In a letter to The Times of London in 1910, the great British writer and thinker G. K. Chesterton wrote a very simple response to a letter, and he included it in the Op Ed page. I think It was the shortest thing that Chesterton ever wrote. It began with a question: what is wrong with the world today? I think this is a question that every generation asks itself. What is wrong with the world today? Maybe the arrogance of our times makes us think that we are the only era where we think we have things wrong in our time. Nevertheless, they are things that we experience and things that bother us greatly.
“What is wrong with the world today?” seems to be on our doorstep whether we like it or not. We wake up to hear that there is military action in Crimea; we wake up to hear that there is violence against groups in Africa; we recognize and see the dangers to the environment; we see moral decay in the world; we see corruption: we see all manner of things that can cause us to be concerned about what is wrong in the world today. But Chesterton’s answer to the question was as simple and concise and surprising as one could ever get. His answer was: “I am”.
You see, Chesterton wasn’t pointing fingers at the myriad of problems that existed in 1910 in his world. He was rather pointing to himself. It was a moment of profound humility and profound introspection. He knew that in looking out into the world in a sense the problems began with him, and he had to turn into his heart and into his soul. What is wrong with the world today? I am. A profound statement!
When we come to Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, often as the ashes are placed on people’s heads, the words, “Turn from sin and live the Gospel” are proclaimed. The beginning of Lent is a time to turn from sin and to decide to live the Gospel. It is a moment to recognize our own infirmities, and sinfulness, to see what is wrong at our front door, a moment of deep and sincere introspection, an amazing moment that we should all go through.
Paul, in writing to the Corinthians in his second letter, doesn’t use quite the same language, but he nevertheless has the same implication. He says to the Corinthians “Be reconciled to God.” Now, the Church in Corinth, as we looked at a couple of weeks ago, was a church that had experienced great schisms. There were some who followed some leaders and others that followed others. There were those who wanted to impose a Roman view of wisdom in the world and there were those who wanted to impose a Greek world view.
There were those who wanted to replace the Apostle Paul as the leader and those who were following him with those that spoke something that they thought was more palatable and easier to digest and accept. There were a myriad of divisions: from those who thought they were spiritually superior to others to those who were living a life of profligacy. Paul had in the Corinthian Church a massive problem. And so he says to them these words: “Be reconciled to God.” He knew in his heart that the message of reconciliation, which is at the centre of the Gospel that he had brought to the Corinthian people, was actually in jeopardy by the divisions and the dissensions that were occurring within their own ranks. He knew that they had to go back to the very core and the heart of the Gospel message if they were going to live a faithful life.
So it seems as we prepare ourselves for the beginning of Lent, maybe it is time for us to see through the eyes of Paul precisely what it means “to be reconciled to God.” For Paul, there is no question that the reconciliation that occurs happens through an agent. The agent of reconciliation for Paul is none other than Jesus Christ. It is his death and his resurrection that becomes the cornerstone for reconciliation.
Reconciliation for Paul wasn’t a nice idea, it wasn’t something that you just looked forward to: it was rooted in something that had already occurred that we should accept. The reconciliation with God had already taken place for Paul. He knew it had happened through the gift of Jesus Christ. Therefore, it is not something that we have to idealize or make up or fabricate; it has already happened. He describes it in what seems like very complicated language, but really is very simple. He says, “God made him who is without sin become sin for us in order that we may become the righteousness of God.”
Now, it sounds like a convoluted statement really: God made “him” Jesus, who was without sin because he was the Son of God, sin for us in order that we might become the righteousness of God. In other words, what he is saying is what he had said earlier in the Book of Corinthians and that is that we have been reconciled to God through his Son. Christ has done it: that which is sinful he has taken upon himself; that which is broken he has borne; that which is wrong about us he has had imputed to himself. Christ has taken our sinfulness, our brokenness, all the things that caused us to live in dissension from either God or one another, and he has borne it. It is done! He has taken it!
Looking at it in a moral sense, which is what most people seem to think when we think of sin, but also in a covenantal sense in terms of our relationship with God that any separation between ourselves and God has now been removed because Christ has borne it. Where there was a gap between God and us stands Christ. Where there was our brokenness and inability to please the holy God, stands Christ. It is the ultimate affirmation of us. Look at the language: “God made him sin and he made him sin for us.” Pro nobis! He took it upon himself. He bore it for us.
It is not something we do. It is not something we accomplish. It is something that has been done, and it has been done for us. Now, this might seem totally contradictory, because on the one hand Paul recognizes that we have been reconciled to God through his Son, but then he says to us: “Be reconciled to God.” So there is an imperative for us in all of this! Christ has done it, but being reconciled to God is something that is a command, a command to follow.
I have a very good friend who is the minister in an old Reformed Church in Brooklyn, New York – he is a real New Yorker! He is a passionate New Yorker, and, he has actually preached from this pulpit here. Dan loves baseball. He is addicted to baseball – it is an illness for him! He loves baseball and he once said to me these words and I thought, “Wow! This is contradictory!” He said, “I love baseball with my whole life, and I really hate the Boston Red Sox.” That is like me saying, “I absolutely love soccer, but I hate Liverpool Football Club.” Right? That is the sort of passion that he brought to it.
It almost seems contradictory though. If you love the game, maybe you love everyone who plays it? But, he is a Yankees fan, and he might love the game, but he doesn’t always like the way that it is played by one particular team that he despises most profoundly. It is, therefore, for him both a “Yes” and a “No.” It is a “Yes” to the game, but it is a “No” to the way it is sometimes played. That is exactly what Paul if saying to the Corinthians. He is saying “Yes, Christ became sin for you, for us. He has done it. But, at the same time, do not treat what he has given you in vain.”
In today’s wonderful passage there is this incredible line where he says, “Do not take this gift that you have been given in vain.” There is a point where yes, we are being reconciled, but we have to be reconciled to God. And the agent of this, the source of this, is Jesus Christ. It is no good just looking at the reconciliation of Jesus, as some people do and say, “Oh, isn’t that a beautiful thing? We’ll just relax in it and we’ll see what God has done for us, and isn’t this beautiful?” But they are not taking that very power and letting it be part of their lives. We treat it in vain when we only observe it, but we are not prepared to live it.
Years ago when I lived in Nova Scotia, I lived on the famous Bay of Fundy. It has, as I am sure all of you know, the highest tides in the world. It is a magnificent place! One moment you can go down to the dock and you can see just mud on the floor and hours later you see enough water for a big ship to come and dock. It is quite amazing! Well, right opposite from where I lived is another town that also has this incredible tidal bore of the Bay of Fundy. It is Annapolis Royal, one of the most beautiful towns in Nova Scotia. You can go and sit and enjoy the peaceful harmony and beauty of the Fort and the old buildings and the lovely restaurants and the great coffee shops, and all the things that I get carried away with!
They are all there and lovely and beautiful, but people discovered something years ago, and that is that not only is this a beautiful town, but it can be a source of something. There was a need to take the power of the Bay of Fundy and turn it into electricity. What was and still remains a beautiful town became a source of power. This incredible gift that had been given was something that could in fact empower people’s lives and the homes in the province. A beautiful thing had been turned into a powerful thing! A beautiful thing had transformed into something that changed people’ lives!
Paul is looking at the Corinthians and saying, “Well, don’t just enjoy the reconciliation you have in Christ, be reconciled to God. But who is he writing to? He is writing to the Church. He knows that this is the Word for them. They are the sphere of reconciliation. He knows that reconciliation begins with them and the Church. There is no point in the Church asking the world to be reconciled to God if itself has not been reconciled to God. One of the problems that Paul was concerned about was that the Church could be a stumbling block for people: that they would see division within the Church, a lack of reconciliation within the Church, and when they see that, then they questioned the reconciliation that occurred in Jesus Christ.
Paul knows that there is a link between Jesus Christ and the Church. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote it this way, and he holds no punches:
The fact that someone has been hurt, damaged or disgraced by us, who has a cause against us, erects a barrier between us and God. Let us therefore as a Church examine ourselves and see whether we have not often enough wronged our fellow people. Let us see whether we have tried to win popularity by falling in with the world’s hatred, its contempt or its contumely, for if we do that we are murderers! Let the fellowship of Christ so examine itself today and ask whether at the hour of prayer and worship any accusing voices intervene and make its prayer vain. (The Cost of Discipleship)
There was a study that was done some years ago, actually in 1997, about violence in the United States. This particular group had examined the number of people who had gone to emergency rooms over a year’s time for violence. There were 1.4 million people who went to emergency rooms because of an act of violence. When they went there, there was something intriguing: 50 per cent of the violence that occurred was perpetrated by somebody known to the victim. But then it gets even more fascinating. Of that, 17 per cent were spouses or former spouses or people with whom they lived. Eight per cent were parents that had caused the violence. Twenty-three per cent were those who were their closest friends and broader relatives and people with whom they worked. In other words, 50 per cent of the violence that occurred was perpetrated by those closest to us.
Paul has a look at the Corinthian Church and he sees this problem and understands that the breaking of relationships, the lack of reconciliation stands firmly at the door of the Church, and if the Church is going to bear witness to the world, if the Church is going to have a ministry beyond its own bounds, it needed to get its own house in order. Paul is saying to the Corinthians, “Give the reconciliation of Christ to be reconciled to God, and by implication be reconciled to Him and the Gospel and to each other.” But, the place of all of this is actually the mission to the world. Paul uses this phrase, he says, “We are ambassadors for Christ.” In other words, the place where the world intersects with the Church is the place where the Word of Reconciliation is to be given.
It is fascinating the role of an ambassador, when you think about it. An ambassador is both somebody who conveys and receives a message. Having received a message from the governing power, they then convey the message to somebody else. And, like Canada has done with Russia this morning and has withdrawn its ambassador and brought him home to give them new instructions and to remind them what our foreign policy is, it is a powerful and it is a meaningful thing. It is something that is seen and heard and understood: an ambassador is a powerful thing! Tomorrow, I am having breakfast with an ambassador to talk about religious matters. It is important to talk to ambassadors: ambassadors convey something.
One of the great things in life it seems to me is to understand that as Christians and as the Church we are ambassadors for Christ as if Christ is making his appeal to us. It is our word of reconciliation that needs to be heard in the world. In its brokenness, in its division and in its hatred, we bring the word of the Gospel. We do it on the basis of what Christ has done. We do it on the basis and the confidence that it is Christ who has already healed those wounds and taken the brokenness of the world upon himself, but we say to the world, “Accept that which is being offered to you and hear the Word of Reconciliation.” It also says to the world, “Be reconciled to God. Do not take what God has done for you in vain and pretend it doesn’t matter, for God has done something mighty for us.”
In 1978, Dr. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Florida told an incredible and a true story of a man called John Griffith. He was a railway line operator in Missouri in the late 1930s. It was his job right on the Mississippi to lift the railway drawbridge up and to allow ships to come through, and then to put the drawbridge down in order that the train may cross. John Griffith loved his job. He had done it for years and had never had any problems until one day when he brought his son to work with him – kind of like a “Take your Child to Work Day.”
His eight year old son was there watching him pull the levers and press all the buttons, and it was wonderful! But, for a moment, John Griffith had to turn away. He had to go because he wanted to look out the window to see if some ships were coming along the Mississippi and if there was time to open the drawbridge. So, recognizing some ships were coming and realizing he had time before the next train he opened the drawbridge.
No sooner had he done that than he turned around and his eight year old son had wandered off. John went looking for him. He couldn’t find him anywhere. He went where they normally had tea and he wasn’t there. He went to the lounge and he wasn’t there. He went outside on to the patio and on to the area looking out on to the river where they normally sat and he wasn’t there. His son had gone! While looking for him he realizes now that the ships have actually passed under the bridge and in the distance he hears the train coming: the train with 400 people on board – the Mississippi Express.
John runs right back to the lever to bring the drawbridge down, because he knows if he doesn’t do it there will be a terrible calamity. But then, after he started to put it down he noticed something. His eight year old son had fallen and was caught in the gears of the bridge below him. He hears the train getting closer. Does he pull up the drawbridge and save his son? Or, does he put the drawbridge down and save the 400 people on the train? No phones, no way of connecting with the train: it was coming!
He lowered the bridge. The train came across the tracks. He looked into the windows of the train. There were people nicely dressed drinking tea in the buffet car, children licking ice creams, women finely dressed, all the formality of 1937 train attire, each of them looking out of the window at the beauty of the Mississippi, no one aware that John’s son had died in the gears of the bridge that had saved them. The father was absolutely devastated! He felt he had done the right thing.
When I think about what Paul is saying to the Corinthians, I think he is saying the same thing. He is saying, “God took his son who was not sinful and made him sin for us. He gave himself for us. Don’t treat that gift in vain. Don’t treat it as if it doesn’t matter. Don’t treat it as if it doesn’t cost something profound. It has!” Paul knows that as an ambassador he has to share in that very same message as though he were making an appeal to the world. He is quite frank with the Corinthian Church. He says, “I am sorrowful, but I rejoice. I am poor that others might be rich. I die in order that others might live. I have nothing, but I have everything!”
It sounds like a contradiction, but in the light of what God has done on the Cross it is not. The Word is always this: be reconciled to God, because God has reconciled us to himself. Be reconciled to one another, because God has reconciled us to himself. Proclaim a word of reconciliation into a broken and a hateful world, because God’s love has paid the cost for that reconciliation to occur. This is because in all things there is great joy, there is great passion, and there is great love behind the words “Be reconciled to God.” Amen.