Jesus: “He is the image of the unseen God” (Colossians
1.15)
Images bombard us – we can’t avoid them; our eyes are
drawn to them and they impact into our minds. We need images to help us
understand our world for they can warn us of danger, give us joyful experiences
and memories and even anticipate a positive future as we create pictures of
where we are going. Alas, we can also form negative images where we
misunderstand and misinterpret, where our thoughts become fearful or hostile to
people and situations.
Today’s epistle is placed alongside the great prologue of
John’s Gospel, which begins “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God”. It is the summation of the Festival of Nine
Lessons and Carols, the wonderful truth to which Christians understand all the
Scriptures to be leading. It is saying that God is not far off but
intrinsically involved in the world through Jesus, the Son. Amid all our
problems and concerns, we have a faith which assures us that God is with us
through the incarnation of Jesus.
The image of Jesus brings home to us that there is no
gulf between us and God. The spiritual is expressed in the physical world, the
eternal in specific years of this earth’s limited time. The images of Jesus
express God’s love and righteousness. His birth, his preaching and teaching,
his calling of followers, his healing miracles, his forgiveness, his ability to
still the storms of life, his parables which speak of the kingdom among us: his
bringing of light, his shepherding of his people, his opening of the Way to
God. They are all glorious images of Jesus’ being, sent from God.
Yet Jesus also engages with the painful side of life in
accepting the consequences of people forming negative images of him:
blasphemer, enemy, disrespecter of traditions, prophet of future woes. He
approaches the end faithfully, willing to endure the pain and lay his life
down, and ultimately God’s affirmation of who Jesus is is shown in the
resurrection. But first he had to accept the horror of the Crucifixion, and
sometimes our images of the cross are overly sanitised as if it wasn’t really
too bad after all. But it is clear that it was, but he died to bring us back to
God, his pains have brought our salvation and the hope of eternity.
The epistle ends with the hard-won victory of the
Crucified Jesus: “Peace through the blood of his cross” (Colossians 15.20).
That is the message, and amid all we suffer, all our fears about our mortality,
we have a hope borne to us by the image of the God who takes on our humanity
and raises it heavenward. It is an image to celebrate and rejoice in at all
times.
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