“Living into Love”
2 Corinthians 3
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
2/14/16
Before reading
today’s text, let’s widen our lens for a few moments.
In the final chapter of First
Corinthians, Paul promises to make a return visit to Corinth. In the first
chapter of Second Corinthians, he tries to explain why that visit never
happened. He mentions some trauma in Asia, an “affliction” so dire that Paul
and his companions “despaired of life itself.” (2Cor. 1:8) More likely, the
missed visit has something to do with a conflict between Paul and a person or a
group in the Corinthian church. He stays away to let wounds heal.
Whatever the
case, many in the young church feel hurt and angry. They think Paul is avoiding
or even abandoning them. So, Paul writes words of encouragement and healing,
words that re-call the Corinthians to the journey of discipleship.
“Thanks be to
God,” says Paul, “who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and
through us spreads to every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him…For
we are not peddlers of God’s word like so many; but in Christ we speak as
persons of sincerity, as persons sent from God and standing in his presence.” (2Cor. 2:14,
17a, b)
“Standing in
his presence” means trusting the revelations of Incarnation and Resurrection as
eternally-spoken affirmations from God.
Remember, after hearing God say,
“You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased,” (Luke 3:22c)
Jesus begins to live as God’s fragrant, physically-embodied “I Love You” to the
entire Creation. Because we are “joint heirs with Christ,” (Romans 8:17)
to stand in his presence is to stand with one another proclaiming God’s
14-billion-year love affair with all that is seen and unseen.
Affirming the
holiness inherent in all things represents a brand new reality, brand new ground
that must be traversed with courageous humility. When entered selfishly, holiness
becomes the kind of soulless, flag-waving religion preferred by cruel tyrants, well-intentioned
kings, and graceless priests alike.
Still, God dares to entrust us with
this new ground. As an apostle, Paul recognizes God calling him to hand the
stewardship of a patch of that ground, of that dangerously liberating Gospel of
Grace, over to the frightened young Christians in Corinth. They may fail, but until
they live it, they will never believe it.
Paul
understands the heady affirmation and the overwhelming challenge he is laying
on the Corinthians. You can almost see and feel his hands still helping to hold
that gospel as he offers it. Something so powerfully transforming can be so easily
misused. It is like a mom handing the car keys to her brand new 16-year-old.
As I read the
words of 2Corinthians 3, imagine yourself holding out your hands as if
receiving a precious gift. Feel Paul’s hands on your hands, and know that you
are standing in Christ’s presence, that God is entrusting you with the Gospel
of Grace and with the new life it creates.
2 Corinthians 3
Are we beginning to commend ourselves again?
Surely we do not need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from
you, do we? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known
and read by all; and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us,
written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of
stone but on tablets of human hearts.
Such
is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are
competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is
from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of
letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
Now
if the ministry of death, chiseled in letters on stone tablets, came in glory
so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses’ face because of the glory
of his face, a glory now set aside, how much more will the ministry of the
Spirit come in glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation,
much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory! Indeed, what once
had glory has lost its glory because of the greater glory; for if what was set
aside came through glory, much more has the permanent come in glory!
Since,
then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, not like Moses, who put
a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the
glory that was being set aside. But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this
very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is
still there, since only in Christ is it set aside. Indeed, to this very day
whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds; but when one turns to the
Lord, the veil is removed.
Now
the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though
reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one
degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.
On his way to Damascus to persecute,
in God’s name, that new religious minority called Christians, Saul,
the murderous peddler of old words, and ways, and means, receives the gift of
enlightenment so suddenly and dramatically it knocks him down and blinds him. Overwhelmed
by the presence of Christ, he must be led to Damascus, where the
still-skeptical Ananias affirms and challenges Saul. Gingerly handing to the
once-vicious Pharisee words of primordial Grace, Ananias says, “Brother Saul,” God has sent me to tell you that you are
loved and forgiven. You are called to live and serve as a sign of the presence
of Christ in, with and for the world.
Yes, Saul. Even you.
“And
immediately,” says Luke, “something like scales fell from [Saul’s] eyes, and
his sight was restored.’ (Acts 9:18)
With the veil removed, Saul, now Paul, can read what was written on his
own heart long, long ago. He begins to acknowledge that he is indeed “a letter
of Christ…written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God.”
In recognizing the Spirit-written holiness
in himself, Paul begins to discover it in the rest of the Creation. Part of his
gift to the Corinthian church is his un-veiled, clear-eyed vision of their own
holiness before God. The Spirit inks that holiness onto all human hearts. The
dark days of chiseled, stone-bound absolutes end with the life, death and
resurrection of Jesus.
Now, this really does not reflect
the change that so much of the Church has preached for centuries. Coming from a
much longer and deeper tradition than Reformed theology, St. Francis of Assisi taught
that Jesus comes not to change God’s mind about humankind. No, Jesus comes to
change our minds about God. Good Friday does nothing to appease a furious god,
a god so offended by human sin as to be unable
to forgive unless someone gets brutally executed. Good Friday reveals God’s presence as active, suffering
Love living at the very heart of the world’s violent brokenness.1
When we distill the gospel into a
sacrifice on Calvary that mollifies a creator who has become so distorted by the
creation as to be incapable of Love, all that matters, says Richard Rohr, is
“the last three days or three hours of [Jesus’] life.”2 Friday,
then, is all about transforming that god.
Only when that god changes do we get our tickets to heaven punched.
Jesus life is far more important
than that. That makes our lives more important than verbalizing intellectual
assent to a theology before and being
“good” until we die. Jesus calls us
to experience and to proclaim the Kingdom of God by living as he lived, by living
for the sake of the Christ within self,
neighbor, enemy, and earth.
If the ancient legends hold any
truth, the third century Roman emperor, Claudius, being convinced that
unattached men made better soldiers, banned all marriages for the sake of the
empire. Convinced that Love and loving commitment to other human beings made
for a better world, a Roman bishop named Valentine
kept on marrying young men and women. This vile treason stopped only when
Claudius had Valentine arrested, stoned, and beheaded.3
Happy Valentine’s Day?
Now, please, do enjoy sharing all
those chocolates, roses, and Hallmark haikus today.
Please remember, too, that we cannot
confront the world’s brutality, selfishness, greed, and hopelessness by proclaiming
an individualistic, “heaven when we die” theology. We confront these evils by
trusting that, in the presence of God, whose Spirit has inked Love onto our
heart of hearts, we stand on the new ground of God’s here-and-now kingdom.
Trusting this good news teaches us
to journey with Christ, to live as he lives; gratefully, generously,
compassionately, and with, as one friend of mine says, “radical, scandalous
Love.”
Now, Happy Valentine’s Day.
2Ibid.
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