New Creation by The Rev. Dr. Dennis Winkleblack
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Sermon for June 14, 2015
The Rev. Dr. Dennis Winkleblack
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartfor CT
2 Corinthians 5:6-10, (11-13), 14-17and Mark 4:26-34
We are star dust. You’ve heard that, right? Every element in our bodies had their origin in stars exploding billions of years ago. And the hydrogen in us – water contains hydrogen, you know, and we’re 70% water – goes back to within a few seconds of the Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago! We are very old, people.
And yet, we’re also very young. We have 50 to 75 trillion cells in our bodies. And the average age of them is only between 7 and 10 years. Even our skeletons are new every 10 years.
What’s more, consider this: since everything is comprised of essentially recycled star dust, it’s therefore not inconceivable that a sub-atomic particle of you was in Jesus’ body. Or Attila the Hun’s. Or both.
We are indeed fearfully and wonderfully and mysteriously made. To be very sure, this thing called life is some kind of marvelous! I don’t know about you, but when I reflect on it, I’m not sure whether to fall to my knees in awe or jump up and down in excitement.
Which brings me to the apostle Paul, the author of our New Testament reading. Now, obviously, St. Paul wrote long before particle physics was discovered. And, yet, he seems to have intuited a crucial part. Remember what we just heard? “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; everything has become new.”
And, how could Paul possibly have known this? From personal experience. You’ll likely recall that the book of Acts tells how God changed Paul from head to toe. Changed him from a Christ hater, a Christian persecutor and some say murderer to the single most important Christian figure in history. Don’t forget: Paul is the one, more than anyone else, whose preaching of God’s new creation made the Jesus movement go viral!
No doubt, some here this morning have known a radical makeover like Paul’s. You are able to sing the hymn “Amazing Grace” with special verve, especially the line, “I once was lost, but now I’m found.” You know this new creation just like Paul.
All of us, however, can surely find a voice with the contemporary hymn chorus, “I’m not what I want to be; I’m not what I’m gonna be; But thank God I’m not what I was.” This is God’s new creation at work also.
And then, not least, we can observe God’s new creation in the movements of God’s makeover in the world around us, so very noticeable just within our lifetimes. Indeed, in whatever ways we as a society are more loving, more just, better stewards of God’s creation, more inclusive of differences, this, too, bears witness to God’s new creation.
Bottom line: The good news, the very good news is that God is active, moving, recycling, refashioning, repurposing, re-creating creation and us to more completely reflect God’s glory and design and purpose. Moreover, when we as God’s self-identified people – God’s church folk – get involved, things move along faster, and suffering is reduced.
However, with us or without us, God is being God. Even as we sit here today, stars are dying which means their atoms and protons are reformulating and shooting into space. God is not taking the morning off! Stuff is happening and God is being God, creating new from old.
It’s what God does. Makes new from old.
And yet still, amidst all the wonder and awe, as the old spiritual declares, “His eye is on the sparrow and I know he’s watching me.” At the least, heavenly fireworks included, God is personal, very personal. As personal as Jesus. This is our faith. This is our experience.
Now, let’s take Paul’s new creation and our personal stories of God to the next level. We can also say God’s eye is on the sparrow and we know God is watching us – as church. We’re here today not just as a collection of individuals, but as church. In fact, we’re living out Paul’s dream as church.
And, we, too, as a church, have a unique identity, a DNA, if you will. We, too, as a church have a future. And, a God who’s watching us and leading us.
But leading us to where? That, of course, is our anxiety as Trinity Church. Either on a front burner or a back burner, there is increasingly a sense of crisis that pervades our assemblies. Thank God, our outstanding leaders are working and praying night and day to enable Trinity Church to re-imagine, really re-create ourselves given our current state of affairs. And, there’s much to be encouraged about.
Accordingly, I think it would be faithful to our scriptures, to stop here and just remind us all of Paul’s promise of God’s new creation and let well enough alone. Just sit down. Many would welcome that, I’m sure.
But, before I do I want to share something interesting and I think helpful from the Gospel lesson. I don’t usually mix the lessons, but I think this begs to be mixed.
First of all, we need to be reminded that Jesus’ parables of the growing seed and the mustard seed are not just about us. They’re about God and about the kingdom, the commonwealth, the realm, the way of life that God is guiding us and all of creation toward even now.
In the second of the two parables told back to back, Jesus notes how something tiny like a mustard seed becomes a very large shrub. So large in fact that the birds of the air can rest in it.
At first, this parable seems to be mostly an echo of the first parable: You can count on God not just growing God’s kingdom like seeds grow into wheat, but you should also know that God often takes inauspicious beginnings and grows them into astonishing outcomes.
But there’s something else in this parable which caught my eye and I think is worthy of yours. And that is the point Jesus seems to be making that birds of the air can now take shelter in this now large bush. It’s a reminder from Jesus that even among plants and animals it’s about symbiosis, relationships, things working together for the good of all creation, the glory of God. For humans, this suggests community with all living things. And for those of us who self-identify as God’s people, it’s grounded in Church.
All of which underscores the reality of science and scripture and faith that we don’t exist just for ourselves any more than bushes or birds exist for themselves. God has need of us!
Curtis Almquist is a monk in the monastery of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge, Mass. Father Don, Peter Vreeland and maybe others of you are affiliated with St. John’s. He began a March sermon by asking, “What’s your identity? What are you to be about?”
Reading that, it occurred to me, aren’t these our questions not only as individuals but also as church? What’s our identity as Trinity Church? What are we to be about?
Almquist goes on, “Why don’t you be a lover: to presume that why God has extended your life into this day, is for the cause of love. To receive God’s love in every way into your being and then to reflect that love outward.”
Almquist then quotes Hildegard of Bingen, the medieval abbess, who “said we should be mirrors. We should be mirrors, mirroring God’s light and God’s love with great generosity everywhere we go. Love is our essence.”
Accordingly, even as bushes grow to fulfill their parts in creation’s ongoing story, so our highest, unique purpose is fulfilled towards the same end by – loving. Or as Hildegard put it so memorably, and I think it is no less true for a church than individuals, to mirror God’s light and God’s love with great generosity.
I think this is an excellent image for a statement of purpose for a church trying to live out its mission in light of God’s mission: to mirror God’s light and love with great generosity.
To be very sure, in the context of our shared life together as Trinity Church, facing an uncertain future, this question of how to love generously must be obviously and intentionally and consciously at the center of every aspect of our life together and the tough decisions we will have to make.
Lest we become mere problem solvers. Lest we lose ourselves in agendas which pit one faction against another. Lest we clench our hands so tightly in fear that we cannot open our hands in faith. Lest we try so hard to save our life as we know it that we forget why our life is worth saving in the first place.
To whom is God calling us to mirror God’s love in this neighborhood? And, since most of us come from neighborhoods all around Hartford, to whom is God calling us to mirror God’s love there, where we live, where we work, where we play? To whom is God calling us to love and love generously?
For this is what we are to be about. And in our answer will be our identity.
To say the least, living boldly and generously into God’s future and ours will demand of us nothing less than a new creation, personally and as church.
But, thank God, making new from old is what God does.