The passage I will read for our New Testament lesson
today is a rich and complex one. It takes us to the heart of the Christian message as it
was understood and proclaimed by the Apostle Paul. Of all Paul's letters, II Corinthians
is the most challenging to understand but also offers the greatest reward for our careful
reflection on it. I want to share with you some of what I have learned by pondering this
particular passage each day for the past several months.
I have found that the Good News Bible: Today's English Version, produced by the
American Bible Society, offers a clarifying and helpful translation. It properly treats
God as a person. Since the English language knows persons only as male or female, this
particular passage uses male pronouns for God, who is neither male nor female. Our
interest is not in gender but in God's personal address to us. Listen for the Word of God.
"No longer, then, do we judge anyone by human standards. Even if at one time
we judged Christ according to human standards, we no longer do so. Anyone who is joined to
Christ is a new being; the old is gone, the new has come. All this is done by God, who
through Christ changed us from enemies into his friends and gave us the task of making
others his friends also. Our message is that God was making all human beings his friends
through Christ. God did not keep an account of their sins, and he has given us the message
which tells how he makes them his friends.
Here we are, then, speaking for Christ, as though God himself were making his
appeal through us. We plead on Christ's behalf: let God change you from enemies into his
friends! Christ was without sin, but for our sake God made him share our sin in order that
in union with him we might share the righteousness of God."
Traveling to 170 events in this country and having the opportunity to observe the
encouraging work of partner churches overseas in four countries has been a great privilege
this year. I have learned a great deal about the marvelous ministries of people in our
congregations, governing bodies, seminaries, and other institutions. I have also learned a
great deal about myself.
Near the end of my travels as Moderator in the United States, I was, as usual, sitting
on an airplane. I had an aisle seat and was getting settled when I became aware of a small
drama being played out across the aisle from me. A husband, wife, and their young daughter
were waiting to occupy the center and window seats. The woman seated on the aisle appeared
to ignore them and did not move. After standing there for a minute the husband finally
spoke up: "Excuse me," he said, "I think those are our seats." With
seeming reluctance she rose so that they could enter. I thought to myself, that was kind
of rude of her. Why did she ignore them?
At the end of the flight, as we were preparing to leave, I looked up and saw the woman
unfold a white cane. She was blind and had not seen the family standing, waiting to get
into her row. Then it got more interesting. As she struggled to pull her heavy suitcase
down from the overhead bin, the guy standing behind her said: "Hey, whatcha got
there, bricks?" She just laughed and said: "No, they're books. I've just
published my first book and brought some to give to my friends."
Paul, in II Corinthians 5:16, says: "No longer, then, do we judge anyone by
human standards." That scene on the airplane reminded me once again how easy it
is to judge, evaluate, measure someone else by human standards, usually to their
detriment. I am certainly guilty of that, and unfortunately we as a church can fall into
that trap as well.
For example, persons with disabilities, like the woman on the plane, form perhaps the
largest minority group in the United States, comprising 15-20% of the population. They
have been severely discriminated against in the past. In the Middle Ages, persons who were
deaf and could not speak were refused the protections of civil law, and often were not
allowed to marry. The church supported such restrictions. Indeed, Medieval churchmen made
literal application to the deaf and mute of two verses in Paul's letter to the Romans,
chapter 10: "So faith comes from what is heard" [vs.17], and "one
confesses with the mouth and so is saved" [vs.10]. Since deaf and mute people
could not hear the words, or speak their confession, it was assumed that they could not be
saved, and thus they were excluded from the communion of the church. Often we think we
know how a word of Scripture applies to others when we do not really know the others.
When we judge people by human standards, the result often is to privilege certain
persons and oppress others. Whenever we have followed a general societal bias that judges
people by human standards we have been wrong. Neither white skin, nor supposed male
rationality, nor the ability to hear or speak defines some people as superior and others
as inferior. Our viewpoint toward other persons changes when we look at them through the
lens of Jesus' life and ministry.
Jesus regarded all people as children of God. He accepted and lifted up people that his
culture declared unclean and unfit for society or heaven. Jesus touched and talked with
Samaritans, and women, and persons with disabilities. He did not regard any person as
automatically excluded from God's realm.
I have observed many ministries that do not judge others by human standards. Let me
mention three of them.
In Salem, North Carolina, in a church basement, is the Church of the New Creation. It
only has about 35 members. There were 45 in attendance the night I was there. It was
overflowing with children - Guatemalan, Vietnamese, Indian, Anglo. Some of the adults had
been members for a long time, while others had apparently just come in off the street .
All were welcome to participate in a very interactive service that ended with all of us
coming forward and taking communion.
Then we moved the chairs and tables and had a meal of rice and beans. One more point.
This congregation has worked on a Habitat for Humanity house and gone to Mexico on work
projects. They are a giving congregation, as well as receiving strangers and their gifts
into their midst. They seemed exhilarated by the experience.
One cold Monday morning in February two Presbyterian Navy Chaplains - a woman, Lt.
Diana Lantz, who is here as a commissioner, and a man - took me through the Great Lakes
Naval Training Station north of Chicago. All U.S.Navy recruits now go through Great Lakes
- 50,000 a year. Many are 18 years old and away from home for the first time. In addition
to conducting services on Sunday, Chaplains are on call 24 hours a day for all personnel
on the base. They may do 8-10 counseling sessions and several bereavement calls a day.
They do not view anyone from a human point of view. They treat everyone on that base as a
child of God.
One of the Presbyterian churches close to Ground Zero is First Presbyterian of New York
City. They lost six members in the tragedy of September 11. I preached there this Spring
and realized that most of the people I was shaking hands with at the door were in their
20s and 30s. That church has not only welcomed, but reached out to, the young business,
professional and artistic community in Greenwich Village. It has about 850 members, twice
the number of 10 years ago. People are coming gladly to hear the Gospel, knowing that they
are not being judged, but welcomed with their unique personalities as children of God.
Paul has urged us not to judge others by human standards, but that is only half the
story. Now the Apostle directs us to our attitude toward Jesus Christ. Paul, in the second
half of verse 16, acknowledges his own shortcomings and faces reality honestly, saying,
"Even if at one time we judged Christ according to human standards, we no longer do
so" (vs.16b).
As Saul, he had wrongly judged Jesus by human standards as a threat to the true
religion of keeping the Jewish law. He had approved the killing of Jesus' disciple,
Stephen. He had breathed out threats and murder against all who were followers of Jesus'
Way. Then, Jesus appeared to him in a Divine light and announced that by persecuting those
that the human law called unclean and excluded, he was really persecuting Jesus. That is
why Paul no longer judged Jesus by human standards. Paul knew that on the road to Damascus
he had encountered a Divine person who had called him to be a disciple.
Paul delights in telling the Corinthians the Good News of his new understanding of
Jesus Christ. In verse 5:17 he says: "When anyone is joined to Christ, he is a
new being; the old is gone, the new has come." This new creation is Jesus
Christ, the second Adam, the one who, in the words of A Brief Statement of Faith is
"fully human, fully God." When we are joined to Christ, trust in him, reflect
him in our lives, we become new persons.
Eugene Peterson in his translation of the New Testament, The Message, renders this
verse: "Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the
Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new."
In verse 18, Paul says: "All this is done by God, who through Christ changed
us from enemies into ... friends." Enemies into friends, that is a message that
the world so much needs to hear right now. We Presbyterians have the responsibility and
opportunity to live that message.
Paul is very specific about how God has accomplished this. In verse 19 he says: "God
did not keep an account of their sins." We are good at counting. We keep track
of the sins of others, and of ourselves, for years on end. But God doesn't keep track. In
Christ, our sin is taken away. We have a "fresh start." We say that we believe
this in A Brief Statement of Faith in our Book of Confessions. "The Spirit
justifies us by grace through faith, sets us free to accept ourselves and to love God and
neighbor." That is a fresh start.
Paul specifies the way in which God did this in verse 21: "Christ was without
sin, but for our sake God made him share our sin." Jesus Christ voluntarily gave
up the one thing that made him different from us. He was sinless, but for our sakes, he
completely identified with us, and became sin for us. Christ shared our sin so that "in
union with him we might share the righteousness of God." That seems so
exaggerated as to be impossible. The righteousness of God in us? What God sees in us is
Jesus Christ - he is our righteousness.
The Heidelberg Catechism captures the enormous implication of this for our lives.
Question 52 asks: "What comfort does the return of Christ 'to judge the living
and the dead' give you?" The answer is, "That in all affliction and
persecution I may await with head held high the very Judge from heaven, who has already
submitted himself to the judgment of God for me and has removed all the curse from
me."
God in Christ stepped into our shoes. Christ shared our sinful condition and allowed us
to share the righteousness of God. That exchange of places is reconciliation.
Sharon and I were in Puerto Rico, last Fall, to bring greetings to the Synod there. We
met in a beautiful new sanctuary at the center of a busy urban area.
The pastor took me on a tour of the building to show me the flowers he had planted
around the church. As we walked he told me this story.
One of his elders is the head of a labor union. That union was on strike against a
corporation, the Vice President of which was also a member of the congregation. The
feelings were running very high.
The Corporate Vice President came to the pastor and asked if he would bring communion
to her home for her mother who was very ill. The pastor agreed. As God would have it, it
was the labor leader's turn, in the regular rotation, to serve shut-in communion. Sensing
the potential conflict, the pastor said to the labor leader: "If you would rather
step aside, I will have someone else take your place." The labor leader replied:
"If I cannot do this, I do not deserve to be an elder."
The pastor and elder arrived at the house and when the corporate Vice President opened
the door, she was at first shocked by whom she saw. Then both she and the labor leader
wept and embraced. Being able to put animosities aside just because of our common
relationship to Christ, that is reconciliation.
Once we are reconciled to God, and to our fellow human beings, then we are called to a
ministry of representing Christ as his ambassadors. Paul says in verse 18, that God
"gave us the task of making others his friends also." Finally, in verse 20, Paul
says: "We plead on Christ's behalf: let God change you from enemies into ...
friends!"
That ministry of reconciliation is not a ministry of judgment, not an authorization to
lay down the law, to make everyone conform to our mores and morals. It is a ministry of
making friends of those who were enemies.
In the Reformed tradition we are very clear that we are all saved solely by grace, the
undeserved favor of God, not because of anything we have done, but because of what Jesus
did for us. Then we are free to keep the spirit of the law out of thankfulness. We seek to
be obedient to Christ out of gratitude for his grace.
That is the message with which we are entrusted. It is a message that God in Christ has
done everything necessary for our salvation. We are ambassadors for Christ, bearing that
message.
There are over 750 ambassadors for Christ that are credentialed as commissioners and
advisory delegates to this General Assembly. We will soon commission 315 others who will
serve as our ambassadors in national and international mission. According to the Oxford
English Dictionary, an ambassador is an official messenger sent by a sovereign. Our only
sovereign is Jesus Christ. In verse 20, Paul says: "Here we are, then, speaking
for Christ, as though God himself were making his appeal through us." What a
trusting God!
When my wife Sharon and I were in Egypt, we were thrust into the role of ambassadors
for Christ on the very delicate issue of Palestine and Israel. We discovered, to our
surprise, that, in Egypt, people at every level of society believe that all Americans hate
Arabs and that Americans uncritically endorse the State of Israel's position on all
matters. Repeatedly our Protestant Christian hosts asked us to express the Presbyterian
position that Palestine, as well as Israel, has a right to statehood, a homeland. We cited
letters from our stated clerk to President Bush and Prime Minister Sharon deploring
Israel's invasion of Palestinian lands and attacks on Palestinian civilians. That news was
greeted with great joy by Christian and Muslim leaders alike.
Once, in a gathering of 60 leading opinion-formers in Cairo - two former ambassadors to
the United States, TV and print journalists, poets and theologians, Muslim and Christian -
my wife put a human face on the issue. She told them that on September 11, the principal
of Roosevelt School in Pasadena, where Sharon had worked, called the director of a Muslim
school across the street and said: "If you do not feel safe you can bring your
children over here and we will care for them." That story swept through the room and
brought understanding and joy. Communicating Christian love is the work of an ambassador.
Our role is to say, in Paul's words: "We plead with you on Christ's behalf:
let God change you from enemies into ... friends." Peterson paraphrases: "Become
friends with God, He is already a friend to you."
It is God's appeal, not ours. Neither our culture, nor our character, is a sufficient
witness to others. We bear this message not for our sake, nor to our credit. It is for
Christ's sake, not ours. We have nothing of ultimate value, save Jesus, in identity with
whom we are in the image of God, and can speak for God.
A few years ago, our friends, Dale and Leanne, moved from here in Columbus, Ohio to
California to retire. We asked them how they had managed to go from a larger house to a
smaller one. Leanne answered: "It was easy. We didn't bring anything unless it had
eternal significance." On that principle you can travel light!
We can drop a lot of baggage when we quit judging others by human standards. We can be
genuinely reconciling when we realize that Christ has done all that is necessary to turn
us from sin to the righteousness of God. We are authentically representing God in Christ
when we view others through the lens of Jesus life, death and resurrection. That allows us
to live and love by the free grace of God in Jesus Christ. What a message! What an
opportunity! What a gracious God!
Amen.
