II Corinthians 5:16-21

William F. Schnell

March 14, 2009

Avatar has grossed over 2.5 billion dollars at the box office, making it the highest grossing movie, domestically and internationally, in the history of film.  People have paid two and a half billion dollars in tickets to watch a human live in an artificial body.  Before this movie came out, we used to call that Major League Baseball.  On Rev. Horak’s recommendation, Nancy and I contributed our fair share at the box office to see this movie at the theatre—for the first time in several years (we don’t get out much).  I am happy to say that we enjoyed the show.

 

The first time I saw Rev. Horak after the movie I said to him, “I see you.”  That was a line in the movie that jumped out at me, and in retrospect I know why.  It is the title of the soundtrack for the movie.  Part of the lyrics could have been a prayer to Jesus:  “Your love shines the way into paradise/So I offer my life as a sacrifice/And live through your love/And live through your life/I see you/I see you.”  Not everyone saw Jesus for who he was according to our call to worship.  He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him (John 1:10)—did not recognize him as God Incarnate in human form.

 

Avatar is from a Sanskrit word that means “The incarnation of a Hindu deity, especially Vishnu, in human or animal form” (American Heritage Dictionary).  Both Hinduism and Christianity are therefore incarnational faith traditions.  Both understand the deity to reside in human form.  The Sanskrit word, “Atman,” literally means breath and refers to the divine spirit within a person.  The New Testament Greek word, “pneuma” also literally means breath (and wind) and refers to the divine spirit within a person.  St. Paul asks: Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? (I Corinthians 6:19). 

 

One last Sanskrit term is “Namaste” which means, “I see you,” or, “that which is divine in me recognizes that which is divine in you.”  It is a common greeting in India, and a sign of deep respect.  It is often said with hands in a prayerful position accompanied by a bow.  Namaste recognizes the sacredness of all and the unity of all.  It says, “I honor the place in you where the spirit lives,” and “I greet that place where you and I are one.”  The original title for this message was “Recognition and Reconciliation.”  Reconciliation comes from the recognition that we are all spiritual children of one heavenly Father. 

 

Without giving the movie away I will tell you that a male and female among the main characters have their share of contentious moments.  But every time they become reconciled they say to each other, “I see you.”  When we see each other from a worldly perspective, we see an adversary or competitor or enemy.  But when we see each other from a spiritual perspective, we recognize our sacred unity.  So the new title of our message for this morning is “I see you.”  I see you as God sees you.  Maybe by taking the initiative we can encourage others to “catch the vision” and see us differently.  If so, peace can enmity.

 

Nancy loves to watch those home improvement networks, and one of them, the Style Network, features a show called “Clean House.”  The host, Niecy Nash, creates an intervention for people who hoard things until every square inch of their living space is filled with junk.  She gets them to let go of things they don’t need, which is most of it, holds a garage sale and uses the proceeds to redecorate their cleared and clean living spaces. 

 

The homeowners are blindfolded and led into each reclaimed room, whereupon Niecy Nash proclaims: “Take off your blindfolds and open your eyes.”  Niecy not only wants her recovering hoarders to open their eyes to their new living spaces, she wants them to open their eyes to the issues that have needlessly cluttered their lives and to open their eyes to a new and better way of living (Niecy is a very active member of a church and it comes across in the ways she ministers to people in humorous but spiritually sensitive ways. 

 

In our text for today we can hear Paul shouting “Take off your blindfolds and open your eyes”--open your eyes to a new way of seeing others.  He begins, So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view.  Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer (Verse 16).  Before his conversion to Christianity, Paul regarded Jesus from a worldly point of view.  He regarded Jesus as a threat to his beloved Jewish faith tradition because of Jesus’ unorthodox biblical interpretations.  He regarded Jesus’ followers the same way and persecuted them in the way only a zealous religious extremist can. 

 

But then Paul had a dramatic conversion experience on the road to Damascus that was both eye-opening and eye-closing.  His worldly eyes were struck blind, but his spiritual eyes were opened to see Jesus as God incarnate in human form.  Jesus said to Paul, “Take off your blindfold and open your eyes!”  Paul said to Jesus, “I see you.”  This visionary experience transformed Paul from a persecutor of the church to an apostle of the church.  So complete was this transformation that Paul likened it to being reborn.  Indeed, prior to his conversion his name had been Saul.  Afterward he changed his name to Paul.

 

In our text he testifies, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!  All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation (Verses 17-18).  Recognition leads to reconciliation.  Paul was reconciled with Jesus by seeing him differently.  Paul was also reconciled with Jesus’ followers by seeing them differently.  Indeed, Paul became reconciled with all people by seeing them not through the eyes of worldly distinctions as he had before but through the eyes of spiritual kinship. 

 

Elsewhere he wrote, Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all (Colossians 3:11).  This was a radical thought even for the early church, which struggled mightily over it in the first council called to resolve the issue of non-Jews wanting to follow Jesus.  Paul no longer recognized such worldly distinctions.  Christ could be found in uncircumcised Greeks as well as circumcised Jews, in slaves as well as free, in women as well as men, and in Scythians as well as those of his own race. 

 

Paul was reconciled to them all saying, To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews.  …To those not having the law I became like one not having the law… so as to win those not having the law.  To the weak I became weak, to win the weak.  I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some (I Corinthians 9:20-22).  Paul saw past every worldly distinction to see the essential spiritual kinship he shared with all of God’s children who had been created in his image.

 

Paul continues in our text,God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ (not just Jews, but all God’s children everywhere in the world), not counting men’s sins against them (If Jesus had counted Paul’s sins against him, Paul would never have become an ambassador for Jesus).  And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.  We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as through God were making his appeal through us.  We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God (Verses 19-20).

 

How can we be reconciled to God if we are not reconciled with his other children?  Do we feel like chumming around with people who are mistreating our children?  What makes us think that God is going to be pleased with us if, while we are paying all sorts of religious lip service to him, we are mistreating his other children?  There are many, many ways we mistreat God’s children because we cannot look beyond worldly distinctions to see his Holy Spirit within them.  

 

One obvious distinction is race.  There was a long time in our nation’s history when a person could be lynched because of race.  In our modern day ethnicity continues to be the basis for ethnic cleansing, genocide and the denial of civil rights.  There are places in our world where the wrong sexual orientation can get you tortured to death and the wrong religion can get you martyred.  There are places in our world where you do not want to be among the feminine gender (think Taliban-controlled Afghanistan).

 

Indeed, the cover of the last issue of The Economist reads: “Gendercide: What happened to 100 million baby girls?”  China alone stands to have as many unmarried young men (“bare branches” they are called) as the entire population of young men in America.  Woe to the vulnerable unborn.  Woe to the vulnerable young caught up in the human trafficking trade.  Woe to the vulnerable elderly whose life savings are lost to the predatory practices of unscrupulous schemers. 

 

In very recent times we have heard people in America, who claim to be true Americans, clamor for the vote to be taken away from other Americans based upon class distinctions.  We have heard Christians say that other Christians were not really Christians because they voted for a Democrat or a Republican.  This is what we do to those who are not like us.  We dehumanize them with labels and names to justify the inhumane ways we intend to treat them. 

 

These are just some of the ways we regard one another from a worldly point of view.  But you will note from a careful reading of the Gospels that Jesus never regarded anyone from a worldly point of view.  He spoke to a Samaritan woman and drank from her cup.  Wrong race, wrong religion and wrong gender according to the mores of his day.  He said, “I see you,” and he made a believer out of her.  To a hated tax collector named Matthew he said, “I see you,” and he made a disciple out of him.  From rich young rulers to poor widows in their distress, Jesus said, “I see you.”  From the demon possessed to socially outcast lepers Jesus said, “I see you.”

 

Jesus saw through all worldly distinctions to the spirit of God in each person, acknowledging their sacred unity, even with those who regarded Jesus as the enemy of God, as did Paul.  And he calls us to do likewise.  He calls us to love our enemies and to pray for them.  He calls us to see them differently and to draw out that spirit within them which alone can bring reconciliation and peace where before there was enmity and strife.  He calls us to transform every Saul into a Paul by his grace.

 

Who regards you as the enemy?  Maybe you have wronged them and need to make things right.  But maybe you have done nothing to deserve this, but they regard you as the enemy anyway.  There is a reason for this.  There is a fear or a hurt in them that probably goes way back to childhood—maybe a parent who did not love them and who hurt them instead, or maybe some other traumatic event.  In some seemingly inconsequential way you may have triggered that hurt and they now associate it with you.   

 

If you knew what they had suffered you might see them differently.  Instead of returning evil with evil and insult with insult, you might be more compassionate and return such nasty things with a blessing.  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow observed, “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”  And so it was that Christ returned Saul’s persecution with mercy and forgiveness.  That was how Saul the enemy was born again as an eternally grateful friend of the Lord.  As some astute observer once put it, “the best way to destroy and enemy is to make him a friend.”

 

So our assignment for this week is to see people differently.  People we might otherwise ignore, like the checkout person at Wal-Mart, we will look in the eye as if to say, “I see you.”  People we might otherwise avoid, like our enemies, we will greet as if to say, “I see you.”  People we might otherwise hurt, like those who have hurt us, we will regard with compassion as if to say, “I see you.”  May recognition of our spiritual kinship bring reconciliation with one another and with the God and Father of us all.

 

In other words, “Take off your blindfolds and open your eyes,” as we rise a sing a hymn of praise to our God.