Preached on 18 June 2006, the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost (Year B), at Zion Lutheran Church, Waynesboro, VA
We have just heard these words of Paul, from his second letter to the church at Corinth: “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.”
What does this mean? We know there will be a new creation: a new heaven and a new earth are promised in the Revelation to John. We await this new creation at the end of time, the consummation of history.
But this text does not refer to a future event, but the present: “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.” Today there is a new creation.
It also seems to be conditional: “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.”
How is someone in Christ? Through baptism. “If anyone is in Christ,” if anyone is baptized, then “there is a new creation.” Baptism must somehow bring about a new creation. What is this creation, and how is it new?
The new creation, like the old creation, is entirely the work of God. The earth did not decide to be created. While we might sometimes take credit for being baptized or having a child baptized, the baptism of infants clearly reminds us that the real work of baptism is the work of God.
The new creation, like the old creation, begins with the Spirit of God moving over the face of the waters (Genesis 1:2). The Holy Spirit is given to us in the waters of baptism.
The new creation, like the old creation, begins with the Word of God. God spoke, and it was. We are baptized, as Jesus commanded, with the Word of God: “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
But the new creation begins with the violent end of the old creation. In baptism, the old is put to death. “The Old Adam with all sins and evil desires is drowned” (Luther’s Small Catechism). All things of the flesh in us are killed, slain by water and the Word.
How does a new creation come out of death? Because “all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death” (Romans 6:3). And being baptized into his death also means that all of us were baptized into his life, his resurrection: “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:5). The new creation is being born again, being born from above. The new creation is new life in Christ.
The new creation is in fact the Gospel. And this means that baptism is not just something that happened to you years ago. Most of us do not remember being baptized. Of course, we are reminded of our baptisms every time we witness a new baptism. But baptism is not simply entrance into the Christian church. It is not simply the beginning of the Christian life. As Luther reminds us, baptism is the Christian life.
The effect of baptism, the fruit of baptism, God’s work in baptism, is made real to us in the waters of baptism. The old Adam is drowned. And yet he is there, day after day. Baptism makes us “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11). And yet every day we sin, every day we are dead to God in thought, word, and deed. Did our baptism fail? By no means! God’s work in baptism, “the slaying of the old Adam and the resurrection of the new creature, both continue in us our whole life long” (Luther’s Large Catechism). Daily we receive the forgiveness of sin, daily the new creature comes forth in us.
“Thus a Christian life is nothing else than a daily baptism, begun once and continuing ever after” (Luther’s Large Catechism).
What does this mean? It means that every day we ought to repent of our sins, recognizing that they come from the flesh, from the old Adam. It means that every day we ought to recognize God’s work of forgiveness in us, drowning the old Adam. It means that every day we ought to give thanks that our cares and sufferings of this world have already been defeated. It means that every day we ought to recognize God’s new creation in us, a new person united with Christ in the resurrection. “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.”
But how is this new creation in us any more than hope in our future resurrection? What replaces the dead old Adam?
Baptism fundamentally changes and continues to change our lives. Having died, we “live no longer for ourselves, but for him who died and was raised for us.” The new creature lives not for himself, for the old Adam, but for Christ.
What does it mean to live for Christ? Does it mean giving up your job to become a televangelist? I don’t want to rule out that possibility for you, but I will say: probably not. I will even go so far as to say that living for Christ is not primarily about obeying Jesus’ commands. I think that living for Christ is most fundamentally a new perspective, new eyes to see the world, a new way of looking at people. Now I know that sounds unimpressive, but I think it has great implications. Let me explain.
“If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation” means not only that the one baptized in Christ has been newly created, but that there is a complete new creation. Not only are we newly created, but we can now see the new creation in others.
“From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view,” that is, “according to the flesh.” In the same way that we no longer regard Christ “from a human point of view, according to the flesh,” but as the resurrected, glorified Christ, we see everyone as resurrected, as newly created.
Our eyes of faith do not simply turn in on ourselves, seeing our own resurrection in Christ. They look out at the world, and see everything in light of Christ’s death and resurrection. As Paul wrote just before the passage we heard today, “We look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18). Baptism allows us to see what really matters, what endures, what is eternal. This doesn’t mean that our eyes of faith see others as ghosts or angels, but as the only resurrected body we know, Christ. On account of our baptism, we now see everyone in Christ. As Paul put it, now “we walk by faith, not by sight.”
What does this mean? What does it matter?
First of all, this new perspective gives us the freedom to serve others. The eyes of the old Adam are turned in on himself. He sees the world through his own needs, his own desires. He is enslaved to himself. Through the death of the old Adam, we are given eyes of faith to see the world clearly.
The neighbor is now viewed as Christ, and the new person in us can live for Christ, do all in service of Christ.
This sheds new light on a well-known passage from the Gospel: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Matthew 25:35). This is not just symbolic, some extra incentive Jesus gives us to do good works. It is really true: in the new creation, the neighbor lives in Christ.
This allows us to take seriously the needs and the very lives of others. We don’t have to worry about whether someone deserves our help or not, whether he is taking advantage of us. Yes, the power of the Old Adam, the desires of the flesh are still present in them, as in us. But in faith, Christians know that the flesh is really dead. Our baptism kills the Old Adam, our flesh, and also lets us see that all flesh has been put to death. The words God spoke to Noah before the flood have added meaning after the resurrection: “I have determined to make an end of all flesh” (Genesis 6:13). The reality of the new creation frees us from the concerns of the flesh, which is dead.
Let’s not forget the new creation: it is not the suffering Christ, Jesus from a human point of view, that we see in our neighbors, but the resurrected Christ. We know his victory over death; we know the powerlessness of death. This lets us look suffering and death right in the eye. Whether the suffering is ours, or a parent’s, or a spouse’s, or a child’s, or a friend’s, or a stranger’s: it is suffering taken up into Christ’s death, and made powerless in the resurrection. Only the eyes of faith let us see this.
This new perspective also means that we don’t simply have hope in resurrection; we don’t simply hope for the resurrection of those we see. In faith we see the resurrection already, the new creation that has been made real in the resurrection of Christ.
This means that we don’t remember the resurrection only when someone dies. Paul has told us that “all have died.” Not simply the obvious ‘all will die,’ or the equally true ‘all are dying.’ Christ has died for all, and therefore, all have already died in him.
And so we see the resurrection, the new creation, in everyone else.
And this really means everyone else. We are not to divide the world into saved and unsaved, Christian and not Christian, baptized and unbaptized. We know that there is no life outside of Christ, and that Christ has died for all and was raised for all. Our faith trusts the promise of God; our baptism allows us to see the present reality of the resurrection in all: “there is a new creation.”
Let our baptism work in us daily. Let our eyes of faith allow us to see the new creation, present here and now. Let us proclaim with Paul: “Everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Jonathan Hall
Scripture quotations from the NRSV; quotations of Luther’s Catechisms from The Book of Concord, edited by Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000)
Comments welcome; e-mail: jonhall@virginia.edu
Posted 28 August 2006
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