This is the seventh in a series in a collaborative reading of Colossians Remixed by Brian Walsh & Sylvia Keesmaat. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6

Well, that was quite the hiatus. But I’m on sabbatical now and one of my goals is to finish this reading & blogging project because well, it’s really good! Although this is part 7 in this series, we’re actually in chapter 9 of the book and the subject at hand is ethics. The nub of the issue at hand here is this:

Can a text like Colossians 3 still be heard as good news in a postmodern culture that has justifiably grown suspicious of absolutistic totality thinking?

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And that’s a good question. Where do we begin to make the case to a postmodern culture that not just the message of the kingdom but the lifestyle it entails along with the ethics and virtues are good.

Our civilisation is reacting against the norms of Christendom but in doing so seem to be returning to the norms of Rome. This circular historical movement creates opportunities for the church because the message that Paul promoted then was both powerful and subversive and is exactly that today. So while postmodern people at the end of a 1500 year period of Christendom may think Paul is writing something hegemonic, Paul is in fact subverting something hegemonic. Paul is challenging the practices, values and ways of the empire. Caesar has been replaced by Christ, the empire by the church. Christ rules from heaven and his kingdom is advancing on earth. The Colossians need fresh imagination to ‘set their minds on things above’, in other words they and us, need to see how Christ upends the narratives of the world and replaces them with something far better.

So what kind of an ethic is this? It is a resurrection ethic that refuses to bow the knee to the empire and its idols. It is an ascension ethic that refuses to be subject to the principles of normality. It is a liberated ethic that dares to imagine a world that is alternative to the present brokenness. It is an eschatological ethic of hope that engenders a this-worldly praxis in anticipation of a coming kingdom.

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As an aside I think this is something that Tim Keller did so well in New York. He was able to articulate the hopes and fears of New Yorkers, explain why they thought the way they did and then show how the Gospel offered them the reality and not the shadow of what they often truly longed for.

The ethic of Paul though while being all of the things above is also distinctly relational and personal. It is an ethic that is fundamentally centred around the person of Christ. It is, or should be, thoroughly Christ centred from start to finish. And Jesus, by and large is still a person that people consider worthy of consideration.

Because you are so deeply identified “with Christ” and so profoundly shaped in who you are by being “in Christ,” your way of life will reflect that relationship. It is not so much a matter of Christians behaving in a certain way just because God said so or because it is good for you. Rather, Paul is saying that Christians live a certain way because of the matrix of relationships that characterize new life in Christ, and especially because of a living relationship with the risen Christ, whose story of death and resurrection we share.

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This sort of description of the biblical story, and the Jesus story as the fundamental basis of Christian discipleship remains a compelling pitch.

Death, burial, resurrection, ascension and second coming: five decisive markers in the story of Jesus. Paul tells us that Christian identity and praxis are rooted in our identification with and participation in these events. The story of Jesus is our story. This is the story that shapes our character and sets the direction of our praxis.

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But why does Paul then bang on about sex here, why this focus on fornication and sexual immorality? And more importantly why does Paul link in Col 3:5 link sexual immorality with greed? It’s a common critique of Christians holding to orthodox sexual practices to ask ‘why don’t you also make such a fuss about greed?’ The charge here being one of hypocrisy. Of course greed in itself should be challenged but failing to make the connection between the two is a failure of textual literacy on both sides. I think Walsh & Keesmaat’s explanation is golden.

Sexual sin greed and idolatry-what is the relation among these? Why end a list of sexual sins with an economic sin? Because sexual sin is fundamentally a matter of covetousness an insatiable, self-gratifying greed that has the control and consumption of the other person as its ultimate desire. Sexual sin is sin not because it is sexual but because it is invariably covetous. It replaces the pleasure and sexual enjoyment of two people in a loving relationship with a self-centered gratification of sexual longings that can never be fulfilled apart from commitment.

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And I think that is such a powerful response. It works as a challenge to the commitment-less, casual hook-up culture and prevailing promiscuity of western sexual ethics. In fact when it comes to exposing the hollowness of the sexual revolution, they don’t pull their punches.

Late modernity and its so-called sexual liberation has given us little more than a sexual atmosphere of predation and recrimination-the most devastating opposite of the trust in which sexual and communal life can flourish. We live in a sexual wasteland that bears only the bitter fruit of violence, loneliness, betrayal and broken hearts.

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That sounds like something Louise Perry would write.

And somewhat surprisingly to me was this upholding of the rightness, the justness, the necessity of wrath.

Wrath is the right response to screwing around with idols. Wrath is the appropriate emotion in the face of adulterous infidelity. God’s loving wrath can be seen both in the very brokenness, dehumanization and barrenness that such idolatry produces in sociocommunal life and in eschatological judgement. This is necessary if we are to live in a moral universe. Those who have been sexually brutalized, economically oppressed, ecologically raped and reduced to commodities in a world system of global consumerism need to have a court of appeal before which they can bring their legitimate complaint. That court, Paul assures them, is the judgement seat of God.

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Where the authors finish though is to take the western and especially American church to task. It’s no good the authors say to complain at the consumer & commodified nature of our sexuality when the church has been almost entirely co-opted in the full commodification of the rest of our lives. Business, environment, families, communities, art, media, sports have fallen to empires of the market and consumerism. And tragically we have made ourselves at home amongst consumerism and we shouldn’t have. So channelling some Wendell Berry they close the chapter out with this charge.

Christian faith has made itself comfortable in the empire and taken up the role of comforter of the empire in its murder of creation.

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So what about the alternatives? Well, they say, instead we should find ourselves a very different looking home and that’s the subject of the next chapter.