2 Cor 5.16-21 — Andy James

Filled with Grace

March 6, 2016 By Andy James

a sermon on 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 and Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
preached on March 6, 2016, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

James B. Janknegt, 2 Sons

One of the most amazing things about the Bible is the way the same stories manage to slip into our lives over and over again. Somehow this great collection of writings manages to carry some sort of meaning in every generation. When things in the world are changing, these ancient stories still speak to our present realities. When the situations in our lives shift for one reason or another, these same stories take on new meaning for us. And when we need comfort amid turmoil in our lives, these stories give us hope for God’s presence through it all.

We need look no further than our reading from Luke this morning for a perfect example of all these things. The parable of the prodigal son told by Jesus in Luke 15 manages to use the same words to speak volumes of meaning into radically different times and places. Every time I turn to this text, I am reminded of something different about who God is. Each time I hear these words, I get a glimpse of the many different ways God loves us. And each time I hear this story, I find myself entering into the parable from a different perspective—some days it is as the younger son, some days as the older, some days as some other minor character around the edges of it all, some days even the father.

Wherever we enter this incredible story, though, from whichever viewpoint seems clearest to us in this particular moment, we gain a glimpse of the grace of God streaming into our world in all time. Grace permeates every moment of this parable. Even the setting for its telling is a moment for grace—Jesus had stirred up trouble with the Pharisees and scribes because of the company he kept, because he welcomed tax collectors and sinners and ate with them, so he wanted to help them understand why he responded to their gracelessness with compassion.

The story, like the setting of its telling, is filled with moments of gracelessness. It opens with the younger son showing no grace whatsoever as he asks to receive his inheritance while his father is still alive. It is as if the son told his father that he was as good as dead to him, that he was worth nothing more to him than the value of the things that he owned. The father had the opportunity to respond with the same lack of grace that was shown him, but he chose to give his son what he asked for.

Andrei Rabodzeenko, Prodigal son

As the son wandered the surrounding lands and squandered his inheritance, he experienced a similar lack of grace like what he offered to his father from those he encountered. The people of his new homeland saw no reason to show this stranger in their midst any sort of grace. They treated him solely as a hired hand, leaving him to fend for himself in the midst of a severe famine, not even suggesting that he ought to take some of the food that he was feeding to the pigs to sustain himself. The son showed so little grace to himself along the way, too. He counted himself so worthless that he would not even be treated as a son by his father, that his father’s grace toward him had long run out, that he was so deeply undeserving of any care other than as a hired hand.

Amid all the gracelessness of this story, the younger son’s return home was filled with great grace. His father’s grace upon his return was so abundant and so much at the ready that he seemed to be on the lookout for his son’s return each and every day, and so he ran to greet him when he saw him from far away. This greeting was not one of stern rebuke but rather warm welcome. Before the son could even finish his carefully rehearsed speech begging for mercy, his father called for a robe, ring, and sandals, then he made plans for a great feast and celebration to welcome the lost son home.

Rembrandt van Rijn, The Return of the Prodigal Son

Amid all the grace shown in this story, the older brother was not particularly excited about his father’s generous welcome to his deadbeat younger brother—it seems that the deep grace of the father had not been passed down to either one of his sons! But the father would not let his older son’s gracelessness undo the grace that defined his life and he was so willing to share. When the older son protested that he had remained at home, working faithfully and diligently while his brother had “devoured [the] property with prostitutes,” and had enjoyed none of these gifts that had suddenly been showered upon him, the father reminded him that the kind of grace shared with his brother was also shared with him, too, but that this moment was worthy of celebration, for “this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.” No matter how much the older son might try to derail it, no matter how badly the circumstances were set with gracelessness, even no matter how difficult it might be for the younger son to accept it, the father insisted in his words and actions that grace would shine through.

In the end, Jesus’ parable is about grace—grace that gives more than we think we can receive, grace that opens us to a radically different way of relating to God and one another, grace that fills even the most graceless places of our world with God’s mercy, compassion, peace, and life—and this parable helps us to see how that grace can take hold in our lives and our world. When it does, we can do what Paul suggests in our first reading, from now on to “regard no one from a human point of view,” to embrace the new creation that comes to us in Christ, to make our lives marks of reconciliation and grace each and every day.

I suspect none of this made much sense to Jesus’ disciples as he told this parable as he made his way to Jerusalem. They probably grumbled about the kind of people who showed up when Jesus welcomed tax collectors and sinners. The disciples may even have found themselves more in line with the devoted older son, complaining about all the people who managed to join the crowd along the way when they had been with Jesus from the beginning. And while they may have appreciated his pointed criticism of the Pharisees and the scribes, we know that in the end they weren’t quite ready to put their own lives on the line to join him in this message. But as time went on, as the light of the resurrection shone upon them, it all finally began to make sense, for the resurrection of Jesus showed them that his death brought a new meaning of grace to everyone. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus ultimately made it clear that his parables about God’s generosity and grace were not just pipe dreams. No—the grace that the father embodied in this parable was the very same grace that was possible and real for everyone because of the reconciliation made possible in Christ.

As hard as it was for the disciples, living such grace is not easy for us, either. It is so much easier to choose to exclude those people who look or act or live differently than we do, to join the Pharisees and scribes in their grumbling about who gets welcomed in and who gets fed, to be so tightly bound by our rules that we end up like the older son and miss the joy that comes when transformation takes root and hold in our world. As hard as it is to show this grace to others, it can just as difficult to show this grace to ourselves. It is all too easy to end up like these brothers, so stuck in assumptions that we do not merit the generosity of God’s grace because of the depth of our wrongdoing or so mired in the despair of legalism as we focus on our own understanding of doing what is right that we miss the opportunity to share the joyous celebration offered when others come to know God’s grace in new ways. Our humanity makes it all too easy to exclude others and even ourselves from the abundance of this grace, but Jesus’ parable and Paul’s words remind us that this is no longer the way we are to live. We are called to set aside the gracelessness that comes to us so naturally and embrace the abundant grace of God in our lives as we become a part of God’s new creation.

So as we journey through these Lenten days, as we walk with Jesus on the way to the cross, may God show us how to welcome this grace more deeply in our own lives, may God help us to set aside our fears of those who might join us in benefiting from this incredible gift, and may God fill us with grace anew as we see others from this new point of view of mercy, peace, hope, and grace, as together we wait, watch, and work for the new creation to be revealed in our midst by the power of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Lord, come quickly! Amen.

New

March 10, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 for the Fourth Sunday in Lent
preached on March 10, 2013, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

I’ve long been a fan of new things. As my car gets older, for example, I find it tough to keep investing in expensive but necessary repairs—at least until I calculate how much more a new one would cost! I remember that my mother gave me a long talk once, telling me that there was some value in old things and encouraging me to put up with older things for a bit longer before getting something new. I’ve gotten a little more practical as I’ve gotten older and had to pay for all my own new things, but that doesn’t keep me away from my love of the new—after all, according to some of you, my mantra is, “When in doubt, throw it out!”

So maybe it is my affinity for new things that makes our text from 2 Corinthians one of my favorites. All six of these verses are rich with the core tenets of our faith: justification, sanctification, reconciliation, you name it! But because I like new things so much, I am immediately drawn to verse 17:

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation:
everything old has passed away;
see, everything has become new!

This idea of the new creation is a powerful one. It points us to a new and different way for us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But this new creation is not just a fresh coat of paint on the walls of our lives or even a complete makeover of a few rooms—no, Paul insists that the new creation is an entirely different way of life rooted in Jesus Christ. This new creation demands that the old way of seeing and doing be set aside to make room for transformation. As Paul says it, we no longer “regard [anyone] from a human point of view.” Because our vision of Christ has been transformed, because our vision of him has been enlarged, because in his death and resurrection everything about him is different, we have to change how we see others and our world. As commentator Paul Sampley puts it, “Something so fundamental has changed in such a profound fashion that the old ways of looking, perceiving, understanding, and more profoundly, evaluating, have to be let go and replaced with a new way of seeing and understanding.” (New Interpreters’ Bible, Volume 11, p. 93)

This new way is the new creation—what I think is simultaneously the most wonderful and the most challenging element of the life of faith. Even with my love of new things, I’m not always convinced that I want to live the new creation. As wonderful as it is, it is also really hard! First of all, it’s hard to let go of the old way of life. I for one know that a more human point of view easily creeps into my relationships with others. I quite easily put the emphasis on what is best for me rather than what is best for the other—or I wonder why they aren’t doing exactly that and doing what is best for me after all! I look at people I disagree with or just don’t understand and prefer to have nothing to do with them rather than taking Paul’s call to reconciliation seriously. And I look around and wonder what good the old things might have, how any redemption might be possible in them, and think about my great mantra, “When in doubt, throw it out.”

Our world doesn’t make it any easier for us to set aside our human way of living, either. We are trained from our earliest days to make decisions about the “right” way—the right people to hang out with, the right clothes to wear, the right place to live, the right food to eat—and those who choose a different way are easily left out. We choose who to consider safe and who to make suspect on the pretense of safety—but the all-too-human characteristics we check never tell us the full story. And some lives seem more valuable to for one reason or another—because of their practice of faith, their wealth, their wisdom, their health, their skin color, their choice of friends or spouses—when in fact the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus show us that everyone is beloved by God, no matter what.

If letting go of the old wasn’t hard enough, embracing the new creation itself is equally if not more difficult. This new thing encompasses everything—it’s not just a little corner of our world, something to do when it doesn’t get in the way of what we like, or limited to whatever time we choose to commit to the church. This new thing is a radical departure from everything that we’ve gotten used to. It requires that we be open to reexamining the whole of our lives through the lens of the death and resurrection of Jesus. It insists that we set aside those things that just don’t measure up to this standard and instead focus on the new things that embody the way of Jesus in our everyday lives. And it demands open hearts and minds that aren’t just looking to recreate the past or hear only what we want to hear but that are truly open to seeing things differently and taking a new path for a new day.

This new way is always rooted in where we have been even as it points in a new and different direction. In his reflections on this text, my friend Casey Thompson suggests that Paul’s own life and ministry show him the way to the new creation.

Everything old to him is now new—mourning and crying and pain are no more. [Paul’s] life of persecuting Christians has given way to a life of pursuing Christ…. When grace unlevels Christians like this, they find themselves singing in a jail cell like Paul. Everything is now oriented from a God-drenched point of view, even though they once saw everything from a human one. They start describing whole new worlds, worlds that are conceived in imagination, but birthed by lives of faithful discipleship. (Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 2, p. 112-114)

Imagination and faithful discipleship are two of the most important characteristics of those who serve as leaders among us. Later today, as we install our newly-elected deacons and ruling elders, we recognize this challenge for their service with a seemingly simple question:

Will you pray for and seek to serve the people with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love?

Imagination, you see, is an integral part of what we do as the people of God as we live into the new creation. We imagine the world that God desires for us. We imagine how we might be more faithful disciples as we journey together on the road of service in the church. And we dream about how we can be a part of God’s new thing that is already happening all around us. We need all these other things that we ask of our deacons and elders—energy, intelligence, and love are critical to the life of leadership in this place—but without imagination we get stuck right where we are, moving nowhere new, repeating old mistakes, seeing people just like everyone else instead of like Christ.

Imagination isn’t the easiest thing for us. As children, we are encouraged to think outside the box, to dream about a different way, but then we are taught to color within the lines, to set aside our dreams and temper our visions with reality, to turn off our imagination and focus on reality. It’s no surprise, then, that imagination isn’t the easiest thing for us. But again Casey Thompson offers us a different way. He insists that the new creation that Paul describes here “is conceived in imagination—and imagination begins in prayer, in the images that God plants within us.” (Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 2, p. 114)

This way demands a lot less talking and a lot more careful listening, a deep attention to the nearly-unnoticed shifts within us. This way may not seem to be as productive, and we may not see immediate results at all, but it even when we can’t see it, it is making space for God to show us something new. In these days when we as a congregation are listening for God’s guidance for the path ahead, as we gather together to listen carefully to one another and explore the possibilities of something new for us, as we long for the new creation to become real here and now, for us in this time and this place, prayer and imagination must stand at the center. We must pray for God’s presence and guidance with us along the way—and we must make space for God’s imagination to take hold in us and through us. So I for one pray that you will join in this time of listening and speaking, in this practice of prayer and imagination, so that together we might gain even a little glimpse of a new way ahead and be a part of this new creation ourselves, building on what we have been to emerge to something new.

So may God’s grace abound all around us, may imaginative visions of love and grace and justice and peace shine brightly, and may God open our hearts and minds and guide our feet as we journey together the path of this Lent and the days ahead. Thanks be to God. Amen.