March 27th: "The Ministry of Reconciliation"
The First United Presbyterian Church of Loveland
“The Ministry of Reconciliation”
Rev. Amy Morgan
March 27, 2022
II Corinthians 5:16-21
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. So 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.
They were trying to desegregate the schools in Durham, North Carolina. And it wasn’t going well. Violence was erupting daily. There were protests. The KKK clashed with black community organizers. And ultimately, all the children were suffering.
So the Durham city council organized 10 days of 12-hour conversations to navigate the crisis. But the two people appointed to lead this conference were sworn enemies.
One was Ann Atwater, a single mother and community organizer. The other was C.P. Ellis, the Grand Cyclops of the Durham branch of the KKK. The two had clashed in previous community meetings, where Atwater had nearly been moved to violence and Ellis came to, as he said, hate Atwater’s guts because of her effectiveness in boycotting segregated businesses.
But over the course of 120 hours, both Atwater and Ellis came to see each other differently. They discovered how much they had in common, to the point where Ellis remarked that he “had more in common with poor black people than [he] did with rich white ones.” Atwater realized that all her efforts and energy were focused on hating Ellis and people like him, and the work of improving the schools her children attended was getting lost in all that animosity.
When the apostle Paul wrote that “we regard no one from a human point of view,” he was talking about the new way of seeing that Atwater and Ellis experienced. The Greek phrase Paul uses is kata sarka, more often translated as “according to the flesh.” “The flesh,” for Paul, doesn’t mean our literal flesh, our physical bodies. It means all those things that are dehumanizing – hatred, greed, pride, resentment. It is the self-obsession that degrades our relationships with God and others.
So to regard no one from a human point of view, or according to the flesh, means, ironically, to see their true humanity, their inherent worth as a human being that is as loved and cherished as we are. It means, essentially, to love our neighbor as ourselves, or even, to love our enemy.
This was not a concept Paul had learned through study and practice. This was an experience Paul had endured. As a younger man, Paul had regarded others “from a human point of view,” as he persecuted and imprisoned Christians whom he felt violated God’s law and stirred up trouble for the Romans. He was so obsessed with his own self-righteousness that he de-humanized his fellow Jews who followed the way of Jesus. His resentment of them was so overwhelming that he turned them over to torture and even death. And he regarded Jesus, the one they followed, from that same “human point of view,” refusing to acknowledge what he meant to other people and the difference he made in their lives.
But then one day, on the road to Damascus, Paul was made new. The risen Christ confronted him, temporarily blinded him, and reconciled him to God. And then he was given a ministry of reconciliation to the very people he had been persecuting.
But Paul finds out in Corinth that people do not easily believe a tiger can change their stripes. Paul’s correspondence with the Corinthian church is the lengthiest of his surviving letters. They were written between numerous visits and lengthy stays in Corinth. And there’s a reason for that: this church was problematic. They fought amongst themselves, they asked tricky questions, they had a lot of different viewpoints, and other traveling missionaries came along and undermined Paul’s efforts. Somewhere along the way, Paul’s past caught up with him, and the Corinthians discovered that this man who preached so passionately about Christ’s gospel had been one of the foremost persecutors of Christians.
Paul has spent much of this second letter to the Corinthians defending himself against accusations of hypocrisy. But his greatest defense, and one of the most elegant theological statements on reconciliation, comes here in the 5th chapter. He drops the defensive tone, and simply shares what God has done in Jesus Christ – for him, for the Corinthians, for the whole creation.
Like Atwater and Ellis walking into the Durham schools conference, Paul walked toward Damascus with hatred in his heart. And, by no effort or desire of his own, he arrived in Damascus a new man, just as Atwater and Ellis left the school conference reconciled and transformed.
The late Catholic scholar Robert Schreiter, who taught and wrote extensively on reconciliation, explained that “What (Paul) experiences in this event is not a trial or forensic action but a person: the risen Jesus. So it is not about rules and practices, but an encounter with a living person. ... A whole new way of reckoning is being introduced. As a result, the law court or the negotiation room is no longer the model for reconciliation; it is, rather, a social space where things are made utterly new.”
Atwater and Ellis were forced to encounter each other as living people. And this created “a social space where things were made utterly new.” The Durham schools were integrated peacefully, and Ellis left the KKK, tearing up his membership card in front of a public rally. When C.P. Ellis died in 2005, Atwater was asked by his family to give the eulogy, and she called him her brother.
New Testament professor Laurie Brink wrote that “The restoration of humanity— victim and wrongdoer alike—is the center of the reconciliation process….Only in the process of reconciliation can a victim come to forgive and the oppressor be moved to repent, making both a new creation.”
This new creation is a humanity that reflects the divine image in which we were all created. It is a humanity that is forgiven, whole, and empowered to be a reconciling force in the world. It is a humanity that lives in those social spaces where things are made utterly new.
Those spaces are in short supply today, and they couldn’t be more urgently needed. During the last year, school board meetings around the country have become more contentious than at any time since Atwater and Ellis worked to desegregate the Durham schools. The increased use of online social spaces like Zoom and Facebook, along with the isolation brought on by social distancing, have diminished those reconciling, transformative social spaces. Families are estranged, friendships are ruptured, and government is in gridlock because we are not reconciled. Violent crime, especially homicide, is on the rise, because we are regarding each other “according to the flesh,” as less than human. The reconciling of nations right now could mean the difference between world peace or nuclear annihilation.
And we are the community entrusted with the message of reconciliation. Not because we’re better at it than anyone else, necessarily. But because we have experienced it. We are in Christ, we are part of his Body here on earth, in the United States of America, in Loveland, Colorado, here and now. And that means we are a new creation.
Paul says, “see, everything has become new!” The verb tense he uses indicates that something has already happened, but the consequences are ongoing. It’s not an over-and-done, like, “I shut the door.” It’s like “I have opened the door,” with the implication being that it is still open and we can now walk through it. Everything has become new, and now everything continues to live as a new creation.
Look, I know it doesn’t always feel that way. We make the same mistakes, run into the same obstacles, watch history repeat itself. There are probably more days we agree with the preacher from Ecclesiastes that “there is nothing new under the sun” than days when we can really believe everything has been made new, that we are a new creation.
The Presbyterian Confession of 1967 says that “The reconciling work of Jesus was the supreme crisis in the life of [hu]mankind. His cross and resurrection become personal crisis and present hope for [humanity] when the gospel is proclaimed and believed.” When Jesus shows up for Paul, he is actively attacking God’s new creation, the followers of Christ. This is not a man who believes in everything becoming new. The appearance of the living Christ and the reconciliation that achieves for Paul create a personal crisis. Not just because he is blind and helpless. But because it forces him to completely upend his entire worldview and change everything about the way he is living. It is a crisis, but it is also a source of hope that is so powerful Paul spends the rest of his life sharing this hope, proclaiming this gospel, and creating this crisis – in Corinth and all over the Greco-Roman world.
When we have been personally confronted with the love of God in Jesus Christ, with an embrace that overcomes any distance or barriers we may construct, we are faced with a personal crisis. Because that kind of love, that kind of personal encounter, knocks us to the ground and disables our defenses. It makes us new, and we experience new things as a crisis. Just ask anyone who has been bothered the last four weeks by our opening hymns.
But that crisis is also our present hope. Because we don’t experience that crisis alone. When Paul was laying in the middle of the road, blind and stunned, Jesus sent him to a man, to a community, who would help him, heal him, and nurture him. The Confession of 1967 also says that “The new life,” that is, our new life in Christ, “takes shape in a community in which people know that God loves and accepts them in spite of what they are. They therefore accept themselves and love others, knowing that no one has any ground on which to stand, except God’s grace.”
As God’s reconciled people, we can be a force for reconciliation in the world. Maybe we’re not going to reconcile Russia and Ukraine from here in Loveland, Colorado. But maybe we can help reconcile contentious city council members to enable our local government to work more effectively for all the people. Or maybe we can help reconcile feuding family members to prevent further alienation and even violence. Maybe we can help reconcile friends who’ve become estranged over politics and create a stronger fabric of community for people who are scared and isolated.
We can do all this because God has already done it. In Jesus Christ, God reconciled us. It has already happened, and we get to witness to that and embrace that and live into that. This is God’s work, that God is doing, through us – the Body of Christ. The Confession of 1967 says in its opening statement, “God’s reconciling work in Jesus Christ and the mission of reconciliation to which he has called his church are the heart of the gospel in any age.”
This is our work, in any age. But maybe especially in this age. If you are worried about the state of things, about war and climate change and mental illness and the list goes on and on, know that we are not helpless. We are called and equipped for the ministry of reconciliation. It is the heart of the gospel, and we are the Heart of Christ in the Heart of Loveland. To God be all glory forever and ever. Amen.
Comments
Post a Comment