Lent

March 24, 2022

Scripture Reading:

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

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 know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 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 he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Reconciliation always requires change whether we are reconciling ourselves to God or one another. We reconcile to God when we commit to coming in line with God’s loving ways of being where God accepts us as we are and as we grow into being all that we can be. Reconciliation with one another involves every day coming into sync with people as we traverse the routines of our lives making the effort to bring our lives into alignment with others. Reconciliation also must occur to correct the fault lines, we may have inherited, but remain a danger to justice for all people. The lack of reconciliation among people is at the heart of most of our problems in this world today and is often the result of being out of sync with God’s justice as we withdraw from being reconciled to God in search of the gods of the world.

The peculiar thing about reconciliation is the issues needing to be reconciled are not the heart of the matter they are merely outcomes. We will never solve those negative outcomes until we address the fundamental problem of failing to love like God at some time in some place recently or historically and change our hearts as well as our behavior.

Prayer: Create in us clean hearts and right spirits as we work for reconciliation. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.