Yejide Peters Pietersen and Bill Goettler discuss reconciliation, spiritual role-models, and what it means to “become the righteousness of God” with reference to 2 Corinthians 5:16-21. The text is appointed for the 4th Sunday in Lent, in Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.
New Creation in Christ (Lent 4)
Voiceover Voice:
Sometimes faith is about disrupting the current order and to upset the tables as they stand.
Helena Martin:
Welcome back to Chapter, Verse, and Season: a lectionary podcast from Yale Bible Study. I’m your host, Helena Martin. Each week here, you listen in on the types of conversations we get to hear in the halls of Yale Divinity School while two of our faculty talk about a biblical text.
This episode, we have Yejide Peters Pietersen, Associate Dean and Director of Formation at Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, and Bill Goettler, Associate Dean for Ministerial and Social Leadership and Lecturer in Parish Leadership and Church Administration.
They’re discussing 2 Corinthians 5:16-21, which is appointed for the Fourth Sunday in Lent in Year C. The text is read for you by student Aidan Stoddart.
Aidan Stoddart:
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.
Bill Goettler:
So, we are ambassadors of Christ, who has entrusted the message of reconciliation to us. These are difficult times in which to trust in reconciliation. We are such a fundamentally broken society right now, and I hear that promise. I hear that encouragement to understand ourselves, to occupy that role, to be empowered to occupy that role. And I wonder if it is also engaging society as we know it today?
Yejide Peters Pietersen:
I agree with you, Bill. I think that people are… we are more hesitant than ever to discuss reconciliation in real terms. And in my own personal experience, I’m thinking about: How does one reconcile to someone who does not seek forgiveness or who initiates reconciliation?
And I think there’s two–I guess, many answers–but one answer is, one can be reconciled to God and at peace with the person who’s done wrong without having a true reconciliation, because that person isn’t willing. And I think about the police officers who murdered my cousins, and I am reconciled to them, inasmuch as I’m no longer feeling hatred in my heart toward them, or holding something against them, but there’s been no admission of guilt. And so, the true reconciliation can’t happen in this life. I take hope in this. And I’m wondering, where do you see this conversation going and how do we deal with that and grapple with that in real terms?
Bill Goettler:
Well, what does it mean if anyone is able to be a new creation? Anyone, Paul says. There’s the requirement of forgiveness of others, even if we’re not yet in a place where we desire that new relationship. It is just asking for such a fundamental transformation in the way that we live in human relationship, and in the way we understand ourselves before God, what’s required of us.
Yejide Peters Pietersen:
Part of it is, you know, if we’re in Christ. So, maybe we’re in church, or we’re in ministry, but are we in Christ? Are we really dwelling in that and the promise not that we’re going to make the new creation, but somehow that being in Christ, being in this with Christ, will begin to transform us?
And one of the things I’m thinking about is the people I’ve met in my life, who I believe were really dwelling in Christ. Some of them, you know, just little old ladies at churches where I served. Older men, you know. Folks–who were just so-called “ordinary Christians,” but the way that they live their life, they were at peace with many thing–so much to me were overwhelming. And to me, that reconciliation was a universal acceptance of what is, and not fighting things, but also very clear about what they felt their mission and goal was. So it wasn’t a passive, like, “Oh, whatever happens,” but more of a sense of, “I am aware of what’s here. I accept it and I feel charged to do certain things.” And so, there isn’t this spirit of hostility and anger, even when there might be strong disagreement and passionate justice seeking. Does that make sense?
Bill Goettler:
I think it does. And to add to that, the sense that it’s God’s work that’s operating here, that we are in the midst of God’s activity of this reconciliation.
Yejide Peters Pietersen:
Yeah. I think that that’s… the key bit here is, the one reconciling us to God is the one bearing the wound. It’s not just like… reconciliation isn’t to me, an “Everything’s okay, and it’s all patched up!” I think about Desmond Tutu, whose life looms large for the church that I’m a part of and for the world. His mission and ministry wasn’t an acceptance of apartheid and it wasn’t an encouragement of passivity, but a clarity that in God all things were being reconciled, so we could have confidence that we could work for things in this life—and even if we didn’t see the fulfillment of those things, that our work mattered.
And I think that’s something that’s an important word for a world in which we are not only not reconciled, but sometimes we are actively cultivating a spirit of malaise, of discomforted disease. I would say this would be sort of the liberal Protestant trap: “I’m so at dis-ease that I’m going to watch these news programs and then just feel dissatisfied with X, Y, or Z.”
And I wonder about how we move away from that into a place of activity, while still being reconciled, maybe because we’re reconciled. Does that make sense?
Bill Goettler:
It does. To come from another perspective, sometimes faith is about disrupting the current order.
Yejide Peters Pietersen:
Absolutely!
Bill Goettler:
–and to upset the tables as they stand, to stand against has become the acceptable norm. And in those times, I think again, to think of God at the center of that activity, that’s a challenge because we have our own egos, we have our own desires and our own priorities… and all the while to be thinking, “All right, if we were to trust in reconciliation through these times, if we were to trust that God is about a new thing, perhaps our egos could be in check. Perhaps we could be those agents of reconciliation.”
Yejide Peters Pietersen:
I hear what you’re saying, and I think it’s about being reconciled to God, and that in itself makes us the ambassadors of the reconciliation. I think we’re always reconciled to something: resigned to, reconciled to, accepting of. But I think what my question for us is, if we’re not reconciled to God, to what are we reconciled? And I feel like we are reconciled many times to capitalism, to agreement, to vainglory, the great sin of ministers and priests. We don’t get to have money and riches—well, we get to have influence and glory. And when we’re reconciled to those things, we simply cannot be reconciled to Jesus Christ, and we cannot be ambassadors of anything but ourselves.
And that’s where I think we fall apart. And I think that’s part of why people show a sort of contempt toward the church. I’ve noticed that when people talk about Pope Francis, they don’t even agree with lots of things he says, but they don’t have contempt for him. They genuinely believe this man believes the things he believes and that he’s trying his best to follow Jesus.
I don’t know that they feel the same way about me and probably for good reason. I think part of the question I have for myself is in what ways, to whom am I reconciled? Not perfectly, but to who am I trying to be reconciled? And then what am I doing in general that shows the world that who I really am, who I’m really an ambassador of: Jesus? Myself?
Bill Goettler:
And Paul says, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to God.
Yejide Peters Pietersen:
Yes.
Bill Goettler:
So if that stay at the forefront of that determination to be reconciled, how it is that We are made one with, in line with, following.
Yejide Peters Pietersen:
I’m thinking about how, and again coming back to Bishop Archbishop Tutu: the problem in South Africa wasn’t that there weren’t faithful Christians as a nation. They’re largely Christian. Really large margins of Christians. And some Muslims and some Jewish people and some Hindus and stuff, but lots of Christians. But they were reconciled to their church, and to peaceability among everyone, and just getting along to get along. And, I think that reconciling to God, that excitement of what Jesus has done… Because, why did he die? You know? I mean, there are lots of people who want to think he died because he was just really good. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. Yeah. But when you’re just really good and you’re in a corner, no one bothers you. He’s really good and out there pointing out the places that needed to be reconciled to God, and that ended up making him an enemy.
Bill Goettler:
Yeah, that’s trouble.
Yejide Peters Pietersen:
And that’s trouble. And I think that restiveness that we cultivate (at least in my tradition), to the extent that it muffles and distorts the reality of that reconciliation, is both anathema to God and also the direct opposite of true reconciliation. When we’re brave enough and bold enough to use our worship as a place to begin that reconciliation, to be aware of it, new and exciting things happen. Wonderful things happen.
Hey, we’re reconciled to each other, my, my reform brother! Across centuries of dissent, right? I guess my question for you would be, become the righteousness of God? What a mantle!
Bill Goettler:
Yeah, yeah. That’s powerful. What an ending to that passage.
Yejide Peters Pietersen:
It’s a little heavy!
Bill Goettler:
To live into, to act in that way as the righteousness of God, to even dare to claim that!
Yejide Peters Pietersen:
Yes.
Bill Goettler:
And then to invite others to recognize that. And obviously to see it in those around us, to identify and make that acclamation.
Yejide Peters Pietersen:
I mean, I guess I wonder in my mind, what would it really mean for us to be ones who were that? And, as I said, I’ve met people who I believe really embodied that. And my question for myself, is, “So what are you doing to get on that road, so that can show up in your life?”
And, you know, I’m wondering here, in life as a Christian person, how do you try to cultivate that? I’m just curious. Cause I’m working on it.
Bill Goettler:
I’m much more interested in seeing it in other people than in claiming it for myself. I think I doubt those who would claim that kind of righteousness of God on their own behalf.
Yejide Peters Pietersen:
Oh yeah. Yeah, I’m saying, but how do–(I guess this is of course the Catholic in me)–how do we imitate the things that those people have done? Like, what are they doing that I could get in on, you know? Just curious. Cause I’m like, “Hey!”
Bill Goettler:
I like it. And to start to name and identify those kinds of ways of life that might lead us in that direction.
Helena Martin:
Thanks for listening to Chapter, Verse, and Season!
Visit YaleBibleStudy.org to find more Bible study resources, read the transcript from this episode, and find all of our past episodes. And follow us on Twitter @BibleYale.
Chapter, Verse, and Season is produced by Joel Baden, Kelly Morrissey, and me, Helena Martin. Aidan Stoddart is our editorial and production assistant. Our theme music is by Calvin Linderman. Thanks, as always, to the Center for Continuing Education at Yale Divinity School. And thank you, Professors Goettler and Pietersen, for your insights this week.
We’ll be back with another conversation from Chapter, Verse, and Season.
Book of the Bible:
2 Corinthians
Subjects:
Corinthians
Guests
Text
New Revised Standard Version Bible
Copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Credits
Host and Executive Producer: Helena Martin
Production Manager: Kelly Morrissey
Creator and Managing Editor: Joel Baden
Assistant Producer: Aidan Stoddart
Music: Calvin Linderman
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Chapter, Verse, and Season gives listeners the opportunity to overhear the kinds of conversations that take place in the halls of Yale Divinity School. Each week, professors from different theological disciplines chat about biblical texts from the Revised Common Lectionary. They bring their own interests to the table and hopefully spark new insights into the scripture appointed for each Sunday.