WADING RIVER CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH

SERMONS IN PRINT

Peter Vibert 4/13/06

2 Corinthians 5:14-21 “Reconciled”

We gather on Maundy Thursday to remember, in a special way, what our Lord has done for us. That of course begs the question of just what he has done. In all the NT, few passages approach the sweeping scope of 2 Corinthians 5, as Paul surveys from maybe 30 years after the events of Jesus’ Crucifixion and Resurrection what it all meant, and what it continues to mean for those who call themselves Christians.

As in all Paul’s writings, it’s crucial to see first what he claims God has done, and then to look for the “therefore” that tell us what impact these acts of God have or should have on us. What has God done? In the death of Jesus, he has “reconciled the world to himself.” What does that mean? First, that there was a breach between the world and God that needed to be healed. The consistent teaching of the Bible from Gen 3 to Revelation is that this world is in rebellion against God. That “falling out” or “falling away” from God that began long ago has affected everyone who has lived ever since.

If you doubt that, then you need only look at – for example – childrearing. Does any parent think that young children need to be taught to act badly? Is bad temper and defiance a matter of nature or nurture? Is any parent in doubt? Babies come wired that way! And as they get older, their wild natures and rebellious spirits find new ways to express themselves, as even the best of parents discover. As one wise parent among us said years ago, “small children, small problems; big children, big problems!” And we know today that the problems do not go away when our children reach 18 or 21 or 30 or 40!

And if you want a less domestic view of what theologians call “original sin,” look at the state of the world, and the animosities that arise like weeds in a spring garden. The only astonishing thing about it is that some people are still astonished when things go badly, and even violently. You imagine they may have lived very sheltered lives!

Everyone in the world needs reconciling to God, who did not make us for this kind of violent squabbling. And Jesus Christ, the man who was also God in the flesh, is the only one in history who has been able to bridge the gap between humans and God. He made himself a bridge that we could cross to reach God. God made him the bearer of all our sins, so that we could become righteous in God’s sight. But not all people are willing to cross that bridge. Christ’s death paid for the sin of all, but not all are willing to be paid for. Not everyone wants to be reconciled to God. Some have always preferred to go their own way, to direct their own lives, to be masters of their own fates. Some have found how to “work the system” of a fallen world to their advantage. They sense no need of God, and think he is pretty toothless anyway to allow them to prosper as they do. They don’t want their “sins forgiven” because they find their sins amiable to live with and often profitable. They can see nothing to lose in staying in “rebellion” against God – if he even exists.

Only those who are joined to Jesus by faith, who are “in Christ,” become a “new creation.” In them, God “starts over” with a clean slate to remake them in the image of his Son, with the goal of making them all he intended humans to be. Redeemed by his Son, he no longer counts them as sinners, but already in his sight sees them as righteous people who are daily being remade, re-created in the image of God – or now, more exactly, in the image of the God-man Jesus.

What has God done? In Christ’s death and rising, he has reconciled to himself those who are “in Christ.” They are now “new creatures” and he is in the process of remaking them.

“Therefore” - what then is left for us to do? In a sense, nothing – this is a work of God that we do not contribute to. He has done the reconciling, we are merely the recipients of his gift. Our guilt is taken away. But in other ways, of course we have much now to do. It begins with gratitude: the kind that emerges when someone loves us. “The love of Christ compels us,” or “constrains us,” says Paul. When someone loves us deeply and sacrificially, it affects us deeply. We can never be the same again. We discover the one thing that everyone secretly craves: to know that we are special in someone’s eyes, that we are needed, that we are wanted, that we are valued. We have a reason for living that nothing else can approach: there is someone who loves us!

And that makes us do things, it compels us to do things, that we would never otherwise do. If you are a married man, you learn to do housework, to take your share in child-raising, to take out the trash, to remember birthdays, to buy flowers, to understand the power of words like “thank you” and “I love you too.” If you’re a woman, I guess you learn similar things, though I don’t pretend to understand the details nearly so well: I guess it’s connected to how some women manage to put up with some men – it’s a kind of “Beauty and the Beast” relationship; it’s all to do with love!

The love of Christ constrains our behavior – this is the foundation, for Paul, of all Christian ethics – and it compels certain attitudes and behaviors. For one thing, being a Christian makes us see people in a new way. We do not evaluate them in terms of ability, or what they are worth, or how talented they are; we do not measure them by height or weight or skin color or native language. We do not, if we are Christians, fall into xenophobia, or join the crowd’s view of “them”! We now begin to see people as God sees them: as people who have immortal souls with whom we will one day either share the presence of God or his eternal absence.

What God has done for us in Jesus makes us aware that we are sinners saved by grace; aware that our faith and trust in Jesus Christ are central to our view of ourselves, as well as other people. And so in some real way, we feel compelled to “live not for ourselves but for him who died and was raised for us.” A major part of that now is what Paul calls the ministry and the message of reconciliation.

If we are reconciled to God through Jesus, then our calling is to bring other people into reconciliation with him – we are now, as Paul says, “Christ’s ambassadors, as though God was making his appeal through us.” We have a message to bring to others: we implore them to embrace the peace, the direction, the love that we have found through being reconciled to God by Jesus. But we also have a ministry of reconciliation towards one another, because the healing of our relationship to God means that we want to heal the estrangements and battles and hurts of this rebellious world.

So we have to find ways to overcome our differences with one another, to put aside our wants and tastes and sins in favor of other people’s needs; to reach out to bridge the gap to other people - even when we are sure that we are in the right and they are in the wrong! That is what God has done for us, and only in his strength can we find it in ourselves to make up with people who we are sure have wronged us. They may be family members, neighbors, work colleagues, community members – even other Christians. It is our calling, our compulsion, our message, our ministry, to reach out to people we are separated from. We may not “succeed.” It may take a strong work of God in them, as it has in us, for reconciliation to truly occur. And the presence of the un-recreated, still fallen parts of each of us makes it possible that there will be new fallings-out in the future.

But our calling, our ministry, is one of reconciliation – because that is what God has done for us – permanently! – in and through Jesus our Lord. So we gather, in gratitude, to remember.

Let us pray...