The New Reality

2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Joshua 5:9-12; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

We are approaching the midway point of Lent. Our Lenten disciplines have varied and we have wavered in how well we have followed them. Giving things up or taking things on for Lent has about the same track record as New Year’s resolutions. It is hard to do this on our own. Twelve-step recovery programs have known this for years. It takes a village to accomplish many things. It takes a village plus Christ to accomplish the new reality that is faith.

Over the first three weeks of Lent we have focused on community. All the faces at the cross remind us that there was a veritable crowd of unique individuals who faced the cross. Paul reminds us that all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. Jesus’ stories and activities throughout his ministry were aimed at enlarging the kingdom. Most of Paul’s letters are addressed to communities of faith. 

Our Lenten discipline has far less to do with giving up chocolate or donuts and lot more with living into a broad and generous understanding of what being the people of Christ is all about. We can participate in lots of spiritual exercises. Saying extra prayers, doing more Bible reading, attending mid-week services, memorizing scripture, or singing hymns around the house may be good in themselves, but none of them assures us of spiritual perfection or being right with God. 

Paul understood this first hand. As a Pharisee he had tried zealously to achieve a fully satisfying relationship with God. But he had failed. In the midst of this failure he was overwhelmed by the realization that he now had friendship with God through Christ Jesus. He likened it to being a new creature or, as the gospel writer John termed it, “born anew.” By the gracious gift of God in Christ, we, like Paul, now possess the right relationship God desires to have with us. What a new reality that is!

Three key words jump out at us in this brief passage from Paul: reconciliation, world, ambassador. All three reflect the new reality which the gospel of Christ inserts into the lives of believers.

Paul has a passion for the word reconciliation, as well he should, based on his experience with Christ claiming him and commissioning him to deliver the gospel. In one grammatical form or another, he uses reconciliation five times in the space of three verses. For Paul reconciliation means a renewed relationship with God established through Christ’s life, death and resurrection.

The verse before today’s reading, 2 Corinthians 5:15, offers the key to how reconciliation can be experienced day by day. Eugene Peterson (The Message) renders it this way: Christ “included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.” Our new reality is that we have a far better life with Christ than we would have without Christ.

The next key word is world. The Greek word kosmos occurs 46 times in the Paul’s writings. It can mean the inhabited world around Paul, but it could also represent the whole of creation. Given Paul’s theological training, it is likely that he saw the kosmos as the reality where human rebellion and alienation from God existed and festered, and where humanity was under the domination of evil. Christ died to remove this alienation and hostility and to break the power of sin and evil enslaving humanity.

Reconciliation between humanity and God was an absolute necessity. That reconciliation must happen in the world. How? Through believers. But Paul says that it is more than believing. Believing is an internal thing. It is in the mind or the heart. Reconciliation has to happen in the world, and that means that it happens outside of individuals. It happens in the world which is thirsty for a new, living relationship with God. Yes, God can and does work in individuals. But God also works through individuals with individuals for individuals.

That’s where the concept of an ambassador comes in. An ambassador represents and interprets his/her country to the government of another nation. It was an ancient and honorable profession even in Paul’s time. Having an embassy with an ambassador in another nation’s capital demonstrates respect for the other nation and the goodwill which should exist between nations. Withdrawing an ambassador is a sign of strained or deteriorating relations.

Paul believed that because we have been given a new relationship with God through Christ, we are now God’s representatives in the world which God has destined for re-creation. We are not people of high rank, of great esteem, of noble birth. Yet God has made us ambassadors to the world. It’s a perfect match, because the world we inhabit is not a world of A-list celebrities, tenured faculty of world-renowned universities and think tanks, or government officials of the highest level. We are ordinary people who live among ordinary people. Jesus put aside his divinity to rub shoulders with humanity. Jesus asks us to put aside the pretense of our imagined greatness and allow our humanity to mingle with the humanity of those around us, to love our neighbors as ourselves, and to express God’s reconciling love.

Whether apocryphal or not, there is a splendid story that illustrates the centrality of this text. It is reported that Swiss theologian Karl Barth was once asked what he would say to Adolf Hitler if he ever had the chance to meet the monster who was destroying Europe. Barth’s interviewer assumed that he would offer a scorching prophetic judgment against Hitler. However, Barth replied that he would do nothing other than quote Romans 5:8: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Only the unparalleled mercy and forgiveness of God, the unstinted gladness and grace of the gospel, could prompt the Führer’s genuine repentance.(1) 

Because we have been reconciled to God, we have the privilege of encouraging others to accept God's free gift, to become reconciled as well. This is called the ministry of reconciliation. Since Paul experienced reconciliation through Christ, it became his mission to preach that message: “If we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son while we were still enemies, now that we have been reconciled, how much more certain is it that we will be saved by his life?” (Romans 5:10). 

The new reality is that we are reconciled to God. We didn’t do it for ourselves, we couldn’t do it for ourselves. Only Christ could and did. What a joyful reality for us to receive. Yes, we have to receive it, believe it with our whole being that it really is true, no matter what deep stains soil our past. We are reconciled. Thanks be to Christ. 

Today, the church owes it to the world to keep on spreading the message of this new reality. We are continually living into new realities. The Israelites experienced the new reality of the promised land when they survived on the fruit of the land instead of God’s manna. Both the younger and the elder son experienced the new reality of grace when the prodigal father welcomed the wandering son back home. What the father did in dividing the family’s resources, then later celebrating the younger son’s return, was an outrageously wasteful, careless, and unprecedented deed. It was unconscionable to forgive and renew the broken relationship in this way. Yet this is how grace functions in God’s realm.(2)

Brother Roger wrote in The Rule of Taizé, “Never resign yourself to the scandal of the separation of Christians, all who so readily confess love for their neighbor, and yet remain divided. Be consumed with burning zeal for the unity of the Body of Christ.”(3)

As we move toward the new reality of a risen Savior, let us live into that new reality by receiving God’s reconciliation for ourselves, by knowing that God’s reconciliation is for the whole world, and by being the empowered bearers of that reconciliation in order to break down the divisions of the world. 

Welcome the new reality in your life. Be the new reality for the lives around you. 

(1) Cited by Ralph C. Wood, “2 Corinthians 5:16-21: Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009) Year C, Volume 2, 110.
(2) Cited by John Shearman, “Opening Comments for Sunday March 6 2016 which is the Fourth Sunday of Lent. Year C,” midrash@joinhands.com, Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 3:48 PM
(3) Brother Roger, The Rule of Taizé (Taizé: Les Presses de Taizé, 1961), 14-16.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.