The Reading—II Corinthians 5: 15-20
The reason Christ died for all was so that the living should live no longer for themselves but for Christ, who died and was raised to life for them. And so from now on, we don’t look on anyone in terms of mere human judgment. Even if we did once regard Christ in these terms, that is not how we know Christ now. And for anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation. The old order has passed away; now everything is new! All of this is from God, who ransomed us through Christ—and made us ministers of that reconciliation. This means that through Christ, the world was fully reconciled again to God, who didn’t hold our transgressions against us, but instead entrusted us with this message of reconciliation. This makes us Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making the appeal directly through us. Therefore we implore you in Christ’s name: be reconciled to God.
The Gospel Reading: Mark 2: 21-22
“No one sews a patch of unshrunken cloth on an old cloak, Otherwise, the patch pulls away from it—the new from the old—and the tear gets worse. Similarly, no one pours new wine into wineskins. If one does, the wine will burst the skins, and both wine and skins will be lost. No, new wine is poured into new wineskins.”
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God, it is an exciting time to be your church. Help us to fully understand your will for our lives. May all that I say and all that we meditate upon bring you honor and glory. Amen
John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church says this about the new life in Christ of which Paul speaks: "[One] has new life, new senses, new faculties, new affections, new appetites, new ideas and conceptions. [One’s] whole tenor of action and conversation is new, and [one] lives, as it were, in a new world. God, [people], the whole creation, heaven, earth, and all therein, appear in a new light, and stand related to [one] in a new manner, since [one] was created anew in Christ Jesus."
We have an invitation to that newness and I will admit to you that I am just a wee bit frightened. Frightened because I really kinda like “old”. It’s familiar, it’s comfortable, and it’s easy. New—not so much. New calls me to go places I haven’t been before, to try things on, to think in ways that are unfamiliar. New in Christ calls me to find my passion in ministry and to pursue it as the Holy Spirit leads. But Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians is adamant.
I fear that we probably don’t spend much time in this so-called “post-modern” age thinking about why Jesus died. Paul, however answers that question in words that leave us little ‘wiggle’ room. “The reason Christ died for all was so that the living should live no longer for themselves but for Christ.” This is the process that old-timers would have called “conversion”.
Father Patrick Brennan, a Catholic Priest, talks about the notion of conversion. Conversion, Fr. Brennan says is
“awakening to the whole Gospel -- the necessary connection between the Kingdom of God that Jesus preached, and the work of social justice. God's Kingdom is no less than this, the transformation of society with the power of the Gospel. Jesus did not intend His words to be misused for feel-good religion. The Gospel is simultaneously comfort and challenge”.
How does this awakening to the whole Gospel affect who we are or what we are? Paul, gives us a starting point—here, now, today. From this point forward everything is different. When we learn of the Gospel of God’s unconditional love made flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, we become brand new. We become the people that God created us to be—fully aware of God’s complete acceptance of us exactly the way we are. We live differently now because we think differently. God made our understanding possible because Jesus showed us the way to reconciliation with ourselves and our creator. Through Christ, all the world was reconciled to God—all the world, not one single person or creature was left out. This is Good News! But wait, there is more. Paul tells us that God entrusted us with the message of reconciliation. “Us”? This is more than we bargained for. We are Christ’s ambassadors. God will use us to bring the message of reconciliation to all who need to hear.
Some of you may be saying, “well, I’m not so sure that I want to be used to bring the message of anything to anyone”. Perhaps it is time to take a good look at this “new creation” thing. John Wesley, Paul, Fr. Patrick all talk about being “new”. I want to ask all of you, just for a brief moment, to travel in your minds to a time when you felt estranged from God or from God’s people or God’s church. It may have been in a time of grief, or great loneliness, or a time when life just wouldn’t fall into place. It may have been the final time you were turned away from full participation in your former family of faith. How did it feel, when you first experienced again the knowledge that God was there for you, that God loved you and that a community of faith was welcoming you into their midst? Perhaps, it didn’t happen until you found this church or another MCC church in another time and place. Perhaps it happened in some other way. For some of you, conversion, reconciliation, if you will, happened a very long time ago. For some, not long ago at all—nevertheless, find a way to recapture, for a moment, that sheer joy and peace that flooded your whole being when you found yourself reconciled with yourself and with God.
This reconciliation, this pure joy is the message of reconciliation and, like it or not, we have been entrusted by God to bring this same opportunity for reconciliation to those who most need to hear it. You may wonder why I am calling us to examine this part of our lives and our church’s life today?
Let me share with you some of the burden that I have carried for some time now. The worst outcome from having gone so long with no space to call our own is not the lack of storage, or the fact that the church office is in our home. It is not that we have to set up and take down our “church” each and every week. It is not that I have to meet you in restaurants or rec centers to talk. The worst outcome is that we have learned to make do and in so doing, have gotten comfortable with being a Sunday-only church. While it is my prayer that we share the message of reconciliation every Sunday, it is not enough. In order to bring the message of reconciliation to the world, we must be where the world is.
Listen again to our mission statement. I hope that you are becoming very familiar with it. “The mission of Open Circle MCC is to share the unconditional love of God: and to call us, through the grace of Jesus Christ, to ministry by all for all”. Not ministry by some for some—that, my friends, is Sunday-only church. As we move into this new era in our church’s brief history, I ask only one thing from you—that you open your mind to ministries that God may be calling you to. As you ponder this request, reflect on the thought of Keith Miller. He says that “the essence of all sin is self-centeredness”. And then he clarifies: “it is not necessarily greed. It is placing yourself at the center and having to be in charge and having to be in control. What we do is elbow God out of [a] job”.
Our greatest need at this, our first crucial turning point, is for people, people just like you, to be willing to listen to God’s call to be leaders, teachers and workers in the church. I’ve heard from some of you that people like to be asked personally, individually and we do that sometimes. It is, however, not my place to interpret what God is saying directly to you. And so, I invite you to listen, and to pray. In order to go from a Sunday-only church to a fully alive faith community sharing the message of God’s reconciling love, it is going to take a lot of people stepping up to provide leadership and assistance. So, I am asking you today to consider this your individual invitation to hear God’s call and respond.
We have, right now, several crucial positions that we need to fill in the next few weeks. Let me tell you some of them so that you can pray in specific terms when next you think this through with God. We need someone to head up our congregational care program—to help coordinate what all the volunteers are doing with regard to our care for each other. We need skilled or willing to be trained people to lead groups. We need someone willing to take on the task of coordinating all our outreach programs—our visitor follow-up program and all the other ways we reach out to people not currently involved in our church. We need someone who will coordinate our office volunteers; and, we need office volunteers. Many of you have told me that you will help with administrative and other office duties when we finally have a office. We are not so far from having that very office we have been dreaming of. And, we need someone to head up our stewardship team—someone who has a passion for encouraging and leading people to tithe of their time, talent, and treasure.
With the purchase of our land and the renovation of our offices, we have the opportunity, as a church, to experience the newness of conversion—the conversion of a wonderfully, welcoming worshipping family to a full-service, if you will, church with ministries that arise from our passion to meet everyone exactly where they are. Even at this tender age, we are becoming new, changing from the inside out and taking seriously our call to mission. I am reminded of Jesus’ words in our Gospel reading this morning. “No one sews a patch of unshrunken cloth on an old cloak, Otherwise, the patch pulls away from it—the new from the old—and the tear gets worse. Similarly, no one pours new wine into wineskins. If one does, the wine will burst the skins, and both wine and skins will be lost. No, new wine is poured into new wineskins.” God is giving us new wine and we joyfully create the new wineskins to hold this precious gift.
Our God is calling us to change, to conversion, to transformation. And, I believe we are ready to say a sacred “yes” to a divine call. I ask you, to explore with God where your passion for ministry with others lies. Listen, and when God calls, for the sake of the world, say “yes”. And all God’s people said: Amen and amen.
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