Targum on Colossians 2:6-15

During the Second Temple period, many Jews throughout the Diaspora, and even some in Palestine, stopped speaking Hebrew, as Greek and Aramaic rose to prominence. To teach their synagogues, rabbis would craft a loose paraphrase of a Hebrew text from the Tanakh, often contextualizing or interpreting it for their audience. They called these works targums. This piece is an attempt to allow us to hear an ancient letter with new ears. (I owe a great debt in this piece to a wonderful book of targums and commentary, called Colossians Remixed, by Walsh and Keesmaat.)

Targum on Colossians 2:6-15
Remember, you gladly received the proclamation that Messiah Jesus has established a new Kingdom, that he, not the next President, or the next cool product, demands your absolute allegiance. If that still holds true, order your lives according to his Way, just as a disciple would follow his Teacher’s every step. Sink deep roots into the soil of Christ’s truth, and your life will burst with fruit; you will be like a house built on the rock, firm and unassailable. From birth, society has demanded unswerving loyalty from you: loyalty to the American Dream, loyalty to unthinking consumption. You were trained to dream of a life of wealth and independence, one in which you could quietly assert your superiority over your neighbor. Well, Christ demands the same kind of faithfulness to his Kingdom, but his subjects follow a different dream: they know that they have received graciously, and thankfulness so wells up within them that it pours out to bless everyone around them.
You know that the world does not control you with its guns; Empire in every guise has always held its citizens in sway by taking their imaginations captive, by convincing them that its rule is ideal, inevitable, and eternal. Do not let the world’s propaganda deaden your heart to the dream of a better Kingdom: the reign of God restoring wholeness to the earth. Do not allow the thousands of corporate logos crowding your brain convince you that your purchases define you. Do not let the roar of idolatrous whispers convince you that man, armed with newspapers, nukes, and Nikes, can promise the hope that only Christ brings.
If you want to see God’s true vision for life, don’t look to the latest philosophy, advertisement, newscast, or wild-eyed mystic—look to Jesus, whose life exemplified the character of God, who showed us how to live in God’s society, God’s economy, and God’s foreign policy. If that’s not shocking enough, remember that Jesus has filled us with his divine presence, by sending us an Advocate to guide us in the ways of the Kingdom. If the Master of the Universe dwells by your side, what other authority do you need to answer to?
If even this royal Advocate were not enough, God has set us apart from the world in another way. Israel circumcised themselves as a sign of their covenant with God; we have received a new symbol: the mysterious burial and resurrection of baptism, the rite that marks our passage into the Kingdom, as we forsake the world and all that it loves. As Christ submitted his body to torture and death for our sake, so we (formerly dead to God because of our disobedience) die to our old ways, never faltering for fear of similar agony that might fall on us, because of our steadfast trust in the power of God that brought Jesus back from the dead after three days in the earth.
Recall your beginnings—you were dead to God, addicted to a lifestyle that was destroying, first yourself, and then the world. The powers of darkness that rule the world as oppressors, merely using thrones, board rooms, and editor’s offices as puppets, have always used the written codes of the world’s laws—whether Caesar’s, America’s, or even Israel’s—to bind our hearts and hands, to mire us deeper and deeper in sin. To set you free, God first had to confront these oppressors, and the systems that kept them in power. Jesus took the worst punishment these laws could muster, and let all their power be nailed on the cross with him, to perish with him. Thus, at the moment when their victory seemed greatest, when their darkness seemed to have crushed even God, Jesus shamed those pompous authorities by returning to life, leaving their power behind him in death. Their worst weapon had become Christ’s power over them—they could only follow meekly in Christ’s wake, watching as he undid the effects of their rule, sowing trust in place of fear, love in place of hatred, even changing an implement of torture to a symbol of peace.