Holy Week and the Colossian Christ 1. In Him, Through Him, For Him

The picture is a close-up of the recently completed Christology tapestry. The idea began partly, and playfully, to answer the question, "What colour is Christology?" It wasn't meant to be a serious question, but it wasn't trivial either.

The whole work was to be based on Colossians 1.15-20, printed below. Each time I took it up I re-read this passage and allowed the images and ideas to soak into my way of thinking for the next 2 months. I read and translated it, worked through several commentaries and went chasing in lexicons and elsewhere. I kept notes on a text layered with profundity, and in which, to quote my theological hero James Denney, 'we hear the plunge of lead into fathomless waters'.

There was no pre-planning, no pattern to follow. I would start at the centre, work outwards, and try as best I could to allow the colours and images to grow out of prayer, reading, exegesis and contemplative stitching!

Over Holy Week I would like to offer a daily reflection on the Colossian hymn and link it to the tapestry. I'm not attempting to explain 'the meaning' of the tapestry, merely to reflect on what I see there, now that it's finished. Explanations are ways of reducing things, and there is something essentially irreducible in all atempts to 'explain' how 'all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in Him' – whether in theological formulae or stranded cotton! 

Colossians 1.15-20

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; ¹⁶ for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸ He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. ¹⁹ For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, ²⁰ and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.