Hardly New
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
January 6, 2008
Happy New Year! A new year. New opportunities. New hope. This is a reminder that we don’t have to get stuck in the same old patterns of last year. So we make a (or several) New Year’s resolutions. I resolve that in 2008 I will or will stop…? Did any of you make any resolutions? That you would like to share? Lose weight? Join a health club? Join the Y? A militant group?
I honestly don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions. I really don’t need to wait until January 1 to make a promise that have no intention of breaking (but I end up breaking it anyway). But I recognize that this holiday often has a way of causing us (sometimes) to stop and reflect. And it is here that I see a great connection to following Jesus. God calls us to listen to His voice and follow Him wherever God leads. Of course this is hardly new.
This is the same old story. Jesus died on the cross so that I might live. Ya dee da. Ya dee da. “Give us something fresh. Some new insight that no one has ever had before. Do something spectacular that I will never forget.”
But no. I think I will stick with what is Hardly New. Because God’s story is a great, grand story that transcends time, literally. It is when we hear God’s story that maybe we can begin to see our story connecting with His. Let’s look at passage that is hardly new: 2 Corinthians 5:16.
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Paul was saying that when we look at ourselves and look at others, we should look through the eyes of Jesus. We look through the eyes of grace and we tell others through words and deeds that God still desires to be with us and us with Him. Of course the pivotal verse is in verse 17 (hardly new for some of you): Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
The problem is there are times when we don’t feel like we are a new creation. Like the group of women that met for an afternoon of lunch and shopping. At lunch they began to share some of the things in their lives. Superficially at first but then they moved into more intimate topics and details. It was like peeling an onion.
Finally one shared how she had recently cheated on her husband. There was silence for a few moments when a woman spoke up, “I cheated on my husband a few years ago. It took me a long while to work through the guilt and now I’m ok. So don’t beat yourself up. Everyone does it. Let’s see a show of hands in this group of women who have stayed faithful to their husbands.”
Only one woman raised her hand. One of the women who didn’t raise her hand went home to her husband. Her husband asked how the afternoon went. At first she was hesitant. Then she began to tell her husband about the conversation at lunch. “Only one other woman raised her hand. I didn’t even though I have been faithful and never cheated on you.”
“Why didn’t you raise your hand?” her husband asked.
“I was ashamed.”
She was ashamed of doing what was right in God’s eyes and couldn’t bring herself to admit it. She didn’t feel like a new creation at that moment.
So if this is a problem that is hardly new, what can we do about it.
Hardly New
• Continual renewal
Sometimes worship seems hardly new. Sometimes we are beaten down by life’s problems and our faith seems old and worn. We feel used up. Take time to be renewed. When we turn from Jesus again and when we quickly forget the wonders of His grace, let us return to our first love. He hasn’t given up on us so let us not give up on Him.
There is not one or two things that work for everybody. In fact, I have found that for renewal to happen continually, I have needed different elements at different points of my life. There was a point when I needed conferences and seminars to stretch me and renew me. Right now, I’m not renewed by those things but actually drained. Sometimes going on a prayer hike works for me. Sometimes a retreat from everyone and everything.
Reading has been extremely helpful for me. I read fiction and non-fiction. Visiting blogs can renew me but it also can drain me as well. Conversation. Prayer with others. Serious study of a passage of scripture has helped at times. Serving in different ministry capacities. Even doing manual labor like building a play house with 99 different steps that stated it would take two people 40 hours of labor to build. At times it was frustrating (especially in the beginning) but I hardly remember those moments now. I see what God has allowed me to do and the fun that my girls and every kid in the neighborhood has on the swingset.
• Letting go
The old has gone. Sometimes we just need to let go of our old behaviors, our old previous ways of doing things, and even our old thought patterns. “How’s that workin’ for you?”
When we came home on New Year’s Day, the weather got pretty bad east of Cleveland. We planned to stop and did stop at exit 223 for gas, bathroom, etc. And it was pretty bad. We had been going the last 25 miles at about 40 mph. And we were moving faster than a lot of folks. We saw several cars in the ditch including one pick up truck on its side. I even saw one women spin out in front of me and end up facing the wrong way in the median. At times you could see more than twenty feet.
For me, I don’t have a problem driving in the snow and ice. Changing lanes can be dangerous and tricky but I have driven on enough of this stuff to be able to carefully do it well. God has helped me in this way. It is like going down Peach Street in the snow even when the street is covered. Usually it is not a big deal driving on it. UNTIL YOU HAVE TO STOP!
As I long as I don’t have to stop, I can drive at pretty good clip in the worst of conditions. But stopping is where trouble happens.
Some of us have some things in our lives that we know we should stop. We’ve felt convicted over them. We know God wants us to but until we have to stop, then we probably won’t. Until we are caught, we won’t stop and we get stuck in the old and never experience the fullness of being a new creation.
It could be things that our culture doesn’t consider to be “sinful.” Maybe it those thing that we make resolutions about. More exercise. Less food. Healthier food. Coffee. Pop. Too much. Too little.
Paul tells us that we have the ministry and message of reconciliation. This is hardly new. If it isn’t working for you any more, then I implore you with Paul: Be reconciled to God. If you are sitting here and know that God is pointing out something that needs to go, then let go.
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us. Something else for being a new creation that is hardly new.
• Stop and listen
Take time to listen and reflect on your life. Take time daily, maybe even twice a day. Meditate and listen for what God is saying. There are a variety of techniques that I don’t have time to describe in detail. But just begin quieting your mind even for ten minutes a day and letting God have space to speak with you. And lastly:
• Pass it on
Nothing solidifies and entrenches the newness of life in Christ then passing on the message of being new in Christ.
We are ambassadors of reconciliation. This is not done in the sense, “You need to do this.” But more like, “I suggest this. It has worked for me. And this is why.” Every time we give the reason for our hope, every time we share what God has done for us what we couldn’t do for ourselves, every time that we admit our mistakes and our failures sharing how God turned them into some sort of blessing, we are reinforcing what we already know to be true. These things become convictions.
In Irresistible Revolution Shane Claiborne tells about his decision to go to Iraq before the war began. He counted the cost finally deciding to go Iraq to stop terrorism and the war in order to love our enemies. After spending much time in Baghdad in the midst of the bombing, he and his friends made the decision to drive across the desert to Jordan.
As they traveled, they soon began looking for gas. One gas station was bombed and then another was simply abandoned. With tanks on empty, they stopped at a station, this one also abandoned. They were joined by a van carrying students from the University of Baghdad, who headed to a refugee camp in Jordan. They hooked up their battery to the pump and using the energy from their battery, filled Shane and his friends car with gas.
They all left in a convoy for Jordan. However, the roads became increasingly treacherous. Buses were bombed out. Ambulances were incinerated. Light poles were down. Car parts and shrapnel littered the road. Soon they could see ginormous clouds of smoke from bombs only seconds old on the horizon. One bomb hit only a kilometer away. The atmosphere was intense as the drivers sped up to over 80 mph to minimize the chances of getting bombed.
The cars began to spread farther a part when Shane’s car, the last in the convoy, spun out of control as a tire burst with a loud pop. The car rolled into a ditch coming to rest on its side. They were able to climb out the top door and pull everyone out. All five were shaken badly and injured—one person bleeding profusely from the head. A car of Iraqi civilians seemed to appear out of no where (after only a minute after the crash). Without a second thought, they all piled into the car heading to the nearest town waving a white sheet out the window as war planes flew overhead.
Rutba, a city of about 20 thousand people, was only a few minutes away. Shane wondered if they might become hostages so he handed a sheet written in Arabic explaining who they were.
The town was devastated. Before they could get out of the car at the hospital, the doctors greeted them as the town began to gather. When they learned that they were from the US, the doctor asked loudly, “Why this? Why? Why is your government doing this?” With tears in his eyes, he explained that one of the bomb’s had hit the children’s ward of the hospital so they could not go to the hospital. “But you are our brothers, and we will take care of you.” So they set up a clinic with four beds and saved the life of Shane’s friend. The doctors apologized for the lack of supplies due to the sanctions. They townspeople brought blankets and water inviting them to live with them in Rutba. When Shane told them that they had to get their passports from their car, the people looked at them as if they were crazy telling them that even the ambulances are getting bombed.
By this time, the other cars had returned to the crash and been told where they were. They had a wonderful little reunion before finishing their journey. As they left the people gave them hugs, kisses, and placed their hands on their hearts. They offered the doctors money but they refused saying, “Just tell the world about Rutba.”
Ambassadors for Christ in a ministry and message of reconciliation. This is hardly new. Isaiah tells us that God desires peace with us. This is part of being a new creation. Perhaps we need to let go of the old and be new. Perhaps we don’t need something new but just need to be renewed. Perhaps if we are continually renewed then the message of peace and reconciliation that sometimes seem hardly new will never lose its freshness because we travel with others who cry out to God to forgive us because we do not know what we do.
