The Love of Christ Urges Us On

 Sermon preached at Church of the Redeemer, Addison on June 16, 2024, the 4th Sunday after Pentecost:  2 Corinthians 5:6-17

For the love of Christ urges us on . . . From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view . . . If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.

 It is an early morning and although 20 or so 7th grade boys are standing together in a clump they are quiet.  It is too early and too cold; their feet are wet from the heavy dew on the grass.

           A boy stands at the edge of the group and shivers.  He’s wearing only gym shorts and a t-shirt, but the shivering comes as much from embarrassment as from the cold.

           The gym teacher barks orders to choose up sides.  He names the two captains.  At first the competition between them is fierce as they pick the best players.  First, second, third round.

           Then the competition shifts and the struggle becomes not to get stuck with the worst players.  The boy stands there through all this knowing his humiliation is upon him once again.  But maybe it won’t be like last week when the teacher had to force the captains to choose between the last few at all.

           A true story, of course.  But also mythic, because it describes our human insecurity:  the fear of standing there in our gym shorts, looking awkward, and not being chosen.

           What does Paul mean when he says that “in Christ” we are “a new creation?”

           Sometimes to answer a question like that it is easier to start with an image of what the opposite is.  This is what being a new creation does not look like. It does not look like the fear of not being chosen, of not belonging.

           For St Paul, being “in Christ” is a very key phrase. He uses it 87 times in his letters.  It is his simple way of describing the unity of Christ and the believer, the unity between Christ and each one of us.  When he says “in Christ” he is saying that the union between Christ and a believer is so deep and so strong that it becomes part of our identity.  I cannot understand who I am other than my relationship with Jesus.

           Which means when it comes to Jesus I always am chosen, I always belong, so much so that life is different, so different Paul uses the metaphor of “a new creation.”

           The boy in that gym class did not know this about himself.  He may have only been 12 years old, but he was experiencing the old creation.  In the old creation he depended on his sense of belonging by how he was treated by others, which seemed to be about a competition that he could not win.  In the old creation he was destined to be forever, not good enough.

           Again, this is not just about an awkward seventh grader, it is about all of us, it is about, to use Paul’s word, “anyone.” Anyone who has ever experienced what it is like to be on the outside with no clear way to the inside.

           The old creation divides the world into winners and losers, defined in such a way that for most people there is no clear path to being a winner. The only chance you have in the old creation is to learn how to act like a winner, often by attaching yourself to a winner, a hero through whom you can get some semblance of belonging.  Or you can play the game of winning by acquisition, summed up by the old, sad bumper sticker, “He who dies with the most toys wins.”

           There is only one way to truly belong, to be a new creation independent of the need to be a winner, and that is to be “in Christ,” to know the love of God for you completely unearned or undeserved, no winning anything, required.

           That is what it means to be a new creation.  To know one’s self to be loved in an indissoluble bond with the Creator of the universe, with something outside myself that I do not need to create on my own.

           And to know that love does something to us.  It is found in the phrase “The love of Christ urges us on . . .”

 When it seems like we will never fit in . . . the love of Christ urges us on.

 When doubt or grief or despair seem to take hold of us and will not let us go . . . the love of Christ urges us on.

 When the world seems so stacked against us, confusing, something we never seem to get right . . . the love of Christ urges us on.

 When we are gripped by death itself, which we know will one day have its way with us . . . the love of Christ urges us on.

 In spite of everything we cannot control . . . the love of Christ urges us on.

 The love of Christ urges us on into the new creation, where we can let go of the old ways of not belonging into the new ways of being chosen and loved for ever.

           This is the message we need to get clear about not only for our own sakes, but for the sakes of the world around us, the “anyones” out there in need of good news.

           If the church is ever to grow again, this is the message we need to proclaim.  The message is not come and belong to the church, it is come and experience the new creation.  Come and experience the love that never dies, the belonging that no one can take away from you.