C, Pentecost 9 Proper 12 - Colossians 2:6-12 "Floating on Faith"

The predawn sky is filled with stars. The darkened dead of night is giving way to light; a glow on the horizon is promising to spill morning into the new day. The air is cold and still, there’s the sound of frost on frozen grass crunching under foot.

You’re asked to enter so you excitedly clamber in trying not to bump the machinery above your head in the dim light. Everyone is loaded and then with the sound of gushing gas, the air around you is lit with light and warmth. The tremendous thrust of heat and light sporadically breaks the quiet of the cool calm morning.

The sound seems ferocious but its effects are subtle and slow. But then there’s liftoff. It’s as if nothing is really happening except the occasional burn of gas above. But look down! There’s quiet movement in the dawn air as the earth passes silently below and seems to be falling away from where you stand.

Hot air ballooning gives one an amazing experience of floating quietly through the air. Relying on nothing but a ball of hot air in a cold sky makes the balloon seem to mysteriously rise into the sky. Slow and steady she moves without a will of her own, the hot air balloon rides through the skies wherever the currents of air decide to take her.

Speaking about Christ, St Paul says to the Colossians, “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.” (Colossians 2:9-10)

Christians are like hot air balloons. We are in Christ, and in him we have been filled, just as a balloon is in the air, risen up it has been filled – with air. The balloon’s assurance of flight seems a mystery, but the air inside it is warm and we know it is because of the occasional burst of fire from the burner and its gentle rising into the sky.

Similarly Christ is the mystery who dwells within you, and is at the same time the one in whom you dwell. God enters you like people climbing into the basket, and on entering you he fires the Holy Spirit into your heart, injecting faith through the visible means of Baptism, Holy Communion, preaching of the Word, and absolution. These blasts of faith into your heart light you up, dispelling the darkness, and pushing out the coldness of a reality that’s knows no warmth.

Watching a balloon from the ground it’s not always apparent that there’s life in these gentle giants. But if we give it time we begin to notice their movement through the sky. And if we were completely ignorant we would soon realise the balloon was in fact moving through something, although it is not visible to the eye.

The sad thing for many in this world is they too are living in ignorant denial of God’s hidden presence. They think believers are deluded, moving around in nothingness by their own futile faith, fired by emotion. They look at us as if we were balloons in nothingness motivated by nothing except our imagination of the future. In fact, this is how they too live! They see themselves rising by their own ideals into the void, creating the future, the air into which they rise by their own understanding.

A balloon without a clean source of heat, fails to rise or travel very far. And if it does rise, to where it goes is a worry if the environment into which it rises is not known. So if you or I believe we can raise ourselves up by our own hot air, to where would we go? It’s no wonder many panic about death because they really don’t know much about the reality in which they live now, let alone what the future hold!

Seeing the fickle reality of others serves you and me as a warning. Perhaps some of you are pondering if it’s really all that import to persist in coming to church. Snoozing in bed, playing sport, or doing something else might seem more profitable than troubling you on a Sunday morning to come and sit in a cold church.

But the reality is this: the place where the warmth of Christ’s death and resurrection is injected into you, lifting you up to eternal life, is found only in church. It might seem, like a hot air balloon that we are floating aimlessly around. But the reality for those in Christ is we are moved by the Spirit in Christ into an eternity with our Heavenly Father.

St Paul says, “Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” (Colossians 2:6-7)

We need to be anchored to the reality around us, and our reality now is Christ. Just as the hot air balloon is held by the air around it, Christ holds us in our earthly reality. And within we are filled or completed by Jesus too, when the Holy Spirit burns in us, illuminating Jesus Christ, and warming every aspect of our being so it might be brought not only to its full capacity, but beyond. So we might be overflowing with thanksgiving and love.

But there is a danger here too. Paul warns you to be aware of the things which turn the burners off in the heart your being. He says if you seek to integrate other means of movement into your heart you will be spoiled. This would be like taking the burner off a hot air balloon, seeking to fly without the fire of faith given by the Holy Spirit. He says…

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. (Colossians 2:8-10)

We first lifted off in Christ at our baptism. The ropes attaching us to our old worldly ways were cut once and for all. This gave the Holy Spirit the opportunity to burn in us to lift us up and send us on God’s way. This way is the way of the cross where Jesus too was baptised with the Holy Spirit and with fire (Luke 3:16) during his ministry here on earth. It is because Christ Jesus was lifted up on the cross and then lifted up from death that we too might be lifted up by the Holy Spirit in baptism.

However, some who are baptised — who have been cut from the darkness of sin — wittingly and unwittingly cut themselves away from the source of faith. They may be baptised but are hacking off the benefits it gives by returning to their dark ways. Perhaps you are tempted to cut off the faith God has given you! By doing so you’re putting off the circumcision of Christ and returning to the circumcision of men…

In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. (Colossians 2:11-12)

Being baptised is being raised in faith. The two things go hand in hand if our baptism is legitimate. If we cut faith from baptism making baptism just an act, where one is “done” we are returning to a circumcision by our own hand and this has the same effect as if one takes to a balloon with a pair of scissors. It might seem to be exciting as we explode all over the place but it is short-lived and ends in the balloon return to earth good for nothing.

Baptism and faith cannot be separated just as Jesus’ death and resurrection needed to occur. Without the resurrection we Christians are to be pitied more than all other people, and similarly when we cut faith from baptism we too are destroying the vessel God has made us to be. Through turning baptism into a once only work and severing us from the source of faith which needs to regularly burn in us, we are testifying by our act that Jesus died for nothing. He may as well have never been raised from the dead.

But as we’ve heard we were buried with him in baptism, and just as he was raised from the dead we too are raised by faith. Not your faith but the faith which becomes yours through the fire of the Spirit. A faith which burns in you when you receive the benefits of Jesus in church, and lived in private prayer, bible reading, devotion and daily living. Just like the means needed for a balloon to rise from its coldness, we need what happened in baptism to continue working in us, burning and creating faith in this life.

In the coolness of these days where it seems things are frosty or even frozen, know that God burns in you. Allow God to continue his work of raising you from death in the faith which began in baptism at the dawn of your eternity and will carry you through till the sun sets on this life. And look expectantly in hope to the dawn of the new day when through the powerful working of God; you too will be raised to eternal life, majestically floating in the fullness of eternal bliss. Amen.