Reconciling the World...”

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A sermon based upon 2 Corinthians 5: 11-6:2
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership,
Sunday June 21th, 2020 (8/10. How Jesus Saves.)

Happy Father’s Day!  Today we continue our series of messages about our salvation through Jesus Christ.  But let me begin with a Fatherhood story that points us in that direction.

Bob Stamps was once on the faculty at Oral Roberts University. Bob was a delightful man with a good sense of humor. He was also bald.   One night he and his wife decided to go out to dinner and hired a babysitter to take care of their little children. While they were gone, the babysitter got interested in a television program and wasn't watching the children very carefully. Their little boy Peter Andrew, got into his father's electric shaver and shaved a big landing strip right down the middle of his head.

When his father came home, he was furious. He said, "Peter Andrew! I told you never to play with my shaver. Now you are going to have to be punished!"  He was just about to announce the punishment when Peter Andrew looked up at him and said, "Wait until you see sister!"

Bob Stamps said they were horrified. They went into the next room and there was their little four-year-old daughter with hair shaved off of her head. She looked like a little skinned rabbit. By this time Bob Stamps was really furious. He grabbed up Peter Andrew and said, "Now you are really going to get it." Just as he started to display his wrath in full when Peter Andrew looked up at him with tears in his eyes and said, "But Daddy! WE WERE JUST TRYING TO LOOK LIKE YOU!"   There was one little boy who didn't get punished that night. Instead he got an explanation and a hug.

On this Father’s Day we are looking at our salvation in Jesus Christ and what God has done to make us new people, better people and better parents too.  In this text Paul announces clearly, ‘If any one is in Christ, they are a new creation (v. 17).  Paul also tells us what our Heavenly Father has specifically done to make us new, better, people.  Paul explains that in Jesus Christ, God has reconciled us (v. 18) and has also reconciled the (whole) world unto himself (v. 19).  Or, as one Christian has put it, through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, instead of punishing the world for sin and wrong, our heavenly Father reconciles himself by giving the world a hug and makes a way to bring us back together with him and with others.

ONE HAS DIED FOR ALL... (14).  The Source of Reconciliation
It’s no accident that this very conciliatory language appears in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians.  Perhaps Paul needed a hug too.  If you read this very personal letter closely, you can feel the tension.  Paul was having to write this letter to defend his ministry.   Even though Paul founded the church in Corinth with blood, sweat, and tears, at the risk of his own life, now everything he has done and is, as an apostle of Jesus Christ, has come under attack.

How did this happen?  Well, from the very opening lines of 1st Corinthians, Paul speaks of divisions and differences between members of the congregation based upon different styles of preachers.   Instead of rejoicing in how God works through differences, people started comparing their former preachers, Paul, Peter, to their current very gifted preacher named Apollos.  Some were even ranking them and taking sides.  Their natural differences had become a point of contention and conflict.

It’s sad when people have to measure themselves or others over against each other.  It’s even sadder when our natural differences become sharp divisions in church or life.  Very naturally we are all different, having differing viewpoints, different gifts, different strengths and different weaknesses.   But the human tendency to pick winners over losers and to choose a ‘top dog’ among us doesn’t do anything to help create a sense of unity or purpose in our lives.

What Paul is trying to help the people see in this letter, is how God had worked through each of them and how these differences, and even the weaknesses were all part of God’s plan.  Paul encouraged the people in Corinth to focus on glorifying God for what God had done through them all and for them all.  He wants to invite them to reconcile themselves to God and each other, and he wants them
join in God’s work of reconciliation, through Jesus’s death on the cross.  “And he died for ALL,” Paul says, “so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.” (2 COR. 5: 15).  These are powerful words under any circumstance, but particularly in light of the divisiveness taking place at Corinth.  Jesus ‘died for us ALL!

Paul words remind me of those difficult and very divisive times that were taking place between Baptist’s back in the 1980’s.  I was in a State Baptist meeting when there was a lot of divisive discussion taking place.  In the heat of all that was happening, Mr. Harris, an 81 year old elderly layman from Charlotte, one of the founders of Harris and Teeter Supermarket chain, stood up and made a motion.  The motion was not directly related to all the discussion, but all the divisiveness had made every thing difficult.  Perhaps this was why after this elderly Christian made his emotional appeal, Mr. Harris went home that night and had a heart attack and died.

Paul wants the Corinthians to know that Jesus died too.  This must not be in vain, he says.  Jesus came to earth to make God’s appeal of love for us all, all the same.  As Paul said later to another church, speaking of Christ’s reconciling work, Jesus died to ‘reconcile all things to himself,...  ‘making peace through the blood of his cross’ (Col. 1:19-20).   At the cross our reconciliation begins.  It begins in the heart of God. ‘All this is from God!’ (18).  

FROM NOW ON... (16)   The Significance of Reconciliation
With all this conciliatory language around the cross of Jesus, we find that reconciliation has much more than a religious purpose, but it’s practical, intentional, and relational.  By revealing God’s love through Christ’s love ‘for our sakes’, Paul says God aims to change our hearts, to make us a new creation (17) and to urge us (14), or compel us into the righteousness of God (v. 21).

God’s reconciling work in the heart (12) can already be seen in Paul himself, when he reflects on how God’s saving work in him has changed how he sees people, after he came to see and understand Jesus differently.  ‘From now on,’ Paul says, ‘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.  (2 Corinthians 5:15–16, NRSV).   The love that Christ has for Paul is also the same love Christ has for all, which is the very same inclusive, reconciling love a God has for the world.  You can’t fully understand the love of God for you until you realize it includes God’s love for the whole world.

This kind of reconciling work is still the most needed and necessary human work, isn’t it?  With constant tensions between peoples, nations, and religions in the world, we still need changes of heart toward each other, not just for our own sakes, but for the sake of the world’s future.

Do you recall that Nursery Rhyme we learned that describes our human condition so simply that even a child can understand?    Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,  Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the king’s horses   And all the king’s men  Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.

Humpty Dumpty was an egg.  As a very vulnerable, fragile egg, he’s how easily represented humans might ‘fall off of the wagon’ in life.  Humpty Dumpty depicts even to children, the the reality of human brokenness.  And nowhere are humans more vulnerable to break that when we ‘break up’ in our relationships with each other.  Think about it:
When Churches split, they almost never come back together again.
When marriages break, they normally end in divorce court.
When businesses get swallowed up by larger conglomerates, they’re never the same.
We live in a world where the ways of living are always dangerous, where we can still break and not be put back together again.

In his book, The Shaking of the Foundations, Paul Tillich, the great religion teacher from Chicago, said that in every soul there is a sense of aloneness and separation.  He named our greatest human problem: alienation.   This idea wasn’t original with him.  He got it from what other social thinkers were seeing in the early 20th century.  They were watching closely what was happening as we moved from agricultural to industrial life, and it wasn’t good.  They saw how people could even be neighbors, or part of the same family and become alienated from each other (Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations, Charles Scribner’s & Sons, NY, p. 156, 1955).

This was part of what was happening almost everywhere, and in some way, to almost everyone.   As we continue to grow up, get richer, get wealthier, and get smarter too; we also tend to lose touch with each other.  We don’t stay in the same neighborhoods.  We move from place to place.   And even when we do settle, there’s so little to connect us together.  When we should be friends, we instead become competitors, if not enemies.  People who even live on the same street and sometimes in the same house, become strangers and estranged from each other.

Most of us recall that video recently of the two toddlers one black, the other white running toward each other and then embracing.  That’s not just the way these two children were, that’s how most all children are.  Then we grow up.  We notice our differences.  We become very different people.  We have our own careers and cares in life.   It becomes harder and harder to find the feelings of togetherness we once knew in kindergarten, in elementary school, in high school, and even in college.  We move on.  We gain so much and have so much, but sometimes we lose more than we gain, especially when it comes to human relationships.

My point is that alienation is not just a modern problem, a money problem, or a political problem, but it’s a human problem.  It’s been here ever since the beginning.  Remember Cain and Abel.   These brothers were already alienated from each other ‘way back when’.  And what was the problem?  It wasn’t that one was a Republican and the other a Democrat.  It wasn’t that one was a Communist and the other a Capitalist.  It wasn’t that one was a Liberal and the other a Conservative. No, one of them was a simple farmer.  The other was a simple Shepherd.  But there very different ways of living life had driven them apart.  Maybe the Sheep got into the Cabbage patch.   Maybe the Shepherd made more money.   Whatever the reason, even though there was plenty of room for both of them, one day the friction between them became so great that Cain the farmer killed his own brother, Abel the Sheep herder.

How do we see alienation showing up in our own lives?   We still see it don’t we?  We see in the struggle of rich nations verses poor nations.   We see it in the immigrants who move to try to find a better, safer life for them and their families.  We see it in the struggle between the haves and the have nots.  We also see this growing alienation in political movements based on fears of who and what is different rather than trying to understand, accept or show compassion.

An Irish pastor, writing in the Irish Times had recently suggested that in the west we ‘have undergone a cultural tsunami in our lifetime.’  ‘For better or for worse’, he says, ‘we have moved from a culture of authority to a culture of choice.’   The only expectation on us today is that we make our own way, live by our own rules, and we get to decide who we love and who we hate.  Love is no longer a moral duty, but a matter of choice.  

Way back in 2000, Robert D Putman, wrote a book entitled, Bowling Alone.  In that book, Putnam pointed to an increase of aloneness and loneliness in western societies.   In other words, to live our own way, we live more alone, by ourselves, and mostly without community.  Then, eight years later, another book by Bill Bishop, entitled The Big Sort, noted the growth of groups with narrow cultural, political or religious views. These new groups are not motivated by anything like love but rather by aggressive opposition to other groups. They have no connection whatsoever in an inclusive, loving God.  These new forms of fundamentalism are displacing love and faith  (From an editorial by Fr Desmond O’ Donnell, in The Irish Times, Tues, Dec. 19th, 2017).

‘GOD IS MAKING HIS APPEAL THROUGH US’ (20)  The Service of Reconciliation
Our overly divided, fragmented, and increasingly alienated world is why the most important ministry of the church today is a ministry of reconciliation.  While God appeared in human flesh to reconcile himself with the world, our ministry is to reconcile ourselves to God and to each other.   In Christ, we have been given a ministry of reconciliation because the world still must be reconciled to God.  

Once on a Japanese Subway, a young pastor (Richard Gribble), heard and saw a very disorderly drunk, disturbing passengers.  He was young and strong and decided it was up to him to save the day, as he attempted to lure the drunk to himself and throw him off the train.  But as he started to move toward the Drunk, an elderly Japanese man, invited the drunk to come sit with him.  They started talking about life, and the drunk started to weep and tell about how his wife had just died.  All this made the young pastor regret his harsh feelings toward the man.  When it should have been him, it was the elderly Japanese man who had accepted the ministry of reconciliation  (As told by Richard Gribble in a sermon at www.sermons.com).

There are many important results of God’s saving work through Jesus Christ and many of them are not always directly visible to us.   We can’t always see that God justifies or declares us righteous.  We are still sinners saved by grace.  We can’t always so easily see that we are redeemed from sin.  We still live in a fallen, sinful world.  We might feel these things deep in our heart, and believe them by faith, and trust our lives to them, but they are spiritual truths and mostly invisible to us.  We also can’t very obviously see that God has reconciled us to himself in Jesus Christ.   People can still misuse the Bible and make it look like a wrathful God is angry at us.   Of course, we believe in God’s saving work for us, and we have the witness of God’s Spirit within us, but this is still invisible and only made clear to us by faith.  BUT THE ONE THING WE CAN ALWAYS SEE, TOUCH, AND KNOW visibly and clearly is, whether or not,we are taking part, sharing in, and participating in god’s ministry of reconciliation.   As I heard someone put it in very vivid radio interview many years ago, which was discussing a matter of social and racial unrest in America:  You are either a ‘love’ person or a ‘hate’ person.  You are either part of the problem or part of the solution.  You have to chose which kind of person we are going to be.

This is similar, if not the same kind of choice Paul means his letter to the Corinthians.  He’s putting a choice before the Corinthians.   If you are with Jesus and when Jesus is in you, you have been given a ministry of reconciliation.  Just as God has reconciled himself to us, we must now be reconciled to God, which of course includes being reconciled to others and leadings to be reconciled to God.

The most important way Paul underscores this ministry call to every Christian by becoming ambassadors for Christ.  Just like an Ambassador in foreign service is representing their country to the world, we are called to be ambassadors of Christ’s love for God’s world to come and to the parts of this world still foreign to God’s compassion and love.  “God is making his appeal through us... (20), Paul says, “we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”

A ministry of reconciliation is the most visible, obvious result of understanding Jesus’ death on a cross.  There is a mystery to the cross we may never fully fathom, but this we can know; This we must do and proclaim: Be reconciled to God!  We must participate in this ministry of reconciliation, not just for God’s sake, but for the world’s, and for our own sake.   As Paul says near the end of this text: “FOR OUR SAKE he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. “

Early this year, when the U.S. responded to threats to one or more Embassies in the Middle East, by taking out an Iranian General who was said to have planned and was planning more attacks,  there was a immediate response by Iran who fired ballistic missiles toward several U.S. military bases in Iraq.  But what was most tragic is that Iran also accidently fired upon a Ukranian airliners, killing 176 innocent people; with 136 of them connecting to Canada.  Most of those Canadian were students and professors, over one-third of the passengers under 30 years of age.

This why reconciliation, which means bringing people together, is the most important work of the church in today’s world.  As Clarence Jordan, the great Southern Baptist Greek scholar once said, reconciliation means that God has put his arms around the world (the sinful world) and given it a great, big hug.  Now, we must do the same.
We in the church have been given the ministry to bring people together because God has brought us together with himself.   Don’t ‘accept the grace of God in vain’, Paul says.  Be reconciled to God and join in this ministry of reconciliation.  AMEN.