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Paul presents a picture of the Spirit "transforming us into the same image" (2 Cor. 3:18), and in his great poem to the Colossians has Christ as "the image of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15).

For early believers this was "subversive poetry" in a world where images of Caesar were everywhere. Caesar was revered as a son of God, pre-eminent above all. But, counters Paul, Christ is our image. Christ is the one who made it all, holds it all together, will bring all creation together again, and claims to rule us all. Talk about near treason!

Is there an empire whose images surround us?

"The average American person is confronted every day by somewhere between five and twelve thousand corporate messages, all geared to shaping a consumer imagination. Whether you are running a political campaign for the highest office in the land or selling a particular brand of cigarette, it's all about image!" (Brian J. Walsh and Sylvia C. Keesmaat, Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire, IVP, 2004). According to Walsh and Keesmaat, "The primal responsibility of Christian proclamation is to empower the community to reimagine the world as if Christ, and not the powers, were sovereign."

I am intrigued by N. T. Wright's comments about presenting the gospel in a postmodern world, where new Caesars reign: "If you simply address the God-shaped blank that people think they've got, the God that you end up with is the God shaped by the blank."

On a corner in Victoria, Canada, one summer I met a delightful street artist. She said she was sure there is something "on the other side" but not quite sure what. But she was sure she was not a Christian.

She spoke of her church-going parents on the Canadian prairies. "The most creative thing they do is to watch television." She thought their god was too small.

"Leyana," I said, "do you realize how really great God is? There is nothing puny about him. He made it all—you and your paintings, your animals, and colors." I quoted for her Gerard Manley Hopkins's poem about the Spirit brooding over the bent world, like a great bird with warm breast and bright wings.

She wanted to write it down. "But my parents would think that's too 'new age,'" she said.

I told her just a bit about the age-old greatness of the gospel, the immensity of the poetry of Christ that Paul wrote to the Colossians. Later I tried to catch this immensity in a poem of my own:

You, Poem

A poem, you, composed to let my glory through.

A word run wry, a wayward child, defiled.

A stain, removed, remade, through harrowing pain.

A body, entered by my Word,

(dark images draining out his blood).

A work revised, by syntax of my grace.

A mirror, to reflect that scarred and lovely face.

A long delight for me once more to read.

Or must it be, again, again, to bleed?

There, I would like to say to all the Leyanas, is creation, and fall, grace and salvation … and, in the final reading, great joy, or great loss. The gospel is not any one formula.

The gospel is a "power"–one greater than the "powers" that hold us in thrall–God's kingdom breaking into the disrepute and disrepair of our lives and our world in a way utterly transforming, the Christ of history alive in our lives today.

Gospel preaching addresses the distorted motivations of everyone. It speaks both to the secular humanist who says, "I accept myself as my own god and obey my own laws," and the religious person who says, "I obey, therefore I am accepted." Both are motivated by self-absorption and the desire to be in control.

Pastor Tim Keller makes this point with the biblical story of the two sons, both the rebellion of the younger son ("I want to be my own god") and the pride of the older son ("I have earned my way into the family by being good") with both missing the good news: that "human beings are more broken and sinful than they could ever imagine, and more loved and cherished than they could ever dare hope."

The gospel, says Keller, is the power of God to change people (irreligious or religious) from the inside out. "Christ gives us a radically new identity, freeing us from both self-righteousness and self-condemnation. He liberates us to accept people we once excluded, and to break the bondage of things (even good things) that once drove us. In particular, the gospel makes us welcoming and respectful toward those who do not share our beliefs."

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