B, Lent 5 Midweek - 2 Cor 6:10b-c "Poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, yet possessing everything"
Where is your wealth? With God or with the world? What does it mean to be poor? We hear texts such as the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 5:3) What is poor in spirit and why do they receive the kingdom of heaven? When you die will your riches be left behind or will you finally inherit them? Where is your wealth and riches, on earth or in heaven?
Here is another question: Are you content to be nothing? Do you prefer to be seen as one of the haves or as one of the have nots? Are you one who likes to be known? Perhaps you like to make yourself known, blowing your trumpet in an attempt to gain some status in society. But does all our self-centred boasting allow us to possess anything more than nothing?
Tonight is the last of the Lenten series of sermons. In the last five weeks we have examined Christ’s great exchange with us, and the practical implications of this switch-a-roo. We have seen Christ walking to the cross, a walk you and I should have made. He walked alone bearing the sin of the world, even though he was without sin. He received all the terror and horror of God’s wrath when he was nailed to the cross, and left to die alone, so we might become the righteousness of God. We have heard
So as we move from the regular Lenten pattern, to Palm Sunday and into Holy Week, we are well prepared to see and understand more clearly the actions of Jesus Christ on the cross. He has taken our place as the afflicted scapegoat bearing all the injustice and sin of humanity, and wrath from God, on the cross. We have plainly seen the lengths to which God went, to swap our waywardness with Jesus Christ’s willingness. And we are called to trust and cling to the willingness of Jesus actions and presence in this life, so we might be with him forever in the next.
This brings us to the last of the phrases in 2 Corinthians 6. Let’s hear it in context: We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. As God’s fellow workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain. We put no stumbling block in anyone’s path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything. (2 Corinthians 5:20-6:1,3-4,7,10)
We return to the questions on what it is to be poor and what it is to be nothing. Paul proclaims in the first half of the phrase that he and Titus are seen as poor yet making many rich. How do they do that; how can they make anyone rich, men who struggle to survive from day to day? We know they have come to the Corinthians as servants of God, speaking with truthful speech in the power of God. They have come with the weapons of righteousness in the right and left hand.
What are the weapons of righteousness that you brandish in your day to day lives? What were the weapons Paul and Titus wield? What was Jesus’ defence system as he walked to the cross? And what is his arsenal today?
Pride, prestige, power, understanding, good works, feelings, accomplishments – all frequent our hands as the weapons, which—we would like to think—bring us some sort of righteousness. But in fact these are the very things that close us off from God and from radiating the love of Christ to others. These things temp us to ridicule, redefine, and replace the very things Christ has put in place for us to receive him. Pushed aside are his gracious means of salvation in favour of the many riches the world offers as righteousness. These riches make us full, full of ourselves, leaving no room for Jesus or his vicarious death and victorious resurrection in our lives.
However, we all know to be full of yourself, rather than being filled with the grace and truth of God is a deadly temptation. And we all know the weapons of righteousness that Christ offers us, are always on offer, calling us to repentance and giving us eternal life with him.
Jesus is our example and he is the one who now walks with us in this life. He came as one who was the poorest of the poor, but in his denial of divine power and his reverent submission to his Father, he was given the strength to walk to the cross. In fact everything Jesus did he did as an obedient Son, never taking his Father’s name or will in vain. He was taken to the cross, seemingly without integrity, seemingly without status, seemingly without any righteousness, as if he had taken God the Father completely in vain. But in this poor afflicted human state was God the Son who had become sin for us, even though he was without sin. What a wretched broken poor and lowly sight he must have been as he allowed himself to be led to the cross. But it is this act of grace we are called to trust and not receive in vain.
All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. (Isaiah 64:6) Thank God those filthy rags now rest on the cross. Sin will no longer sweep us away in eternal death. The poverty, shame and wretchedness of Jesus’ humiliation and death are now our riches. Our hope is in the weapons of righteousness, given to us by Christ in his word, full of grace and truth. We are provoked by the Holy Spirit to see our sinful nature and repent. The Spirit gives us the power to perceive the righteousness of the cross, and he whispers the sweet words of forgiveness, as he gives us God the Son, who once was poor and afflicted in death but is now risen glorified and all powerful in heaven and on earth.
We are poor in spirit, we know who we are, and yes, it is painful! But in our poverty, in our inability to buy or boast our way into heaven, we have been given the riches of heaven. It has been given to us by Christ in the way he has set out for us in his word. God has worked in the poverty of your parents, or through those struggling in his seemingly clumsy church, and through the poorness of his pastors. Just as God worked through Paul and Titus in the
In worldly measures you might appear as not amounting to much – maybe as having nothing and being nothing. The church might appear as dull and lifeless; a conglomerate of poor pathetic people holding onto nothing. But know that you possess the most profound riches in Christ; only recognised in faith and fully revealed in eternity. God thought of you and me to be more than nothing, even though sin had reduced us to nothing. In fact he thought so highly of you and me, even when we were nothing, that he sent his one and only Son to die for us so we might have the full riches of God’s grace in eternity.
Jesus became poor so that we might be made rich. He was reduced to nothing, even being stripped of his clothes, so that you might possess the assurance of eternity, and one day be robed in the wealth of righteousness, forever face to face with God. Amen.
