A New Person in a New Year
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. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
2 Corinthians 5:20, 21
As far as worship is concerned, the new year begins in a strangely familiar way. Before March 2020 who would have predicted that sitting in front of some sort of screen on a Sunday morning to watch worship was commonplace? Certainly not me. And I can’t say that it is a trend which I welcome. Yet I must remind myself the technology offered by YouTube does allow us to continue looking at Scripture together and that’s a good thing. A better thing will be when we are back together in person at SCBC.
In the sermon for this Sunday we are going to be looking at an intriguing image, that we are ambassadors for Christ. One of the ideas suggested by this image is that as ambassadors we must faithfully present God’s message in our world. And what is that message? God is offering us the opportunity for reconciliation; that happens through Jesus Christ who was made to be sin so that we might become righteous.
Our God, who is utterly and completely holy, must be the one to reach out toward us in order to make reconciliation possible. Reconciliation is an idea that is much in the news these days as Canada talks about the relationship between the national government and Canada’s indigenous people. In that context reconciliation seems to be about a renewal of trust and in some way a righting of past wrongs.
When we consider the reconciliation between us and God, it is easy, I think, to reach the conclusion that God must be the one to offer reconciliation. As hard as we might try, we cannot restore the divine image that was part of our creation. For the divine-human relationship to be restored, we must be remade as righteous people. It is God who does this through offering the perfect sacrifice that is Jesus Christ.
The turn from December to January does not make us new people; but perhaps with the new year on our mind, this is a good time to be reminded that God has made us new through faith in Jesus and this chance for anyone to be new is the message entrusted to us as Christ’s ambassadors.
Happy New Year! Take joy from your newness in Christ; give joy as you represent Christ in our world. I hope you will be watching on Sunday at 9:30 a.m.
The Rev. Dr. William Norman