You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November 2007.
I am on a brief break from the blog; hope to resume next week.
Advent series:
12/2 advent 1 Elizabeth’s Servant Lk 1:5-25 Modenia Kramer will do a performance based on this text. The theme is preparation for the coming of Jesus.
12/9 advent 2 An Angel’s Word Lk 1:26-38
12/16 advent 3 A Mother’s Song Lk 1:39-56
12/23 advent 4 A Father’s Praise Lk 1:57-80
12/24 Christmas Eve A Savior’s Birth Lk 2:1-7
12/30 Harold Christmann preaching
We put no stumbling block in anyone’s path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. 4 Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; 5 in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; 6 in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; 7 in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; 8 through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; 9 known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; 10 sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
2Cor. 6.11 We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians, and opened wide our hearts to you. 12 We are not withholding our affection from you, but you are withholding yours from us. 13 As a fair exchange — I speak as to my children — open wide your hearts also.
2 Corinthians 6:3-13
Sunday’s scripture is the last from 2 Corinthians for awhile. Next week we begin moving towards Christmas in Luke’s Gospel, starting at the beginning.
I have really enjoyed blogging and preaching from 2 Corinthians. Paul has shown us what ministry is all about – not the show, the glitz or even the numbers (gasp!) – but the message – the treasure – and what it does in us and to us.
The last word in verse 13 is a great one – open wide your hearts. Think of a baby opening his mouth to catch that spoonful of strained peaches. Open wide.
When Jesus was asked to boil down the law, he said this: Open your hearts to our God and to your neighbors. That’s It.
There is a lot of trouble in our churches and in the world. We have people in the hospital and dying. Last month, fires burned church buildings and houses down. Tons of people are losing their homes in the mortgage crisis, not to mention hunger, wars and cultural erosion… Things seem to be getting worse not better. The world is breaking down in so many ways.
Troubled times often causes people to close their minds and hearts. Opening our hearts means swimming against the tide.
This is what Jesus-loving people do; we open our hearts. We get vulnerable and even broken for God. We love and serve. We’re in a collapsing world; broken-down, yet being renewed by the Jesus-Message.
…known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
God broke his own heart to save the world. Jesus invites us to open our hearts, big and wide, to God and to the world.
This is how the world gets changed. Give Thanks and Open Wide!
Have a great Thanksgiving.
run to Sunday!
As God’s fellow workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain. 2 For he says, “In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.” I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.
2 Corinthians 6:1-2
Paul urges his readers not to receive God’s grace in vain. The mention of God’s grace in chapter six refers back to the end of chapter 5. The righteousness of God in 5:21 speaks of God’s grace shown towards us by sending his Son to die for us. Becoming the righteousness of God describes how in our beaten-down lives and ministries we come to embody the death of Christ. (For a deeper look at what it means to become the righteousness of God, see this article by Tom Wright.)
Paul urges the Corinthians not to receive God’s grace in vain. I take this not as a reference to grace as a commodity to be transferred, but rather to the process of becoming God’s righteousness, becoming God-filled, becoming grace-filled.
Reconciliation, a key theme in 2 Corinthians, happens by grace. God favors us when we do not deserve it, we respond to God with favor, and are reconciled to God. In his letters, Paul calls the Corinthians to be reconciled to God, to one another and to Paul as apostle, pastor and friend.
In 2 Cor 6:2 Paul quotes the first portion of Isaiah 49:8; here is the entire verse from Isaiah:
This is what the LORD says: “In the time of my favor I will answer you, and in the day of salvation I will help you; I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people, to restore the land and to reassign its desolate inheritances…
Salvation/reconciliation is gracious help from God, empowering us to become and embody God’s covenant. Believers become the righteousness of God and embody God’s covenant faithfulness.
Grace happens when God gives of himself to us. Grace happens when we give of ourselves to others.
Full. Free. Undeserved. Grace.
run to Sunday!
So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
This is one of the high points of Paul’s letters. With memorable phrases, Paul’s words sing to us about who we are in Christ, and what we are called to do. The passage seems to flow around three ideas, which is handy for the preacher!
1. New outlook – verses 15-16
2. New creation – verses 17-19
3. New mission- verses 20-21
First, a new outlook. Based on the death of Jesus (verse 15), we no longer evaluate people and situations in the same way as before. Jesus died for everyone, which levels the playing field. We no longer judge a book by its cover. We no longer value people based on their affluence, ethnicity, power, appearance, or by any other standard that comes from the world around us.
Instead, we look at everything and everyone through the lens of the great sacrifice God made for us in Christ. Who we are and what we have are gifts from God, not personal achievements. All this comes out of our new relationship with God, based on who Jesus is and on what he did for us.
Second, a new creation. Being in Christ means being newly created as part of the coming new heavens and new earth. The first creation is amazing, but it has been spoiled by sin. You and I are made in the image of God, but we have been spoiled by sin. Christ’s coming, death, and resurrection began the renewal of creation.
Individual people are renewed spiritually, and when Christ comes again, we shall be renewed physically in resurrection bodies. God often brings spiritual and physical healing in this life as a foretaste of the new creation. You and I work to bring people to Christ, to alleviate suffering and to bring justice to the oppressed as ways of anticipating and applying God’s new creation.
Finally, a new mission. We have a ministry of reconciliation. We are ambassadors of Christ. Put the two together and you get a picture of ambassadors of reconciliation on a mission from God.
We represent the King of kings in a foreign land, speaking on behalf of the King so that through Christ people can be forgiven, or reconciled. We are reconciled with God so that the sin-problem is no longer an obstacle to God’s new creation happening to us.
Other faiths have many fine aspects, including sound moral teaching and so much more. But no religion deals effectively with the problem of sin the way Christ did by taking our sin on his shoulders at the cross.
We who are ambassadors of reconciliation carry out Christ’s mission of introducing people to God through Christ. We also lead Christians who are looking at things from a worldly point of view back to a dynamic faith in Christ. All this for the glory of the One Who makes all things new!
run to Sunday!
