A New Creation In Hope
Sermon
Living In Hope
Cycle C Sermons for Lent and Easter Based on the Second Lessons
In Christ, we are a new creation. We, each of us, have been transformed and we need to look at the world, not from the human, but from the divine perspective. What does that mean to you? Paul saw the coming of Christ as the new act of creation. Just as in Genesis, God dramatically spoke creation, our world, into being. The coming of Christ was a new creation that freed humans from bondage and moved us into the light of life. Christ was and is the new beginning of our lives in relationships to God. What was old has been washed away. We are renewed and transformed.
As faithful followers of Jesus, it is not that Jesus simply reordered the world, but that we are called into living in the risen Christ. We are called to become involved in the new transformed order created through the coming of Jesus into the world. We are transformed, renewed, and through us the world is also renewed and transformed.
We are called into the work of becoming a new creation, redeemed, and gathered. We are called to be God’s own people. Just as that long-ago message written for the church in Corinth was a message of belonging to God, this message is for us as well. All the faithful, all who follow Jesus, are welcome into the reordering of the world. Everyone is welcome. Everyone is gathered in. Those who are blind to God’s love and truth are gathered. Those who cannot hear God’s message are gathered. Every man, woman and child is gathered, called God’s own. And even more than that, God counts us on to be the witnesses of God’s love, truth, mercy, patience, and of all the other blessings we receive from God.
What are we doing to reorder the world, to be a part of transformation and the bringing about of the new creation? It’s important to realize that the new creation, the transformation begins in our minds ― our thoughts, our attitudes, our outlook on ourselves, our faith, and our world. How are we looking at the world these days? How are we seeing our role in the world?
A year or so ago, I wrote a sermon on the greatest commandments. It wasn’t using this scripture as its basis but the concepts seem important to share here. If we are about the transformation of the world, we start by following the commands of our God through Christ. I asked a question about what our response to the love of God needed to be. How do we show our kinship with Jesus, change our attitudes so people know that we are children of God acting in the world? The premise of the sermon was that we love God and love people. To me, that is the transformation of our thoughts and attitudes as human beings ― to move into loving God and loving people, our neighbors ― all our neighbors. If we boil down all the messages about transforming the world, about being transformed through faith, that’s what our faith is all about: loving God and loving people.
It’s a little like the story about a man who had a huge boulder in his front yard. He grew weary of this big, unattractive stone in the center of his lawn, so he decided to take advantage of it and turn it into an object of art. He went to work on it with hammer and chisel, and chipped away at the huge boulder until it became a beautiful stone elephant. When he finished, it was gorgeous, breathtaking.
A neighbor asked, “How did you ever carve such a marvelous likeness of an elephant?”
The man answered, “I just chipped away everything that didn’t look like an elephant!”
When we chip away everything else, the way we participate in the transformation of ourselves and the world is to chip away the excess, and focus on love ― love from God, love to God and love shared with the world. A new humanity, a new creation, would, I believe, be a humanity and a creation built on love, celebrating love. Love births the other gifts of the spirit. Love births hope for a new way, a new creation. And because we are children of God, we are beloved, just as Jesus is beloved because he is a child of God. We enter into new life, new creation, and a new covenantal relationship with God. We are loved.
We are loved despite our flaws and failings, despite our sins. We are loved when we behave in the way God calls us to behave ― when we love our neighbors as ourselves ― and we are loved when we do not behave in the ways God calls us to behave ― when we are angry, spiteful, and filled with prejudice and selfishness. We are loved in any case.
Yet, if we want to be a part of the reordering, the new creation, we must choose to act with mercy, compassion, kindness, and love as a means of thanking God for the wonder of our birth, our life, our blessings. We must act as one who follows Jesus, not to earn our way into God’s family, but in thankfulness for our eternal inclusion in God’s family. It is our way of becoming part of the transformation Paul is writing about. As we realize that Jesus is in us and we are in him, we feel and live a life intimately connected to God and to one another, marked as God’s own by the love we share, by the righteousness we demonstrate, by the gratitude we express, and by the hope we know.
As we live into hope, the hope that comes from knowing we are beloved and blessed, we are called to share that hope with others ― that hope the prophets proclaimed, that hope that brought Jesus into the world, that hope born in us as part of the new creation of God through Christ.
As I was preparing to write this sermon, I was listening to a song from a Christian music duo For King and Country. They are two men from Australia. I was listening to their song titled “Crave” and the lyrics of that song reminded me how much we, and the world, need hope. Look up those lyrics. They are powerful words.
Hope is what we crave ― as individuals, families, and nations. Hope is what we need. Hope is God’s mark on us. Hope is what we each and all can use to transform, to reorder the world into a new creation.
Hope reminds us we are never alone; we are always included. We are called, loved, nurtured, and blessed. We are gathered in and welcomed back when we have wandered away. To be marked as participants with Jesus in the new creation, in the transformation of the world is to be called to live our lives loving God with all our hearts; minds, souls and strength. To be marked as God’s own is to be called to live our lives loving our neighbors ― all our neighbors ― whether we know them, understand them, are comfortable with them, or whether they are complete strangers with names we cannot easily say or remember, languages we do not know and customs we do not understand. To be marked as God’s own is to walk in the footsteps of Jesus ― offering compassion, inclusion, healing, recognition, kindness, truth, love and the hope we, and the rest of the world, crave. To be marked by God is to be transformed and to transform. Amen.
As faithful followers of Jesus, it is not that Jesus simply reordered the world, but that we are called into living in the risen Christ. We are called to become involved in the new transformed order created through the coming of Jesus into the world. We are transformed, renewed, and through us the world is also renewed and transformed.
We are called into the work of becoming a new creation, redeemed, and gathered. We are called to be God’s own people. Just as that long-ago message written for the church in Corinth was a message of belonging to God, this message is for us as well. All the faithful, all who follow Jesus, are welcome into the reordering of the world. Everyone is welcome. Everyone is gathered in. Those who are blind to God’s love and truth are gathered. Those who cannot hear God’s message are gathered. Every man, woman and child is gathered, called God’s own. And even more than that, God counts us on to be the witnesses of God’s love, truth, mercy, patience, and of all the other blessings we receive from God.
What are we doing to reorder the world, to be a part of transformation and the bringing about of the new creation? It’s important to realize that the new creation, the transformation begins in our minds ― our thoughts, our attitudes, our outlook on ourselves, our faith, and our world. How are we looking at the world these days? How are we seeing our role in the world?
A year or so ago, I wrote a sermon on the greatest commandments. It wasn’t using this scripture as its basis but the concepts seem important to share here. If we are about the transformation of the world, we start by following the commands of our God through Christ. I asked a question about what our response to the love of God needed to be. How do we show our kinship with Jesus, change our attitudes so people know that we are children of God acting in the world? The premise of the sermon was that we love God and love people. To me, that is the transformation of our thoughts and attitudes as human beings ― to move into loving God and loving people, our neighbors ― all our neighbors. If we boil down all the messages about transforming the world, about being transformed through faith, that’s what our faith is all about: loving God and loving people.
It’s a little like the story about a man who had a huge boulder in his front yard. He grew weary of this big, unattractive stone in the center of his lawn, so he decided to take advantage of it and turn it into an object of art. He went to work on it with hammer and chisel, and chipped away at the huge boulder until it became a beautiful stone elephant. When he finished, it was gorgeous, breathtaking.
A neighbor asked, “How did you ever carve such a marvelous likeness of an elephant?”
The man answered, “I just chipped away everything that didn’t look like an elephant!”
When we chip away everything else, the way we participate in the transformation of ourselves and the world is to chip away the excess, and focus on love ― love from God, love to God and love shared with the world. A new humanity, a new creation, would, I believe, be a humanity and a creation built on love, celebrating love. Love births the other gifts of the spirit. Love births hope for a new way, a new creation. And because we are children of God, we are beloved, just as Jesus is beloved because he is a child of God. We enter into new life, new creation, and a new covenantal relationship with God. We are loved.
We are loved despite our flaws and failings, despite our sins. We are loved when we behave in the way God calls us to behave ― when we love our neighbors as ourselves ― and we are loved when we do not behave in the ways God calls us to behave ― when we are angry, spiteful, and filled with prejudice and selfishness. We are loved in any case.
Yet, if we want to be a part of the reordering, the new creation, we must choose to act with mercy, compassion, kindness, and love as a means of thanking God for the wonder of our birth, our life, our blessings. We must act as one who follows Jesus, not to earn our way into God’s family, but in thankfulness for our eternal inclusion in God’s family. It is our way of becoming part of the transformation Paul is writing about. As we realize that Jesus is in us and we are in him, we feel and live a life intimately connected to God and to one another, marked as God’s own by the love we share, by the righteousness we demonstrate, by the gratitude we express, and by the hope we know.
As we live into hope, the hope that comes from knowing we are beloved and blessed, we are called to share that hope with others ― that hope the prophets proclaimed, that hope that brought Jesus into the world, that hope born in us as part of the new creation of God through Christ.
As I was preparing to write this sermon, I was listening to a song from a Christian music duo For King and Country. They are two men from Australia. I was listening to their song titled “Crave” and the lyrics of that song reminded me how much we, and the world, need hope. Look up those lyrics. They are powerful words.
Hope is what we crave ― as individuals, families, and nations. Hope is what we need. Hope is God’s mark on us. Hope is what we each and all can use to transform, to reorder the world into a new creation.
Hope reminds us we are never alone; we are always included. We are called, loved, nurtured, and blessed. We are gathered in and welcomed back when we have wandered away. To be marked as participants with Jesus in the new creation, in the transformation of the world is to be called to live our lives loving God with all our hearts; minds, souls and strength. To be marked as God’s own is to be called to live our lives loving our neighbors ― all our neighbors ― whether we know them, understand them, are comfortable with them, or whether they are complete strangers with names we cannot easily say or remember, languages we do not know and customs we do not understand. To be marked as God’s own is to walk in the footsteps of Jesus ― offering compassion, inclusion, healing, recognition, kindness, truth, love and the hope we, and the rest of the world, crave. To be marked by God is to be transformed and to transform. Amen.
