Iain Provan was an Old Testament professor at Regent College for many years and recently retired. In his retirement, one of his first projects was to write a book with a title based on this metaphor of the cuckoo. 

The book is titled, Cuckoo in Our Nest: Truth and Lies About Being Human. His goal is to show how unbiblical ideas have laid their eggs in the church’s nest, and like the cuckoo, replaced truth with lies.

[The] cuckoo, which migrates to Europe from Africa every spring, is a “brood parasite.” It does not raise its own young, but instead sneaks into another bird’s nest and replaces an egg with one of its own. This egg looks very much like the host’s eggs, so it is difficult to spot. The host bird therefore raises the cuckoo chick believing that it is one of its own. Unfortunately the cuckoo is, from the moment of birth, an assassin. It systematically goes around pushing any other eggs or chicks out of the nest, ensuring that its own song is the only one that can be heard by its adoptive parents. Having taken over the nest in this way, it receives the adoptive parents’ sole attention, growing as a consequence to two or three times their size. In all of this the cuckoo is “a cunning master of misdirection.”

From the Introduction to Cuckoos in Our Nest by Iain Provan

I am beginning a series in Colossians at my church. I started with this metaphor because one of the reasons this book exists is to remind the church what is true about what we believe and why we exist. The early church struggled, just as we do today, with staying faithful to the core teachings of Jesus. We as humans have a collective tendency to drift, to wander from what is true about ourselves and about God.

As we enter this series on Colossians, my hope is that our individual and collective imaginations, goals, and behaviour will be more closely aligned with what is true about God and ourselves. For some of us, this will be a journey of great distance. For others of us, it will be a shorter journey.

Unlike Iain Provan in his book, my goal is not to identify the lies among us. Rather, my goal is to remind us of the truth. The more familiar we are with the truth, the more easily each of us will be able to identify the lies in our own lives. This is done in community with one another. The point is not to go around with a lie detector, making accusations. But, when we are closely aligned with the truth, the lies have no chance to settle in and hatch.

So, let’s dig into this book by first looking at the context in which it was written.

Context of Colossians

In Matthew 28:19-20 and in Acts 1:4-8, Jesus gave final instructions to his disciples to be witnesses of Jesus’ teaching, his death, and his resurrection; to multiply the number of followers of Jesus first among the Jews who were considered God’s chosen people, then among the Samaritans, who were similar to Jews but despised by the Jewish people, and then among the Gentiles who were non-Jewish people.

Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you… he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Matthew 28:19-20; Acts 1:4-8 (NIV)

There were twelve disciples in Jesus’ inner circle who were there for his entire ministry on earth. These disciples were eventually commissioned by Jesus as Apostles, which means they were assigned a special task of being Jesus’ official representatives as they began the work of establishing the church. One of these first Apostles was Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus to the ones who wanted him crucified. Following Jesus’ crucifixion, Judas killed himself, leaving only 11 Apostles, which was an incomplete number. 

They decided to replace Judas with a man named Matthias. However, Jesus chose someone else as the twelfth Apostle, a man named Saul. Saul was an extremely devout Jewish leader who despised the early followers of Jesus. He considered them to be a disgrace to the Judaism and was on a mission to destroy Christianity. One day Jesus appeared to Saul and told him that he was to stop persecuting Jesus and his followers and instead bring the news about Jesus to the non-Jewish people. Jesus changed Saul’s name to Paul and from that point on Paul went on to become the single greatest influencer in the world besides Jesus himself. 

Throughout Paul’s ministry, he planted many churches and developed relationships with people all over the Roman Empire. Eventually, he was imprisoned because his ministry was disrupting the order of the Jewish religion and subsequently the Roman government. 

While under house arrest in Rome, Paul was allowed to receive visitors regularly and he wrote several letters, one of them being this letter to the Colossian church. It is likely that Paul never visited the Colossian church, but heard about them from Epaphras who was the founder of that church. 

Epaphras had come to visit Paul in prison to seek his advice because of some deceptive influencers in the Colossian church that were causing confusion about what being a Christian really means. They tried to add Jewish laws and special knowledge about God to the Christian faith. They were cuckoos in the nest of the Colossian church. 

With Paul in Rome was also a man named Onesimus, who was a runaway slave of Philemon from Colossae, who we learn about in the New Testament book of Philemon. Onesimus had become a helpful companion of Paul during his time in prison. 

When Epaphras came to visit, Paul took the opportunity to demonstrate what would become one of the most disruptive aspects of the Christian faith; forgiveness and reconciliation. The Roman Empire had no tolerance for disobedient slaves. A master of a disobedient slave would often have that slave crucified under Roman law. But Paul wrote to the Colossian church, that they should receive Onesimus back as a brother in Christ. We will come back to that story line later in the series.

So, Paul wrote this letter with the intention of encouraging the Colossian believers and reminding them of what is true about the Christian faith. He sent this letter, along with a few other letters to be delivered to various churches to be read publicly among followers of Jesus. 

This is one of several letters that were circulated among the churches in the area we now know as Turkey, and most of the letters had a similar purpose: to remind the church about what is central, which is Jesus Christ, and; to encourage them to continue in their mission: making Jesus Christ known through the message of the gospel and through how they behaved. Each letter is a little bit different. Let’s look at the unique message of Colossians. 

The Message of Colossians

The aim of Paul in writing this letter was to warn the Colossians against the deceptions creeping in to the church. These deceptions mainly came through a group of people called Judaizers, who insisted that Christians conform to Jewish customs. So, Paul is warning the Colossians that there are cuckoos in their nest. 

The short letter does not contain all the details about the lies that have crept into the church. We know some of this from other books of the New Testament and from history. Rather Paul focuses on the truth they need to be reminded about. 

The truth is that Christ is sufficient for salvation. The religious practices, while not necessarily evil, are a shadow of Christ. They do not provide salvation. Christ is the ultimate and only true hope for all who believe in him. There is no hope in keeping the religious practices. They only produce pride and division.

Christ is the only ruler and head of the church. The religious leaders do not have the authority to add to the Gospel. The message of Jesus is plain: believe in him and you will be saved.

The deceivers that Paul was warning about were seeking to throw into the background the unique greatness of Jesus Christ. They were acting out of fear that their own uniqueness was being threatened. The ground was being made level by the Gospel, which is never a welcome message among the elite. This is not a warning only for the church in Colossae. It is also a warning for us.

My hope is that as we go through this series in Colossians, we will be reminded of the unique greatness of Jesus; of his sufficient sacrifice; of his divine kingship and rule over the church and over the entire universe, and; of his promises to build a church that will continue to expand and defeat the powers of evil in this world. 

This short letter is a timeless reminder of why the church exists and how it will transform our community and the world. We are being told that Christianity is irrelevant. The church in Canada is shrinking. Christian faith is being dismantled and reorganized into categories of what is helpful and unhelpful. The Bible is used as a reference guide or how-to manual instead of the living and transformational Word of God. 

We are surrounded by messages that seek to minimize and confuse the Gospel, discouraging us and tempting us to cling on to shadows of the truth. In the midst of the confusion is a letter of clarity called Colossians. It is a reminder of what we believe and what we are here for. 

We are more than a social club. We are more than a support group. We are more than an activity centre. We are the living embodiment of Jesus Christ, the visible representation of God’s presence on earth. There is no longer a temple containing the most holy place. There is no longer an Ark of the Covenant upon which the presence of God rests. There is the church full of people who have been rescued from the power of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of Jesus.

So, how do we become this church? 

What would it look like for the church in Hoadley to receive Paul’s letter as our own? What is the message of the letter that will help us distinguish the cuckoo eggs in our nest from the legitimate eggs? That is the goal of this series.

Between now and the end of November, we will look at the following topics:

• A Fruitful Church – how our hope, faith and love bears fruit among us and in our community
• A Wise Church – how increasing our understanding of God’s wisdom produces lives that are pleasing to the Lord
• A Flourishing Church – when we identify with Jesus we become people of reconciliation and peace
• A Mature Church – our certainty of who Jesus is and who we are in him prevents deception and lies from taking root among us
• A Holy Church – when we get our instruction from Jesus, we are free from the bondage of legalism and fear
• A Renewed Church – a real transformation happens when Jesus becomes our Lord, bringing life where there was death

The common theme through all of these topics will be that the church is built upon, has its only hope in, and exists for the unique greatness of Christ. Jesus Christ is central to our existence. He is the only legitimate source of life and truth.