A Sermon on Five Verses (Year C, Lent 4)

 2 Corinthians 5:16-21

From now on, 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. 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.

This Epistle reading is only five verses. Five sentences. And in two of those sentences, St. Paul uses words translated as some variation of the verb “reconcile” five times. He does this all the time, and to a modern reader, the repetition of terms, this over-explanation of theological points is dizzying. There are really only two classes of people in our modern society who are used to reading and communicating in this way: lawyers and philosophers. But what the rest of us can do is take our time with the text, read it line by line, consider what that line has to say.
Now, entire books have been written on the complexities of St. Paul’s rhetoric and the influences of Greek culture on his writing, and none of that even takes into consideration the mighty influence of translators in subtly shifting one’s interpretations of the text. But you do not need to be a lawyer, a philosopher, or a theologian to study the Bible and put the wisdom you encounter into practice. So, we’re going to take this short text from St. Paul’s second letter to the Church at Corinth and look at it, line by line, and see what it might have to say to us today, in the 21st century. Let’s go.

First line: "From now on, 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."

This reminds me of a song from the Prince of Egypt movie. It’s called “Through Heaven’s Eyes.” This is a song sung by Jethro, Tzipporah’s father, when a young Moses tells him that he doesn’t think much of himself, and certainly doesn’t think he’s a worthy guest at his feast, even after saving Jethro’s daughters from ruffians. Jethro’s song talks about how we can get so bogged down in the metrics by which we assess value: wealth, strength, size, importance, that we fail to consider our inherent value and dignity through God’s perspective… How we could be the right person at the right time for anybody. There’s whispers of the prodigal son from our Gospel in here too… when the son returns to his father and says 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the Father values his son so unconditionally and is so delighted to be reunited with him that he throws a big party. In both cases, it’s not the objective value of a person that matters, but the relational value. When Jesus was among his followers, they related to him in a very human way, but after his ascension, that relationship changed. Now, they experienced Jesus, the Christ, through one another. When we understand that we can experience Christ through every person we meet, especially those with whom we are in community in the Church, this shifts our lens away from a worldly perspective and, with God’s help, closer to God’s own.

This leads to the second verse: "If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!"

When we shift our perspective away from one in which we assess value based on worldly metrics, we start to notice all the ways God is working in the world, and in us. Letting go of the need to be the smartest, the richest, the most esteemed, the most attractive, or to compare ourselves to others who have those qualities which we feel we lack, opens us up to live authentically and cherish the qualities God has given us. I wish we could welcome everybody the way we welcome new babies. Nobody expects anything of babies, and in most cases, we acknowledge that if a baby has a need, it is our responsibility to accommodate it. Part of the joy of babies is that there’s a world of possibilities in every one. Even though they come into this world full of their own personalities and predispositions, we tend to not place a whole bunch of assumptions on babies. We wait for them to grow into their full stature and try our best to guide them and set expectations with them for how they can fit into our world. We don’t do that with adult newcomers in our communities. We don’t acknowledge that spiritual growth and maturity takes time in just the way physical maturity does. And we also don’t give ourselves the opportunity to grow in faith. If someone comes into our midst who already has evident gifts or, more often, those worldly designations of value, we’re much quicker to embrace them. If we treat every person who comes into our midst as a new creation full of possibilities, who needs support and nurturing, and maybe a gentle guide in navigating our community, what would that look like?

Now we move to the third verse, and this one is a doozy: "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."

“Reconciliation,” as a theological term that typically refers to reconciling us of sin, and yes, that’s kinda what’s going on here, but Paul is saying so much more in this passage. “Reconcile” has a lot of different meanings. For those who keep checkbooks or work in accounting, one may be familiar with “reconciling accounts,” which is simply a matter of cross referencing the different accounts and receipts and making sure everything is in proper balance. The Latin root of this word, “Concilar” means “to bring together.” The suffix “Re-” modifies the word to mean “to bring together again.” This is why the word “reconcile” is often used to mean “to make up,” or to stop quarreling. But notice that Paul isn’t just talking about individual sin here. The phrasing “reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them,” may imply in English “the world” as a shorthand for all of humanity. As in, we sinned and we, humans, require reconciliation with God. But the word Paul uses here in Greek is “kosmon.” This is a word we see all over the New Testament, and it’s translated as “world,” but its meaning is much closer in meaning to the English word “Cosmos.” All of Creation. Everything that is. What Paul is saying here isn’t just that we as individuals are separated from God by our sin and Christ restores us to a fuller relationship with God. No. What Paul is saying is that God is taking everything in the whole universe that is separated from God and bringing it back together with God. All that is broken is being made whole. It is being reconciled. It is being brought together. And then that last clause: “and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” We are the ones who have been entrusted with this message of reconciliation. We are the ones with the privilege and duty to communicate that God brings all things together.

Fourth verse: "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."

Jesus said that we will be known by our fruits. This is where I don’t have good news for you. People who are not Christian do not perceive us as being bearers of good news. They don’t even think we’re very nice people. In fact, the good folks at The Episcopal Church headquarters in New York paid some researchers to study perceptions of Jesus and Christians in our country. The results were released in March 2022, and among non-religious people, over half report that they believe Christians are hypocritical, judgmental, and self-righteous. Whether someone is non-religious or simply belongs to another faith, 20% or fewer believe that Christians are giving, friendly, or compassionate. A significant number of non-religious people don’t even think we represent the values and teachings of Jesus a lot. If, as Paul says, we are ambassadors for Christ, and that God makes their appeal to the world through us, how are we doing?
Now, I don’t think perceptions line up with reality all the time… public opinion is very easily manipulated, but I don’t think we do ourselves any favors. Jesus warned us about losing our salt– of living our lives in half-measures. The reality is that there are a whole lot of very loud people out there doing and saying things in Jesus’s name which, instead of encouraging love and reconciliation and liberation and wholeness, only serve to bully, demean, imprison, and hurt people. And if we are not visibly proclaiming Good News to the contrary, if we are not walking the walk and talking the talk, we ought not be surprised when folks think we're all the same as those folks spreading hurt and pain. Paul knew that, even in the early days of the Church, it’s easy to let things slide. Complacency is easy. Half-measures are easy. Falling back into our old habits and ways of looking at the world is so, so easy. And that’s why he says, at the end of this verse, that we need to be reconciled to God. We can’t be ambassadors for God and offer reconciliation if we, ourselves, are not reconciled to God. That takes introspection. That takes emotional honesty. That takes courage.

Finally, the last verse: "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

We’re coming back again to Jesus. Emmanuel. God with us. God became one of us. The wholeness and unity of God became incarnate in human form and was literally broken– died– in order to make that coming together again with God a possibility for us. We don’t have to have it all together. We don’t have to be perfect. We don’t even have to be okay. It’s okay to not be okay. Because God chooses to be in relationship with us and rejoices, just like the Father did when his son returned, a little worse for wear. If God can bring the whole universe back together in Christ, just imagine what God can do for you, for all of us.