"CHRIST IS THE IMAGE OF THE INVISIBLE GOD."

Homily for Sept. 4^th, 2015: Colossians 1:15-20.

“Christ is the image of the invisible God,” we heard in our first reading. From time immemorial people have longed to see God. The book Exodus tells about Moses asking to see God. “My face you cannot see,” God replies. “For no man can see me and live. … I will set you in the hollow of a rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand, so that you may see my back; but my face you cannot see.” (Ex. 33:20-23)

The birth of God’s Son, Jesus, changed this. Jesus is God’s image. Looking at him, we see what God is like. Jesus preferred the company of simple, ordinary people. He came to the world in a provincial village where nothing interesting or important ever happened. Jesus moved not among wealthy or sophisticated people, or among scholars and intellectuals, but among ordinary people. They were the ones who welcomed him most warmly. The rich and powerful and learned had difficulties with Jesus. Many were hostile to him. That was true then. It remains true today – with notable and happy exceptions, for which we give thanks to God.

In his youth Jesus worked with his hands in the carpenter=s shop. His teaching was full of references to simple things: the birds of the air, the wind and the waves, the lilies of the field, the vine, the lost sheep, the woman searching for her one lost coin, leavening dough with yeast, the thief breaking in at night. Those were images that everyone could understand. Jesus also told stories: so simple that they capture the interest of children; yet so profound that learned scholars are still studying them today.

In preferring simple people and simple things, Jesus was showing us what God is like. He who is not only God’s image, but his utterance and word, God=s personal communication to us, is saying through all the circumstances of his life that God loves humble people. God is especially close to those who feel that they are not in control of their lives; that they are the victims of circumstances; that their lives are a tangle of loose ends and broken resolutions.

Jesus, the man who gave God a human face, and a human voice, shows us through all he says and all he does, that God loves us with a love that will never let us go.