June 14, 2009 - 2 Cor. 5:6-10, 14-17 - Everything is New!

Adele Horin, a writer for the Sydney Morning Herald wrote, ‘Ever since King Frederick William I of Prussia formed his regiment of giants in the early 1700s and discovered that taller soldiers could thrust their bayonets further, it's been cool to be tall.’[1]

Indeed, studies have shown that a majority of the heads of major corporations are taller than average.  On average, taller people earn more money and get more respect than their shorter counterparts.  Certainly, most of us remember Randy Newman’s song that tells us that short people ‘got no reason to live’.

But our ‘preference’ for tall people started long before Frederick William.  In 1 Samuel 9, we read about the calling of Saul who seemed like the perfect candidate to start a royal dynasty in Israel.  We read that he came from a good family.  He was wealthy.  He was the handsomest man in all of Israel – and he stood head and shoulders above everything else.

To the people of Israel who longed for a king to lead them so they could be just like all the other nations, Saul must indeed have seemed the perfect choice.  But Saul had a fatal flaw in his personality: in his pride, he began to believe his own press.  He thought he was self-sufficient; he didn’t need to follow God’s way.  Then he became downright disobedient to God because he insisted on doing things his way.  To the people of Israel, Saul appeared to be the perfect choice – but for the people of Israel and for the purposes of God, he was anything but.

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            This morning’s reading from 1 Samuel 16 about the calling of David should tell us a lot about how God views things in this world, and how different it is from the way that we humans view things. 

            The prophet Samuel is sent to anoint another man to be king over Israel.  He goes as directed to the home of Jesse to anoint one of Jesse’s sons.  The first son comes and like Saul this son is tall and handsome – being Semite he was most likely ‘tall, dark and handsome’.  But this is not the one the Lord has chosen...  Jesse’s 7 oldest sons pass by he old prophet and none of them is the one chosen by God.  Instead it is the youngest, the least of the sons.  The Lord tells Samuel that God does not look on the outward appearance, but on the heart.  It’s just that for we who are only human, it is easy to be misled by appearances, to be fooled by the world’s way of measuring success, to be taken in by things that don’t matter on the realm of heaven.

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            The apostle Paul is battling this same kind of human way of judging success in this morning’s scripture portion from 2 Corinthians.  For most of this letter to the church in Corinth, has been defending his ministry.  This criticism of his ministry is both personal and theological. His opponents have come into the church at Corinth and sought to undermine his teaching and his authority.  They point out their ‘victorious Christian lives’ in contrast to the tribulations of Paul.  They can measure themselves by worldly success as signs of God’s favor against the life of Paul that shows so many signs of being weak and defenseless.

            Perhaps they are even tall and comely.  We know that by contrast the apostle Paul was short and swarthy with flaming red hair and an eye infection that plagued him constantly.  Paul, the apostle to the gentiles, was no tall and handsome King Saul, but neither was Paul arrogant and disobedient to the word of God.

Paul’s detractors preach health and wealth and security and honor, but for Paul, the gospel is about the way of the cross, not the way of success.  This was why he began this second letter to the church in Corinth by referring to his sufferings.  Rather than being a sign of incompetence and weakness, failure and rejection, they are for Paul signs of being in touch with the way of Jesus.

Paul's struggles with Christians and Christianity are still with us today, especially in places where the gospel is sold as something to bring people blessing, a kind of spiritual capitalism of health and wealth, honor and respect.

For Paul, and for us, the main thing for him is not his - or our - personal state of happiness in these earthly human bodies but rather it is in living a life that pleases God – a life in relationship with God lived in the continuing presence of God.  This is the relationship matters most.

Paul writes that ‘the love of Christ urges us on’, that in spite of everything the world threw at him, in spite of his many detractors in the church, it was the love of Christ that gave him power and hope, that we live not for ourselves  but for Christ who died for us.

Therefore, we who call on the name of Christ are called to regard no one from a human point of view. In 2 Cor. 5:17 Paul writes ‘if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away: see, everything has become new!’

Christ died so that we might all join him in death – not a death to touch and feel, emotion and joy, love and life - but death to selfishness and self-promotion – death to putting ourselves first and putting all others last – death to arrogance and greed - death to self-importance and self-sufficiency.  Death to the kind of life that relies on worldly success, on earthly beauty or on being tall and handsome.  Faith in Christ celebrates resurrection to new life – to a new life where people no longer live for self-promotion, but for love.

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Everything has become new! The way we look at everything is creation is changed!  Everything is beloved of God.  Everything in creation is redeemed by the love of Jesus Christ!

This includes every one of us.  Yes, we are called to love one another – but we are also called to love ourselves as Christ has loved us.  Just as we no longer judge the world by the world’s standards, so we must no longer judge ourselves by those standards either.  No longer should we judge ourselves by height or weight, by the color of our eyes or our skin, by our youth or our age, by physical beauty, education or credentials.  But we should open our hearts and minds to God who sees all and judges rightly; in whose hands is our present, in whose heart is our eternity.

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            This morning, we will celebrate the sacrament of communion.  We do so not just because it is not just the command of Jesus, not just a memorial meal, but a means of grace whereby we taste of the holy meal the disciples shared with our Lord.  It is the great equalizer where we are no longer rich or poor, old or young, tall or short.  It is perhaps the one thing we do on this earth as a community of faith where the only thing that matters is what God sees, how God loves, how God gave the tremendous grace that brings us together as God’s family.

            It is perhaps one of the few things we do in this life where we can fully embody that kind of grace and acceptance, love and equality.  Let us join in that heavenly feast in humility and love accepting that we are new creatures in Christ just as surely as was Paul.  Amen.