“here Is a New Creation”

(2 Corinthians 5:11-21) 

Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we try to persuade others; but we ourselves are well known to God, and I hope that we are also well known to your consciences.   We are not commending ourselves to you again, but giving you an opportunity to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast in outward appearance and not in the heart.  For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you.  For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died.  And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them. 

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way.  So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!  All this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.  So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.  For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

            So, here we are hearing a rather complicated passage from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian church.  But I don’t want you to let all this wordiness drag you down.  There are times when I get overwhelmed when I work to interpret Paul’s letters.  What I do in those situations is to try to zero in on a couple of sections–which is what I’m doing today. 

So, one of the things I wondered about as I have tried to unpack this passage is, what does it mean to stop regarding those around us from a human point of view (as it says in verse 16)?  And, if we regarded Christ from a human point of view, what does it mean to no longer do that?  Well, the final answer is that we are new creations in Christ.  Paul tells us that. 

As these new creations, we are called to do, think and act differently than when we regarded the world from our human point of view.   Now, when we interact with folks, we are told that we must look to what is not immediately seen.  We must see the inner person and not make decisions about others by only what we see on the outside. Good rule, right?  Don’t judge a person by their outward appearance.  This almost always gets us in trouble, but we do keep doing it.  On first meetings in the past, I have decided that I don’t need to know a certain person, but then I DO get that opportunity to know them, and I think, “Wow! I wish I’d known them sooner!” 

In Paul’s language, we must consider the heart, not the face.  This text is about how we are transformed by our experience with the Risen Christ.  It is about how, when we are changed by knowing Christ, we begin to be able to stop judging people by the superficial things that seem to rule everything and everyone around us.  We can do this because we have died to our old way of being with each other, and we have risen to God’s way in Christ.  We no longer regard Christ or each other from a human point of view.

An example: a couple of weeks ago we were dealing with the text from Mark about how the Pharisees were looking to entrap Jesus in his activities on the Sabbath.  You remember: the disciples had gone into the field and gathered some grain because they were hungry, and the Pharisees were judging Jesus and the disciples for doing this on the Sabbath.  Then, Jesus had healed the guy with the withered hand on the Sabbath.  Of course, people need to be fed on the Sabbath and, if someone is in need of healing, why not do it on the Sabbath?  But in Jesus’ day, religious law was so rigid that people could get hurt in the process.  They were judging Jesus and his guys by the superficial laws that did not take into consideration human needs and compassion. 

These days we have lots of examples of how this plays out.  The big controversy over gay and Lesbian issues have kept the United Methodist Church stuck for decades because of a rigid, unmoving, uncompassionate reading of scripture.  What people have understood as religious law has been hurting and even killing our gay and Lesbian siblings for a very, very long time.  So, it’s clear we need to stop regarding our Christian friends from a human point of view and start seeing people through the eyes of Christ.  

Being transformed by Christ allows us to see through God’s lens.  Thanks be to God, the United Methodist Church has finally made the changes necessary to move forward, to officially welcome all with open hands, open minds and open hearts.  We can say those words now with integrity when before they seemed hypocritical.  This is what it means to see, not through human eyes, but through the transformed hearts and minds of people who belong to God and belong to Christ.    

The next section in this scripture passage says this: “So, if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”  Our translation suggests that God has transformed the old which is great news for us who are part of the old guard.

It means there is the hope of transformation for us all, that we all can be in on this new creation.  Even old things can become new.

My mentor, Dr. Van Bogard Dunn, had a great story from way back when.  Bogie was known for doing all his writing longhand on a legal pad, and he was not interested in doing things any differently.  Others had been trying to get him to use a word processor.  One day, his wife, Gerry, reported him coming down the stairs from his office, waving a paper from his printer saying, “Old Dog.  New trick!” 

Of course he had discovered the amazing possibilities that come with writing on that word processor.  Like many of us who were eventually converted to working with a keyboard and, eventually, a desktop computer or a laptop, Bogie had seen the light.  “The old had become new.”  The old dog had learned a new trick.

Many of us church leaders, in our youth, had all kinds of new ideas for how the church needed to change and keep up with the changing world.  We were sure that the new worship style that we had been introduced to, which was less formal, along with some new music that we liked, would surely attract young people and make worship more meaningful for everyone.  When we ran into some resistance, we may have had the passing thought of, “I guess some of these old folks are going to have to pass on before we can move forward with ministry in this place.”  Well, now, a lot of us are those old folks who are hanging on to “traditional” ways of doing things. 

I have to say that now I am old enough to have seen a lot of trends come and go, and I’ve seen a lot of ways of being in ministry introduced along the way.  Being at Annual Conference really brings this home.  Many of these programs have been and still are heralded as new revolutions without which a church cannot grow and will surely die.  I say this both humbly and with some gained wisdom.

…It’s true that today’s youth have known nothing but screens.  Their brains are wired way quite differently than mine.  …But I have to believe that there are some things that all human beings have in common, and that is our need for love and connection with others. 

So, I hold this truth to be self-evident: that the old doesn’t have to pass away, necessarily, but that it must be open to the new, to allowing Christ to break into our world and transform us, to be created anew.

So, these words written by Paul can be meaningful in our world today as we try to sort through a very complicated time (though it may not be any more complicated than any other time.  I don’t know).  Paul makes a case for the need for a ministry of reconciliation, of the healing of relationships that are broken. 

Now, I don’t care who you are or what time and place you have lived in, you have probably experienced a relationship in your life that has been fractured or cracked or you know people who have.  More importantly, you may have found yourself having fallen away from a relationship with your Higher Power.  You may have felt lost and afraid in the midst of troubles or you may know people around you who are in need of reconciliation.  Our verse says “We are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making an appeal through us.”  The Message Bible puts it this way: “We’re Christ’s representatives.  God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them.  We’re speaking for Christ: so, become friends with God.  God is already a friend with you.”

This business of reconciliation is not something that is limited to a certain type of church or a specific sort of worship or a certain way of talking about Jesus.  It does not exclude folks who don’t worship regularly.  Reconciliation is a gift of God through Christ that allows us to be in sacred relationship with all God’s people.

Last week I asked Lynn to add a few words to the Welcome page on our website.  Now it goes like this: “Welcome to all who are searching for a church home, to those who need strength, to those who have strength to share, to those who want to follow Christ, those who may have doubts or even to those who don’t believe.  

Welcome to new visitors and to old friends.  Welcome to children, men, women, non-binaries, single people and married folks.  Welcome to people of all colors, cultures, abilities and sexual orientations, to believers and questioners, and to questioning believers.  Welcome Everyone!”

            I believe that this is a statement of reconciliation, an offer that ours is a place of reconciliation and that we, all of us, are always in need of reconciliation, with each other and with God.  It matters not what we’ve done or how we have judged others.  Here is a place of reconciliation.  May we live into that beautiful vision, that new creation.  May we be the Jesus House for ourselves, for each other and for all those out there who are seeking!  Amen.