How do you reconcile faith in a good God with a world where life is undone by death, joy by sorrow, and health by illness? This sermon moves from Greek philosophy and deism, through Nietzsche’s desperate sentence, to Paul’s hymn about Christ as the image of the invisible God and the firstborn from the dead (Colossians 1). God’s will, it turns out, is not the instant erasure of what is broken but a bridge joining heaven and earth, a bridge whose visible sign today is the church. Listen if the words ‘your will be done’ have grown harder for you to pray.
Discussion questions
For your small group or for personal reflection after the sermon.
- In Colossians 1:15 Paul calls Jesus the image of the invisible God. How does this echo humanity being created in God's image in Genesis, and what does it say about who Jesus is in contrast to us?
- In the ancient world the firstborn held the right of inheritance and the duty to care for the family. How does it shape your reading of Colossians 1:15-20 that Jesus is the firstborn over all creation and the firstborn from the dead?
- The sermon describes the tension between the idea of a good God and a world where death destroys life and sorrow destroys joy. When do you feel this tension most strongly, and how do you think about God in those moments?
- Deism pictures God as a clockmaker who wound up the world and then left it. In what situations is it easy for you to live as if God were absent, and what in Paul's text contradicts that?
- According to the sermon, Jesus is the bridge connecting heaven and earth, and the church is a picture of the new reality. How can your community show others this week that God's will is already happening on earth?
- What changes in the way you pray "your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" when you see it as an expression of hope that all things will be reconciled in Jesus?
