The Cross and New Creation
(Meeting of The Presbytery of New York City; A Lenten
Meditation)
Isaiah 43:16-21 (OT, p. 746); 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 (NT, p. 191)
Every preacher has a list of favorite Bible passages,
and both of the lessons this afternoon are on my list.
For those of you from churches that follow the lectionary,
the First Lesson is the Old Testament passage for tomorrow,
and the Second Lesson was the Epistle for last Sunday.
The two share the theme: "Deliverance and New Creation,"
and they offer us magnificent material for our meditations
during this period from Ash Wednesday to Good Friday.
The anonymous prophet we call Second Isaiah and the apostle Paul
both proclaim the good news
that something radically new is breaking forth in the world.
Through the prophet,
God calls upon Israel to not remember "the former things,"
by which God means that the people need to forget
both their own long history of sinfulness
and also God's former acts of deliverance,
like the Exodus from Egypt.
For so radically new will be the manner and means of the deliverance
that God next proposes to accomplish that no previous model
of deliverance will prove adequate for conceiving of it.
Proclaims the prophet, God's new act of grace
will so far outstrip human understanding
that nothing Israel has ever previously known or experienced
will have prepared them to comprehend it.
The people must be open and receptive to something startlingly new.
Now, for the apostle Paul, the author of our Second Lesson,
this hope proclaimed of old by Second Isaiah-
this hope for an unimaginable, new act of divine grace-
this hope, according to Paul, has at last been fulfilled.
For at the cross of Jesus,
there takes place an event of earth-changing grace and deliverance,
an event that forever alters the course of human history.
The Creator who first brought order into being by saying,
"Let light shine out of darkness, , , that God
has once again broken through darkness with a new light-
this time, it is the light of Christ that has been created to
illumine and transform the chaos of our human darkness.
At the cross, there begins a process in which the world
quite literally is being remade, reordered, and reconstituted.
And our culture has acknowledged this
by dividing our history into years B.C. and years A.D.,
years before Christ and years after Christ.
At the cross, a new age dawns.
Time shifts course, and has to be charted differently.
A new order begins to emerge.
This Lent, we are called by God to let this new creation,
this deliverance effected in Christ,
be reenacted within us.
W e are called to let the reordering of the cosmos begun in Christ
take place within us.
So I wish to reflect with you this afternoon
on the words of the apostle Paul found in our Second Lesson,
on Paul's understanding of the ways in which
the cross re-creates us
and thereby delivers us.
First, Paul says that in the cross we perceive that
our normal ways of looking at things-our worldly standards-
have got to be changed.
For in the cross, we behold
that which is contrary to human wisdom,
we see that power like that of Rome is weakness
and that weakness like that of Jesus is power.
In the cross, worldly wisdom is shamed and exposed as folly by
the one named Jesus, who would appear, by worldly standards,
to be weak, foolish, and lowly.
From this we may learn that our human use
of such categories as race, gender, class, and sexual orientation
to determine rankings of power,
to establish hierarchies of human worth and value-
use of such categories for these purposes is wrong.
Now this message is very difficult for us American Christians to hear,
for the secular forces around us have thoroughly conditioned us
to ascribe value to people and to establish rankings
of earthly power on the basis of precisely such things as
race, gender, class, and sexual orientation.
But at the cross, a new age dawns.
And God's new order is emerging.
New creation means being delivered from seeing things in old ways.
N ew creation means letting God transform our minds,
so that we may be delivered
from the way humans have seen things
to the way God does see things.
New creation means being open to new events of grace,
events unlike any known or experienced before.
To stand at the cross of new creation
is to let the mind of Christ take hold within our own.
Second, Paul says in our lesson that in the cross
God has acted to reconcile us to Godself and to each other.
God has renewed the divine-human relationship
through an act of incomparable grace and love.
Jesus takes upon himself the weight of human sill
and then proclaims from the cross, "Father, forgive them."
In that moment, deliverance dawns, new creation begins,
and God is reconciled with all of humankind.
Power flows forth from the weakness of the cross-
first, that we may be reconciled with God,
and, second, that we may be reconciled with each other.
On the cross, God and humankind are reconciled in love;
on the cross, human and human are brought together in love.
To stand at the cross of new creation
is to let the relationship between God and Jesus
transform our relationships to God and neighbor.
To stand at the cross of new creation is to be delivered
from relationships infected by fear, suspicion, and hatred and
to be re-created in relationships filled with faith, hope, and love.
Third, Paul says in our lesson that in the cross we are called
to carry on Christ's ministry of deliverance and new creation,
Christ's ministry of reconciliation.
We are called to become, as Paul puts it, "ambassadors of Christ."
We are to proclaim that God is not some angry deity
out to get even with the world.
W e are to proclaim that God holds humankind in love,
and we are to make this proclamation through words, yes,
but also by visibly holding each other in love.
New creation calls us to model for the world God's reconciling love,
to be, as Paul puts it, "the righteousness of God" in the world.
In the cross, our purpose in life is transformed,
and we are made over into God's co-workers.
To stand at the cross of new creation
is to let the vocation of Christ transform and fill our own vocations.
What incredibly good news Paul brings us.
God has come in Christ to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves
even with all the self-help programs in the world.
God has come to deliver us, to forgive us, to make us new-
so that we might become "the righteousness of God"
made visible in the world.
I pray that during this time from Ash Wednesday to Good Friday,
we will be found standing at the cross of new creation,
opening ourselves to the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.
To stand at the cross of new creation
is to let the mind of Christ take hold within our own.
To stand at the cross of new creation
is to let the relationship between God and Jesus
transform our relationships to God and neighbor.
To stand at the cross of new creation
is to let the vocation of Christ
transform and fill our own vocations.
I pray that come this Easter Sunday
the power flowing from the cross will have re-created us,
such that our thoughts, our relationships, and our vocations
will all have been delivered from their old, inadequate patterns
and will all have been re-created
as part of God's new creation.
Let us pray.
O God made known in Christ-whose Word frees us and whose
Spirit gives us life- you are so much more than our limited
certainties, so far beyond our widest imaginings. Your new creation
transforms and stretches us.
You are the center of our lives. Enable us to discern the error in
our ways of being, of thinking, of acting. Enable us to turn away from
all that hurts and destroys, from actions that treat people as things,
from shallow commitments that break faith with others.
Through the power of Christ's cross, make us y our
righteousness in the world. Help us to be truthful in our dealings,
speaking no word of malice against another. And link us to one
another with the love you intend for us to embody, that we may
indeed be ambassadors for Christ, in whose name we pray.
Amen.
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