan Yoder, Phil Ladd, Bill Braden, Cliff Johnson, Mick Baugher, and so many others have in common?  Well, they all have the misfortune of having known me for years, but they’ve also all signed up, put on a uniform, and put themselves at physical risk to serve our country in the armed forces.  It’s one thing to spout an opinion from the comfort of a pulpit or a family room couch or a college lectern, but these guys (and people like them) have stepped forward when others step back, knowing that they’re putting themselves between you and harm... and that should always earn a tearful “Thank you!” from the rest of us.  So Happy Memorial Day! and a very special “Thank you!” to all of you who have worn our flag on your sleeve and trained to defend us.

This week at First Covenant, we finished up our Sunday School classes for the year (we always take the Summer off to give our teachers and families a bit of a rest and the opportunity to take the vacations that they deserve).  Well, I didn’t really finish off our Adult Class on Philippians, but we at least came to a stopping point by looking at Paul’s impressive résumé, which he shares with the church to make a point -- not the point that he was impressive or that we should be impressed by such résumés (since he says that he considers all of that “rubbish” -- which is a bit more colorful in the Greek), but rather the point that we really shouldn’t be impressed by stuff like that.  Too many people think that Person X is better, or “more saved,” than Person Y because of what they’ve accomplished, or what kind of church background they’ve had, or how they dot their “i” or cross their “t” when they write, but Paul reminds us that all of that is less than nothing -- it’s actually detrimental -- if it makes us stutter-step in simply focusing on knowing Christ more and more, and making Him known to others.

In fact, we talked about that in our message this week.  In the final sermon in our series looking at “The Bible--The Musical!” we went through Paul’s hymn of the early church in Colossians 1:15-20.  Paul could’ve just listed doctrinal truths about Christ, but instead, he wanted to make sure that we sang those truths -- that we internalized them, that we owned them, that we sang them in the shower and hummed them in the car and really knew them on a deep, personal level.

Jesus was not simply our Saviour, not simply the first “offspring” of God.  As we see in John 1:1 (and, for that matter, in Genesis 1:1), Christ was and always has been God’s creative Word, actively and consciously creating everything that is and ever has been.  He’s fully God -- not just full of God, but God’s fullness in Him -- and He always has been.  And even though everything rightly belongs to Him as our Creator, He nonetheless made the personal choice to die to bring His errant creation back into relationship with Him, so that we could know Him once again... and make Him known...

If there was ever someone who put on a uniform so that He could put His own life on the line to save others, it would be our Lord.  On this Memorial Day, that’s worth remembering... and praising God for... and emulating in our own lives...