Word to the Wise
Saturday, June 13, 2009 - Saturday in the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time
[2 Corinthians 5:14-21 and Matthew 5:33-37]So whoever is in Christ is a new creation; the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come. And all this is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and given to us the ministry of reconciliation, namely God wsa reconciling the world to himself in Christ , not counting their respasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ.......
If someone asked you, "Are you a new creation in Christ?" or "Are you an ambassador for Christ?", I suspect your (and my) reaction would, at least momentarily and probably longer, be one of stunned or surprised silence! We might say, "Ummmm, never thought about it before!" or "Where's that coming from?" or "I have no idea"....etc.. Yet, by virtue of our baptism we are indeed "a new creation in Christ" and are "ambassadors for Christ." Long theological books are written about the quotation from the first scripture today. I can only make a couple of suggestions. To become someone "new" means that a new future awaits, different from the older one. If we take our faith seriously, it should color our choices and our future in a faith-filled way. The result is that we become a kind of ambassador - perhaps not quite as dramatically as St. Paul did - but nonetheless representatives and promoters of the "new creation" that we have become and share with all other believers. It's both a personal and public thing. I found the statement so compelling I put it on one of the "souvenir" ordination cards I published at the time of my ordination to the priesthood. To think of one's life in such powerfully theological terms may be a bit frightening, but we do carry about a powerful reality in our "earthen vessels" and we are not meant to keep a tight lid on it! AMEN
config
view
logs
3840.0 KB
71 ms
4
