2 Corinthians 5:16-21

Lent 4 - Year C 

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

Grumbling turns one into a growling animal, not distinctly human. It takes a method of reconciliation to see this otherwise and thus to respond without a mirroring growl. Paul is positing such a reconciliation comes from a specific indwelling of G*D into Jesus.

So long as an uniqueness of Jesus is required, there won’t be any evidence of other similar results through other means. When beginning to learn mathematics, students are asked to show their process under a rubric of one process leads to one result. It is like learning to color within the lines. So it is with these sorts of doctrinaire muttering. Once whispered, it yells at us about perspective and boundary.

While there are some who find the demarcation of one moment to be critical to understanding everything else, we more usually understand there is a progression of development by stages. A particular stage can be summarized, but not contained, in a key person in a timeline. You may want to play around with a timeline of mathematics. 

It is difficult to come up with a timeline of prophets. There are several out there, but they are all within a single tradition [if you know of an interfaith timeline of prophets, please reply]. Anyone want to try to develop a reconciled presentation of the prophetic tradition? After all, reconciliation is ours as well. Is this to be limited to “reconciling” folks to G*D only through Christ, or anyone to G*D through any avenue?

Things get real convoluted and contradictory when we get into parsing what might be behind how moments of inspiration come along. It seems that Paul might have been saying more than he knew when he gets into G*D making Jesus “to be sin”. This seems to raise more questions than it responds to. You might want to delete verse 21 from this text.