Dead Poets Society is, I think, one of the best films of all time. In his first lesson with
his senior class, the rather eccentric but very inspiring English teacher John Keating,
played by Robin Williams, takes the boys into the foyer outside the classroom where
he asks one lad by the name of Pitts (a rather unfortunate name, Keating muses) to
read out a poem. In an uncertain voice, Pitts reads,
"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
Old time is still a-flying
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying."
’Carpe deum’, Keating says to them, ’Seize the day’. Every single one of us is just
food for worms. You may be destined for great things, but you need to take the
opportunity now. Then he leads his class up to the cabinet on the side of the foyer,
filed with old, black and white photos of old boys . What do all these boys, your
illustrious predecessors, have in common?, asks Keating. They’re all fertilising
daffodils. They’re all dead. They were boys with high expectations, high ideals, just
like you. They felt they were invincible, thought that the world was their oyster, just
like you. But did they manage to fulfil even a tiny bit of their potential? Keating
gathers his charges close around the cabinet, telling them to listen to the legacy the
old boys have for them. He whispers from behind them, imitating the ghosts of the
past. "Carpe deum. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary."
This teacher, while he might have been inspiring, while he might have been
funny, had all his priorities out of order. He thought that success in this life was the
most important thing to pursue. He thought that everything ended when we all
became "food for worms", when we all began a new job as daffodil fertilisers. Yet,
despite his problems, one part of John Keating’s message echoes the thoughts of Paul
in 2 Corinthians 6. Seize the day, says Keating, make your lives extraordinary. Seize
the day, says Paul, be reconciled to God.
The idea of reconciliation gets a lot of airtime nowadays. Most obviously we
think of the reconciliation between the broader Australian community and it’s
indigenous population. Simply put reconciliation means the bringing back into
friendly relations, repairing a relationship. When we think of reconciliation in it’s
current contexts, we think of something that requires compromise, requires
forgiveness from both sides, requires acceptance of responsibility, requires apologies.
That’s what the current debate on Aboriginal reconciliation hits snares - because
people aren’t prepared to accept responsibility, even collectively, they’re not prepared
to say sorry. And this is made out as a condition for forgiveness. We won’t forgive
you, unless you demonstrate to us that you are genuinely sorry.
But that’s not the way reconciliation with God works. Notice Paul’s appeal in
vs 20 - "Be reconciled to God." He doesn’t say, reconcile yourself to God. He doesn’t
say, you and God better make up and be friends again. He simply says "Be reconciled
to God. And the reason he can say this is because he’s already explained how God has
brought this reconciliation about. It’s all from God as vs. 18 points out. He does the
reconciling. It’s not as if he steps back and first demands an apology before the
process can go any further.
You could think about it like this: The reconciliation from God is not so
much like today’s Aboriginal reconciliation debate. It’s more like the story of an
Aboriginal man the white men named Bill. He was alive at the end of the nineteenth
century. He lived a traditional life on the land somewhere around where modern-day
Taree is. The only difference was, his tribe had been contacted by two catholic
missionaries who told them the Gospel, and they accepted it. Bill learnt English, and
while he still lived his traditional life, he had some contact with white civilisation.
Two pastoralists tended some of the land near where Bill’s tribe hunted and spent
most of their time. They decided, and we don’t know if it’s true or not, that Bill’s
people had stolen three sheep from their properties. Feeling quite justified about
what they were about to do, they took their shotguns and killed ten members of Bill’s
tribe during the night, including two of his sons. When the local authorities got wind
of the massacre, the press ran a story about it. The pastoralists had been arrested, and
the paper quoted them as saying, something like, "There’s nothing wrong with it.
They were only niggers." The journalist went out to see the remainder of Bill’s tribe,
no doubt expecting to be able to write that they weren’t really people at all - they
couldn’t speak properly, they lived like savages. When he got there, Bill spoke to
him, and the journalist was taken aback that this nigger could speak so well. In the
paper a few days later, a story appeared about this interview with Bill. The article
recorded that the journalist had asked Bill what he wanted to say to the two
pastoralist, the two men who had killed his family and were proud of the fact. Bill
replied in his simple English, "I don’t like what they did, but that’s alright. I just want
to be their friend."
"I forgive them," Bill was saying. It goes against this world’s way of thinking,
doesn’t it? You only need to be nice to people who are nice to you. If somebody does
something wrong against you, you should fight for your rights, fight for punishment,
not forgive. Those two pastoralists were by now means asking for forgiveness. They
weren’t even sorry. And that’s exactly the situation we were in when God offered us
reconciliation.
I’ve just recently studied the book of Judges, and it’s interesting to look at the
cycle of sin that goes on in that Book. The Israelites worship other gods, intermarry
and God punishes them - then they cry out for help, and God saves them. But toward
then end of the narrative, with the Israelites always sinking even deeper into sin, they
don’t even ask for God’s mercy. They just ignore him altogether. But the Lord,
simply out of his compassion for his people, has mercy on them and gives them a
saviour.
A very famous verse in Romans 5 says this: "God demonstrates his love for us
in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." It goes on in verse 10, "For if,
when we were God’s enemies we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son,
how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life. "
While we were still God’s enemies, ignoring him and rejecting his rightful
lordship over us, he sent Christ to reconcile us to himself.
And 2 Corinthians 5 explains exactly how this works. You see, this
reconciliation didn’t require God to say, oh I’ll forget about all the bad stuff, come and
be my friend. It requires the problem in the relationship to be finally and absolutely
dealt with. That problem is our sin. God just can’t accept us when we are black with
sin. We have to be pure white, clean, otherwise we will stain God’s presence with a
big, ugly black smear - a stain that God won’t and can’t put up with. He reconciles the
world to himself by not counting this sin against people - have a look at vs. 19: "God
was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them."
But he doesn’t just forget, or pretend they’re not there. vs. 21 says that "God made
him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of
God." Just as the consequences of sin is death, separation of God, being the
righteousness of God means that we are clean and can approach God’s throne with
confidence. We can be friends with God. Jesus became sin for us by bearing those
consequences in our place. He became God’s enemy, so that we could be God’s
friend. In his anguished cry of "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me" from
Mark 14:34, he was cut off from his father’s presence, the unity of the Trinity severed
in a tragedy beyond human understanding, so that we could be at peace with God. He
became sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God.
This ministry of reconciliation has been given to Paul to proclaim, as we see
in vs 18 and 20. This explains one of his purposes behind writing this letter. The
Corinthian church was turning to other teachers who maligned Paul and his Gospel.
Paul was trying to defend himself against this, making sure the Corinthians knew that
it was he who taught the truth - he defends himself personally in the rest of chapter 6
and 7. But here, he recognises that the need of the Corinthians to be reconciled to
Paul is merely reflective of their need to know the truth and be reconciled to God. I
am God’s ambassador, he says, so accept what I say, and what I say is "Be reconciled
to God."
Paul is urgent in his demands. He implores them in vs 20: Be reconciled to
God. He pleads with them, beseeches them (and whatever other synonym you want to
use). This is incredibly important. It’s not something that can wait. You’ve got an
opportunity now which won’t last forever, so you’d better take it, Paul tells them.
Imagine a man standing in the middle of some train tracks, reading a
newspaper. You’re standing to the side of the tracks, and you notice that he doesn’t
seem to be getting off. In the distance behind him, you can see the train coming
toward him, you can hear the noise it makes. Strangely, though, he doesn’t seem to
notice. You scream at him and wave your arms. Get off the track, you scream. He
looks at you, and calls, I’m alright here, I’ll do something when I need to. By now,
you have no idea why he can’t hear the train quickly coming up behind him. You can
feel the vibrations on the ground. Get off, get off, get off, you scream. There’s a train
coming!! But he just looks at you and calmly says, "Give me a few minutes, I’ve got
plenty of time. Let me finish the paper!" You pick up a handful gravel and start
hurling it at him. One stone makes a hole in the paper right on the article he’s
reading, so he gets a bit annoyed. "I told you to leave me alone! I’ll do it in my own
time. Just go - " and he never finishes the sentence.
I’ll follow Jesus, one woman says. But not now. How about when I’m older,
when I really need it. You hear a splat as the train hits her.
The Gospel sounds good to me, says the father with his two children. But I’ve
got a family to bring up. Tell me about it later. You can hear the bones crack as he’s
flung off the track into the ravine below.
Yeah, I believe it, says the teenager. But I’ll do something about it when I’m
older. I’ve got to have fun with my friends now. The broken body is crunched under
the train wheels.
You see, friends, this is a desperate situation. Paul’s demand is urgent. "Now
is the time of God’s favour, today is the day of salvation. " Don’t receive God’s grace
in vain by hearing it but not doing anything about it.
We don’t know when God will demand our life from us. A guy I went to
school who died from a stroke at age 16 didn’t know. The rich fool mentioned in
Luke 12 did not know his life would be demanded from him after he had built himself
all his massive barns to store his wealth.
And nor do we know when Jesus will return. Like a thief in the night, we are
told, when we don’t expect it. It could be now, it could be tomorrow. God is patient,
but he has set aside a day.
That is why Paul is so urgent. We have an opportunity now to be reconciled
to God, and we must take it now, else we miss it.
If you have already been reconciled to God, then you, too, are ambassadors for
Christ. You can’t put off evangelism - it must be done now! Plead with your friends,
as Paul does. This isn’t something you can go, "oh well, they don’t believe it" about.
If they were standing on the train tracks would you just sort of mention once that
they’re about to be obliterated?
2 Pet 3:9-10 says this: "The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise as some
understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but
everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The
heavens will disappear with a roar: the elements will be destroyed by fire and the
earth and everything in it will be laid bear. "
This is the time of God’s favour, and this is the day of salvation. Carpe deum!
Seize the day! Be reconciled to God.
