Rev. Jay Rowland
2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10 (NRSV)
So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. As we work together a [with him], we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For it is written,
“At an acceptable time I have listened to you,
and on a day of salvation I have helped you.”
See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
Now Is the Time
I chose this scripture from the four available today because of the urgency of Paul’s appeal to be reconciled to God. I’m trying to understand what it means to be reconciled to God and why that would be something that’s so urgent.
Reflecting on this passage again this year something new hit me. It occurs to me for the first time that Paul offers a description of what it can look like to be reconciled to God. This description appears in a string of rapid-fire, (mostly) one-word capsules of his experiences as a follower of Jesus: endurance, affliction, hardship, calamity; beatings, imprisonment, riots, labors, sleepless nights; … truthful speech and the power of God; punishments; bad reputation and good reputation; alienation, sorrows (yet always rejoicing); poverty (yet making many rich); losing everything (yet possessing everything).
This description suggests a level of difficulty exceeded only by a sense urgency. And so I find this to be powerfully compelling to us. If being reconciled to God puts us through anything like what Paul describes, being reconciled to God may require more of us than we are willing to give.
Generally speaking—at least to me, being reconciled to God means don’t let anything come between us and God. And if and when anything does, address it quickly whatever it is--do something about it. Don’t just let it go. And Lent provides us with an invitation to work more intentionally on that process: identify whatever might be coming between ourselves and God; reflect on it; talk with others about it; pray about it. When we spend some time and energy considering what we let come between us and God we find it helps us live closer to God, more aware of God’s presence in our lives and in the life of the world.
The season of Lent and the process I described often brings to mind a particular word that I’d like to explore. That word is “repent”. For most people, the term repent means something like “stop sinning.” Here I must pause to acknowledge Catholic theologian Father Richard Rohr. His books and podcasts are so illuminating to me and I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned from him. Rohr notes that the word translated as “repent” is among the first words spoken by Jesus at the start of his ministry: “Repent for the kingdom of God is here” (Matthew 4:17, Mark 1:15 The original Greek word which gets translated into English in our Bibles as “repent” is “metanoia”. It does not mean “repent”. Metanoia comes from two root words: “meta” which means “go beyond” and “noeo” which means understand, perceive, consider, think; and so the literal meaning is “go beyond your understanding/perception/thinking” which is much different than what the word “repent” has come to mean. It’s a better translation, more descriptive, but it’s harder to do.
And so the word Jesus spoke (metanoia) indicates that being reconciled to God has something to do with going beyond our typical state of mind (Rohr’s terminology) in order to better understand the kingdom of God. Think about the typical state of your mind. I can say that the typical state of my mind is: often cluttered, anxious, irritated--as in wanting some situation or person to be different than it is. The human mind loves to obsesses about situations and people who “need” to be fixed or changed; the human mind excels at judging and rushing to conclusions.
Jesus bursts onto the scene urging people’s minds to move into the kingdom of God. Now consider the term “kingdom”. In Jesus’ time, most people lived in a kingdom or empire, under the authority of a king or ruler. Our kingdoms today have evolved into the kingdom of say, the garage, or the kingdom of the kitchen, or the back yard, the video game; the kingdom of NASCAR, or pro football, etc. We all still inhabit kingdoms. For many people, the USA has always been the primary “kingdom”.
Jesus says, metanoia to that! The kingdoms of this world do not serve their people. It’s always been the other way around. People have always been used and mis-used by their kingdoms. Perhaps the kingdom of God may include, and may even bless all the smaller kingdoms we serve, the kingdom of God in itself is nothing like those.
To go beyond our typical mind requires us to consider how much of ourselves we put into our own comparatively smaller but preferred kingdoms. It’s a first step toward discovering more about our need to live in the kingdom of God.
Jesus makes it very clear from the start that the kingdom of God at odds with the world around us. And I can see how the world around us is really good at provoking us—moving our minds here, there and everywhere, from irritation, to outrage, to frustration, to needing to fix, or change or get rid of this that or the other. And all those thoughts have a cumulative, crushing, limiting impact upon one’s interior world—which Jesus wants us to devote more and more to the kingdom of God.
Taking all that into consideration, Jesus comes preaching interior change as the way to bring about all those changes which can improve human life in the world. We spend so much time being upset about all the things that need to but are not changing—things in the world, in our nation, in our jobs, in our relationships, our families, our schools, our churches, on and on it goes. Meanwhile, the kingdom of God is always about the good of the whole rather than the partial good. That’s why it’s holy. It’s about what’s best for everyone rather than some or even many.
Jesus comes to us urging us to engage in metanoia – to push our minds beyond ordinary thinking, or understanding or perception. Jesus brings to us a philosophy of change. We human beings are not naturally attracted to change. We prefer the predictable instead. But Jesus knows that “to love is to change. And to love perfectly is to change many times” (John Henry Newman). That’s very different than how we actually live. Most of us live life on cruise control. We continue to do what we continue to do, the way we always do. Any alteration is a shock to our system; any diversion is uncomfortable, unsettling, uncertain. But that’s REAL LIFE in the REAL WORLD isn’t it?: changes happen to us that can be uncomfortable, unsettling, and create uncertainty.
But at the same time, if we don’t change as human beings, we don’t grow as human beings. And if we don’t grow as human beings, we don’t change. And if that happens, Rohr presents the scenario of a person being the same at age 30, 40, 50, 60 (etc) as they were at, say, age 16. We all know or have met people like that. People who at age 40 (etc) are challenging authority, picking fights, trying to impress, trying to force their way, trying to win like we do in adolescence. Which is somewhat descriptive of our culture and our politics right now: 40-, 50-, 60-, 70-year olds challenging authority, picking fights, trying to impress, trying to force their way, trying to win like a bunch of hormonally raging adolescents do. Look around. We live in a time in which what’s true or what is fact is less important than what I say is true or factual in order to get what I want. Whatever is good for all of us is not important because it’s all about whatever benefits the faction I care about most and am most involved in.
Jesus presents to us a spiritual philosophy, a moral theology that demands that we change our typical patterns of thinking. Kingdom of God thinking means thinking about the common good--not the Republican good, or the Democratic good, or the White, Black, Hispanic good; these can all be ideals worthy of aspiration and energy. But Jesus is challenging us to see that our view is always partial, limited. We must expand our personal borders, we must do more growing, changing, growing up and getting out of ourselves and our limited kingdoms we’re stuck living in.
If we don’t start practicing metanoia it’s hard to see any hope for the world we inhabit right now. Or is it the world that inhabits us, which is so divided, so cynical, so … off; a nation where facts can be fudged or created and debated; a nation where people seem to be literally living in the kingdom of the Democrats or the kingdom of the Republicans.
There’s got to be a better way. And there is a better way.
Jesus challenges us to change, change our mindset, change our ways, oppose the cynical ways and current trends of truth and love. The Kingdom of God includes pieces of these other kingdoms, but goes far beyond them toward what’s good for everyone. The Kingdom of God is about making life better for people who are oppressed, struggling, suffering, ignored, rejected. Look at the gospels: Jesus is constantly doing, saying, and living for the oppressed, the suffering, the struggling, the ignored, the rejected. And we are supposed to be His people, doing like he did, fighting for what he did, loving the way he did …
Of course we all fall short. Of course we cannot succeed, fully or partially. Of course there will always be more need than any of us and all of us can handle at any given moment. But isn’t asking or expecting us to succeed. He’s asking us to keep moving, to push past and challenge typical understanding, thinking, perception, in order to welcome and accompany the kingdom of God that arrived with Jesus and is expanding, though contested and opposed by the kingdoms of this world.
That’s how we become reconciled to God: metanoia
That’s what will bring the kind of change we all yearn for deep-down: metanoia
The urgency Paul declares is greater perhaps than ever before:
Now is the time.
