March 25, 2001
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.
If you go to any bookstore today, one of the largest sections of books is “Self-Help.” Religion is usually a small section and Christianity is even smaller with mostly books on how religion can improve your life. Americans seem to be infatuated with the need to be improved.
After decades of being told that we need to accept ourselves—“I’m OK and You’re OK,” affirm ourselves—“I am lovable and capable,” love ourselves just the way we are, there still seems to be in us a discontent with the way we are. We want to be better.
Some years ago, a minister, Norman Vincent Peale wrote a book to help people to change, to improve themselves. He suggested getting up early in the morning and rocking in a rocking chair for at least 15 minutes and thinking about good thoughts about the day ahead.
Then he suggested that you make a list each day of the good things you are going to do that day, not the bad things. Put this list in your right pocket.
Next, set aside some time each day to write one letter to someone who has touched your life in a positive way, thanking them for their influence upon you.
Then volunteer two hours per week, read at least one positive book, have three conversations with people who are positive, and on and on.
By the end of the book, you would be so depressed about all that you had to do in order to be a better person that you decided to stay just the way you are!
Change comes hard for us. We are creatures of habit, conditioned, by a lifetime, to react to the world in certain ways. You see, people almost never, ever change. That’s the reason why the writer of Ecclesiastes declares, there’s nothing really new under the sun; when it comes to us, it’s just the same old thing over and over again.
And yet, it is difficult for us to extinguish the thought that maybe God created us to be more than we already are. We are always looking for a fresh start. How is it possible for people like us to change?
Well, for people like us, it’s impossible. To be the people we want to be, the people we ought to be, we just can’t will ourselves to be better. We can’t just take a deep breath, think positively, follow the three-step technique and pull ourselves up by our
psychological bootstraps. Minor improvements maybe a possibility, like changing our hairstyle. But real, fundamental life change, I don’t think so.
That is why it is so amazing that Paul makes this sweeping declaration to the church in Corinth that, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation!”
Breathing Fresh Air
Remember when you were first created and born into this world? Maybe not, but you know that when the baby is born, the doctor spanks the baby to cause the child to cry. They do this to clear the lungs for the baby to breathe fresh air for the first time. The baby becomes a new creation.
But somehow as we got older and more suspecting, we started breathing old air, stale and toxic air back into our lungs. We want to improve ourselves, but the old air that is full of impurities is keeping you from being a new creation. Most of us like to hold a little baby and try to remember how it was when we were once so young. We wish that we might have another fresh start in life.
A guy name, Bill Stone made diving history when he invented a new type of breathing equipment in 1987. Had he been using normal scuba gear, he would have been forced to surface after 30 minutes. But Stone, an engineer, was wearing a homemade rebreather.
So down in the water he stayed, for one hour, two hours, 10 hours, 20 hours. Finally when he resurfaced, he had been underwater for 24 hours—the longest anyone has ever survived underwater with a self-contained breathing device.
A rebreather works by saving old air—instead of sending it all out into the water as bubbles. The rebreather scrubs the old stale air of carbon dioxide and adds just enough oxygen as is necessary for healthy breathing.
Paul was saying to the Corinthians that in Christ, we’ve taken a new set of lungs. Jesus is our rebreather who purifies our old selves to become new creations. He is the fresh air that we have been gasping for. We try to improve ourselves but failed. We need Christ to resuscitate us with fresh air or we will not be able to change.
Normally, you and I as human beings wouldn’t be able to survive underwater or even on land without air. When Uncle Victor, two other guys, and I play tennis, we have to breathe fresh air to remain on the court. We even joke about no mouth to mouth if any of us stop breathing!
Paul is saying to us that in Christ, we have a new set of lungs—a new Spirit-breathing device allowing us to live as new creations. We are at ease in the kingdom of God, while also reconciling others to God. “Everything old has passed away and everything has become new.”
With our newly improved lungs in Christ that enables us to be reconciled with God, we are also given the ministry of reconciliation in the world. As God in Christ forgave and forgot our trespasses so that we are in God’s kingdom, we are now commissioned as ambassadors to forgive and forget the trespasses done to us with others so that reconciliation can happen.
We long to better ourselves. We dream of how it was when we were babies to get another chance for a fresh start. Jesus Christ gives us a fresh start to improve ourselves!
Reconciliation
Like all babies, they don’t stay a little baby for long. They learn to walk and talk. They don’t stay fresh in their pants for long and they spit up.
As new creations in Christ, we don’t just breathe fresh air and stay innocent to enjoy our new starts in life. As Spirit-breathing believers, we are challenged to do the work of reconciliation.
The original Greek word for “reconciliation” is a fascinating word: katalasso. Kata means “together,” and lasso means “wrapped” or “tied”—not unlike the lasso that cowboys use to rope wild horses. Paul tells us that God was active in Christ, tying the world to himself, wrapping it close to himself in the bond of forgiveness and love. At the same time, God was entrusting the message of tying, wrapping, and lassoing to us, asking us to go out into the world as ambassadors for Christ.
After we have been reconciled to God, we are to perform the ministry of reconciliation. Let yourself get tied to God through his Son Jesus Christ, and then go out into the world to do the work of wrapping people together and lassoing them for God.
If you are still looking for ways to better and improve yourself, be reconciled to God and perform the ministry of reconciliation in the world.
There’s a true story of a Palestinian priest named Elias Chacour who was conducting a Palm Sunday service at his church in Israel. He saw how so many people were at odds with each other. In fact, he realized that there was, in reality, no peace among his people.
At the end of the service, he made a startling decision. He walked down the center aisle and at the back of the church locked the only two doors to the church and took the key. He told the people both that he loved them and that he was saddened to find them so filled with hatred and bitterness for one another. Then, in the midst of stunned silence, he announced that only one person could work the miracle of reconciliation in their village: Jesus Christ.
“So on Christ’s behalf, I say this to you,” said Elias Chacour: “The doors of the church are locked. Either you kill each other right here in your hatred, and then I will celebrate your funerals…or you use this opportunity to be reconciled together before I open the doors of the church. If that reconciliation happens, Christ will truly become your Lord.”
Ten minutes passed, and no one said a word. The people sat in silence, locked inside their church.
Finally, one man stood up. It was Abu Muhib, a villager serving as an Israeli policeman, who was in his uniform. He stretched out his arms and said, “I ask forgiveness of everybody here, and I forgive everybody. And I ask God to forgive me for my sins.” He and Chacour then embraced, with tears streaming down Abu Muhib’s cheeks. Within minutes, everyone in the church was crying, laughing, embracing and sharing Christ’s love and peace.
Elias Chacour then announced that “this is our resurrection! We are a community that has risen from the dead, and we have new life. I propose that we don’t wait until Easter to celebrate resurrection. I will unlock the doors, and then let us go home to home all over the village and sing the resurrection hymn to everyone!”
In Christ, this congregation in Israel became a new creation. They breathed fresh new air. When they went out going home to home telling others of the resurrection, they not only received a fresh start for themselves, they were offering fresh starts for everyone in the village. The toxic air of conflict and hatred was replaced with the fresh air of Jesus Christ. After choking for so long, Elias Chacour and his congregation were given another fresh start to improve the world.
New Creation
God loves to keep doing a new thing according to Isaiah (43:19). We think of creation when God first brought light to the dark, chaotic waters. And throughout the Bible and even until the last book of the Bible, it says, “See, I am making all things new.”
Ezekiel says there will come a day when God will breathe upon us again, even as God creatively breathed upon the chaos creating the world, God will “put a new spirit within them.” (Ezekiel 11:19), a new life-giving breath. Elsewhere Ezekiel declares, “A new heart I will give you,” (36:26). New breath, new heart, do you believe it?
Paul says, if you are “in Christ,” you are being made into a “new creation.” We can’t be changed, fundamentally changed, by self-help and self-improvement. If we are to be different, our help must come from the outside, from some creative power beyond that of our own devising. Paul says that power, that transforming rebreathing power is Jesus.
Implanted deep within us is this one who knows us, who wills the best for us, who wants us to become all that God intends for us to be. We were created, says Genesis, in the image of God. Although we may have warped that image by breathing all kinds of toxic air and distorted God’s intentions for us, God keeps creating his creations. God keeps resuscitating us with fresh air so that we may have another fresh start!
God Isn’t Done
Forget trying to improve yourself when God isn’t done with you yet. Each day, God is drawing us nearer, refashioning us, restoring us. It’s not a matter of self-help or self- improvement. It’s a matter of God being faithful to God’s promise for creation. God keeps working, forming, breathing into us, re-creating us. To be “in Christ” is to have this “rebreather” device known as Christ who leads us toward that newness that God intends.
The promise of the gospel is: you can change because Christ is in you.
Some of you may be sitting here thinking that real and fundamental change that would redirect your life in a new direction is impossible. You think that it’s your nature to doubt God’s word. You think that you need to be tough and assertive so that no one will take advantage of you. You think that it’s not in your nature to admit that you’re wrong and to ask for forgiveness. You think that this neat idea of being a “new creation” always happens to someone else and not me. So you still go to the bookstore and run your fingers through all of the self-help books just hoping that some new technique will make you better. You think that you might find that new device to give you a fresh start. If you think that way, you will fail to find your answer.
The good news is that just as God recreated humanity in Jesus, when we are “in Christ,” God is breathing into us the fresh and life-giving Spirit to make us new creations. God keeps doing a new thing. God is retrofitting us from top to bottom. Each day we are being renewed in Christ. God said, “See _______, See_______, See_______, See________, I am making all things new!”
“So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”
Let us pray.
Lord, we want to be more than we are. We long for abundant life in its fullness. Yet we are enslaved to old habits, past problems, and tired-old ways. Lord, we want to change. We need help, help from the outside that gets inside. We don’t want just to be improved, we want to be new. Come to us, Lord; dwell in us, take over our thoughts, wills, and actions. Change, transform us more into your intentions for us; keeping us more into your image. In Christ, we receive our fresh start. Amen.