Who New?
“Who New?” by Pastor Rosanna McFadden
Good morning! It is the fourth Sunday of Lent, and spring weather continues to provide a helpful metaphor of how changeable life can be, and what needs to happen for us to be prepared to meet, and maybe even welcome, those changes. I am considering these things under the topic ‘the things which make for peace.’ Last week I preached about resilience, and today I want to talk about transformation.
This text from 2 Corinthians 5 may be a familiar one to you — it certainly is worth repeating, because this passage has an optimistic tone, a sense of God making things new, of reconciliation and hope. Some translations include the word Behold! There is a new creation which gives a kind of flair to the passage, like an angelic announcement, or maybe the sweep of a magician’s cape: Ta da! If you start an announcement with Behold! Whatever follows had better be good. Behold! It is overcast and 50 degrees just doesn’t cut it. 2 Corinthians 5:17 was the theme for Annual Conference 2008, and the logo was a beautiful butterfly with outstretched wings. This is still the image which comes to mind when I hear or read this text, even after I have studied it more deeply.
As is usually the case, some broader context is helpful. This is part of a letter written by the Apostle Paul to the church in Corinth. Corinth was a multi-cultural port city, where people of various countries, various languages, various religious, and various socio-economic status rubbed shoulders. That mix, and especially the tension between Jewish Christians and non-Jewish Christians — Gentiles — was present in the Corinthian Church. Added to that was some arrogance by some members of the church about their superior spiritual gifts, and some bad behavior of someone sleeping with a member of his wife’s family. We know from 2 Corinthians 2 that at some point in his ministry at Corinth, Paul had a painful personal interaction with a member or group at the church, and has decided not to return in person. The church at Corinth is fractious, complicated, and sometimes mean. In short, it’s a typical church. This letter which we know as 2 Corinthians is a compilation of parts of several letters. And although we don’t know the specifics of all that Paul was addressing, I think it’s safe to assume that Paul is doing what writers and preachers have done forever — he is writing what he needs to hear and be reminded of himself.
Like last week’s text from Philippians, 2 Corinthians 5:16 points back to the passage which came immediately before. The pointer is the word ‘therefore’. Paul is saying, “Because of this, we regard no one from a human point of view.” This is a bit convoluted because of Paul’s syntax, but it isn’t a new concept in Paul’s writing: because Christ died for us, we no longer live for ourselves, but for Christ. Because of this we no longer regard other people from a human point of view. Does this mean we don’t need to be troubled by other people? How does that work, exactly? I confess there are times when I have tried pretty hard to move on from being wronged or hurt or angry, and it just hasn’t gone that well. Sometimes I have felt guilty that I’m still upset about a situation, and sometimes I’m convinced that I have a right to feel the way that I do. Neither of those responses, I have found, have helped me to move past my umbrage. I don’t get to dictate other people’s behavior. Regarding others with a Christ-like perspective is about the things I have to let go of or hold lightly for my own sake. Resentment is certainly not a thing which makes for peace. I heard someone say that holding on to a grudge is like swallowing a poison pill and expecting the other person to die.
I would be better served by reading this passage more carefully and completely. It turns out that this a lot more about Christ than it is about me, and Paul suffered greater spiritual, emotional and physical injury than I ever will. If I am in Christ, I can stop seeing others from a human point of view because of Christ. All this is from God — whom humanity disobeyed and disregarded and sinned against. Instead of giving us what we deserve, God loved us so much that he sent Jesus Christ to restore relationship with us. God did this for us and this is what we are to do for one another. I have heard this passage so often that I had to work hard to come up with a version I can examine which doesn’t use the vocabulary of reconciliation and trespasses and ambassadors. Those are fine words, but not helpful if they lull us into a sense that being reconciled is an intellectual exercise which we can give assent to without having to do the hard work of allowing Christ to change our minds and our hearts. If you think reconciliation is easy, you either haven’t done it, or you weren’t very hurt to begin with.
The question is, how do we get from where we are to where God wants us to be? For some of us, especially of some personality types and Christian formation, the answer is: to work really, really hard and try not to screw up. I’m here to tell you, that’s the wrong answer. I can state that with conviction from personal experience — I tried it, it didn’t go well — and also because of what I read in this passage and other places in Paul’s writing, particularly. The best we will get, if we work hard and have the tailwind of some happy circumstances, is reformation. Once we behaved in ways which were not-so-good, pretty bad, or downright awful, and now we’re doing better — at least most of the time, much of the time, some of the time. We definitely have some days which are above average. Reformation is about as far as we can hope to get under our own power.
What Paul is talking about in this passage is transformation: and transformation is the only way to get from where we are to where God wants us to be. Both reformation and transformation work with the God-given material of who we are. Reformation is our best attempt to get our act together, or to at least pretend or to appear to have our act together. Transformation is allowing the power of Christ to make us into the people who God wants us to be. We know what that looks like — it is what we have seen and heard and know about Jesus Christ; especially his death and his forgiveness of those who killed him. Jesus was human — that forgiveness, reconciliation and even compassion for his enemies was not the power of his human spirit; it was the power of God at work in him. Listen to verse 19: In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. To us. Jesus’ resurrection is the most powerful sign of transformation imaginable. Those who have died cannot bring themselves back to life; it happens through the power of God. And the mystery of transformation is that though we are still the same people, we are changed people.
I want to consider — briefly — how transformation is a thing which makes for peace. It can be helpful to think of transformation in terms of the natural world: caterpillars turning into butterflies, bulbs growing into flowers, etc. I don’t think the path to transformation for humans is as natural or effortless as that. I am sure that Jesus loved his human life and would have been reluctant to lay it down even if that death had been peaceful, instead of violent and humiliating. It is so much easier to hold on tightly — even to things which are not good for us, like bitterness and anger — than it is to surrender to the hard work of transformation. It is no easy path to go from where we are to where God wants us to be. That terrain varies, depending on who you are and where you start. The story of Lent and the hope of Easter is that the path goes through wherever we are. Christ is and has been wherever we are. What God is calling us to be SO much better than anything we might have to leave behind, but we have to loosen our grip on what we want or feel like we deserve in order to receive God’s gifts of peace and transformation and new life. Amen.