Ambassadors and poop
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Have you ever built up an image of a place? In your mind, it’s not the kind of place you want to go. You picture it as unattractive, maybe dangerous. Who in their right mind would want to go there? You feel sorry for those with the misfortune of being there. But then, eventually – possibly, reluctantly – you go. And the reality turns out to be far different to what you imaged.  It’s nice. The people are real friendly, interesting. The atmosphere surprisingly OK.
Just before Sally and I moved here, I went to Beirut.  We have friends who moved there with their young family: she to teach, he as the Anglican Vicar of Beirut. Every time I thought of Beirut I thought of Terry Waite and the other hostages caught up in the Lebanese civil war of the mid-1980s. But then I went to visit Dave. Beirut turned out to be beautiful.
Maybe you once had – or still have - pre-conceived ideas of what you imagine church and Christianity to be like. Deluded, dull, ‘do gooders’? 
If so, you’re in good company. Apostle Paul had to admit, he too had pre-judged Christ and His followers. In verse16:
“From now on we regard no-one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.”
Paul had wrongly thought them a misguided movement of deluded, uneducated people. He wrongly thought God was distant, harsh, judgmental and that, because everyone was doomed, our only hope was to prove ourselves worthy of God’s relent. If you’ve ever tried that, you know just how exhausting and futile it is.
How do you convince Perfection you’re good enough to be included?  And what is “good enough”? Pray? But for how long? 20 seconds (long enough to say the Lord’s Prayer); 10 minutes; and hour? Trapped in a never-ending cycle of “never good enough”, sometimes you’re left feeling, when will this ever end?
Paul says, it doesn’t have to be this way. Jesus had a radically different take on life and faith. Sets us free, find life, be more fully human
Let’s be honest, we’ve all messed up.
The first day we moved into our house, whilst we were moving in, our dogs were exploring the garden. Maybe unsettled by the move, they took up the challenge to poop on every blade of grass.  Early evening, I want out to de-poop. So many bags, I threw them into a pile, creating my own mountain Cairn. As I worked down the garden, and tired, I threw a particularly full bag. Was it that I was tired? Was it that I misjudged the distance or was my throw just ‘off’? Or was it the sudden gust of wind? Whatever. The bag of poop flew up in the air, over the fence, and landed in the branches. Hanging there. On my neighbours’ side. 
How do you recover from knocking on the door of your new neighbour and saying, “Hi, I’m Danny, I’ve just moved in next door and thrown a full bag of dog poop into your garden”? So I did what any one else would have done: I got the step ladders and a rake, and tried to get my poop back. Standing on the very top of the ladder, grabbing hold of branches, and getting scratched in the process… To my horror, the poop bag dropped to the ground. And then the neighbours light went on. I leapt off the ladder. To this day I have no idea how our neighbour thought a bag of dog poop turned up in her garden.
Now, instead of it being a bag of dog poop, picture it as whatever you’d rather others didn’t know about: those unkind words, that selfish act, those jealous thoughts, that mean moment… Even when we’re trying to live simply, we can end up spreading our metaphorical poop. By the way. the Bible calls it sin. But ‘poop’ works too. And no matter how hard we try to make amends for our own ‘poop’, we only seem to make it worse. Apostle Paul says, that’s us. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Jesus offers a radically different way of living. Then it becomes, not how good are we, but how good is Christ.
Today, we had a baptism. Jacqui didn’t get baptised because she had finally reached Level 42 in spirituality or Christian maturity. She was baptised, not because of how good she is, but because of how good Christ is. That’s why she was baptised INTO CHRIST.
Back to Beirut.
I was there during Remembrance. As Vicar of Beirut and Chaplain to the British Embassy, it was Dave’s job to lead the Remembrance service at the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery. This was to be attended by embassy staff, military top brass, and a lot of Ambassadors, each with their own security teams. The American Secret Service, with their suits, shades and padded shoulder bags, were not to secret.
And all this was taking place in the Hezbollah-controlled district.  The cemetery was overlooked on three sides by apartment buildings.     It was hugely intimidating. No-one closed their eyes during prayers. The Lebanese Army had check points, Hezbollah controlled the area. And then there were the British and American security teams. And I got to be there, to get into the event, the “other world”, because I was in Dave’s 4x4 – I was with the Vicar if Beirut.  On my own, no chance. But, in Dave’s car with his ‘access all areas’ pass.
Paul says, in verse 17: 
“Therefore, if anyone is IN Christ, they are a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come.” 
It’s not just that we have to feel new or ‘perfect’. It’s that Christ has heralded a new world order, a new way of being, a new way to live. No longer bound by our own feelings of inadequacy, failure to live up to our own expectations/ standards (like struggling under the weight of the Old Testament Law) or what to do with our ‘poop’, instead, in Christ, we live free in God’s love and total acceptance.        To finally live as God intended for us. Paul says in v.18:
“All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting our sins (our bags of poop) against us.”
BTW, it’s not that God needs to be reconciled to us. He loves us and doesn’t count our ‘poop’/ sin against us. It’s we who need to be reconciled to God. Rather than us climbing the tree, scratched and bleeding, it is Christ who once and for all.
Verse 19-20:
“And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s Ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us.”
Ambassadors don’t speak for themselves. When an Ambassador speaks, it’s as if the Head of State is speaking. Ambassadors don’t act on their own authority, But they do speak with authority. When you become a Christ-follower, you become an Ambassador.

DannyBrierley@ChesterRoadBaptist.org.uk 
07840 046020