Readers' Theatre: Colossians 1: 15 - 28

Here’s a readers’ theatre setting of Colossians 1: 15-28, the suggested epistle reading for Proper 11, Year C.  It is set for two readers.

Readers’ Theatre: Colossians 1: 15-28

Christ is the exact image of the invisible God.
He existed before anything was created

and is supreme over all creation,

for through him, God created everything
in the heavenly realms and on earth.

He made the things we can see
and the things we can’t see—

thrones and kingdoms,

spiritual powers and authorities.

Every detail was crafted through His design,

by his own hands and for his purposes.

He has always been!

It is his hand that holds all creation together.

Christ is also the head of this body, the church.

He is the beginning,

the first of those to be reborn from the dead.

So he is first in everything!

For God in all his fullness

was pleased to live in Christ,
through him, reconciling everything—the whole creation—to himself.
He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth
by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.

This even includes you who were once far away from God.

You were his enemies,

separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. 

Yet now he has reconciled you to himself

through the death of Christ in his physical body.

As a result, he has brought you into his own presence,

and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him

without a single fault.

But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it.

Don’t allow yourselves to be shifted away from the hope of the gospel,

which you have heard,

and which, indeed, the whole world is now having an opportunity to hear.

I myself have been made a minister of this same gospel,

and though it is true at this moment

that I am suffering on behalf of you who have heard the gospel,

yet I am far from sorry about it.

Indeed, I am glad,

because it gives me a chance to experience in my own suffering

something of the untold pains which Christ suffers

on behalf of his body, the Church.

For I am a minister of the Church by divine commission,

a commission granted to me for your benefit,

and for a special purpose:

that I might fully declare God’s Word—

that sacred mystery which up till now has been hidden

in every age and every generation,

but which is now as clear as daylight to those who love God.

They are those to whom God has planned to give a special vision

of the full wonder and splendor of his secret plan for the nations.

And the secret is simply this:

Christ in you!

Yes, Christ in you bringing with him the hope

of all the glorious things to come.

So, naturally, we proclaim Christ!

We warn everyone we meet,

and we teach everyone we can,

all that we know about him,

so that, if possible, we may bring everyone

to full maturity in Christ Jesus.