Colossians: The People of God in the Age of Empire
Colossians: The People of God in the Age of Empire – A reorientation around Christ as the image of God and center of all things—countering empire, fear, and cultural conformity with a community formed in resurrection power, bound by love, and commissioned for renewal.
Christ in You, The Hope of Glory
June 1, 2025
Speaker: Rev. Donnell Wyche
Description
In the final installment of our Colossians series, Pastor Donnell explores Paul’s powerful counter-vision to life under empire. Rather than simply critiquing systems of domination, Paul offers a transformative alternative rooted in the sufficiency of Christ. In empire, worth is earned through control, consumption, and coercion. But in Christ, worth is freely given, and we are invited to live as new people—formed not by fear or hierarchy but by resurrection hope. As Pastor Donnell reminds us, every act of forgiveness, generosity, and love becomes a quiet rebellion against the logic of empire. The sermon returns to Paul’s opening prayer in Colossians 1, highlighting that before offering instruction or correction, Paul begins with intercession—thanking God for the faith, love, and hope already alive in the church. Even from prison, Paul remains hopeful, convinced that the gospel is on the move, bearing fruit across the world. Pastor Donnell draws this into our own lives, reminding us that the kingdom of God advances not through domination but through ordinary believers practicing resurrection by living with courage, kindness, and open-handed faith. The message ends with a practical invitation: live like Christ dwells within you. Intercede for others not out of performance, but from a Spirit-empowered hope that transforms both the one who prays and the one who is prayed for. Resurrection isn’t just a belief—it’s a way of life. And each time we affirm someone’s dignity, offer compassion, or act with courage, we become part of God’s unfolding story of glory in the midst of empire.
Scripture References
Persevering in Prayer
May 25, 2025
Speaker: Pastor Hannah Witte
Description
In this heartfelt and deeply personal sermon, Pastor Hannah Witte (Pastor of Community and Mission –– Grace Ann Arbor) invites the congregation into a counter-cultural life rooted in prayer, gratitude, and spiritual attentiveness. Drawing from Colossians 4:2–6, she reflects on the Apostle Paul’s exhortation to persevere in prayer as a way of resisting the empire—the forces of consumerism, nationalism, fear, and control that seek to dominate our lives. Pastor Hannah begins by sharing her own calling into ministry and the ongoing journey of faith that’s filled with more questions than answers. She reminds us that prayer doesn’t come naturally, but it is the pathway through which God’s dreams are ushered into the world. Pastor Hannah unpacks Paul’s call to “stay awake” in prayer, encouraging us to resist the spiritual sleepiness that keeps us disconnected from God’s presence and purpose. She shares practical ways to cultivate this awareness, including beginning each day with the simple question, “God, what do you want to say to me?” She weaves in personal stories—most poignantly the sudden death of her mother—to show how practicing gratitude in both joy and grief keeps our hearts tender and open to God. Gratitude, she emphasizes, is not a trite response to suffering but a sustaining act of resistance and trust. The sermon closes with a call to embrace God’s expansive dreams for humanity. Pastor Hannah highlights Paul’s own example—even from prison—of praying not for personal comfort but for open doors to proclaim the liberating love of Jesus. She challenges listeners to align their prayers not just with their personal desires but with God’s redemptive hopes for their neighborhoods, relationships, and communities. As we scatter into our lives, we are encouraged to live interruptibly, speak with grace, and embody God’s dreams in everyday encounters—offering a quiet but powerful resistance to the despair of empire.
Scripture References
Culture Making at Home and at Church
May 18, 2025
Speaker: Rev. Donnell Wyche
Description
In this sermon, Pastor Donnell Wyche examines one of the most difficult sections of Paul’s letter to the Colossians, where household codes outline relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, and slaves and masters. Far from affirming hierarchical or oppressive structures, Pastor Donnell argues that Paul is subverting the dominant culture of the Greco-Roman world. By addressing the powerless—wives, children, and enslaved persons—directly, Paul grants them dignity and moral agency. Paul’s command that husbands love their wives and that fathers avoid embittering their children is revolutionary in a culture where power was rarely checked by compassion. In Paul’s view, culture-making begins at home, and households become outposts of the Kingdom when marked by mutuality and cruciform love. Pastor Donnell devotes significant attention to Paul’s instruction to enslaved persons, acknowledging that these verses have been weaponized throughout church history to justify horrific systems of oppression. Pastor Donnell makes it unequivocally clear: God has always been anti-slavery. From Genesis to Revelation, God’s vision is one of abundance, liberation, and human flourishing. Slavery always is anti-human (Genesis 1:26–28), anti-God (Isaiah 58), and anti-Gospel (Luke 4). While Paul does not outright condemn the institution of slavery—which scholars note was foundational to the Greco-Roman economy—Paul plants subversive seeds by calling for equality between slaves and masters, as he later does more explicitly in Philemon. Pastor Donnell laments Paul’s limited prophetic imagination but sees Paul’s writings as part of a kingdom trajectory that invites us to go further in working for liberation and justice in our own context. Finally, Pastor Donnell challenges listeners to resist empire not just in theory, but in practice—beginning at home. The family is often where empire’s patterns of control, fear, and domination take root. But in the Kingdom of God, the home is to be a place of tenderness, security, and love. We resist empire by embodying cruciform love in our relationships—with our spouses, our children, our coworkers, and our neighbors. Through daily acts of compassion and humility, we bear witness to a different way of being—one shaped not by power but by the cross, not by empire but by resurrection.
Scripture References
Practices of Resistance
May 11, 2025
Speaker: Rev. Donnell Wyche
Description
In this third installment of the Colossians: The People of God in the Age of Empire series, Pastor Donnell Wyche explores Paul’s invitation to live a resurrection-shaped life as resistance to the demands and distortions of empire. After deconstructing the false promises of empire—security, glory, and salvation—Paul turns toward reconstruction, calling the Colossians to embody new life by setting their minds on Christ. Resurrection, Pastor Donnell reminds us, is not metaphorical—it is real, and it invites us into ordinary, grounded practices of love, patience, forgiveness, and peace as signs that Christ is alive and empire is not in control. Pastor Donnell contextualizes Paul’s challenge by naming how empire shapes us with fear, scarcity, and performance-based identity. Drawing from his experience on Ann Arbor’s planning commission, he critiques how exclusion and self-protection still shape our civic life—especially around housing—and how Paul calls us to take off the habits of empire and put on the character of Christ. Resistance, in this sense, isn’t reactive—it’s proactive. It’s not about protest alone, but daily formation: shedding old ways of being and clothing ourselves with compassion, humility, and love. This, he asserts, is what empire cannot imitate. The sermon climaxes with Paul’s powerful reframing of Christian identity: “You are chosen, you are holy, and you are deeply, deeply loved.” Pastor Donnell insists that our actions must flow from this identity—not out of fear, guilt, or striving, but as a response to God’s unshakable love. Resistance looks like parenting with patience, giving freely, refusing cynicism, and holding fast to hope. Every act of mercy, love, and peace is an act of protest against empire’s rule. The invitation is clear: live like resurrection is real—because it is—and let your life be a declaration that Jesus is Lord.
Scripture References
Naming the Empire
May 4, 2025
Speaker: Rev. Donnell Wyche
Description
In this powerful and provocative sermon, Pastor Donnell Wyche continues the Colossians: The People of God in the Age of Empire series by exploring Colossians 2:6–15 and what it means to be faithful to Christ in a world shaped by empire. Drawing from Paul’s letter to a fledgling church in Colossae, Donnell frames the passage as a deeply subversive text—one that directly confronts the ideologies, powers, and allegiances of the surrounding Roman empire. For Paul, and for us today, to declare that Christ—not Caesar, not the economy, not nationalism—is Lord, is to resist the false narratives that shape our lives and identities. Pastor Donnell draws sharp connections between Paul’s world and our own, exposing the subtle and not-so-subtle ways empire exerts its influence today—from militarism and economic control to curated media narratives and Christian celebrity culture. He names modern forces—TikTok, Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, Warner Bros, and even popular pastors—not to shame, but to awaken the church to how deeply these forces shape our desires, fears, and theology. “Don’t be taken captive,” Paul warns, and Pastor Donnell echoes that call with urgency, reminding us that resistance starts by rooting ourselves in Christ, not in power, performance, or fear. The sermon crescendos with a bold declaration: Jesus, crucified by empire, disarmed the powers not with violence, but through the cross. Pastor Donnell invites the weary, the skeptical, and the disillusioned to see Jesus clearly—not as a tool of empire, but as the one who triumphs by love, truth, and resurrection. “Empire doesn’t get the last word,” he proclaims, “Jesus does.” The call to the church is clear: Wake up. Resist. Stay rooted in Christ. And when overwhelmed by the noise of the world, pray the simple prayer of resistance: “Jesus, free me from the voices that hold me captive. Root me in you again.”
Scripture References
The Unco-opted Christ
April 27, 2025
Speaker: Rev. Donnell Wyche
Description
In this opening message of our new series on Colossians, Pastor Donnell Wyche invites us into a powerful re-centering of our lives around the crucified Christ. Preaching from Colossians 1:15–20, he reminds us that in the midst of empire, cultural pressures, and leadership failures, Paul does not begin with fear or anxiety but with a bold proclamation: Christ is the image of the invisible God, the one who holds all things together. Pastor Donnell challenges us to see worship not as private devotion but as public resistance — an act of allegiance to a kingdom that values humility, peace, and sacrificial love over the power, dominance, and platform of empire. Drawing on rich historical context and vivid contemporary parallels, Pastor Donnell names how empire continues to shape our world through fear, fragmentation, and injustice. Yet in a world that feels unstable and disillusioned, Christ invites us to a different imagination — one rooted not in scarcity but in abundance, not in domination but in reconciliation. He reminds us that Christ’s death was not a defeat but the planting of a seed that bursts into new creation, calling us to participate in God’s ongoing work of healing, resistance, and restoration. Throughout the sermon, Pastor Donnell gently yet boldly calls us to faithful resistance: to make Christ, not empire, the center of our lives; to embody peace, generosity, and mercy in a world hungry for hope; and to trust that even in the ruins, Christ is making all things new. As we contend with grief, fear, and low trust, we are invited to breathe deeply, to anchor ourselves in Christ’s sustaining love, and to live as witnesses to a kingdom that does not co-opt or conquer, but sets us free.
Scripture References
Sermon Notes
Colossians: The People of God in the Age of Empire –The Un-Coopted Christ
April 27, 2025
Welcome and Opening
We’re grateful for you and the gifts of God that you bring into this space.
As a church, we want to live in God’s unfolding story, being transformed by Jesus, learning to belong to each other across our differences, as God invites us into freedom, joy, and boundless generosity. If you are looking for a church home, we would love to become your church home, and I, in particular, would love to become one of your pastors.
Today, we launch a new sermon series in Colossians. Paul writes to a community navigating life in the shadow of empire, leadership failures, and cultural disillusionment. Sound familiar? Paul doesn’t begin with fear or ambition. He begins with Christ—at the center of everything, holding it all together.
The Image That Refuses to Co-Opt You
Paul writes this poem to the Colossians 1:15-20:
15The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
This is poetry. This is resistance. This is worship that defies empire. Worship that centers Christ reorders the world around a different axis. In the Roman world, worship was political. To say “Jesus is Lord” was to say “Caesar is not.”
Paul offers not just awe, but allegiance. In a culture saturated by illusion, Paul insists that reality itself is held together by a suffering, reconciling God—not Caesar, not success, not platform. Christ, and Christ alone.
Centering a New Imagination
Paul is not simply offering a theology lesson. He is shaping the church’s imagination.
Everything—governments, systems, economies—was made through Christ and for Christ. But Paul does not deny that we live in a fragmented world. A world where trust is low and leadership often fails. Yet, Paul dares to proclaim that Christ is before all things, and in him all things hold together. This is a protest. This is a re-centering of reality. Paul invites us to imagine a world not built on scarcity, but on abundance. Not on domination, but on grace. This reshaping of imagination—what theologian Willie Jennings calls “the decolonizing of desire”—is the first step toward becoming a new creation people.
Why It Matters That Christ Is First
So much clamors to be first: ambition, pain, fear, politics.
Paul reminds us that Christ is not just the Savior of individuals—he is the head of the resurrection parade, dancing in the dragon’s jaws of death, carrying with him the fullness of God. Christ is making all things new—including the broken, hidden parts of our lives. Survival mode is not the end of your story. Resurrection is. You don’t have to make yourself new. Christ is already at work making all things new—including you.
This Happens on a Cross
This reconciliation happens not through domination, but through peace made on a Roman cross.
The cross was the empire’s warning: stay in line, stay afraid. But God turns the cross into an altar of love. In a world built on fear and coercion, Jesus models a power that is vulnerable, a love that forgives, a strength that suffers. In the words of Colossians Remixed: the cross is where empire does its worst and God does God’s best. If this is who our God is—not a God who demands sacrifice, but a God who becomes the sacrifice—what kind of people are we called to become?
Re-Formation as a Church
This has been a season of betrayal, disillusionment, and grief. Many of us are lamenting not just institutional loss, but the deeper loss of trust.
Yet Paul dares to proclaim that Christ is the head of the church.
The local church still matters.
Community still matters.
Resurrection still happens.
We don’t need to build a platform. We need to build a community where love takes the lead, where mercy outweighs image, where justice is not optional but essential.
In Christ, a new creation is rising.
And we are invited to begin again—right here, right now.
Practical Tip:
This week, when you find yourself overwhelmed, anxious, or unmoored, pause and say out loud, “Christ holds all things together—including me.” Take a deep breath. Hold it for a beat. Then exhale.