If this winter is like most winters, you will wake up one morning, peer out your window, and find the whole scene blanketed in pure white snow. It will seem like a fairyland to you, and for a little while, at least, the whole world will appear to be new. Brand new, clean and fresh, sparkling and exciting. A new world.
You will then turn on your radio to find out how to deal with this new reality, and, depending on your perspective, you may be given either a monumental headache or the gift of a new, easy day.
If you have to go to work, you are awarded the headache as you strategize how you are going to maneuver in a city where everybody is a maniac on slick tires. Excedrin time!
Ah, but if you are a student, likely they will tell you that Montgomery County Schools have closed, D. C. Public Schools have closed … if you live out in Virginia, in fact, you didn’t even have to turn on the radio, because you know those folks close at the very rumor of snow. Your new world has just gotten newer and fresher; you have a whole day to spend that you didn’t know you were going to have. And whether you will roll back into bed for extra sleep or get up and invest the newness some other way is your choice.
A new world brings a new day and new choices, new options, new possibilities. Inevitably, however, some of us are going to sleep through it.
Last November, some of us attended the sessions of the D. C. Baptist Convention and listened to a battery of speakers working their way through Paul’s great passage in the Ephesian letter about the Christ who breaks down dividing walls. And on the very day we were hearing those messages, over in Berlin one of those dividing walls was coming down, literally being torn down. It seemed to be the dawning of a new day in German life, maybe, some of us dared to hope, in the life of the nations so long at odds across what we had come to call the Iron Curtain. November 1989 -- was that to be the dawning of a new day in politics? Was that to be, as the pop song puts it, “the start of something new?"
November, December 1989 -- the rumblings we had heard in Eastern Europe built. Noises were coming not only from Poland and not only from East Germany. Noises signaling the start of something new were to be heard
in Hungary, in Czechoslovakia, in Bulgaria, in all those places we can scarcely find on the map, much less pronounce. But we knew something new was happening there and we sensed that it mattered.
The noises of something new built to a crescendo as in the Soviet Union itself, on one day we heard with awe the rasping voice of a Soviet dissident, once exiled, once maligned, once thrown into a Siberian workcamp, but now a member of the Soviet Congress … on one day we heard him speak again with force in opposition to the regime which had so often stripped his countrymen of their rights, and the next day, as his life had ended suddenly, we heard from his enemies words of respect, words of sincere appreciation.
Something new is going on here, isn’t it? Even in what an American president had once called an Evil Empire there seemed to be a new day.
And then Romania. A land of mystery and of pain. A place of poverty and of oppression. A nation whose people had been robbed and raped and plundered beyond imagination -- Romania at Christmas time – the people took to the streets, they seized their destiny in their own hands, they toppled the dictator, and they have started something new.
At Christmas time -- somehow it seems exactly right, for at Christmas we had all gathered to celebrate the coming of Him of whom it had been said, "He has put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent empty away."
Now I know that we have to be a little cautious about the meaning of all of this. I know that it would be easy to get caught up in euphoria and to think that the Cold War has been won and that Communism is wiped out. And I do not want us to be naive. But my faith insists on telling me that the God who is always a surprise, the God who is always starting something new, is doing it again. This God, who will be Lord of the nations; this God, whose will is in some ultimate and mysterious way going to be accomplished: this God is doing something new.
And just as when you and I wake up to what seems to be a new world on a snowy morning, and we have to choose what we will do with it and how new we are going to let it be, so also we are going to have to choose what to do with this brave new world. We can sleep through it and wait for everything to get back to normal; or we can wake wide up and begin to make this new world even more new.
This is the first Lord’s Day in a new year and a new decade, and, if my analysis of the scene out there in the world be at all accurate, this is the first Lord’s Day in a social and political landscape that is also new. My question to you then becomes, "how new is new?" "How new is new?" How much are we aware of newness in ourselves? How much investment are we going to make in the newness our God wants to bring to His world?
Will we wake up and seize this day with Christ – not just for Christ, but with Christ? Or will we fall asleep and let it pass?
Will we find in our faith the energy to unite with our God and His mission? Or will we drop back into business as usual?
One day a teacher and scholar named Saul of Tarsus encountered something that gave his life a new dimension. Though he had supposed that he had it all figured out, that he knew full well who the enemy was and what he stood for, one day Saul got jolted out of the saddle there on the Damascus Road. And for him, that was the start of something new.
And Saul had the same choice we’ve been talking about. Saul had the choice whether to retreat to obscurity and go to sleep, living out his life anonymously and quietly in some obscure spot; or to recognize that something new had come into the world and into his life, and therefore he had to do something about it.
I think you know enough of Saul’s life to know what happened. I am sure you know that out of the Damascus Road experience and his response to it Saul got a new name, becoming Paul; a new direction, and a new mission. This was indeed the start of something new.
Let him describe it and its meaning in his own words:
"The love of Christ compels us, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on therefore … if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation … entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ."
How new is new? If God is in it, new enough that the past doesn’t matter any more; what matters is that God has acted, decisively, finally, in Christ Jesus, to bring a new day. What you and I used to be doesn’t matter nearly as much as what we can be -- new creations.
How new is new? If God is in it, new enough that old enemies are brought together, new enough that old misunderstandings are cleared up, new enough that old struggles lose their meaning. New enough that I feel more committed than ever before to work for justice and peace in this world, no matter what the price, because our victorious God will not let it be lost.
How new is new for you and me? If God has done something new in Christ Jesus, for the world and for you and for me, new enough that even we are changed. Even you and I, who so often want to resist change; even you and I, who so often imagine that nothing special ever happens to us; even you and I, who claim that apples don’t fall far from the tree and that leopards don’t change their spots and that nothing is as good as the good old days -- even you and I, if we encounter this new-making Christ, are going to find this new year, this new decade, and this new world, genuinely, truly new.
Frankly, when I think about what lies before us, never before have I felt such optimism about what can happen if you and I will be open to what God is doing and will wake up to move ahead with Him. Never before have I felt such energy about seeing this church reach out and make a difference. Never before have I thought so strongly that it really might be possible for us to become effective for the Kingdom. I can envision us equipping ourselves, developing our skills, and then marching out to claim this community, right here, old as it seems to be, tired as it may look to you, and making it new for Christ.
Last week my wife and I were in Fort Worth at Mission 90. Mission 90 was a conference that Baptists sponsored for students involved in our network of campus ministries across the country. There were about 3500 of them there, learning about missions and paying attention to the needs of a new world. On Saturday and Sunday, when the invitation was issued, over 600 of them came forward to make commitments to a missions lifestyle. And I thought, I am here seeing a whole new world come into being!
It can be! It can be! When you and I wake up and see that Jesus Christ has died for all, and therefore all have died -- all have died – and the old things are passed away, we’ll have to respond to that.
You and I, if we look at this Table and then listen to our hearts, will recognize that God is working His purposes out, from day to day and year to year, and He is calling us to be new. Even you and I, if we are willing to respond, can become new creations, in whom all the old garbage is down the tubes and everything is bright and fresh and new.
In this New Year, approaching the Lord’s Table, hear this great good news, this ancient yet new news -- that God is in Christ reconciling the world to himself, and that he has entrusted to us – to us – the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ.
And if we believe that, in this New Year, in this new world, we will do more -- and give more -- and work more -- and share more -- and be more -- because we are ambassadors for Christ.
In this New Year, in this new decade, in what we fervently pray is a new world, come to the Table of the Lord, die with Him to everything old and outdated and unworthy; and wake up. Wake up to a lifestyle of witness and service and renewal. Come to the Table of the Lord, where we are reminded that He who died is alive again, and that that means that He is going to be King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
How new is new?
"While in despair I bowed my head, ’There is no peace on earth,’ I said, ’For hate is strong and mocks the song Of peace on earth, good will to men.’
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep, ’God is not dead, nor doth He sleep. The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, With peace on earth, good will to men.’
Till ringing, singing on its way, The world revolved from night to day A voice, a chime, a chant sublime, Of peace on earth, good will to men."
If anyone be in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, the new has come.
