new creation — Page 2

Call the Midwife

May 5, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5 and John 14: 23-29
preached on May 5, 2013, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

And in the spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God.

I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

—Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5 (NRSV)

Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.

“I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.

—John 14:23-29 (NRSV)

For better or worse, I’ve recently taken to “binging” on TV shows via Netflix as part of my weekly routine. It all started a year or so ago with Downton Abbey, an addiction I understand I share with some of you, and it has progressed through a lot of other interesting shows that are notable on both sides of the Atlantic. My most recent find just this past week is a British series called Call the Midwife, a period drama set in a poor neighborhood of East London in the 1950s. It follows a group of nuns and nurses who work for the health of the whole community while giving their closest attention to women of childbearing age in the midst of the baby boom even as new medical practices and procedures begin to take hold in the community. It is an intense series, not for the faint of heart or stomach, as it provides a quite realistic view of the always-difficult circumstances surrounding childbirth while also dealing with the depth of emotion that naturally comes anytime birth and death are involved.

The work of a midwife, so common for millennia and yet so uncommon in our society today, deals with these in-between times: the time between pregnancy and birth, those pivotal moments when the life of mother and child are at greatest risk, the critical minutes when we know that great joy may lie ahead and yet the path to get there is filled with fear and uncertainty. The greatest gift of the midwives on Call the Midwife is not their medical training or ability to work in difficult conditions but rather their gift of calm and comfort as the storm of childbirth swirls. One of the characters, a tall and stocky woman who seems about as comfortable in her own skin as a platypus dining in a fine restaurant and who has been burdened with the unfortunate nickname “Chummy” for most of her life, walks into a bedroom to assist at a birth and summons an amazing calmness and steadiness that is entirely unlike her presence at any other moment. She was clearly born for this work. Her gentle, kind, and simple words to the mothers embody the best work of a midwife—to provide a loving and healing presence even as anxiety swirls and the things that are ahead seem so uncertain.

Our reading this morning from the book of Revelation points us ahead to a different time and place—to a time and place that seems a lot like the romanticized life we imagine after a baby is born, but it skips over the real and present challenges that are involved in getting to that point. In this reading, the midwife has come and gone, a new life has been born, and there is nothing but sheer joy. In John’s vision recounted here, the holy city, the new Jerusalem, is real and whole and complete. There is no need of a temple, because God is present there. God’s own light does away with sun and moon and night, and there is no gate to keep anyone out. Glory and honor stream into this city to bring praise to God. This city is full of new life, for the river of the water of life flows through the middle of it, by the throne of God, to sustain all things forever. The tree of life grows beside the river, with new fruit each month and leaves to bring healing to the nations. All things in our world that harm and hurt will be replaced here with things that build up and give life.

This new Jerusalem looks to be a wonderful and fulfilling place to live and be filled with new life, life grounded in our experiences of the here and now and yet new and different and whole and complete. Yet as much as we may long for it, as much as we certainly hope for it, this holy city, this new way of life, is not yet here. The vision of a new thing may be clear, but the path to get to it is uncertain, filled with potential for pain and suffering. We can see that there is something new before us—we can see a vision of the new creation, a distant view of the city of God, maybe even an outline of a new and different life ahead—but we can’t quite see how to get there from here. The journey is inevitably marked by anxiety and fear because we do not know if we will make it or if the things that we hold most dear will survive to the new day. These are the moments to call a midwife, to look for someone who can speak to us clearly and honestly, someone to give us kind and confident words to show us the way through our uncertainty to new life, someone to help us see that there is something more ahead that might be different from where we have been, someone to guide us through the seemingly uncharted waters as we seek the new life that we know is ahead.

This kind of presence is exactly what Jesus promised us in our reading from the gospel of John this morning. Not only does he promise that “the Advocate, the Holy Spirit… will teach [us] everything and remind [us] of all” that he has said to us, he assures us that peace is with us:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you… Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

This is just the thing we need to get through uncertain days, just the presence we need to navigate uncharted waters, just the kind of wisdom we need to see the new thing that is ahead, just the sort of thing that a midwife can bring.

My friends, we are at a critical moment in the life of our church—a moment where we need a promise of peace, a vision of something new, and a midwife to get us there. There are challenges swirling everywhere around us, ranging from the practicalities that we are spending a lot of money on a really small group of people to the bigger challenge that our community doesn’t seem to welcome what we are offering—if they even know about it and feel welcome here. Amidst all this, it is tough to imagine something new for us and our world—and even tougher to sort out how we might get there. It is in this moment that Jesus offers us peace, and it is in this moment that we must call a midwife to help us in that journey, to calm our nerves and ease our spirits, to guide us through to the new thing that is being born even now. Something new will happen here, and it is our opportunity to embrace the Spirit’s leading and journey into this new thing now or choose to wait until we have much less choice in and control of the new thing that is ahead.

John Lewis, a student leader in the Civil Rights Movement and now a congressman from Georgia, recently spoke about on his experiences along that way. In the Freedom Rides on buses from Washington, DC, into the deep South that began 52 years ago yesterday, Lewis was the first to be attacked. Alongside so many others, he faced incredible violence and responded with a real hope for peace and nonviolence. In a recent interview, he reflected on the journey and struggle that defined this journey toward justice and a new way of life:

I wanted to believe, and I did believe, that things would get better. But later I discovered, I guess, that you have to have this sense of faith that what you’re moving toward is already done. It’s already happened…

It’s the power to believe that you can see, that you visualize, that sense of community, that sense of family, that sense of one house…

And you live that you’re already there, that you’re already in that community, part of that sense of one family, one house. If you visualize it, if you can even have faith that it’s there, for you it is already there.

So as we wait and work and pray in these in-between times, as we make our way through these final Easter days and sort out what the resurrection means in the everyday, as we discern where God is calling us to move and go as a congregation, as we look for a vision of something new, may God guide us in all that we do, and may the midwife of the Holy Spirt move among us to help us through all our fear and uncertainty as we journey toward the new thing that is already done and join in offering our best to help make it real here and now and always. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Looking for the Living

March 31, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on Luke 24:1-12 for Easter Sunday
preached on March 31, 2013, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Why do you look for the living among the dead?

The women who had made their way to Jesus’ tomb were startled enough by the two men in dazzling clothes who met them there, so I can’t imagine all the other emotions that came as they were confronted by these strange words. They had come to the tomb expecting to finish the work of burying Jesus that they had started so hurriedly on Friday evening and abandoned for the sabbath, so they figured that the dead Jesus would be exactly where they had laid him. But things were not as they expected. Not only was the tomb unsealed and the large stone rolled away, Jesus’ body was not there. Then to be greeted by these two strange men—it was quite a way to start the morning!

Why do you look for the living among the dead?

Our own search for Jesus can certainly take us to some places where that question might be in order. It’s easy to think that we’ll keep encountering God in our lives in the way we always have even when our world is changing quickly and dramatically right before our very eyes. It’s easy to walk away from God when things are going right and then come back when life takes an unexpected turn. But when we do this, are we not also looking for the living among the dead? Do we show up as the women did, at the tombs of our world, expecting that we can encounter God again just like we did before? Do we put God in the same box that they did, leaving no room for resurrection and new life?

Why are you looking for the living among the dead?

If these words weren’t strange enough, the two men in dazzling clothes continued on: “He is not here, but has risen.” All the assumptions that the women had made about this morning were turned on end, all because they had forgotten what Jesus had told them. In the midst of the chaos of his arrest and trial, they did not remember that he had told them that this kind of end was ahead for him. In the midst of his execution at the hands of the religious and civil authorities of the day, they had forgotten his promise that this was not the end of his story. In the midst of their grief, they could not imagine that anything more than death was ahead for him.

And so since they had forgotten, they went to the tomb to look for Jesus. They thought that he belonged there among the dead. They expected him to be there, right where they had laid him. But they were wrong. The stone was rolled away, the tomb was empty, and Jesus was alive and present in the world even though they had not seen him yet. They couldn’t look for him as they had done before—they had to see him in different places, in new ways, and maybe even right where they were.

Why do you look for the living among the dead?

It’s a fair question for us, too: where do we look for Jesus? Do we come to church, thinking that he has set up shop permanently and exclusively within these walls? Do we look for people who have a grand outward appearance of faithfulness, expecting that their holiness and virtue will show us the face of Christ? Do we seek out people who think like us, look like us, pray like us, speak like us, and believe like us? When we do these things—when we look for Jesus in all places where we expect to find him, in the halls that seem to hold religious power, in outward expressions of faithfulness, in people who are just like us—are we not looking for the living among the dead?

Why do you look for the living among the dead?

The women were not alone in this in their time. Even after they believed the news from the two men in dazzling clothes who met them at the tomb, the other disciples just didn’t understand it when the women told them. They called it nothing more than an idle tale—leiros in the Greek, literally meaning “nonsense”—except for Peter, who ran to the tomb himself to see it with his own eyes and then returned home, amazed and confused by what he had seen. The disciples were not yet ready to go looking for Jesus in new places.

Why do you look for the living among the dead?

It’s easy to get sucked in to this way of thinking, to join with the disciples and question how we might ever expect to see Jesus in our world. There is enough brokenness in our world to bring even the most confident and faithful among us to question how God is at work around us. There is enough war and violence in our world for us to reasonably wonder how the peace of Christ is actually taking root around us. And there is enough death in our midst to make us even wonder if the resurrection is real at all. And so we too often stand with the women, the disciples, and countless others who look for Jesus in the wrong places, who don’t understand how Jesus could be resurrected in the first place.

Yet those two men in dazzling clothes at the tomb call us to seek something different, to look for the living Christ in the real world, in the places where there is real and great need, in the places where something is deeply missing, in those places where we would least expect to encounter him, for he is present and alive and at work here and now, and we are called to join him as he works to make all things new. Maybe it is time to look for Jesus alive and at work in our world in new places, among the prisoners and the poor, among the homeless and harmed, among the sick and sad, among the destitute and depressed, among people who don’t look like us, act like us, love like us, believe like us, think like us, or dream like us.

It is there in those places, in the places we least expect it, in the places furthest from the tomb, in the places of greatest need, where we might just find Jesus. And so whether we have seen him yet or not, whether we have sought him in a graveyard or out on the streets, whether we believe or whether we doubt, may we go forth on this Easter day with our eyes and hearts open to meeting the risen Jesus in our world, wherever that search may lead us, ready to serve others and embody the fullness of his love to everyone we meet until he comes again in final victory to destroy death once and for all. Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.

Wet

March 17, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on Isaiah 43:16-21 and Psalm 126 for the Fifth Sunday in Lent
preached on March 17, 2013, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

The other day, I met a friend in Manhattan for a cup of coffee after work. He needed to run a couple errands, so I joined him in wandering around Manhattan as we talked. Most days at this time of year, this would have been a refreshing way to spend a late afternoon, with a gentle, crisp breeze to keep things cool but not cold and the late afternoon sunshine taking the edge off the wind.

But sun was not in the cards for us that afternoon—it was overcast and gray. Even worse, though, it was a drizzling and misting day, raining just lightly enough that you didn’t really need an umbrella most of the time, but as we walked along, we ended up getting soaking wet—not just our coats, not just our shoes, but everything, soaked to the bone.

As I pondered this text over the last few days, this soaking mist kept coming back to me. Usually we think of waters much like we hear in our reading from Isaiah today, rushing around, pouring into our lives, changing things quickly. We look for waters that will quench our thirst and bring us a taste of new life. We seek the full promise of Isaiah’s prophecy:

I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

We long for new springs that will not damage us or destroy us, hoping for the presence of God to bring waters that will make a way where there was no way, quench the thirst of a dry land, and refresh the people of God. We look to be refreshed and renewed by the memory of who God has been and what God has done, to once again set aside the former ways of destruction, the frustrations of exile, the mourning and crying and pain of the past, so that we can embrace this new thing, a way opening up through the wilderness, the possibility of new life breaking through into the weariness of our world. We seek something so easy and so dramatic that everything changes, that everyone stops and takes notice—like in Isaiah’s world, where even the wild animals pay attention, give their honor, and share the gift of life in this new water, and all people are enabled to declare great praise.

But when we look around us, when we stop and wander around in hope of finding something that has eluded us, more often than finding gushing springs of new life, we find what seems to be a dreary mist—yet before we know it, we are soaked through and through. And we just don’t know what to do with that—while I know of few people who don’t appreciate a good wet shower or a nice rainstorm from inside, most of the time we’re just ready to dry off and dry out already! Yet God’s new thing is sinking into us anyway, soaking us like a drizzly New York day, getting us wet whether we like it or not, calling us to set aside where we have been and keep our focus on where we are going.

I love these words from Isaiah, but something is missing in them. When I read more closely, I realize that Isaiah isn’t worried about convincing people that this is the right thing. He doesn’t seem to be concerned that they might be anxious about taking a new path. He certainly doesn’t worry that God’s people will share the emotions that I feel almost every time I face a new way—that strange blend of deep and real and true excitement mixed with a healthy and honest dose of fear. And he doesn’t spend a lot of time wondering how to get them to accept this challenge—it seems almost a given that they would welcome this new way.

And that makes a lot of sense in the original context of the prophet’s words. The people of Israel were desperate to be back in control of their own destiny, to set aside foreign leadership and feel that they had power again, to come back home and get things back to normal once again. They were ready to sing songs of praise and joy, as in our psalm for today—they were like those who dream, with mouths filled with laughter, tongues with shouts of joy, and praises echoing among the nations.

Yet for us, the promise of something new is not always so joyful. Since we are generally well-off and without difficulty, change means that something that has at least felt settled in our world will have to be made new. We are afraid of what this new thing will mean for the past and present that we know and love—or that we just know and expect to not love! We struggle to change our plans and our ways to make space for something more than what we have always known. And we wonder how much we will have to change in order to adapt to the new thing. How soaked will we be when this drizzle ends, and how much drying off will we have to do? Can we just stay a little dry and keep even a little of this new thing out of our lives? Or even better, can things change without getting us wet at all?

The reality is that God’s new way changes everything about us. We spend these forty days of Lent preparing for Easter not because we like to beat ourselves up, not because we need to know what it is like to be thirsty every now and then, and not even because we are sinful people who need to change our ways. No, we set aside this time of penitence and preparation because the new thing ahead—the Easter of joy and gladness, this new day of resurrection—inaugurates a new way of life in our world, and we have the opportunity to join in.

When the new thing that God is doing really sinks in, when the little drizzle of grace that we sometimes even struggle to feel on our faces starts to soak us through and through, when we recognize how the waters of baptism have seeped into us and changed us as much as we might have tried to resist them, we start to perceive what God is doing in our midst. We start to see the way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. We see a new path emerging just where we thought we were staring into an abyss. We watch as God opens unexpected doors, offers us unusual opportunities to give honor and praise, and shares the crisp gift of the water of life with us all.

So as we make our way through these final Lenten days, as tomorrow night we begin conversations about our future as a congregation and wonder what new path God may offer us, as we look for a way forward for our congregation and even more for the life of faith in the midst of a world that is changing even as it is longing for something new, may God’s amazing grace soak us through and through so that we may be a part of the springs of new life in our weary world, the way of hope in the wilderness of our lives, the rivers of justice in the desert of our world, and the gift of the water of new life for all those who seek something new.

So may we be wet with the abundant mercy of God’s love, now and always.

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.

Making Things New

June 17, 2012 By Andy James

a sermon on 2 Corinthians 5:14-20 for the Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time, RCL Year B
preached on June 17, 2012, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

I’ve been thinking back a lot recently. Between all the moving and cleaning out going on here at the church and at the manse, I’ve seen a lot of things that bring back wonderful memories! It’s been almost seven years since I began serving as your pastor, and somehow it feels both like I’ve been here forever and like I just arrived yesterday! In my cleanings, I came upon a cassette tape from a worship service on a warm August afternoon in Oxford, Mississippi, back in August 2005, when St. Andrew Presbytery ordained me to this ministry. I didn’t get a chance to listen to the tape, but my memory could hear many things, especially the joyous anthem offered by the choir. They sang a musical setting of this very text that they had sung many times before, and its melody and message echoes in my memory even today:

Therefore if we are in Christ, we become a new creation;
behold, the old has passed away; with the new comes celebration.
We are ambassadors, ministers for Christ:
come join the celebration!
All of this is from our God, who unites this congregation.

Much of my love for that song comes from my love of this text from 2 Corinthians that we read this morning and especially the idea of the new creation that it brings to mind. Here as Paul looks back on his relationship with the church in Corinth and his own pilgrimage of faith, he gives us both a central claim of our faith and a great promise of something new. First, he emphasizes once again the importance of the past event of Christ’s death in giving us life:

The love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died.

In Christ, we share the full benefits of his death, but not just for that reason: in his death, we also gain the promise of new life. Because of all this, everything changes. Because of Christ’s death and resurrection, we have to look at everything differently. Because all share this incredible gift of new life, we can’t look at people the same way that we used to. Because we once knew Christ from a human perspective but now see him so differently, we have to look at everyone with those new eyes. In looking back, we must look forward differently.

This new way of looking ahead culminates in what Paul calls the new creation.

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

The new creation is the pinnacle of Paul’s theological understanding. We hear it week after week in the promise of the assurance of pardon – “anyone who is in Christ is a new creation: the old life is gone, a new life has begun” – as a reminder of the abundant grace of God that changes everything and reshapes even our greatest sin. We get a first glimpse of it as God takes the very dead Jesus of Good Friday and breathes a new and different kind of life into him on Easter Sunday. And we see it taking full shape and form day after day as our world is transformed into something new and different and wonderful by God’s power at work in our world.

This new creation is the ultimate goal and end of our life and our faith. We are not seeking that popular image of heaven guarded by St. Peter waiting at some pearly gates. We do not walk through our days looking for some sort of golden paradise to enjoy for all eternity. We do not await the transformation of all things into something that ends up being joyful for only some of us. Instead of journeying toward any popular image of heaven, Paul says that we instead seek this new creation, a different way of life where all know the fullness of God’s love, justice, and peace, a transformed world marked not just by perfection but even more by wholeness and peace, a new way opened by the death of no less than Christ himself so that life can prevail for all. Ultimately, in the new creation, we are freed from where and what we have been so that we can be the people God calls us to be in the days ahead.

The idea of the new creation is incredibly radical. It challenges so much that we have told ourselves about this world and the next. The new creation insists that we don’t have the last word and that God can and will and is doing more than we can ever imagine or dream to transform all things. The new creation suggests that the things that are ahead will not just be a more perfect version of the way things are now or the way we remember things being in the past, but the future new creation will instead bring the full transformation of things into God’s greatest and most perfect intentions for all creation. And the new creation reminds us that ultimately God is the author and director of what is ahead, and that we are invited and encouraged to be a part of it. Because of what God has done, we look back differently – and we look forward differently, expecting a new way to emerge in and through and because of Jesus Christ our Lord.

This is a tremendous gift and a tremendous challenge. It’s great to be able to look back differently, and it is even better to have a different way of looking forward as we seek to join in the work of the new creation. But, since the new creation isn’t clearly among us yet, and since it looks so different from what we so often expect, this isn’t always very easy. In fact, in its final verse, our last hymn probably expresses my greatest feeling about the new creation, for we are waiting for God to finish this new creation in us and through us and around us, and so often there is just not much we can do to make it happen ourselves. But if we just sit idly by, waiting for someone else – even God! – to do it for us, we will miss out, for at its core the new creation is something that we must claim as our own. We can’t just look for others to do it in spite of us or wait for God to make it happen – we have a role and a responsibility to step up and embody this new way in our world.

This is not easy to do. We have to set aside the ways of this world, the ways of death that insist that life as we know it is enough, the ways of human thinking that suggest that some rightfully have more power and presence than others, the ways of uncertainty that keep us caught up in the way things have always been rather than being open to something new. We have to open ourselves to thinking differently about things, not just assuming that everything can be like it once was or that the way we have always done something is the best way for it to be done. And in the midst of it all we have to battle through our fears, our hurts, and our anxieties, trusting that God will remain present with us even when things are changing faster than we could ever imagine and praying that God will ease our fears so that we can be a full and willing part of these new things that are emerging in our world.

So amidst all that thinking back I’ve been doing lately, my vision of it all has changed a bit. I’ve seen God’s presence clearly in all of it, as things have come together in unexpected and wonderful ways, as God has clearly been walking with me every step of the way, and as God has eased my fears and given me hope that there is something new ahead. And I’ve also seen little glimpses of that new creation, too, small places where new things are creeping in through the cobwebs, brief glimpses of new light emerging amidst the darkness of our world, and even some bigger moments when all the new things that God is doing become clear.

In these days, as we look back a bit and look ahead all the more, may we see the journey with new eyes, with a strong sense of God’s presence going with us on the journey and a clear vision of how we can be a part of God’s new creation so that we can be a part of the renewal of all things by the power of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Thanks be to God. Amen.