2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Lent 4 - Year C
Grumbling turns one into a growling animal, not distinctly human. It takes a method of reconciliation to see this otherwise and thus to respond without a mirroring growl. Paul is positing such a reconciliation comes from a specific indwelling of G*D into Jesus.
So long as an uniqueness of Jesus is required, there won’t be any evidence of other similar results through other means. When beginning to learn mathematics, students are asked to show their process under a rubric of one process leads to one result. It is like learning to color within the lines. So it is with these sorts of doctrinaire muttering. Once whispered, it yells at us about perspective and boundary.
While there are some who find the demarcation of one moment to be critical to understanding everything else, we more usually understand there is a progression of development by stages. A particular stage can be summarized, but not contained, in a key person in a timeline. You may want to play around with a timeline of mathematics.
It is difficult to come up with a timeline of prophets. There are several out there, but they are all within a single tradition [if you know of an interfaith timeline of prophets, please reply]. Anyone want to try to develop a reconciled presentation of the prophetic tradition? After all, reconciliation is ours as well. Is this to be limited to “reconciling” folks to G*D only through Christ, or anyone to G*D through any avenue?
Things get real convoluted and contradictory when we get into parsing what might be behind how moments of inspiration come along. It seems that Paul might have been saying more than he knew when he gets into G*D making Jesus “to be sin”. This seems to raise more questions than it responds to. You might want to delete verse 21 from this text.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/03/2-corinthians-516-21.html
There is some good antinomian, revelational, and enthusiastic stuff here that is fun for Arminians of several stripes. This is often looked upon in personal terms, when I get Jesus my previous behaviors change and I only do what Jesus would do. He's my limit.
If we take this to be the body of Christ, the church, that is being talked about, what then of creeds and traditions and all the rest of the institutional stuff? What is the new sense of an everywhere GOD instead of an interventionaist God?
Whether being spoken of in personal or institutional terms, the focal point is that of relationships. It is not so much whether there is an orthodox reconciliation process, but is reconciliation, renewal of relationship, happening. Where is Saint Alinsky when we need him?
One of the old things that might pass away is the last verse. Is it not sufficient to say that it is in Christ (all of Christ, not just the sacrifice for sin) that reconciliation can be glimpsed. Might one be bold enough to say that it is in Christ that God is reconciling God with Christ; it is in the world that God is reconciling God with the world; it is in you and me that God is reconciling God with you and me?
Now there is a new God. The old God has passed away. We give evidence that reconciliation is possible. Look and do so in your way. When this reconciliation is taking place we say Christ is present. When it is not taking place we can say Christ has not been received. Christ might be considered a supporting cheerleader for reconciliation, not the focal point of the scene. It takes a strong Jesus to stand back from the limelight and push us forward to demonstrate how well and in how many ways reconciliation can take place.
The hope is that we are getting better and better about equating what it means to be human with what it means to be reconciling. Some have come far enough already to know that to be human is to be reconcilers - blessed are they. This is a needed next evolutionary step. May the hundredth reconciling monkey jump into the human bloodstream even more quickly and pervasively than HIV.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/march2004.html
To be a new "creation" in Christ sounds similar to heaven come on earth. There is something different here than before.
This difference is described in terms of reconciliation.
As you look around your life and this earth can you see why the issue of reconciliation is emblematic of newness?
At least one perspective is that new creations continue creating or, put another way, a chain reaction needs to start somewhere.
We are following the first plan to be made in the GODS image as creative partners when we act to reconcile ourselves and others, setting loose the energy of the nature of love. In some sense the gods had to be reconciled to get to that image without dividing it into this image and that.
Our source and end is found in reconciliation. It is a high moment in life and in every renewal of life. It is even important on a physical level as two different genetic strands become reconciled in a child (viable in some way as the irreconcilable differences are not viable and are lost to view before even being noted).
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/march2004.html
Love G*D with everything you are, and your neighbor as yourself.
Be reconciled with G*D in everything you do, and with your neighbor as well as yourself.
Other words that can be substituted in are "peace", "partnered", "engaged", and each of the virtues.
There is an impetus to reconciliation that, once experienced, brings a desire for more. Reconciliation is thus a once and future desire - always available and always sought.
It is this vibrant energy that shows its connection to creation and G*D. It comes from premeditated mercy and results in more of the same. In some ways it is a catalyst where we end up having more - it is negentropic [free energy] with increasing capacity for G*D work.
- - -
I got me a ministry of reconciliation
and I'm gonna spread it all around
here a reconciliation
there a reconciliation
e-i-e-i-o
everywhere a reconciliation
yee-hah
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html
Viewing one another from a human point of view – "intoxicated with the prospect of the worst" [Miss Garnet's Angel by Sally Vickers] has been popular since G*D succumbed to a first temptation trap of making human's in G*D's image and setup a second temptation trap of G*D's knowledge of good (some) and evil (more than some).
Yes, this suggests that if we can look through Christ-colored lenses, G*D can look through Human-colored lenses. What's good for the goose is good for the gander; what's good for a G*D image is good for a Human image.
Presuming transformation is possible, how do we see reconciling possibilities peeking out from behind our perceptions and beyond our prejudicial experiences? We can begin with preemptive mercy that starts with a metaphoric 490 minus-trespasses – so a particular trespass can't possibly count against someone. A gift of minus-trespasses keeps us balanced, out of intoxicated prospects.
To be in this position of an excess of minus-trespasses is to have begun a new thing, teaching G*D and Neighbor about reconciliation. So we end this passage with a twist – For our sake, Jesus' abundance of minus-trespasses sparks a new creation of minus-trespasses in us that reconciliation (the righteousness of G*D) might continue and deepen.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/03/2-corinthians-516-21.html