"The Ministry of Reconciliation" (Fourth Sunday in Lent)

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

16 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. 17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 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. 20 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. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

            One of my earliest memories took place sometime in 1987. I was three years old, and my uncle’s girlfriend (or maybe they were married then) picked me up in her yellow Firebird from the apartment my mom, sister, and I were staying at to take me to Clark Cinemas in town. She was brave enough to take a three year old boy to see his first movie, and that movie was Masters of the Universe. That’s right: He-Man—and I went nuts! I loved He-Man when I was a kid; I had most of the action figures (though I never had Battle Cat or Castle Grayskull), and I couldn’t pick up a stick or a Wiffle-ball bat without holding it up in the air and hollering, “I have the poweeeeeerrrrrr!” I loved it! Along with the thrill of sitting in a movie theater for the first time in my life, I was going to see He-Man in an actual sword fight with Skeletor, and it was AWESOME! Masters of the Universe quickly and easily became my favorite movie as a kid. I’d watch it every time it came on television; if it came on while my step-dad was flipping through the channels, I’d beg and plead to put it back on, even if it was just for a few minutes. I’m telling you, I loved that movie as a kid.

Fast-forward about twenty years. I’m sitting at home on my day off, and back when Sallie and I lived where we could get actual high-speed internet (don’t get me started…) I usually spent the mornings of my days off watching Netflix. Well imagine my joy when one day what should happen to be added to Netflix but Masters of the Universe. I sat down on the couch, selected the movie, clicked “play,” and prepared myself to be transported back to my childhood. You know what happened instead? I realized what an awful movie Masters of the Universe actually is. I mean, it’s pretty terrible: the acting, the story, the effects…I could go on, but I think it’s enough to say I didn’t even make it through the entire movie—a movie I once enjoyed so much.

What had changed? I mean, I’m sure it was the same movie I saw back in 1987, when I thought it was the greatest thing ever, so what was different now? The answer is pretty obvious: I had changed. It had been at least two decades since I had last seen Masters of the Universe, and in that time a lot had changed. I had grown up, went to college and grad school, gotten married, bought a house, seen a lot more movies. It wasn’t just the time and growing older that changed my perspective on that movie, it was the experiences I had had, the things I had learned, the stories I had heard. I had changed; Masters of the Universe remained quite the same, but I, I was different.

I suppose that’s a fact of life, isn’t it? We grow older: we change. We learn: we change. We experience something new: we change. Things in this world may stay the same, but we change, and those changes cause us to see the world differently. This is all the more true when we think about what it means to be a Christian, how becoming a follower of Christ can’t help but change us, how it changes our perspective on the world. I believe that’s why the Apostle Paul begins our text this morning with these words: “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.”

What Paul is saying here is that from now on, since the work of Christ has been fulfilled, those of us who call ourselves Christians, those of us indwelt by the Holy Spirit, can no longer view people according to “the flesh” (the NRSV translates it “from a human point of view,” but the word here in Greek is sarks, which is better translated “flesh,” Paul’s favorite term for those things opposed to the way of God or “the Spirit”). We no longer regard people from the point of view of those who choose to live their lives in selfish opposition to the ways of Christ. In other words, we no longer judge people based upon human standards: on their triumphs or failures, their victories or defeats, their wealth or their poverty, their abundance or lack, their appearance, behavior, or what they can offer us. We no longer judge people for what we may have once deemed to be their relative worth. Our perspective has changed, because we have been changed by God.

I’m afraid this is something we often ignore about the Christian life: somehow we’ve been convinced that the only change that really matters is the change in our eternal destination, that once we may have been bound for eternal damnation, but now we are bound for glory, and that’s all that really matters, so let’s keep on keeping on when it comes to our ways of life. Let’s welcome those we find fit and worthy, while keeping the rabble out and the unclean at a distance. It too often seems as if we understand faith as an addition to our lives, as something to toss on the heap of nouns and adjectives we use to define who we are, but faith in Christ is much more than that. Faith in Christ is much more than box to be checked on a form, more than a classification, more than just another label used to separate people from one another. Being a Christian means more than being lumped in with one political party or another as a “voting bloc.” Following Christ is a fundamental reorientation of your entire life.

I’ll let that sink in for a minute: following Jesus is a complete reordering of your life. That’s why Paul makes this claim in verse 17: “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” Now, does this mean that you were a strung out, cussing, fighting, mean mongrel on Monday and then (“ta-da!”) you “get saved” and you’re a whitewashed, bible-quoting saint on Tuesday? By no means! What it does mean, though, is that something within us begins to change; we begin to transform into something radically different from what we were before, and we begin to see the world differently. Perhaps the new creation isn’t only being born in us; maybe it’s also being born in the way we see the world. Maybe part of the “everything old” that’s passing away is how we’ve viewed the world, how we’ve seen each other, until we’ve been changed, made new, by the Holy Spirit. Maybe this reorientation, this re-birth, this new creation in Christ isn’t only about our relationship to the hereafter. Maybe this new life isn’t something that’s only waiting for us after we die. Perhaps this new creation begins now. Maybe, just maybe, following Jesus creates within us this new perspective, this new creation, even now, and maybe us new creatures have a bigger part to play in this world that just throwing in the towel or pointing fingers at one another. Could it be that God intends more for us as believers than to go through the religious motions until we receive our “reward” in the great beyond?

Paul seems to think so. The apostle suggests that God’s saving actions in Christ were more than down payments on plots in heaven. Paul tells us that God’s reconciling work through Jesus is a work which God means for us to continue. He writes in verses 18 and 19: “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.” Notice Paul’s language here: God has “reconciled us to himself…God was reconciling the world to himself”: God is not the guilty party, the one in need of reconciliation, no. It’s us, the world, and God is the one who initiates this reconciliation, not us. Somehow, though, we are entrusted with this ministry of reconciliation, this message of reconciliation. God has entrusted us with this Good News that God does not view us as enemies, that God does not see us as scum unworthy of the gift of life, but in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.”

What a word for this world! What a word for us! In Christ God does not count our trespasses, our sins, our faults, our failures, our blind selfishness, our greed, our hatred, our ignorance, our bigotry, our meanness, our “old” self against us. God has reconciled the world to himself through Christ. And yet, here we are; here we are as folks who too often count the sins of others, folks who point fingers, who say things like, “they ought to be ashamed.” Here we are, reconciled, new creations, still trying to hold on to the old, dead creatures we once were, judging others by the flesh, weighing their faults against ours to see if they’re worse than us. Here we are, drawing lines, applying labels, and building walls. Here we are, claiming the Good News that has freed us, that says to us that God God’s self no longer counts our sins against us, while we scratch another tally mark on the wall, numbering the times someone else has hurt us, someone else has let us down, another time someone else has made a mistake. Too often it seems we’re glad to claim that God has reconciled us, all the while withholding such reconciliation from others because we feel they don’t deserve it (like we ever did!).

But God has brought us to more than that. Christ has called us to more than an existence in our own, private reconciliation with God. Paul tells us that God has entrusted the message of reconciliation to us, and therefore, “we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us…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 is more than a ticket to heaven when we die; this is more than a delayed “reward.” This is reconciliation, a call to let go of the old self that once sought every way but God’s. God has reconciled us to God’s self in Christ, but God has also called us to be agents of that reconciliation to others. As followers of Christ, we no longer see the lines of division that we once recognized, lines that once separated us from one another. We no longer view people the way the rest of the self-centered world does: we see people as Christ sees them, as children of God just as worthy of grace, forgiveness, and love as we are. We no longer see degenerates, reprobates, losers, or heathens. Rather, we see those for whose sake Christ was made sin, those for whom the God of all creation became flesh, those for whom Jesus gave his life to manifest the limitless love of God. And when we see others that way, when we see all of God’s children as just that, then—then we can truly be those agents of reconciliation Christ calls us to be, for we will no longer regard anyone from a human point of view, but we will see them as God sees us, as the righteousness of God.

May we realize that we are all much more than the ways we are perceived by others in this world. May we respond to the call of Christ to be agents of reconciliation in a world so obsessed with building walls, drawing lines, and pointing fingers. May we strive to bring the Good News of God’s reconciling work in Christ to all of those who feel pushed aside, left out, unworthy, and otherwise judged by those who believe they are better than everyone else. May we work together to be the righteousness of God, to reconcile this world to God. Amen.