14 March, The Apostles: Last week, I wrote about how Jesus is seeking to encounter us every day of our lives. This week, I’m going to talk more about what an encounter with Jesus looks like. I’ll ask Saint Paul to set the stage:“Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)Every time Christ encounters us, he gives us something we need to become a new creation. And what exactly does that mean? Saint Paul continues:“And all this is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and given us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us.” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19)
So, being a new creation means taking on the task of delivering Jesus’s message of reconciling love to others. At first, this may not seem like such a great job. It’s always wonderful to receive a message of reconciling love, but giving a message of reconciling love is hard work! How can we be expected to forgive someone who has hurt us, especially when we seem to get no reward for being good? This is how the elder brother of the Prodigal Son feels as he pleads with his father: “Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends. But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.” (Luke 15:29-30)
I can sympathize with this elder brother, and I’m sure many of you can, too. How can this be the new life we are called to live? How can delivering this message of reconciling love bring us new life? The answer to this question lies in the father’s response: “My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.” (Luke 15:31-32)
Jesus is asking us to recognize that we are already with God. We can find great peace in this knowledge. Those who do not know God or turn away from him in sin suffer from the absence of this peace, though they may try to hide it from themselves and others. And let us remember that recovering from the damage done by sin can be painful, even after we receive reconciliation. When we reflect on these facts, we are able both to rest in God’s peace and to share in his joy and compassion for every repentant sinner.
And what if we cannot find this peace or discover that we are unable to share in God’s joy and compassion? When this happens to me, I always find that there is some sin in myself that I have not turned away from. Often the sin is pride, thinking that my way is better than God’s. To see that God’s way is better, I have to take a risk and see where his path leads me. In the end, his wisdom always proves itself to be greater than mine. Each experience like this is an encounter with Jesus, and the more of them I have, the more I feel like I am living as a new creation.
Richard C.Davis
14 March, The Apostles
