Trinity Sermons trinity@trinitypresdenton.org

    To Sermon Menu

Trinity Presbyterian Church

Rev. Craig Hunter

March 18, 2007

Well, here we are. The countdown is over, our engines are revved, a new spring is here. It's an exciting time to be here. I'm excited to be here! It's my first week here, my first Sunday here, the beginning of our ministry together. We are smack dab in the middle of the new, at the start of a new stage in our journey, turning the page on a new chapter.

Into this atmosphere of newness comes our lectionary text for today, a text that coincides well with this atmosphere of celebration. It's too bad I can't take credit for setting the lectionary, but I will enjoy and take advantage of the happy coincidence that today's Scripture lesson is about change, it is about newness, it shares some of the energy and joy that I hope many of you feel this morning.

On this new occasion, with a text about newness, I therefore thought it was appropriate to do something new, so I decided to do something I have never done before. I decided to memorize the Scripture passage. I first heard of this idea from another pastor who stressed what a powerful spiritual exercise it was for her. Sometimes it improved the quality of her sermons, but even when it didn't, the reading and re-reading of the passage subtly shaped the lens through which she saw things during the week of the sermon.

And so it has proven to be for me. As I rubbed my mind, my spirit, again and again over the texture of this text, it was almost as if I wore it down, and certain aspects began to stand out in relief. It was almost as if the text was pared down to its essentials, as if it became some kind of Giacometti sculpture, you know that famous 20th century sculptor who made those very stark, elongated human figures. And what stands out for me are the prepositions, certain short phrases. "In Christ," "through Christ," "for Christ," "ministry of reconciliation," "the world to himself," "for our sake." These short phrases are the subtle colors with which Paul paints this beautiful passage. If I had to write some short, haiku-like poem summarizing this passage, I think I would write

From now on
In Christ
Everything new!

From now on
In Christ
Everything new!

I must confess that this passage has been on my mind for a while, even before I learned it was the lectionary text for today. You see, my life seems to have a kind of sacramental freshness to it these days. It is present in the new beginnings of seeing new faces and meeting new people. It is present in the activity and excitement of moving into my new home, the first home I have ever owned. It is also the first time in my adult life that I have ever moved anywhere without already knowing when I would leave. I have found myself hesitating to pound nails into the wall to hang up paintings or to otherwise leave permanent marks of my presence -- I can't quite believe that the house is really mine, that I am really here, and that I am going to be here for a while.

On my three day drive out here, I reflected that not only are the people and places new to me here, this is also a potential for me to be new. No one knows me here, I have no routines yet, there is a profound opportunity for me to change, to become more of the person I would like to be. It's kind of like being born again, having a fresh slate, hitting the reset button on my life. Will I become more extroverted than before, change my personality somehow, take up a new hobby, make some of those changes I've been wanting to make for a long time? For example, I've decided not to have any TV connection at home -- I don't get a single TV station, and I'm hoping to keep it that way -- it makes my home feel like more of a sanctuary. Who knows what other changes I will make? Even if I don't make any other changes, just feeling the potential for change is itself an exhilarating rush. It is no wonder, therefore, that this passage about a new creation, about everything becoming new, resonates so strongly with me these days.

Unless I miss my guess, I think there is a sense in which that is true for us as a congregation as well. We are new to each other, your slate with me is clean, you too have been born again, in a way. Some of that same sacramental freshness is present here too. I see it in the excitement with which you greet me, in your eagerness to get to know me better. I hear it in the questions that people and committees ask me, in the way those questions are asked. After almost two years of waiting for a new pastor, there is an excitement at the opportunity to explore and resolve issues that have been put on hold, an excitement heightened by the length of the wait that preceded it. This sacramental freshness, as I call it, is indeed holy, for in any change, in any coming of the new, there is always the coming of a new way of knowing and seeing God.

But as exciting as all this talk of newness is, as I have spent time considering this text and this sermon, I am aware that the situation I have described is the exception rather than the rule. Most of you have not moved recently -- you have been here for a while, and will stay here for a while. Even for me, as the weeks become months and the months become years, the sense of newness will wear off -- how will this passage resonate with me then? What does being a new creation mean in this context, the context in which we live most of our lives, a context in which our slates are not being wiped clean? Becoming a new creation isn't really that easy, is it? It isn't really just a matter of making a few changes, making and keeping a few new year's resolutions, or even moving to a new place. After all, we don't really live most, or perhaps even any, of our lives smack dab in the middle of the new. The old doesn't just pass away, for better and for worse, we see it all around us, in our own habits, in our relationships, in the ways of the world. Sometimes we dread the new, sometimes we long for it, but either way, our lives are lived in the in-between space, somewhere between the old and the new. What does being a new creation mean in that space?

I think about people I have encountered during my time abroad. Many of them will never move anywhere their whole lives. They couldn't even if they wanted to -- they don't have the means. While the rest of us speed along on the information superhighway, to some extent, they are stuck in the old -- old homes and old ways of doing things.

Or I think of people like Ibrahim, a young Egyptian college graduate in Cairo. He graduated with a degree in engineering, but he doesn't have a job because there aren't jobs to be had. He has a girlfriend and would like to get married, but how can he marry her without any way to support her? Without work, he has too much time on his hands, he is bored. What does being a new creation mean when life feels so humdrum and frustratingly empty, when life has become so stale?

Or what about people closer to home? What about people like Joanne, who has been married for twenty years in a relationship that increasingly seems passed its expiration date. She and her husband seem and feel stuck, caught in the old, having the same almost identical arguments again and again. It is almost as if they are actors in a play, the way they play their parts with such precision.

Or what about people with physical limitations, people with illnesses of mind or body, people like Matt, who with the coming of old age and the onset of new health conditions feels the horizons of his possibilities shrink and begin to grow dark?

What does talk about a new creation mean in such contexts as these?

In thinking about such people and stories, sometimes it almost gets to the point that I think, How dare I talk about newness, about new creation, in a world such as this. A world where injustice seems all too enduring, sickness all too limiting, death all too real, where even when we move to a new town and a new life, we don't just leave our pasts behind us, the old patterns and problems have a way of catching up to us. The viruses on the hard drives of our souls don't just disappear when we hit the reset button. We call that sin, the way the unhealthy patterns and scars of our past reach forth to inhibit and restrict our future. And as exciting as it is to be in this place in these days, we are deluding ourselves if we think that those patterns, those sins, aren't present here as well.

If you want to talk about new creation, then those are the terms, that is the framework, that is the context. If you want to talk about new creation, you talk about it not in an ideal world, but in the world in which we live, a world of sin.

What does new creation mean in a sinful world?

I don't know. But I don't think it means that our pasts, and our sin, just disappear. After all, the God of the new, the God of our future is the God of our past. There is no magical reset button that wipes our past and our sin away, and makes us clean. Rather, somehow it is harder than that, more mysterious than that, and better than that.

I think instead that when this passage talks about a new creation, what is different, what is fresh and clean, is not so much us, as the way God sees us. "Not counting their trespasses against them," it says, it doesn't say that our trespasses don't exist, it doesn't deny the reality of our sin. But somehow God overlooks them, or looks through them, somehow the sin in our world and in our lives that holds us back, that restricts us, somehow that doesn't stop the love of God. It doesn't stop the love of God because of who God is, because of what God did in Christ. "For he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." Which is to say, God doesn't see us according to a human point of view, according to our sin, according to the walls that divide us from ourselves, from each other, and from God, because in Christ those walls have already been destroyed, our sin has been redeemed.

I think Paul in this passage is inviting us to share that vision, to share God's vision. He is asking us not to regard anyone from a human point of view. Rather, we are to regard each other from God's point of view. And I think something amazing, something life-changing, happens when we do. To share even for just a moment a glimpse of how God sees us, of how God sees the old and stale parts of our lives is to be changed by that vision, it is for those old and stale parts to be redeemed, to be resurrected, to become new. That is the paradox -- Seeing how God sees the old makes us new. Seeing how God sees our sin is what frees us from it.

That is my hope and my prayer for myself, for us, and for the world -- that we would have even just a glimpse of that vision. To share that vision is to be empowered by it and to want to pass it on. It is to become an ambassador for Christ in a ministry that reconciles, that challenges the dividing walls of injustice, that brings people together, that sees people not according to the sin of their past, but with the love of God, a love that makes new. It brings fresh creativity to old relationships, hope to the sick, and new life to the dead.

Today is appropriately a special day in the life of our congregation. I am looking forward to the food, the dessert, and the exciting program we are having after worship. But today, as every day, the deepest cause of celebration, what makes us a church of Jesus Christ is that we celebrate a newness that began much earlier than this week, indeed it is the oldest newness in the world, the resurrecting newness of God's love.

 

 

 

Copyright © 2007 Craig Hunter
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

To Sermon Menu