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“New Creation
is Everything”
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If the American project is about discovering how to turn differences into blessing, it is not the first movement to take on this task. |
“The American project is the single most successful answer to humanity’s deepest question: how to turn our post-Babel differences into a source of blessing rather than conflict?”1 Jonathan Sacks, an Orthodox Jew living in Great Britain writes this remarkable sentence in a book entitled The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations. The quote came to mind as I was reflecting on the confluence of the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time and commissioning of mission workers, and Independence Day 2004 in an America which lives in no ordinary time. If the American project is about discovering how to turn differences into blessing, it is not the first movement to take on this task. One can properly argue, and Sacks does, that the Christian Church and the Judaism out of which it sprang, found itself confronted by a God who, their texts said, loved the world, the whole world. Much of the history of Judaism and Christianity is the struggle of these covenant people with this covenant God. That is, of course, the meaning of the word Israel, “God-struggler.” And this struggle is certainly at the heart of the cross. We are, all of us who claim to live within this tradition, constantly having to do with, as Walter Brueggemann says, “texts that linger, and words that explode.” These words explode all boundaries, all isms, and all attempts to cordon off and limit the scope of God’s love. So,
yes, I believe, along with Sacks,
that America, when it is at its best,
stands within this tradition, longing
to crown its good with brotherhood
and sisterhood, from sea to shining
sea. But this is a difficult project,
for the church and for the nation. |
God is not mocked, the man shouted on the muggy April morning in front of Wendy’s across the street from Vanderbilt Divinity School. |
Paul, from the beginning, preached this gospel of reconciliation to Jews and Gentiles, and did the difficult work of bringing these hostile groups together. Paul did this by preaching what he knew to be the gospel. God, through Christ, has made peace with the world. God has come in grace, and this is God’s doing. God is the initiator of faith and it is only by God’s grace that any of us are saved. No sooner had Paul left Galatia than new teachers came in, preaching a word quite different from this one. No, no, no, they said, calling into question this radical grace. Grace is not free. It is contingent. God acts, but you first must be circumcised; you must refrain from unclean foods. Then you’ll know, truly know that you are saved. God is not mocked, the man shouted on the muggy April morning in front of Wendy’s across the street from Vanderbilt Divinity School. I was already in a bad mood. I parked three blocks away, realizing that I had already accumulated over $150 in parking tickets for those few times I convinced myself that I could go to class and get out before the traffic cops came. And it was muggy; too muggy for April. I rounded the corner to find this guy, generating his own heat. God is not mocked, he called, whatever a man reaps, that shall he sow! I tried to get around him, to no avail. “Do you know your eternal destination,” he asked, with the best piercing gaze he could muster through his rheumy eyes. “Yes,” I said, “Vanderbilt Divinity School,” pointing across the street. “And I’m late.” His look told me I had just made a critical error. “That’s a devil school,” he said. “They don’t believe in the Bible.” Having just spent the previous evening parsing obscure biblical texts for one professor and memorizing about 75 Hebrew Bible facts for another, I looked at this guy and said two words, “I wish.” And I walked away, hearing his shouts fading as I walked, “There’s only two groups, the saved and the unsaved. Do you know which one you are? There are only two groups, he said.
And it would be easy enough to dismiss
him if I didn’t hear his sentiments
echoed almost everywhere I go in the
church. There are only two groups:
contemporary or traditional; evangelical
or mainline; evangelism people or social
justice folk; pro-homosexual or anti-homosexual.
There are only two groups, the wrong
group, or my group. |
Each side now believes the other side is somehow less than Christian. ... And what Paul writes could not be more unexpected. |
We are only mirroring the wider culture. Our society is quick to draw up lines and build forts, lobbing our verbal stones at one another. Liberals or conservatives, National Rifle Association or Handgun Control, Inc., pro-life or pro-choice, Fox News or CNN, Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken; we are all on sides. As Jonathan Sacks says, “We no longer broadcast, we narrowcast.”2 So Paul has his work cut out for him. He knows that these other teachers have already divided the people into pro- or anti-circumcision. Each side now believes the other side is somehow less than Christian. And Paul certainly has his own position, stated quite clearly to Peter when he saw Peter get up and leave the table where he has just been eating with the uncircumcised Gentiles when a group from the circumcision party came in the room. Paul himself has long ago given up the notion that persons must be circumcised in order to be true believers. And yet, to say that would be to give in to the temptation to take sides and divide the body further. The words he chooses to say here will have enormous implications for the life of this young church. After re-stating the gospel to them
in a way that countermands what they
are hearing from these other teachers,
he takes the pen from his scribe
and writes himself. It is a pattern
in these ancient letters for the
author to dictate the bulk of the
letter, and then write the conclusion
or postscript in her/his own hand. “See what
large letters I make when I’m
writing in my own hand!” says
Paul. And we should be alert, because
what comes next is conclusive and
central to the entire letter. It
is a summation of sorts, his closing
argument in the court of law that
will decide the direction of this
young church. And what Paul writes
could not be more unexpected |
Now the old categories no longer apply. In this light, these arguments about circumcision and uncircumcision are seen for what they are... |
Circumcision is nothing, writes Paul. Good. We expect Paul to say that. But then, “Uncircumcision is nothing. New creation is everything!” Two simple Greek words stand alone, NEW CREATION. God acts in grace. God alone initiates faith. You can do nothing to earn it. God has done a new thing in you. You are a new creation. Now the old categories no longer apply. In this light, these arguments about circumcision and uncircumcision are seen for what they are: ways of ignoring the deeper claims of faith, ways to try and make sense out of the totally non-sensical notion that God acts in grace to redeem creation, in sovereign freedom and love, ways to ultimately try and control God’s grace. Paul says as strongly as he knows how. God’s truth is larger than these divisions. God’s grace spills out over all these boundaries. New creation is everything. There is a third way that transcends
circumcision or uncircumcision, rendering
both into what Paul calls “nothing.” This
is the way of the cross. Paul boldly
claims that at root, these attempts
to make the Galatians adopt additional
practices to earn God’s favor
are really only feeding the egos
of the teachers, so they may boast.
The only thing Paul will boast in,
he says, is the cross, through which
he has been crucified to the world
and the world to him. And in this
crucifixion, we become a new creation.
This is the central truth that the
authors of the Barmen Declaration
that we will say today declared when,
faced with the Nazi control of religion
and the attempt to create a state
church, “We reject the false
doctrine, as though there were other
areas of our life in which we would
not belong to Jesus Christ, but to
other lords.” The cross reveals
the depth of God’s grace. It
calls into question all simplifications.
It makes a way where there seemed
to be no way. It calls us to go deeper
than all the old divisions, to find
a third way beyond all the dichotomies. |
Hope born out of lament is so much more real, lasting, and deep than mere optimism, for it relies on God’s gracious initiative and not on human willpower to sustain. New creation is everything. |
Katharine Lee Bates’ hymn we sing today was written in a time of national optimism, when the expanse of spacious skies and amber waves of grain and the vision of human made alabaster cities gleaming caused Americans to believe that all things were possible and that progress would continue unabated until the Kingdom of God was built on earth. But the performance of it that I will remember most was in a context far different from unfettered progress. I watched images of the rubble of the World Trade Center moving across my screen as a lone voice sang, “O beautiful for patriot dream, that sees across the years, thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears, America, America, God shed his grace on thee, and crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea.” It was no longer a hymn of progress and optimism, but a prayer of lament and hope: lament for opportunities lost, lament for the stark divisions that still existed in our world and even in our own nation, and yet hope that God could take our tears and our grief and anger, and in God’s grace, transform us, create us anew. Hope born out of lament is so much more real, lasting, and deep than mere optimism, for it relies on God’s gracious initiative and not on human willpower to sustain. New creation is everything. It is fitting that today, July 4, 2004, we commission a number of mission workers from our church who are going to Mexico and Guatemala. What better way to live out to plea of Bates’ prayer than to go and bear one another’s burdens, doing good for all? It is amazing how our differences are put in perspective when we are teaching Vacation Bible School in Mexico, loving our brothers and sisters in Guatemala, building a Habitat for Humanity house in Williamson County, walking beside someone in pain as a Stephen Minister, and countless other acts of ministry. Perhaps in the end this is what Paul meant by his sudden two word outburst, “NEW CREATION.” Perhaps it is in solidarity with the world that God loves and for which Christ died that we find ourselves united. And crown thy good, O God, not just here, but around the world, with sisterhood and brotherhood, from sea to sea to sea. Amen. |
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1 Sacks, Jonathan. The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations. Continuum Press: London and New York, 2002. pg. ix. (return) 2Sacks, pg. 2. (return) |
