Grace Goes On--March 17, 2021
"I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you." [Colossians 4:18]
These are parting words, but the connection persists. Love endures. Grace goes on.
We have been working our way through the letter to the Colossians since the first few days after Christmas of 2020, and there has been an awful lot of water under the bridge since then--both in this letter's four chapters and in the world in which we live while we've been reading it together. And now, we finally come to the end--the last words of this late-written letter, which certainly could have been the last that the church in Colossae heard from him. Our devotions, too, will pause after today, and resume in the new week after a moment to catch our collective breath, with new reflections and new directions. But that still means, in a very real sense for Paul, for the Colossians, and for us, that this is an ending.
But even at our endings, grace goes on.
It can be easy to get thrown off by the opening of this verse, about Paul "writing this greeting with my own hand." But in light of the opening verse of the whole letter, where Paul named Timothy as being with him, it makes sense to understand this whole letter as something that Paul had ostensibly dictated, while Timothy was the one with the actual pencil and paper (or ink and papyrus, as the case may be). Then, finally, like a professional may sign a letter which had been typed up by the administrative assistant based on dictation, Paul writes his final greeting in his own hand. In other letters (take a look, for example, at Galatians 6:11) Paul was rather self-conscious as he wrote in his own hand with "such large letters"--which some take as evidence his eyesight was failing and therefore had to write in large print. And it was not unusual to have someone else writing for you as you spoke out loud what you wanted to say in the ancient world--again, not all that dissimilar from dictation in an office today, or your voice-to-text function on your smart phone.
So there's at least reason to believe that Paul may be feeling his own body wearing out as he concludes, leaving the actual physical act of writing to his administrative assistant Timothy except to sign his name at the bottom. Paul has put a lot of miles on his tires, so to speak, and, as Ben Gibbard once sang, "the souls of our shoes are all worn down, the time for sleep is now." Paul knows he is getting near the end of his earthly life, and either Jesus will come suddenly, or otherwise old age will have to fight it out with the Roman executioner for who gets credit for Paul's death. His final request to the Colossians, "Remember my chains," casts the shadow of his looming death-sentence after a Roman trial in the background.
And yet, I also think that line, "Remember my chains," has the feel of love, more than a guilt-trip. I don't think it comes off with the feel of, "Pity me, because I have to suffer this way while you all get to be free and live your lives," so much as, "You were worth it--you were worth the cost of me being imprisoned, if it meant getting to share the Good News of God's love in Christ with you. Having you as part of the family of God was worth all the struggle, all the suffering, and all the scary things ahead on the last leg of my life's journey. You were worth it." In other words, I hear this as a reminder, "Know how much you have been loved; I chose this path willingly, because it meant I was able to share God's love with you."
And then, after that, when the tired apostle has spent his last words of his own, and said all he can say in his own power, he leaves his readers--then and now--with something more. Grace. After our striving is done in this life, grace goes on.
That ain't a bad place to leave things between us, either. After all of our best efforts are done--some having met with success, and some having been dismal failures--the grace of God continues. In the end, our lives' worth and value and meaning are bigger and more durable than our achievements--they are caught up in the grace of God who calls us beloved, blessed, and worthy simply on account of grace: free, audacious, reckless, unconditional grace. And to hear no less a dedicated worker than Paul say to his readers, "Grace be with you," is an emphatic reminder that even the all-stars of the early church knew their lives were entirely held by the love of God embraces us as we are.
You know the old hymn--the one we'll be hearing again soon, come Good Friday: "I'll cherish the old, rugged cross, till my trophies at last I lay down." Well, here's Paul, just about done with all of his life's trophies and ready to let go of them all, and knowing that grace is the one holding him--the same grace that was willing to go to that cross for our sake.
So, at least for a few days, until a new beginning starts for us in a new week, let this be our parting word, too: beyond whatever you have done or accomplished already in your life, and beyond whatever potential or aspirations you have for achieving great things in this day ahead, may you be held in the grace of God now and always.
Because after all of our laboring is done and our energy has all been spent, don't you worry. There is more yet to come: grace goes on.
Lord Jesus, hold us in your grace, and let us extend it to everyone else we meet today, too.
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