2 Corinthians 5:11-21
“What on Earth made You do That?”
“What on earth made you do that?”
The newspaper reporter was incredulous.
A young woman had just won a three-week trip around the world.
It was the chance of a lifetime!
And she had given it up in order to stay with a friend as she went to the hospital to face an operation.
“I mean,” the reporter continued, “surely she would have understood?
There must have been other people who could have been with her.”
The young woman remained silent.
Eventually, seeing that she wasn’t going to get away with saying nothing, she burst out:
“All right. You really want to know?
You think I’m crazy.
But what none of you know is what she did for me three years ago.
I was on drugs and I couldn’t stop.
It got worse and worse.
My family threw me out.
She was the only person who looked after me.
She sat up all night, again and again, and talked me through it.
She mopped me down when I threw up, she changed my clothes, she took me to the hospital, she talked to the doctors, she made sure I was coming through it.
She helped me with the court case.
She even helped me get a job.
She-she-she loved me!
Now that she’s sick herself, it’s the least thing I can do to stay with her.
That’s far less than she did for me.”
The logic of love far outweighs all other logic!
The logic of love changes everything, and gives people the power to face things and do things they wouldn’t otherwise have done!
But it can also cause others to wonder, “What on earth made you do that?”
“Are you out of your mind?”
And that is what Paul is addressing in our Scripture passage for this morning.
The Christians in Corinth weren’t so sure they wanted Paul as their teacher and leader.
They didn’t regard him as being a very eloquent speaker, and physically…
…he left much to be desired.
And what about his ministry?
He was constantly getting in trouble because of his zeal for the Christian faith!
If we look over at Chapter 6 we will see a list of what Paul has endured for the sake of the Cross.
He has shown great “endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger…”
And these things have not stopped him.
Despite these overwhelming challenges, Paul went on speaking the truth, relying on God’s power, and using God’s weapons such as purity, understanding, patience and kindness, and sincere love…
…rather than the kind of weaponry that come so naturally to the human race.
Paul says that he has lived and shared the Gospel of Jesus Christ “through glory and dishonor, bad report...”
He has been “genuine,” and yet has been “regarded as an [imposter]; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet [living on]; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything…”
No wonder some had been saying Paul was “out of his mind”!!!
One day, General William Booth of the Salvation Army was quoted as saying, “if I thought that I could win one more soul for Christ by standing on my hands and beating a tambourine with my feet, I would learn to do it.”
If we follow the way of Christ’s generosity, and forgiveness with utter loyalty, there will always be worldly thinking folks who will bluntly call us “crazy.”
But, “Christ’s love compels us.”
As Christians, we are, as Paul puts it, “in Christ,” and therefore our old selves have died with Christ and a new person has arisen!
And in this newness of life, we no longer judge things as the world judges things.
There was a time when Paul judged Christ by human standards, and was bent on eliminating the Christian faith from the world.
But not now.
Now his standards are different.
Now the Man Whose Name he had tried to destroy is to him the most wonderful Person in the world…
…because He has provided Paul with that friendship with God that he had longed for all his life!
And that is what Christianity is all about!
Our relationship with God has gone terribly off the tracks.
People have become self-absorbed, worshipping created things rather than the Creator.
We cheat, murder and steal.
There is little love, and not much concern for our fellow human beings.
And the result—people are miserable.
There is a great big void which nothing, absolutely nothing can fill…
…except…
…except…
A relationship with God through Jesus Christ!
And that is what has happened to Paul…and this is what happens for anyone who accepts God’s free offer of salvation through grace.
When we are saved we are “in Christ.”
We are a “new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
And the “new creation” refers to both the person who is saved, and to the world in which we enter…which is the Kingdom of God!!!
And when a new world is born, a new way of living goes with it!
When a couple have their first baby; a whole new chapter has opened in their lives, and nothing will be the same again.
How many of us can relate to this?
They have new responsibilities; everywhere they go, they see things with new eyes.
And when people who have lived in a small rural home move into a new modern home in a big city there are no more trips out the back door to get running water.
There are no more piles of laundry drying on the living room chairs.
And when people move from one country to another.
They need to learn a whole new language.
And new laws apply.
If you try and speak with the old language, and live by the old laws…
…well, it just won’t work!
But that, Paul implies, is what the Corinthian Christians are still doing.
You can’t be a Christian and stay the same.
That is a contradiction in terms.
For, when we are “in Christ” we see the world, other people—everything through a new set of eyes!!!
And nothing is more liberating nor exciting!!!
A new world has come about; the challenge of the Gospel is to live cheerfully in that new world.
And Paul’s challenge to the Corinthians is for them to see that that’s what he is doing.
And that is what they, as well as we, are called to do as well!!!
Paul mentions “reconciliation” 5 times in our Scripture Lesson, but this “reconciliation” isn’t a matter of God claiming a world that didn’t belong to God, or making a new one out of nothing.
It is not God Who needs to be reconciled to men and women.
Men and women need to be reconciled to God!
The entire process of salvation comes from God!
It was because God so loved the world that God sent His Son.
It’s not that God was somehow estranged from us, but we were estranged from God.
God’s loving appeal comes from a loving Father to wandering, lost and broken children to “come home” where love is waiting for them.
“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation…
…We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us…
…Be reconciled to God.”
Wait, wait, wait a minute…
We are to be Christ’s ambassadors?
What in the world does that mean?
Could this be what Christ’s love compels us to do?
Could it be that the Gospel is not just a way for us to get saved and keep it to ourselves?
Is it, instead, an announcement of a love that has changed the world, a love that takes the people who find themselves loved like this and sends them off to live and work in a totally new way?
Could it be that the energy to get up and go on as Christians comes not from some cold sense of duty…
…nor from a fear of being punished…
…but from the warm-hearted response of love to THE LOVE that has reached out, reached down, and reached us?
Will this love cause us to do things in ways that surprise or even shock people?
The Gospels are chocked full of that sort of thing; so is the story of Paul’s life.
But, if a new world has come to birth, you couldn’t possibly expect it to look like the old one, could you…
…would you want it to?
If anyone is in Christ, a new world has been born, and a new way of living goes with it!
No wonder the Corinthians found Paul’s life so hard to fathom.
He was behaving like someone…who lived in a whole new world!!!
And that is what an ambassador does.
An ambassador is one who lives in a foreign land in order to represent his or her people.
We, you and I, are called to be “Christ’s ambassadors.”
We are called to represent Christ to a world that doesn’t know Him.
Just think, YOU might be the only image of Christ that someone ever sees!!!
A big responsibility?
Yes!
Risky?
You bet!
The greatest privilege in the world—no doubt about it!!!
As Christ’s ambassadors, we are called to live in such radically loving ways, that people will be in shock and awe.
We want them to ask, “What on earth made you do that?”
I love the vision Carol Gates has for East Ridge United Methodist Church.
She said, “I want people to think of us as those crazy Christians who keep giving stuff away for free!”
That is awesome!
“For Christ’s love compels us” to do just that!
Paul goes on into Chapter 6 of 2 Corinthians to say, “As God’s fellow workers, we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain…
…I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the time of salvation.”
We have a ministry!
We have a calling.
We have a reason to live!!!
“on Christ’s behalf; Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
May it be so!
May it be so!
Amen.
