This is the third in a series in a collaborative reading of Colossians Remixed by Brian Walsh & Sylvia Keesmaat. Part 1. Part 2.

What must have it been like to hear someone tell you about Jesus in the first century AD? What would they have said and what objections would it have raised? It’s a really interesting question because we can easily forget how much the world of our time has been shaped by 2000 years of Christianity. What presuppositions would have existed for the hearer and the teller? What everyday experiences would have shaped the reception of the message about Jesus Christ?

That’s where Walsh & Keesmaat start chapter 3 with an first person imaginative account of how Nympha became a follower of Jesus through her friend Lydia. Firstly, I wish more ‘commentaries’ were this creative in how they approach introducing their topic. They haven’t dived into facts and figures and a brief history of Colossae but they’ve told a story!

What quickly becomes apparent both as the story is told and then later commented on is how important the context of the Roman Empire is to the authors. Empire hangs like a shadow over everything, shaping it in ways seen and unseen. Its presence felt everywhere just like the Empire in the Star Wars movies. “The whole rhythm of my life, especially in the city, was shaped by the empire,” Nympha recounts. The contention is that not much has really changed since then.

The peace & prosperity of Pax Romana is founded on the conquests of the legions. Material wealth is founded on the impoverishment of subjugated peoples. Nympha comes to an awareness that her life of comfort and ease to which she had never given much thought was a consequence of an empire whose methods she began to see were questionable and often unpalatable.

In this context someone else other than Caesar claiming to forgive sins, bring peace and be LORD over lives was subversive and potentially dangerous. Caesar was being challenged in his divinity, his rule, his righteousness, his power and was being challenged by a Jewish rabbi from Judea. It was, it is, quite the thing.

Either Caesar had brought forgiveness of our sins, fruitfulness and peace through the great victories he had wrought, or Jesus had brought forgiveness of our sins, fruitfulness and peace through his paradoxical victory on a Roman cross. But this seemed impossible, unimaginable!

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And they capture well what it means, or at least should mean, to find an authentic community of Jesus’ disciples.

I began to attend more regularly the meetings of those who follow Jesus. They welcomed me in, even though they knew that my position in the community could prove a threat to their security. They were prepared to practice such a risky love, they explained, because their Lord embodied such love even to the point of death on a cross. So I wanted to know more about this Jesus. The life of this assembly of Jesus followers awakened in me an insatiable curiosity about Jesus and his story. I don’t know how to explain it, but the more I met with this community and the more I learned about Jesus, the more I wanted to join them in following him. And the more I followed Jesus, the less enamoured I became with Caesar.

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The case Walsh & Keesmaat then advance is that we are not so different from the Colossians because we too live under an empire even if it doesn’t have a Caesar. So how do they define empire? Empires they argue are,

1. Built on systemic centralizations of power
2. Secured by structures of socioeconomic and military control
3. Religiously legitimated by powerful myths
4. Sustained by a proliferation of images that captivate the imaginations of the population

The empire we live under, they argue, is that of global capitalism and then point to the World Bank, the IMF, the disparities between northern and southern hemispheres, American exceptionalism, Hollywood, and the constant stream of messages that say in ways subtle and not at all subtle ‘consume, consume, consume’.

I think there’s a lot to be said for this critique but I think the differences are also telling at least in making it clear that there is something to resist. There is after all NO global capitalist empire. There is no Caesar in that regard, but there is a global capitalist system which shapes so much of life no matter where you happen to live it. I think resisting Caesar is harder, he can arrest me. But it’s also easier, I’m resisting Caesar because I’m following Jesus. A nebulous system is harder to identify and therefore harder to resist.