CONTEXT - Paul provides a learning moment for his recipients about two very important words in the Christian primer-reconciliation and mission. This passage is about being reconciled and being reconcilers. This may provide a very useful opportunity during the Lenten season to review with your listeners the balance and interconnections between soteriology and missiology.

RITE OF PASSAGE? - For Paul and early Christians, Christ’s death was THE transformative event for all of life. Nothing was the same after that. In the AC-After Christ-timeline, one’s perspective on life simply changes; in some cases it reverses and moves in a totally new direction. Paul says that Christ’s death and resurrection changes the way people should live: no longer do we live for ourselves but for the one who died and was raised for them (5:15). This AC event will impact all of creation; it will change the way we relate to others, literally, kata sarka, "according to the flesh." Believers must look beyond kata sarka, to the inner person and not take their cues from the outer person, the heart, not the face.

BASIL THE GREAT - We find three creations mentioned in the Scripture; the first, the education from nonexistence into existence; the second, the change from worse to better; and the third, the resurrection of the dead . . . now humanity is created a second time through baptism, ‘for if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature.’ [1]

If you were appointed an ambassador for your country, where would you want to be sent? ___Malta? ___Belarus? ___Cincinnati? ___Anywhere with 81 degrees out?

What does reconciliation mean to you? What has God reconciled in your life?

It would be both fun and helpful to begin Paul’s famous words from somewhere deep in the Hawaiian Islands (Wycliffe’s Pidgin Translation):

. . . whoeva stay tight wit Christ, dey one new guy. Da old tings no stay no moa! Look! Da new tings wen come. All dat stuff come from God. He wen bring us back da same side wit him, cuz a wat Christ wen do. An he tell us fo work so da odda peopo can come back togedda wit him too

. . . we da talka guys fo Christ. We tell all da peopo dat god stay begging um fo come back. Cuz we Christ guys, we stay beg you guys, ‘Eh, come back da same side with God.’

Lent offers a great opportunity to stand back and to think about what God has done for us through baptism. It’s sort of looking at a large map of the United States instead of a city map. This passage during Lent can provide a larger view of our "saved" life.

Follow the general contours on the map that Paul sketches in 2 Corinthians 5-the what of reconciliation, the why of reconciliation, and the what now of reconciliation.

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[1] Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture VII (InterVarsity, 1999), page 249.