NEW TESTAMENT: Colossians 3: 1 - 11 (RCL)
Colossians 3: 1 - 5, 9 - 11 (Roman Catholic)

Colo 3:1 (NRSV) So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, 3 for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.
5 Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. 7 These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. 8 But now you must get rid of all such things--anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices 10 and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. 11 In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scyth'ian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!


h/t montreal anglican



The author has described baptism as being raised with Christ and becoming sharers in his suffering and death. In the early Church, those to be baptised removed their clothes before the rite and donned new ones after it, symbolizing the casting aside of their old ways and their new life in Christ. Vv. 1-4 summarize this teaching. The author tells us that we already have close fellowship with Christ, but that this is not yet fully revealed; our lives are still “hidden with Christ in God” (v. 3). When Christ’s glory is “revealed” (v. 4) at the end of time, our complete union with him will also be seen. (Early Christians saw Psalm 110:1, “... Sit at my right hand ...”, see v. 1, as showing that Jewish messianic hopes are realized in Christ.

Being baptised, we are expected to conduct ourselves ethically (vv. 5-17): we are to cast aside both sins of the body (v. 5) and of the mind (v. 8). “Fornication” (v. 5), porneia in Greek, means all forms of sexual immorality; the “impurity” is sexual; “passion” is lust; evil desire is self-centred covetousness; “greed” motivates a person to set up a god besides God. Because people still commit these sins wilfully and without seeking forgiveness, “the wrath of God is coming” (v. 6) on them – at the end of time. (“Image of its creator”, v. 10, recalls that God makes humans in his own image.) In the baptised community, racial and social barriers no longer exist, for “Christ is all and in all” (v. 11).















GOSPEL: Luke 12: 13 - 21 (all)

Luke 12:13 (NRSV) Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me." 14 But he said to him, "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" 15 And he said to them, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." 16 Then he told them a parable: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17 And he thought to himself, "What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' 18 Then he said, "I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, "Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' 20 But God said to him, "You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' 21 So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."



Jesus has drawn a large crowd; the Parable of the Rich Fool is a lesson for the disciples too (v. 22). As he often does, Jesus speaks to his disciples with others present. The Mishnah, a Jewish book of laws, guided rabbis in how to handle questions of inheritance. (It must have been galling at times that Mosaic law prescribed that an elder son receive twice the inheritance of a younger.) Jesus wants no part in sorting out such issues: the word translated “friend” (v. 14) literally means human, a stern salutation. Jesus explains: “all kinds of greed” (v. 15) have no place in anyone’s life; true being (real and meaningful “life”) is more than “possessions”.

Jesus’ story of the farmer is particularly apt for a rural crowd. The farmer’s land “yielded a good harvest” (v. 16, Revised English Bible). As the frequent use of “I” in vv. 17-19 shows, he thinks only of himself, of his material well-being. He fools himself into thinking that materiality satisfies his inner being (“soul”, v. 19). This example story (unusual because God is a character) does not attack wealth per se, but rather amassing wealth solely for one’s own enjoyment. Purely selfish accumulation of wealth is incompatible with discipleship. God calls the farmer a “fool” (v. 20) for ignoring his relationship with him. Earthly riches are transient, but a time of reckoning is coming, when we will all be judged by God. This time may be when we die or at the end of time, or both. We must trust in God, leaving the future in his hands. Jesus makes his point by providing an absurd example: materialism can get in the way of godliness. (The crowd would recall that, in the Old Testament and in the Apocrypha, foolishness often has overtones of immorality, of deviating from God’s ways.)

the Septuagint was written some two to three centuries before the New Testament, so we sometimes need to ask whether the meaning of these words had changed over the centuries. In the case of v. 5 here, we should ask: did the author know of older meanings for some of the words in his list of vices? Consider porneia (“fornication”). In Classical Greek (the language of five to six centuries before Christ), porneia seems to have primarily referred to prostitution. If the author of Colossians was aware of this earlier meaning (which might have still been current when Hosea was translated into Greek), perhaps he tied this passage with Hosea 1:2: “... Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom”. In the Septuagint translation, “whoredom” is porneia and “the land commits great whoredom “ (Septuagint: ekporneuousa) . He was probably also aware of Proverbs 5, where good and bad women, representing wisdom and foolishness, and faithfulness and faithlessness, are mentioned. (In the Septuagint translation of Proverbs 5:3, “loose woman” is gynaikos pornes.) So it seems that more is at stake than sexual misbehaviour; indeed, the author of Colossians calls on his readers to be faithful (as Hosea called on his to be faithful to the covenant with God). Prostituting oneself in either (and both) senses is the “earthly” part.