Beside Ourselves for God
Copyright
© 2012 Robert J. Elder, Pastor
2 Corinthians 5:6-21
Eleventh Sunday of
Ordinary Time: June 17, 2012
The sermon has
two parts, matching two themes in this reading from 2nd Corinthians. The first
part has to do with craziness, the second, with reconciliation. Our job is to
find out how these two go together.
Part 1:
Craziness
Paul said, “For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God.” Now what do you
suppose is going on there in that sentence? I know that phrase, to be beside
oneself, and I think you do too. We use it in common, everyday story-telling
with each other. “My daughter didn’t come in ‘till 2:30 in the morning. I was beside myself with worry!” The
dictionary says that to be “beside oneself” is to be “in a state of extreme
excitement.” I think I would add more than that. It can mean exceptionally
worried, or exceptionally happy, or exceptionally frantic. In any case, the
sense of it is to be at the top of our emotional spectrum. One notch higher and
we would be in orbit. It is to be in a superlative state of our emotional
lives, whether high or low.
Another way of looking at it is to say that it means to be a little crazy,
a little unlike our normal selves, to be “beside” the self that we usually are.
One other place where this same Greek word is used in the New Testament is in
Mark 3, where the family of Jesus, worried about his newly launched ministry, “went
out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’”[1]
Clearly, this is serious business.
Do Christians appear to the world to be a little crazy? Paul was
enthusiastic for his faith. I can imagine that sometimes when he preached he
got carried away, that he pounded the pulpit a bit, if he had a pulpit. And in
Greek society, this would have appeared a bit out-of-control, like almost any
professional basketball player when the referee calls a foul on him when he was
twenty feet from the ball, minding his own business. They get a little beside
themselves, don’t they? They act a little out of the normal, may storm around
for a while, may have a technical foul called on them, may even be thrown out
of the game. But if they were that way every day, all the time, we would say
they were just plain crazy, not a little “beside themselves.”
So Paul said, “if we are beside ourselves, it is for God.”
We might say, “I am so enthusiastic for the work of the Lord, so worked up
over the need to get the message about Jesus out to the world, sometimes to the
outside world, it appears I am beside myself. But it is all for God.” Paul knew
that it sometimes might appear just a step beyond sanity. He went on to say, “…if
we are in our right mind, it is for you.”
Why did Paul get so worked up over his message? He said, “For the love of
Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all.” That’s
it, in a nutshell. Paul saw a whole world filled with people for whom Christ
had died, yet who did not know him or the good news that this represented. Sure
he was a little beside himself, he had a large job getting that saving word out
to an entire world!
Which brings
us to…
Part 2:
Reconciliation
What was Jesus up to that got Paul so excited? Paul said, “In Christ, God
was reconciling the world to himself ... and entrusting the message of
reconciliation to us.”
God had a plan, it was brought into existence through the ministry,
crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, and then God entrusted “the message of
reconciliation to us.” Wow! The great big God who created the world and all
that is in it has entrusted the most important message the world will ever hear
to us: weak, fallible, ambiguous creatures.
The late John Baillie, theologian and leader of the World Council of
Churches, once quoted this portion of our passage, “In Christ, God was
reconciling the world to himself,” and then went on to ask, “Would the people
who see you daily and with whom you have the most to do, be able to guess, even
if you had not told them, that you believed this?”
The dictionary definition of “reconciliation” is “the bringing together of
two opposing parties or points of view.” The truth of the matter, as Paul
addresses it, is that since creation, God has remained the same. It is human
beings who have taken up the opposing point of view. So it is we who must be
brought back.[2] This effort
has been entrusted to Christian believers. Do we live so that those who see us
know we believe that “in Christ, God is reconciling the world to himself”?
The additional truth about God’s desire for reconciliation with us is
inescapably true. We cannot be reconciled to God unless we are reconciled and
at peace with those around us. We cannot paint the face of Jesus for an evil
world, in either metaphor or in concrete deeds, unless we first have this
spirit within us. That, more than any other reason, is why the Christian
church, since its very foundation, has sent folks into mission beyond the
comfort of the world they know. By our actions, we become living symbols of God’s
reconciliation.
Part 3:
Mission
I think I misled you about the number of parts to this sermon. Perhaps I
was a little beside myself. It turns out there is a third part. It has to do
with missionary efforts in which Christine and I have been involved in the
past, but not only with that. It also has to do with the whole Christian missionary
enterprise, in which we all participate, whether financially or through prayer,
or by actual travel to places to carry out mission.
I once read an account about a woman who, several years ago, came to see
the pastor of a large and influential congregation in New York City, to talk
with him about a rally which her group was sponsoring in regard to a particular
social justice issue. I don’t recall every detail of the story, but I remember
that the conversation went something like this:
The woman wanted the pastor to be at the rally to lend his influence to her
cause by his presence. He looked over his calendar and realized that he had a
conflict, and so, as politely as possible, he declined. Not to be deterred, the
woman accosted him with the sort of guilt-inducing conversation that people
think should work especially well on pastors, of all people. She said, “How can
you say you are a faithful pastor when you will not set some time aside to come
and march with our group for a cause which you yourself have agreed is just?”
The pastor thought this over and, perhaps appearing beside himself for a
moment, said to her, “Ma’am, have you made any efforts toward starting a
hospital in Nigeria?”
Somewhat put-off by the unexpected, subject-changing question, she
stammered, “Well, no, but...”
He went on, “And have you taken part or helped organize volunteers for the
ready-to-read program in our near-by low-income elementary school?”
“Again, no, but...”
“And how about our denomination’s extensive efforts to eliminate hunger in
parts of Asia, have you been taking part in that effort?”
“No, no I haven’t, but that is beside the point!...”
“Ma’am,” the pastor said, “that is precisely
the point. You did not invent good causes. We both know no one can be present
to support every good cause on earth. For my part, I can only do what I can do.
I must choose. The rest I leave to God. No one of us, nor any single church,
will ever solve all the problems of humanity. That is a job for God’s own
timing according to God’s own plan. The way this will be done is quite beyond
our imagining. But long before you were born, people of the Church of Jesus
Christ were hard at work eliminating poverty, fighting disease, battling
illiteracy, crusading against injustice. And the Church of Jesus Christ will
continue in this way long after both of us are gone. So, no, I cannot come to
your rally, but I wish you well, and I will pray for you, and I trust that God
will bless it if it is meant to prosper by God’s hand.”
As Christine and I have contributed our own small part in mission efforts
in Mexico and in Kenya over the years, we clearly realized that our efforts
would not eliminate all the problems in those places. So the effort could
appear, to cynical eyes, to be doomed from the start. What is the point? There
will still be plenty of poverty, malnutrition, poor health and bad housing even
after short-term missionary efforts are over.
But of course, the purpose of any mission is not just housing, or
healthcare, or providing food, and never was. Otherwise, people would be
correct in thinking we are a bit “beside ourselves” for going anywhere to do
our little bit. The point moves beyond utilitarian do-goodism to the good word
from God through Christ: As Paul declared, God reconciled himself to us through
Christ, and has entrusted to us that message of reconciliation. We carry the
word where we go and where we build that God loves people, and will stop at
nothing to get that word communicated, even to the point of sending Jesus to
die for us.
So, even as we prayed over our growing Churches in Partnership garden last
Sunday, or as we celebrate the small efforts we can make to be of service to
others here in Vancouver, or in places we may never see, we recall, as Paul
said, that we are still ambassadors, allowing God to work God’s own message
through us. I remember vividly a mission in which I was involved several years
ago in Mexico, when a couple of men stopped their truck outside our worksite
and spoke to me in 3/4 Spanish, 1/4 English to ask what we were doing. I told
them, in the best Spanglish that I could muster, that we were building a house.
One of them looked at me, looked at our crew of unskilled youth and adult
volunteers, our complete lack of power tools. It didn’t add up in his mind, you
could tell. He probably thought, borrowing Paul’s term, that we must be “beside
ourselves” to think we could accomplish anything useful with our pitiful crew. “¿Por
qué? (Why?)” he asked. I said, simply, “Para el amor de
Dios (for the love
of God).” Then he nodded his head up and down. The reconciling word was
something he understood, and they went on their way.
Beside ourselves for God. It’s a good place to be.
Copyright ©
2012 Robert J. Elder
