King of the Hill, Top of the Heap

Colossians 1:11-20

There is nothing that says you are the king of the hill or the top of the heap then when you are literally made the center of the world. So says a medieval map, the Ebstorf mappamundi, drawn in 13th century Saxony. This map depicts the Christian worldview at the time within the body of a crucified Christ. Christ literally covers this map and holds it all together. Christ’s head is in the East, at the top of the map, the direction of Paradise. His hands mark the northern and southern limits of the known world, and his feet are at Gibraltar where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic. In the middle of the map we see Jerusalem, the spiritual center of Christendom, located at Christ’s navel. Europe is in the bottom left quadrant of the map, Africa in the bottom right, and Asia dominates the upper half. It is both a sacred object glorifying the Body of Christ and also a tourist map of the strange and wonderful places that formed the background of medieval storytelling. The original map was 12 feet by 12 feet, painted on 30 goatskins sewn together. This mappa mundi was found in a convent in the city of Ebstrof in northern Germany in 1843. Sadly, the original was destroyed 70 years ago, during the World War II bombing of Hanover in 1943. All that survives is a set of black-and-white photographs and several color facsimiles.

The original mappa mundi is lost, but not our belief in the Son of God who holds all things together. In his letter to the Colossians, Paul writes that Christ "is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created" (Colossians 1:15-16).

For Paul, Jesus is not simply a Galilean peasant who grew up to be a religious leader. No, he is "the image of the invisible God," the human face of our divine Lord. He is "the firstborn of all creation," the one who joins with God as being created "at the beginning of [God's] work" (Proverbs 8:22).

He is the One in whom "all things in heaven and on earth were created." We hear this echoed in the gospel of John, in which we are told that all things came into being through the Word of God, "and without him not one thing came into being" (John 1:3).

Image of God. Firstborn of God. Creative power of God. The Christ who is being described to the Colossians is not small and insignificant, meek and mild. The Christ being described is the Christ who can spread his arms across a mappa mundi of the Christian world and hold together the north and the south. "All things have been created through him and for him," says Paul. "He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:16-17). Nothing in all creation is beyond the powerful grasp of the eternal Son of God.

The amazing thing about this ancient set of verses is that it puts us in touch with one of the oldest sets of beliefs about Jesus. The letter to the Colossians is telling us that Christ "himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together" (v. 17). Not just some things. All things. In fact, to emphasize this point, Paul repeats the word "all" eight times in these ten verses of Scripture. In Christ, all things hold together.

This unifying power of Jesus was one of the oldest of Christian beliefs, and it has become one of the most controversial of claims today. In his New York Times bestseller called Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, pastor and author Rob Bell says that the insistence of the first Christians was that when you saw Jesus -- a first-century Jewish rabbi -- you were seeing God in skin and bones, flesh and blood. "Jesus, for these first Christians, was the ultimate exposing of what God has been up to all along."

No big surprise there. But what was God's mission, as revealed in Jesus Christ? "Unity," says Rob Bell. "Unity. To all things. God is putting the world back together, and God is doing this through Jesus."

Perhaps you’ve heard by now about our brothers and sisters in Christ at Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas. They have our presbytery tied up in a civil legal case that’s hurting all involved more than it is helping. The Highland Park congregation held a congregational meeting to vote whether or not to stay in the PCUSA and they voted to leave us. Is this what it means to be the body of Christ in the world? Such behavior pulls people apart. It drives wedges between the various parts of the body of Christ. Have they forgotten that, “He (Jesus) himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body and we are the parts.” The eye can’t say to the arm, “I don’t need you.” Or the arm to head, “I don’t need you”. We cannot afford to continue to allow our differences to control us and pull us apart as God’s people in a time when maintaining the unity of the body of Christ is so badly needed.

The discovery of a medieval map of the world featuring Jesus at the center of the map invites us to put Jesus at the center of our "map," that is, our world. This leads us to wonder what would Jesus be replacing? A web search of what priorities people value reveals that men have different priorities than women, husbands than wives, teenagers than adults and so on. For example, one site said that the top ten priorities in a man's life are: sex, sleeping, food, work, sports, activities (playing video games, cars, friends, motorcycles, etc), making money, family, new electronic devices, wife/girlfriend.

This list certainly does not describe the priorities of many, perhaps not even most, men, but certainly some. But that's not the point. The focus here is: Just what, or Who, has our attention? To whom are we listening? Whom do we try to please? Whom do we serve? Who is at the center of our "map"? May it be Christ!

May we allow Christ to be the center of our “map”, the center of our world so we may be a part of the awesome work Christ is doing in the world; so he might come to have first place in each of our lives. Amen.