Scripture Reading 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 (NRSVUE)
From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we no longer know him in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ: be reconciled to God. For our sake God made the one who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Meditation Being Human Toolbox 3: Wisdom!
That was then; this is now. This is how our passage begins. “From now on…” In other words, something happened, and it changed everything. There was a before, and there was an after.
Our lives as human beings are filled with befores and afters. Before and after we learned to drive. Before and after we met the person we decided was “the one.” Before and after the diagnosis. Sometimes, the befores were better; sometimes the afters were better! How many of these befores and afters truly marked our souls? How many of them were painful? Or joyful? How many of them resulted in a kind of wisdom for which, now, we are grateful?
Both joy and suffering can be our teachers, though I think we tend to assume difficulties will impart more wisdom than our successes. Our parents told us that, that the tough parts of life would give us character. My mother liked to quote Nietzsche, “That which doesn’t kill me makes me strong.” Pain and sorrow can give us wisdom. They can give us a new view on life. Marshall McLuhan said, “I don’t know who discovered water, but I know it wasn’t a fish.” Rabbi Steve Leder explained it this way:
Because a fish is born in water, lives in water, dies in water… ironically, the fish is the idiot that doesn't know it's in water…Look, we are like that fish and…when does a fish discover water? When it's jerked out of it, wriggling at the end of a hook, gasping for breath. That's when a fish discovers water, and it is only pain and disruption that can do that for us…Disruption is the only thing that teaches us anything. It can provide us with some of the deepest wisdom of our lives. [1]
We can confidently say this about Jesus Christ. He was probably the greatest disruptor of history. “From now on,” our passage begins. Whatever your understanding of who Jesus was or is, whatever place he has in your faith or in your life, the coming of Jesus into this world was so earth-shattering, for two millennia we have marked our days by it. This is what Paul is talking about in his letter to the ever-chaotic church in Corinth, still fighting after all these years. He is trying to explain to that congregation that, before, we had our own world view, based on the things our parents taught us, or how much schooling we had, or where we live, or whether we were brought up in a violent household. Call all of that, our “human” point of view.
But now things have changed. It’s not just that we believe in Christ, or trust in Christ, or are aware of Christ: we are in Christ. And once we are in Christ, everything changes. Before and after. We are a new creation, and we are handed new glasses, new lenses with which to look at the world. Call it the deepest kind of wisdom, because it is holy. And it all revolves around what, at first, was a terrible, heinous loss.
There was before—a heady time of the reign of God being at hand, and healing, and teaching, and feeding the hungry, and great hopes of Jesus the Messiah. But that was then. Then, Jesus died, in a terrible, painful, shameful way, labeled a traitor, laughed at in his suffering, and buried in a borrowed tomb. On that fateful Friday, this—the suffering, the death, the shame—was now.
But, it turns out, that was also before! Before some women turned up at the tomb to find it empty. Before Mary Magdalene lingered in the garden and saw a gardener she didn’t recognize. Before Jesus showed his wounds to his friends and told them he wanted something to eat.
The great before and after encompassed the resurrection. And the before was changed by it—was blessed by it—and those new glasses it gave the disciples and, ultimately, the world, enabled us all to see that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus were all one thing, one some scholars have actually called “the Jesus event.” And that event revealed to us a love like no other. The before, as the calendar told us, was before Jesus was known to us; the after was the invitation to be in Christ.
What does it mean to be in Christ? One thing it means is to have that new view. To see the world through the loving eyes of God. We can see Jesus in every face. We can see enemies as the broken people they are. We can see ourselves as the broken people we are. And we can choose to live out the love of Christ every day, by our actions, by our prayer, and by our commitment to Jesus’ great project, the project of reconciliation, forgiveness, all encompassed by love, justice, and peace.
To be in Christ means access to the deep wisdom love gives us. It means we are willing to go the distance for this great commitment, to take risks for it—not to win the love of God, because we already have that, we have been bathed in it, and it is ever with us. We are already a new creation. To be in Christ means leaning into that newness.
And, to be clear, to be in Christ, makes us even more profoundly human, because it gives us greater access to our understanding that God not only made us in love; God also made us in God’s image.
From now on… before and after. From now on, we see through the lens of being in Christ, the beautiful, the most precious, most human “after” of our lives.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1] Rabbi Steve Leder, in “The Hardest Part Week 5, February 26, 2025, in Everything Happens, presented and produced by Kate Bowler, podcast, 10:50.