Seven Days a Week

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

May 6, 2007

Text: II Corinthians 5: 14-21

Leander Keck, professor at Yale, wrote:

“I do not know why so much of mainline Protestantism has become a joyless religion. Perhaps we are more impressed by the problems of the world than by the power of God. Perhaps we have become so secular that we indeed think that now everything depends on us; that surely ought to make us depressed.

“Perhaps we have simply gotten bored with a boring God whom we substituted for the God of the Bible….. Even the Eucharist, despite the words of Great Thanksgiving, is rarely the thankful, joyous foretaste of the Great Banquet with the One who triumphed over Death, but mostly a mournful occasion for introspection.

“A joyless Christianity is as clear a sign that something is amiss as a dirty church.” (The Church Confident)

GOD HAS SHOWN HIS FAITHFULNESS

Well, Paul in this section of Second Corinthians is out to remedy this illness----especially in the thinking that everything depends on us alone.

You may remember that Paul, in writing to the Christians in Corinth, is taking them to task for talking big about their superior spirit-filledness--- while keeping on in their old ways of treating one another. Some are set aside as inferior believers, and members are splitting into various factions, following their favorite teachers---rejecting Paul as yesterday’s news.

If Paul ever raised his voice in dictating a letter, surely it was when he spoke these words:

For the love of Christ controls us, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

From now on, therefore…..

Watch out when Paul uses a “therefore!” He is about to set people right about the gospel of Jesus Christ and the consequences of living in Christ.

First Church, Corinth is not the Corinthian’s Church. They did not create it. It is Christ’s body. “The decisive and universal is that “one has died for all. While “we were “helplessly turning point” mired in hostility to God,” God “acted in love for us….” God did this through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. “God has reconciled the world to himself, not counting our trespasses against us.” (Verse 19) (James F. Kay, The Lectionary Commentary)

GOD’S INITIATIVE

God has “put the world square with himself through Christ, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of our sins.” (The Message, verse 19)

You might not be pleased that God has done this for you. That God has drawn so near to you. But God did not ask your consent. You have been reconciled, along with all the rest. God has made peace through Jesus Christ. He has shown himself to be your Savior and Friend.

Now you can certainly rebel against this claim of God on you. You can reject this relationship which God has invited you to enter into. But this doesn’t change what God has done.

But, if you enter into this relationship, if you accept God’s acceptance of you, if trust in God alone for your rightness---- then certain things follow. You will be a “burgeoning” new person (verse 17, The Message).

NEW PERSONS, NEW WORLD

You will live differently.

You will relate to people and the whole created order differently;

and you will see your life’s purpose differently.

John Wesley comments on this passage: We will have “new senses, faculties, affection, appetites, ideas and conceptions. We will live, as it were, in a new world. God, people and the whole creation will appear in a new light.” (Notes on the New Testament)

LIFE IN SERVICE TO GOD

You and I will live differently. We will “live no longer for [ourselves] but for him who for our sake died and was raised.” We will live for Jesus Christ.

How that goes against the grain! We are so hopelessly hunkered down in our egos. Our first question is usually, “What’s in it for me?”

But God in Christ has rescued us from the dungeon of overweening pride and fear----and from the belief that we count for nothing. God, out of love for you and me and the whole world, has come to us in Christ Jesus and defeated the powers of darkness on their own ground. You are forgiven and freed from all that hems you in and pulls life out of you. “All this is God’s gift, offered without price.”

To accept this love does not to mean that we “hate” ourselves or this world. It means that we are freed to love ourselves soberly, wisely.

To live in service to the Triune God as your Guide and Savior is genuinely to be free. We give up our search for a different past. We come to accept ourselves as gifted persons in our own right, without always looking sideways at others and see how we measure up beside them. And all of this happens because we now see ourselves as subjects of God’s pure, unbounded love. We are new creations in the making because God has made it possible.

OTHERS

If we see ourselves differently, we can also see others differently. “We no longer regard anyone from a human point of view.” A better translation (since we can hardly have any other viewpoint that a human one) is “from an outward, external point of view; as utter strangers.”

In our Christ-less view, we will be seeing others, even those other members, as competitors for the big prizes from God. We tend to think that God only has so much affection to pass around, and we do not want to be left out.

Or, in contrast, we will see everyone else as winners and ourselves as the losers.

The contrast? When we see people from the view of the cross, we see them and ourselves as ones for whom Christ died and was raised. We see them as God’s beloved. In this light, true community is possible at a level deeper than close proximity or superficiality. We seek to build each other up into Christ. Differing gifts is something to be celebrated, not feared or minimized.

Does this mean that all is sweetness and light between people once they are in Christ Jesus?

Yes and no. God has made it so. God in Christ has “broken down the dividing wall of hostility.” So, at a deep level, we are all one. Though it grieves our Lord, we do not live up to our newly-minted selves. And, we all have some distance to go in getting this Christian new being right. But we call upon God’s forgiveness and we keep on forbearing and forgiving and seeking to manifest the reconciliation which God has already accomplished between us.

MISSION

We are new creations because God in Christ has called us to a purposeful life.

Though I might have advised God against it, God in Christ has “entrusted us with the message of reconciliation” and made us his “ambassadors.”

Whoa! Errand boys and girls might have been more like it. Maybe employees in the corporation? No---we are given the job of being ambassadors, envoys, representatives.

How we shy away from this responsibility! Especially in the marketplace of the gods that is our contemporary culture. If you represent one God, that means you can’t be neutral. If you have on your calling card only “Representing Jesus Christ,” people might actually ask you and me to show our product!

But, in the mystery of God’s providence, God wants us. We saw last week how Peter was told to tend the sheep of God. Now, Paul is telling us, we must go to where God’s sheep are scattered, wherever in the world they are.

One of my favorite writers on evangelism has a study called “Friend-makers for God.” One translation of this passage has it this way: “God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing.” (CEV) We are not to go and yak to people merely about ourselves. “God makes his appeal (invitation, summons, request) through us.”

God wants everyone to hear the news of the world being reconciled. God wants everyone to know of the fresh start that is offered. Why? Because God loves people. God loves the world. And the needless suffering of people grieves God.

How do we carry out this calling to be ambassadors for Christ? There is more than can be said here, of course! But when we begin to claim and consecrate our gifts of the Spirit, God will open our ears to all kinds of possibilities.

In our daily lives---whether in a workplace or in our neighborhoods or as volunteers---- we can be the front-line medics for people who are wounded, much as the Good Samaritan was.

We can minister with our message of God’s love in Christ in the midst of caring relationships. (It is like one beggar telling another where food is to be found, as D.T. Niles said so many years ago.)

We can minister through representing the new Christ-ethic by which people are not pre-judged but treated as beloved creatures of God.

We can show by our actions and voices that this planet earth, “our island home” is God’s creation and our only habitat, and must, for the love of God and our great grand-children must be preserved.

We can find places we can use our talents and time to volunteer to give a hand up to children and youth who need it.

We can invest ourselves in the future of the church by showing our children the wonder, excitement and joy of serving Christ within their chosen vocations, rather than just making a good living.

We may find God calling us to be change agents in the world, to make changes in the policies and customs which are counter-productive or down-right destructive.

We can travel to lands where there is suffering on a level we have not encountered and discover the presence of Christ in them, serving us.

We can work on all of those problems in society that do not have easy answers and which require tenacity, patience and emotional intelligence.

Martin Luther wrote of the universal priesthood of all believers. He said that we are all called to be “little Christs” to our neighbors. All of us have a ministry to others. He wrote the following:

“If you are a craftsman, you will find the Bible placed in your workshop, in your hands, in your heart; it teaches and preaches how you ought to treat your neighbor. Only look at your tools, your needle, your thimble, your beer barrel, your articles of trade, your scales, your measures, and you will find this saying written on them. You will not be able to look anywhere where it does not strike your eyes….There is not lack of such preaching, for you have as many preachers as there are transactions, commodities, tools and other implements in your house or [workplace]; and they shout this to your face: ‘My dear, use me toward your neighbor as you would want him to act toward me with that which is his [or hers].’” (Quoted in Christianity in Real Life by William Diehl)

COSTLY DISCIPLESHIP

Living in this New Creation, and into the new persons God has designed for each of us, will be costly. Living for Jesus Christ is costly, as he said it would be. Representing Christ may irritate our friends and create some new enemies. But we can’t help it. We have to “answer for the hope that is in us.”

But if and when we have accepted God’s rescue of us, this life is the only way to go. For we believe this is the direction history is headed, that God’s sovereign love will bring in the kingdom in heaven to our earth. Meanwhile, we seize the day, not for ourselves but for love of Christ and neighbors.

So we are freed to rejoice and give thanks. This whole enterprise does not depend on us alone. God reigns, Christ is Lord, reconciliation has been permanently accomplished in Christ Jesus.
Now, while we live on this earth, it is time to show and tell this Good News.