“Rooted and Built Up”
Seventh Sunday After Pentecost
July 27, 2025
Burnt Hills United Methodist Church
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing…
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will we ever learn?
These evenings have been highlights of my summer. There’s something so right about folks coming together to make a joyful noise, and I have to give props to Cathy, Beth, and Ross for dreaming this up during coffee hour back in the spring. The vision was simple: a social justice sing-along for folks who can’t sing.
Perfectly imperfect in our gathering and music making.
Songs like these have carried generations through the weight of injustice. They remind us that despair is not the end of the story. They root us in something larger than ourselves when the enormity of the world’s grief makes us feel small and insignificant.
Because I don’t know about you, but I’ve been struggling with the enormity of the world’s grief this summer, too:
An on-going genocidal campaign in Gaza funded by our public dollars;
Federal agents disappearing men, women, and children here in our communities who look like me and have last names that sound like mine;
The erosion of cherished civil liberties;
The criminalization of homelessness and poverty.
And that’s not even touching the private crises each of us might be carrying that will never make it to our timelines or newsfeeds.
Oh, when will we ever learn?
I try hard to live by activist Mariame Kaba’s maxim: Let this radicalize you rather than lead you to despair.
Let this radicalize you.
It’s an invitation to pay attention to what we’re rooted in. After all, radical comes from the Latin word radix, meaning root. A radical is one who is rooted.
And here’s the thing: we’re all rooted in something. The question is: what are we rooted in?
Now, I admit that I’m not a botanist, nor am I much of a gardener. Jo is the plant person in our household. But, for some reason, my YouTube algorithm is full of gardening content, feeding dreams of one day growing a big, beautiful, productive garden that attracts all the pollinators and yields tasty harvests.
And then I remember just how many of Jo’s plants I’ve managed to kill while they’ve been traveling, and I think…maybe plants just aren’t for me.
Still, I know two things about roots. They anchor, and they nourish.
Roots keep plants steady when the storms come, right?
Como un arbol firme junto al rio, ¡No nos moverán!
Just like a tree that’s planted by the water, we shall not be moved!
Our roots keep us grounded. When life shakes us and the winds of fear and falsehood try to pull us out of place, roots hold us steady.
And roots nourish. They draw up water and nutrients, the hidden—and sometimes not so hidden—things buried deep in the ground all around us and deliver them to the rest of the plant. What we receive from our roots, for better or worse, is what animates us.
That’s what Paul is telling the Colossian church.
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
Did you hear that? Paul doesn’t tell them to go out and plant themselves in brand-new soil. He doesn’t tell them to hustle to earn this rootedness. It’s already happened.
You’ve already been planted.
You’ve already received Christ.
Your roots are already in this rich and abundant soil, and you didn’t have to do anything for it.
So why are you trying to mess with it?
Because here’s what you need to know about the Colossian church. Their city had seen better days.
Once upon a time, it was the most prosperous city in its region. But by the time Paul writes this letter, Colossae is in decline. Other cities in the valley outproduced it. All that wealth and influence drained away.
Sound familiar?
And when an earthquake ran through the valley in the early 60s, those other cities had the means, capital, and resources to rebuild, but Colossae? Not so much.
When the soil beneath you feels unstable—when your world is shifting—it’s tempting to look for new soil; to try and grasp at anything that promises stability in a cosmos governed by quantum principles of uncertainty.
In the face of this shifting ground, Paul doesn’t tell them to scramble or chase new roots.
Instead, he says remember who you are.
Remember whose you are.
The one in whom the fullness of deity dwells bodily.
The one in whom you have come to fullness in.
The one with whom you were buried in baptism and with whom you were raised.
The one with whom God made you alive.
Remember who you are and remember whose you are.
Because not all soil is good soil. Not all soil is rich and abundant with nutrients of love, gratitude, interdependence, and grace. Some soil is toxic, death-dealing even. Soil that promotes scarcity, fear, ownership, and domination. Soil that takes you captive and chokes the life out of you.
Paul asks the church in Colossae: Why would you root yourselves in that toxic soil when the rich soil of Christ is already here?
Sure, the soil of the dominant social order is enticing. It looks rich, but it’s laced with toxins. It promises security, but it breeds fear. It trains us to see our neighbors as competitors rather than companions and it tells us that our worth is measured by what we produce and what we possess, but Robin Wall Kimmerer is right:
I think I cannot own a thing and love it at the same time. Owning diminishes the innate sovereignty of a thing, enriching the possessor and reducing the possessed.
No matter how loud the dominant voices of our culture are, I cannot own a thing and love it at the same time. Love is not about control. Relationships are not about getting the best deal. Creation itself is so, so much more than raw material to be bought, sold, and stripped for profit.
Anyone that says any differently is poisoning our soil with fear and scarcity—a logic that runs counter to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Because we don’t have to cling. We don’t have to compete or keep score. We are already enough. We are already rooted in the love of Christ—perfect love which casts out fear.
Perfect love that doesn’t shy away from or try to cover up the injustices of the world but goes beyond itself to dwell among the poor and the powerless.
Perfect love that responds to pain and suffering not by lashing out but by extending a hand in trust and in care.
Perfect love, love so amazing and so divine, that bears witness to the enormity of the world’s grief and gives everything rather than hoarding everything.
“Every time I take a step in the direction of generosity,” Henri Nouwen writes, “I know I am moving from fear to love”.
That’s what the life-giving soil of Christ offers. Soil that encourages us to love without counting the cost. Soil that has us give because we have already received. Soil that allows us to trust that our lives are not defined by scarcity but by abundance.
So there we have it. Two soils. Each filled with their own properties that will either lead to death or promote flourishing.
And yet, how often do we try to have it both ways?
How often do we plant one root in Christ and one root in the toxic soil of the dominant social order, hoping that we can draw nourishment from both? How often do we trust Christ’s promises on Sunday but go back to keeping score on Monday? How often do we talk about grace but live like there’s never enough?
Here’s the problem. These two soils don’t mix, and we will not be able to thrive when part of us is rooted in fear and part of us is rooted in love.
Why root ourselves in that toxic soil at all?
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
Friends, the enormity of the world’s grief is daunting. There’s no denying it. I feel it, and I’m sure that many in here feel it. And that’s why these summer evening social justice sing-alongs have been a balm for my soul this summer. They remind me of the truth that Paul has for the Colossians.
We’ve already been planted in Christ.
We don’t have to scramble for stability or hustle to earn favor. The soil of grace and gratitude is already beneath our feet, already holding us, and already nourishing us for a life that is fully alive.
Because the good news of the gospel is that we have been given the greatest gift of all. Through Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, you have been given to me and I have been given to you and we have been given to each other—we have been given to each other. We are rooted in Christ, together.
And everything that weighs us down—every ledger of fear and record of failure, every false measure of worth—has already been nailed to the cross. We bear it no more because Christ has already borne it for all of us
Because when we gather together in community, in here on a Sunday morning or out on the lawn on a beautiful summer’s evening and orient our love in the same direction—beyond ourselves—we find that the despair that the powers and principalities of this world so desperately want us to fall into, isolated and divided, is a choice we cannot afford. We find that we can, instead, face the enormity of the world’s grief, together, and be radicalized by it—rooted in the one who gives us strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.
So, may we root ourselves in the rich and fertile soil we’ve already been planted in.
May we live not according to the logic of scarcity but of Christ’s endless abundance.
May we let every step we take move us from fear to love, and let’s invite others to do the same and maybe, just maybe, we won’t have to ask when we’ll ever learn ever again.
And may the one who began a good work be faithful to complete it in us.
The work continues.
Amen.
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