Concordia Lutheran Church
The Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 14. 2010
So That!
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
† IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST †
May the grace of God our Father, paid for by treating Christ like a sinner, help you understand that you are at peace with Him, and with all of His people, even as you appeal to them to be at peace with God!
He made Him to be Sin…
It sits there, these words of Paul, at the beginning of our epistle there today, challenging us. Look there, at the top of the page. “We are careful not to judge people by what they seem to be…”
Let’s be a bit truthful, this is often indeed what we do. We look at someone, and we base how we treat them accordingly. Example. Two young men knock on your door on a Saturday morning, and as you look out the window, you see their bikes, and their white shirts and narrow ties, and you ….
Turn out the lights and hush everyone in the house… “be quiet – the Mormons are out there!” Of course, it might not be the Mormons, it could be the census, or the IRS, or… nah.. it’s the Mormons – hide!!
Or you see another young man, Caucasian, unshaven, with clothes a little askew and raggedy, would you think he was the guest preacher at a youth gathering of a Passion church? Turned out he was the pastor of a church of over 500 on the east coast, here to talk about a life of prayer. I had that embarrassment a couple of weeks ago, here – I was reaching to my wallet – to see if I had some money to help him out! We kick ourselves after such embarrassments, and yet… we do it again and again..
Seriously, we do judge people by their looks often. People even did that to Jesus. When people looked at Him, they saw Mary’s son, or the step brother of Jude, or the nice young carpenter turned Rabbi. But when he starts talking about death, and eating and drinking His Body and Blood, or when he raises people from the dead, it’s hard to conceive of him as the Messiah, the Son of God, of being…God. Nah- not him.
According to the flesh – no way
Even according to the flesh, they had trouble seeing Jesus as the Christ!
So if not that… how
As we travel through lent, it’s time for a bit of introspection. A time to realize our sins. Not just to learn from our errors, but to realize that Christ’s death on the cross can heal the damage they have done. In our attempts to live as we ought, the challenge is not being strong enough, the challenge comes from knowing what it means to be reconciled to God. For I believe, as we understand what it means to be His people, we will see the other relationships we have, change. Most importantly, because trusting in Him means seeing that He has changed us all.
Our message
THREE TIMES
We’ve been entrusted with it
We oversee it
God makes His appeal through us?
I’ve mentioned before, that when scripture mentions something twice, its to draw attention to it. In language studies, you call this a parrellism. If it is said three or more times, even more attention is drawn to it.
In our epistle today, something is mentioned a number of times. It is this idea that we are to be at peace with God. I chose the translation today, the Contemporary English Version, because it simplifies this. Other translations use a good old church word – reconciliation – here. The concept is simple – our debts, our sins, have been forgiven by God. He has made the peace.
But that’s not all that is mentioned in multiple ways. Hear this again.
8 God has done it all! He sent Christ to make peace between himself and us, and he has given us the work of making peace between himself and others. 19 What we mean is that God was in Christ, offering peace and forgiveness to the people of this world. And he has given us the work of sharing his message about peace. 20 We were sent to speak for Christ, and God is begging you to listen to our message. 2 Corinthians 5:18-20 (CEV)
Three times Paul talks of being given the work, of being sent to share this message of peace with others. That incredible blessing is passed down to us, the ability to see God make peace with others, by sharing with them this same message that has been shared with us, that we are celebrating this morning together.
But, you might say, pastor – sharing Christ’s love with people is difficult, we don’t know them, they might be…. Well… sinners! You know what – even if they know Jesus, they probably still sin at least once a month…er week. And that is why Paul precludes a lesson about reconciliation with the comment about not looking at others according to the flesh. If we look at those…. Out there… according to the flesh, we won’t care if they hear or not.
It’s when we understand how God made us at peace in His presence, that things change, the relationship make our lives new… different…peaceful
Regarding people according to the way they seem to be….
Did Randy
But how do we do that with…others?
Understand Reconciliation
The change starts when we become Christ’s, we become “a new person. Everything in the past is forgotten, all things become new- because of the change in the status of the relationship, that God has changed.
Some of the older translations tell us here that we’ve become new creations. Indeed we have, not in the sense that I am completely destroyed and remade from scratch. That would be nice, say about 80 pounds less and 4-6 inches taller? It’s more like when you go and buy a pre-owned car. The car is new, because it has a new owner. In the same way, in our baptism, when we are born again, we go from being enslaved to sin and satan and the fear of death, to being God’s people, holy priests, His saints and His kids.
Here is a way to understand the difference a relationship makes. My cousin Randy wrote yesterday, “My wife and two kids both have the nasty stomach flu going around... 2am last night, Bennett is up throwing up... I get up, pull her hair back and rub her back. She finishes, looks back at me and says, "daddy, thanks for helping me throw up"... i'll tell you, at that point in time, there is no place else in the world, with no other person in the world, that i would have rather been... !
When I commented to Randy that he was a great example of God’s love to his kids, he was a bit shocked- he was thinking how amazing it was that his four-year-old daughter would think to thank him for caring for her.
That’s the kind of relationship that God has called us into in Christ. That’s what the church word “reconciliation” means, or in this translation what it means to be at peace with God. When we are sick, or when we are experiencing the sickness and problems in the world, we know that God is right there, with us, showing us love, guiding us through it. Because He chose to, even though the cost was so high.
He does not look at us as some other person’s sick kid, some other person’s problem. He takes us on, problems and all, and is there with us, cleaning us up.
New Creation
Not new as is origin, new as in status
Born again! Baptised, Marked as CHrists
That’s what it means to be a new creation – He takes responsibility for us, for getting us through our lives, for dealing with the sin. He baptizes us, cleanses and comforts us and makes us His. That’s what is means when it says God HAS done it.
When my cousin saw his daughter, sicker and nauseous, he didn’t see the sickness as much as he saw his daughter in need of care, and comfort. When God sees us, He sees His children, and will do anything to restore us to health. He will pay any price to bring us comfort, to bring us, His people, His children, peace.
The cost was high. It was His only begotten son, that would provide our cure. To take upon himself our sin, the one who knew not sin, who though tempted, never failed.
That’s what we tell others about – knowing that Christ died for them as well. That’s what we celebrate at the end of lent when we celebrate Maunday Thursday, Good Friday, Easter, and in every worship service were we take the bread and wine, the body and blood and realize it was on the cross, that God treated Christ as a sinner, so that Christ could make us acceptable to God. So that Christ could make peace between Himself and us. That’s the so that where the sermon title comes from…the last line of the epistle…. But God treated Him as a sinner, so that Christ could make us acceptable to God. All of us here, and all those out there… who will believe, once they hear.
So dwell in the indescribable peace of God, which guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus… and rejoice, for He is with us, and we are acceptable to our Father.
AMEN?
