2018-06-18
Brooke Strong
Scripture II Corinthians 5:6-10, 14-17
Over a hundred years ago, a man named John Watson, writing under the pen name Ian MacLaren, wrote a short sentence that could form the spine of our shared life. He was aware that we are all much more aware of our own struggles and challenges than we are of those of anyone else. I know the things that keep me awake at night, but I likely have not the slightest clue about what freezes you and fills you with fear.
There is perhaps a woman here who has recently lost a pregnancy. Her miscarriage is the source of a bottomless grief. There is a man who is twitchy at the thought of the bets he is relentlessly drawn to place on athletic contests, all with the numbing conviction that he’s about to win the big one. There is the family whose eighteen-year-old will soon depart for college, and there is such a mix of colossal sadness and tremendous relief at the thought of the impending departure.
I know what I’m going through. But I usually have not more than the slightest hint of what most of you are going through. And so it behooves all of us, as the saying I hinted at earlier implores, to “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” This is certainly not true at every minute of our lives. This may, in fact, be a remarkably joyful time in your life. But in the seasons of life, there is a kind of rhythm that carries us from the exhilarating mountaintop to the most desolate valley, the hard battle.
The apostle Paul knew those valleys and battles. He had been imprisoned and persecuted for his faith. He had encountered disdainful resistance from people in various churches. And he was acutely aware of his own shortcomings. His life was no playful carousel.
And knowing that this was true not only for him, but also for the people to whom he was writing—knowing that they were struggling with battles of their own—what does Paul say to them? He says, “So we are always confident” (II Corinthians 5:6). “We are always confident.” And I want to say to him, “Really? Are we really always confident? Do we have no moments of doubt? Are we never consumed by worry? Are we always possessed of an other-worldly peace—always confident?”
Paul can seem maddeningly dismissive of the real and crushing suffering that sometimes plagues us. It’s not because he thinks we don’t suffer, though. He knows we do. The key to what he’s writing is that he is so rooted in a deeper truth. And he believes with all his heart that it’s this deeper truth that changes everything and that gives him confidence. What he sees is that, at the root of all our lives, is Christ. This may, at first glance, not seem to be much consolation when you’re wrestling with demons at 3:00 in the morning. But it is enough, says Paul. A decision is asked of us about where to lay our head. It’s the decision about where we’re to put our trust. We can choose to lie in the thorns of our struggles and suffering. Or we can choose to sit among the roses of Christ. They’re both there in our gardens. The question is, what is it that commands our attention: thorns or roses, struggles or Christ?
For Paul, I think, this is a variation of the old saw that we become what we pay attention to. If I pay attention to ugliness, that’s what will shape me. If I focus on betrayal and stupidity and pain, that is pretty much what I’ll become. It’s those proverbial battles that will define me.
There are days my spirit sinks, discouraged by a personal slight or an internal conflict or a blatant cruelty somewhere in the world. If this hasn’t happened to you, God bless you! But I’m guessing you know what I’m talking about. And what Paul is implicitly asking is: when we slide into gloom or shame, what’s our anchor; where do we get our true bearings?
As is typical of Paul, he returns again and again to Christ as his guide and stay, Christ as his port in the storm. You feel like dirt because your neighbor dissed you? You’ve fallen prey to an imprisoning addiction? You fear the ravages of old age and a grim and relentless dying process? Paul has compelling counsel for it all. “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know Christ no longer in that way” (5:16).
It’s all in our point of view, in other words—thorns or roses, struggles or Christ. And Paul expounds on just who this trustworthy Christ is. We can look at Christ one way, he says—as a human being—or in an entirely different way—from the angle of God. If we look at Christ from a human point of view, we see a person who eats and drinks and walks and talks and is sometimes happy and sometimes sad. Our lens determines what we see.
But Paul says there’s another way we can see this redeeming Christ. If we look at Christ instead with divine eyes, we will see healing and light and hope and blessing. We will see one whose very presence makes for what Paul calls a “new creation” (5:17). We will see one in whom spirit and energy and justice come to life.
I was talking to a wise church person this week, one who has been through a great deal in the last several years. She’s in something of a dry spell, she says, not unlike the vision the prophet Ezekiel has of a valley of dry bones. But she said it’s going to be OK, because she knows those bones will come to life again. Just so we’re clear: those bones are not, at present, alive for her—she is far from a Pollyanna who plasters on a fake smile and says everything is always just great. But even in her desolation, she knows those bones will yet live again. She trusts that. She is, to use Paul’s word, “confident.” Battles, yes, but also grace. And by that grace, the roses will, in time, overshadow the thorns. In Christ, she will be, and in truth already is, a new creation.
The English word “confident” means literally “with faith.” If we look confidently at our lives or at the future, it means we see something beyond the circumstances of the moment. The sorrow or fury or despair we feel will not always be what dominates. If we know ourselves to be in the roses rather than just in the prickly thorns, we trust that, no matter the present circumstances, “all shall be well,” to use Julian of Norwich’s ringing declaration. We will again be, and in truth already are, a new creation.
The opportunities to look confidently at life’s battles are legion, and they can make all the difference between just enduring life and seeing instead its promise and hope and joy. Like the woman who trusts that the valley of dry bones will again come to life, we are invited to put on lenses that confidently see God working in our midst to make a new creation. Maybe it looks like this: As most of you know, Mary and I have a granddaughter, Allie, who lives in Columbus. Allie’s other grandparents live in Columbus, as well, and they take care of Allie every day while her parents are working. So I said to a friend one day, somewhat tentatively and with slight embarrassment, that I was afraid Allie was never going to know Mary and me anywhere near as well as her other grandparents (whom we adore, by the way). And with a confident smile, this grandparent said to me, “That may be true. But you can still be glad Allie has four grandparents who treasure her. And just because you’re not around as often doesn’t mean Allie can’t love you with a huge heart, too. People don’t go around comparing their loves,” said this woman. “In fact,” she added with a wink, “you and Mary can be the rock star grandparents who swoop in for a fun visit every once in a while, and bring her the gift of your own spirit and company. It will be enough, and it will be good.”
What a great reminder: I can look in a mopey way at what I don’t have. Or I can put on the lens of confidence and bask in the radiant love that is given to me to have. What’s the lens? Thorns or roses? Behold, in Christ, there is a new creation.
The second most popular TED Talk ever given is by a psychologist named Amy Cuddy. Cuddy has written a book called Presence. When she talks about presence, Cuddy isn’t talking about it the way we church people often use that word—meaning being wholly focused on someone else and giving them your undivided attention. When Cuddy uses the word presence, she is talking about the attitude and identity—the presence—we bring into a room. She’s talking about the body language we use and the way we hold ourselves in whatever settings we find ourselves. She talks about the decision we can make in any situation to come into it in a “big” way. We literally, physically make ourselves big.
Cuddy says that, in a race, when people cross a finish line first, they instinctively raise their arms over their heads in a sign of triumph. This happens across all cultures and eras. It’s a bodily bigness that expresses confidence.
So Cuddy says let’s reverse the order. If a victory yields arms raised in triumph, maybe the inverse is also true: arms raised in triumph can yield a sense of victory. When people are tense before an important event in their life—picture a job interview, or a potentially difficult meeting at work, or a major speech, or asking someone to marry you—they typically say they’re nervous. Cuddy urges people instead to label the feeling excitement: not nervous, but excited. Then it has a positive, hopeful connotation.
Cuddy observes that people in our culture are making themselves smaller and smaller. We hunch over cell phones and curl in on ourselves. And that very posture reduces our sense of being dynamic and active agents in transforming the world. So, she says: before a significant or challenging event, go into your bedroom or your bathroom, look into the mirror, and raise your arms over your head in a victory stance. And she says just the act of doing that says to your body, ‘I’ve already won! It’s going to be great!’ A coach had his Olympic swimmers do that some years ago. He told them that when they first got up in the morning, they were to walk and present themselves as though they had already won. And this very body posture transformed the way they thought of themselves and it enhanced their performance. Their very posture led them to live out their full potential. Just so you know, I did that this morning! And you can tell, right! I’m confident in the gospel!
And this makes all the difference in our life with God and in our relationships with others. This whole matter of posture and attitude is not, for us Christians, a competitive thing, as though we’re better than everyone else. No, for us it’s a matter of living out fully the gift of Christ’s new creation. We’re to act as though God’s world is already alive. Our biblical passage this morning is embedded in a section in which Paul is urging the Corinthians to reconcile themselves to God and each other. He says, “our aim is to please Christ” (5:9) by acting into the oneness God has given us. The new creation is that we are already one! This is why we’re to act that way. It’s why living confidently as one whom God adores matters. It’s why justice toward immigrant families and their children is paramount. It’s why, in this #MeToo era, treating women with profound respect is crucial. It’s why honoring our fathers, even when they were less than perfect, is imperative. It’s why contributing to this church and its ministries—ushering and donating and setting up for worship and visiting people who are alone—is so vital. We each have been blessed with gifts and strengths. And we are all already one. So let’s act that way: there is a new creation!
When I was in seminary, I had an African-American professor of theology named Leon Watts. One day, Professor Watts was talking about racial justice and how elusive it sometimes seems. And I was curious that he was somewhat critical of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. The aims of that movement were beyond reproach, he said. But he also thought they missed the mark in a crucial way. The theme anthem of that movement was “We shall overcome,” a song that still moves many people my age deeply. And it was that song, from his angle, that wasn’t adequate to the task. In contrast, he pointed to Martin Luther King’s remarkable “I have a dream” speech, in which the culminating words were “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty we are free at last!” Those were words, he said, that captured what that movement was about perfectly. Not “we shall overcome,” but “we are already free.” The crucial difference in tone is that one—“we shall overcome”—thought we needed to do all the work, while the other—“Thank God almighty we are free at last”—declared that God had already set freedom and equality as the way things are, and our job is to live into that reality in such a way that we live according to what already is. If we stand confidently with the conviction that, in God’s sight, all people are already free, it changes the way we see the work that of course still needs to be done. We do the work, not meekly hoping for what might seem an unlikely outcome, but with the conviction instead that it is already done, and we are part of the continued doing. Freedom, justice, and love are built into the very fabric of the universe, and we are here to be midwives of their inevitable birth. May we indeed be confident, for behold, in Christ, there is a new creation!