From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point
of view;
even though we once knew Christ from a human point of
view,
we know him no longer in that way.
So if anyone is in Christ,
there is a new creation:
everything old has passed away;
see, everything has become new!
All this is from God,
who reconciled us to Godself through Christ,
and has given us the ministry of reconciliation;
that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to
Godself,
not counting their trespasses against them,
and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.
So we are ambassadors for Christ,
since God is making the Lord’s appeal through us;
we entreat you on behalf of Christ,
be reconciled to God.
For our sake the Lord made Christ to be sin who knew no
sin,
so that in Christ we might become the righteousness of God.
SERMON
As she waited for her loved one’s passing, she asked me to
send along some words. I was both surprised that she knew me well enough to ask
something so fitting, and also that I had never been asked before. There isn’t
much I can do in those times. I am not the one you want to bring over a
casserole, or remember the formality of a card, but to e-mail along some words,
was something I could do. I can write a prayer and so I did. I sat fireside
with folk music in the background, and for the next hour and a half at least, I
plucked out words like a child picks dandelions, arranging them for a
rudimentary bouquet. With each key type and spacebar came the intentionality of
a word prayed, of a flower smudged in beside another flower. As I pressed send,
came the image of child lifting up bright yellow flowers on plasticity stubby
stems to an adult towering above. In both cases the reaching and lifting was
the culmination of its beauty, transforming its crude state to one which points
beyond. This is what Lent is about, God’s transformation of a broken world.
This is what this scripture is about.
“So if anyone is in Christ,
there is a new creation:
everything old has passed away;
see, everything has become new!”
Lent is about taking our brokenness, and healing it. It is
about taking our distraction and refocusing it. It is about turning our
hopelessness into hopefulness; it is about shedding big words that make us
sound smart and substituting them with words whose meaning is solely prayer.
Lent reminds us that it is not the elaborate flowers that evoke beauty but the
giving and lifting up of dandelion weeds and palm branches as a gesture of
care. Lent is a waiting preparation for the Easter to come, and part of
preparing is noticing the little Easter that are already sneaking in to these
thin places, where heaven and earth collide.
“You won’t believe this,” she said, and I knew I would. A
dove of peace was the image I used throughout the poems, and as she got up
after midnight, before dawn, a dove was cooing outside
her window. Inside, her baby likewise cooed. She had received the prayer. This
is what Lent is about. This is what the scripture is about.
“All this is from God,
who reconciled us to Godself through Christ,
and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.”
Lent is about God reconciling the world, that alongside a
dying loved one is cooing baby and a dove. This is what this scripture is
about. It’s about those places where awe sneaks in past common sense, to land
us in a place of wonder and gratitude. This is what Easter will be about. That
from a cross will come an empty tomb and angels. This is our time of waiting,
our time to practice watching, because even now Easter is sneaking in, we are
becoming new, and God is reconciling the world.
