(part of the “Breathing Out” Lenten Series)

Scripture Text:  2 Corinthians 5: 17-21

17So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; 19that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. 20So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

We’ve read this before, this “new creation” stuff.  We’ve read that God has reconciled us to the Godself through Jesus Christ.  OK, now that we’ve gone over our main theology…The truth is, what does that mean?  After all, we’re only humans.  Right?  We’re sinful and messed up and many of us have no idea what this actually means.  I mean, what does it mean to be human?  We read the Creation stories.  God created us.  Why?  Was it to become something different?  Was it to become better?  Or are we doomed?

I think many of us tend toward Gnosticism.  We imagine the notion of a good God, a God who created us as humans, as sinful, as not “of God”.  We have the notion of a divine spark that might pull us out of our plight of humanity, our sinful state.  But, remember, God created us.  God created us as human.  Do you really think God would create us as bad and then expect us to claw our way out of our created demise?  That’s bizarre.

So, along came Jesus.  So many of us relegate him to a super hero of sorts, a “super human” that is somehow above all this that we have to endure.  Really?  See, we are told that Jesus was born of a human, born as a human.  Otherwise, Jesus never would have been able to reconcile us to God.  Jesus came as one of us, as Emmanuel, the one among us, the one who was one of us, the one who showed us the way to be not just “merely human” but “fully human”.

Jesus was fully human and fully divine.  Call it the sacred “And”, the very reconciliation of God to the Creation that God so dearly loves.  THAT is our understanding of the Cross.  The Cross was not a way “out”.  It certainly wasn’t a punishment for being human.  I don’t even think it necessarily “wipes” our sins out (oh dear, I’m going there!).  For me, the Cross is the ultimate reconciliation, the new Creation.  It is the place where God recreates humanity, recreates the world, finally gives us a notion as to what it means to be “fully human”.  “Fully human” is not “just human” or “merely human”.  “Fully human” is the way that Jesus lived, the Way that Jesus walked.  “Fully human” is what we’re called to become—not “godly”, certainly not Divine”—just what we were created to be all along. 

So, the breathing…Breathe out the notion that you are “merely human” or “only human”.  Oh, my goodness, God created you for so much more.  And breathe in the message of the Cross, that we are reconciled and made new, that God invites us and walks with us to what God intends for us to be. 

Jesus didn’t come to make us Christian; Jesus came to make us fully human. (Hans RMadeleine L’Engle)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli