New Creature in Christ
2nd Corinthians 5:6-17
Happy Father's Day to all those who provide the loving support of others no matter your gender. Fathers can be both a positive image and a negative image for God. In our lives our father may have been a blessings or a curse most likely for all it is somewhere in-between. I was blessed with a good father and have generally positive memories and experiences from my relationship with him. Good or bad our parents leave a lasting mark in the way we respond to the world, the way we function. The same can be said of most of the relationships and interactions we have with others; the closer the relationship the greater the influence. It seems that we are wired to react to the community around us. Our father or mother may have the biggest impact on us. Or a father or mother figure in our lives. Yet the whole community forms and effects us.
The Corinthian’s reading today has Paul explaining his ministry. In Paul’s theology the Body of Christ and our being part of it, suggests that community, family, belonging is critical. Being connected to one another is core. This is a critical foundation Paul’s teaching. We are made new in Christ by being In the Body of Christ. Put simply if we surround ourselves with a loving community we will feel love and cared for and will know belonging. If we surround ourselves with the opposite our souls will hide away in loneliness and suffering. You can decided what might be consider the opposite of a loving community. Also sometimes both are present in the same gathering of people. The spiritually nurturing community is the ideal Paul proclaims. Without community, without belonging spirituality is simply self help.
Yet are there not times when we all just wish to be disconnected. Like the song “I’ve been to the desert on horse with no name. In the desert you can't remember your name 'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain”. Separated and disconnected from life, from community and others will perhaps minimize your suffering. But life will pass you by, lonely, safe, half alive, separated from love and hurt. Alone like a bolder in the forest gathering moss, hidden from world.
I once traveled with a 30 year old man across Western Canada for business. At the time I had two children under the age of 8. When we went out for food he explained that he didn’t eat red meat and that was why he never got a cold or flu. I explained to him that his theory may fail if he lived with kids and was up at 3 in the morning comforting your child after she vomited in your hand. It isn’t hard to avoid the cold if you avoid all contact with others. Likewise, it isn’t hard to avoid emotional suffering if we avoid people, community, and relationships in general. But is that living.
None of us get to this point in our lives without a few triggers built into our psyches. Throughout our lives we each have built up an ego self to operate in this world. A toddler might dance with wild abandonment with real joy but at a some point self awareness moderates the wild expression of joy. What are others thinking? Perhaps a well-meaning adult shuts down the dancing, “child, you are embarrassing the family.” Perhaps the child trips and hurts itself. Either way the dancing stops and worse case the developing ego marks this as a thing to avoid. Like a small subroutine in a complex computer program it can mess up the entire system. It might trigger embarrassment, shyness and reluctance in the 40 year old adult. The embarrassment belonged to the well-meaning adult not the child.
We each have our own burden, our own ego programming, which prevents us from being full alive. In the reading Paul speaks of knowing Christ “in the flesh” in contrast of being in knowing Christ as a spiritual presence. Christ died in the flesh and being part of the living Body of Christ we died with him to new life. The general acceptance is the flesh is the physical body but I think Paul is means more than this. He is not saying we lose the physical bodies or that our physical bodies become something new or different. He speaks of spiritual matters. In the Body of Christ all the old things pass and everything becomes new. We are new creatures. All that ego programming is reset.
One of the burdens and blessings my father instilled in me is a deep sense of responsibility for community around me. Perhaps it was being raised in a family of six children. Perhaps is was the detailed weekly schedule he put on the kitchen chalk board with the chores for each child. Or most likely it was a value I picked up watching his interaction in the world. It has served me well on my journey but it has also been my burden. Walking the camino I learned of the burden. Helping others became costly. On the long pilgrimage eventually your ego skills will fail you. Your ways of functioning in the world will show its’ limits. Often younger physically fit pilgrims will quit earlier than a more chronologically gifted pilgrim. They haven’t yet discovered their limitations. About three weeks I crashed. I was warn out, and tried and had blisters on both feet. Now that ego was defeated the Spirit was able whisper into my soul. “Enough you are not responsible for it all.” Or maybe the whisper was there all along. After that I was more free, my pack felt lighter. My support and care of those around me became more balanced with my own self care. I had to reach the end of my physical and emotional capacity in order to learn this important lesson. But it was my lesson not someone else’s. Others had other lessons to learn. And some never discovered their renewal. On the Camino take a little luggage as possible because you will be carrying all your emotional baggage.
The emotional baggage we all carry is the fracture points in our ego shell. It is the triggers set up from our life’s struggles. It might be the smell of a house fire reminding your soul of a fire in your home as a child. Or the “off hand” words of a friend echoing a childhood trauma. Talk therapy works on the ego triggers and fractures. It “fixes” the ego to function in the culture. But it doesn’t make a new creature. It isn’t transformative. Transformation arrives when we get inside the ego shell and release the child dancing with joy. It is singing to the full moon. It is laughing with abandonment with friends. It is loving someone else or the whole community gathered around you. It is walking this world with an aching physical body but still being fully alive. It is leaving behind all our baggage.
Paul notes that people in the Corinth church have been boasting about this “spiritual” credentials. He wants this readers to know that he has shown his true self to them. It wasn’t a performance. One line might confuse you: “if we are out of our mind it is for God; if we are rational, it is for you.” He is talking about ecstatic speaking. - speaking in tongues - implying there were those in the community proving their spiritual credentials this way. They were boasting. It was ego stuff. He then speaks of dying with Christ so that we “no longer live for themselves.” The ego dies and we become a new creature.
If you have one person singing a song it may be beautiful and moving. If you find yourself in a small choir, or listening to a small choir you might hear individual voices, you might hear your voice contrasted with others around you. At some point with enough voices or the right situation the voices blend. The voices signing become more than a collection of individual voices. We become lost in the music, the melody, the words, time seems to pause. The ego individualism is lost to the experience of the whole.
The gathered people of God, gathered in the name of Christ, is a harmonious choir. We sing the song of our souls, peeling back our individualism and our ego selves until like Paul we present only our true self to the collective body. Together we become the body of the living Christ in the moment.
“After nine days I let the horse run free 'Cause the desert had turned to sea. There were plants and birds and rocks and things. There was sand and hills and rings.” The no name horse, the means of our journey, is set free because now there is an abundance of life. “whoever is in Christ is a new creature: the original things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” I am grateful for all my father taught me. I am grateful for my many lessons of life that built up an ego that functions reasonably well. I am grateful for all I learned being in community in its’ many forms over my life journey. I am grateful for the joy and privilege and burden of being part of the body of Christ. Here in this holy manifestation of the Living Christ you are free to be your true self.
