AN UNBELIEVABLE OFFER!

(Preached on Sunday, February 13, 2005)

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.  -II Corinthians 5:20

 

In our nation, we are proud to say that nobody has any right to tell us what to do.

No foreign power is superior to us; no outside body dares criticize us.

We will take under advisement comments from our allies, but as the world superpower we are the ones who will advise others, not the other way around.

 

This is also true in our personal lives.

One of our chief values is self-reliance, the ability to take care of ourselves rather than asking for help.

And this attitude begins at a very young age in our culture.

“I do it myself!  I do it myself!”

Any parent of a pre-school age child, or any adult in close proximity to such a child for any length of time, has heard these defiant words of imagined independence.

Whether tying their shoes or cutting their food, these four words convey in the clearest and simplest of terms the attitude of self-reliant, independent, rugged individualism.

While clearly a trait valued in our nation, it is not unique to Americans, and is, in truth, a common trait of humanity.

 

While we, in this country, have raised individualism to an art form, it has been part of human nature since the dawn of time.

The Book of Genesis describes this trait as part of the human condition even in the Garden of Eden, that idealized time of our earliest ancestors.

Adam and Eve, symbolic of all human beings, are created by God and placed in a garden fully supplied with all they need for living.

They can eat any of the fruit provided, except the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

As soon as God’s back is turned, that is exactly where they head and what they eat.

You can almost hear them crying out as they ran to the tree, “I can do it myself!”

 

God created us for community, for relationship.

God created us to care for one another and to be cared for by God, but from the very beginning, as any parent of any two year old knows, we have wanted to do it our way for ourselves by ourselves.

No matter what mistakes we may make, no matter how chaotic our lives may be, no matter how tense we are, “nobody tells us how to live.”

Not even God.

Often is seems we would rather be wretched, stressed out, self-centered, even mean, than turn over our lives, our political decisions, our spending habits, our recreational activities, our relationships to God’s guidance.

What we don’t recognize is that in taking this attitude, we establish a hostile relationship with our Creator.

 

“Oh, but I love God” you say.  “I come to church, I worship God, I work at church, I love God.”

But do you look to God before you make every decision?

Do you study the Word of God given in the Bible, the teachings and life of Jesus, the writings of the apostles and the prophets, in order to learn how God would have you live?

Do you really consider how God would have you vote?  What God would have you purchase?  What God wants you to do with your money?

Or, do you consider those aren’t really God’s areas of concern?

 

This is the situation Paul is describing in the passage we read this morning from II Corinthians.

It is this hostile relationship that has developed between human beings and God that Paul is referring to when he states that he and the other apostles are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making an overture through them.

They are like ambassadors opening negotiations between hostile nations.

 

But the way Paul states the message from God is nothing short of astonishing.

“We entreat you... be reconciled to God ... we are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way.”

Christ entreats us?  God begs us?

 

It is as though the president of the United States were to call you into the Oval Office and say, “I am appointing you as ambassador to North Korea, and I have a difficult mission for you there.  I want you to beg for peace.  What we want here is to overcome the years of animosity and suspicion.  So make no demands, no threats; issue no ultimatums.  Do whatever you have to do to get the message across.  Whatever violence you may face, whatever their attitudes are, I want you to be conciliatory.  Probably you will be followed and harassed; you may even be jailed — we can’t know how this will go.  Make no effort to find bugs in the embassy, put no scramblers on the line; everything should be completely open and above board.  You understand?  At any and all costs, we want peace.

How would you respond?

An ambassadorship, remember, is a sign of trust, and such an appointment is one of the highest honors any country can bestow upon a citizen.

Yet here is the president of the United States saying that your safety as ambassador cannot be guaranteed — that in fact we can count on a hostile reception.

You will be ambassador of the most power nation on earth, yet you are asked to go, hat in hand, to our sworn enemy and petition for reconciliation!

Is this any way for a superpower to act?

 

But this is exactly what Paul claims: that he comes as an ambassador, carrying a petition for peace from the Creator, Sustainer, and Ruler of the Universe, to the creatures who are in rebellion against God’s authority.

I can say without hesitation that this is as ridiculous a situation as the idea of the president sending an ambassador to beg for peace with North Korea.

In fact, more ridiculous, because we actually have cause to fear North Korea, since they announced this past week that they do have nuclear weapons and they are no longer going to engage in talks to do away with those weapons, while God has no reason to fear us, no matter what we do, or what threats we could make.

 

That is why this is such an unbelievable offer!

Paul suggests that here is God, through God’s ambassador, hat in hand, approaching us telling us that God has surrendered!

Although our lives are nothing of what we had hoped and expected, lacking any great accomplishments to show for our time spent here, and although we have refused to take seriously the claim God has on our lives, God does not want to be our enemy, but our friend!

God does not despise us; God loves us.

God does not enforce our separation; God wants to be at one with us.

 

To accomplish this, God has sent an ambassador who is willing to do whatever it takes, whatever is necessary, to re-establish good relations between us and God.

That is what Jesus did.

Instead of continuing hostilities, even in the face of hostility, Jesus created a space of grace.

Jesus did not call down any flaming swords or legions of angels, but instead, spoke the simple prayer, “Father, forgive them.”

As Jesus listened deeply to the heart of God, he refused to see his enemies as his enemies.