2 Corinthians 5:16-17

The beauty of stained glass windows depends on where you stand.I love churches with stained glass windows. For one, they are interesting to look at, especially if the artist included some nuggets that aren't easily recognizable. For example, most stained glass windows contains the Greek Alpha and Omega symbols. I usually don't pay attention else until finding those symbols. I find them extremely beautiful to behold.

But there is a place that one can stand that completely renders the beauty of the stained glass normal. If you are standing in this particular location the stained glass will be so underwhelming that you will scarcely even notice that it is there. The location I am referring to is on the outside of the building. For it is the light that shines through the stained glass that reveals the beauty. Without the light shining through, the stained glass is unremarkable.

This slight observation points to a general and obvious truth: Where you stand determines what you see. If you stand on the inside of the building, you see beauty. If you stand outside, you see nothing worth seeing. It all depends on where you stand.

In today's sermon we are looking at a passage (2 Corinthians 5:16-17) in which the apostle Paul alludes to this general truth. He is telling his Corinthian readers about a time when he saw everything from a human point of view. 

Often times we read the bible and assume words like “the flesh” or “the world” are intrinsically bad. We are tempted to do the same with "human point of view. This is because they are almost always referred to as leading to bad things. Therefore we assume that they, themselves, are bad. But this is not the case.

The human point of view is simply that, it is a physical way of looking at something. For those who do not have a spiritual life with God, this is the perspective that they have. They use their senses, take in information, then make judgements based off of the information they have taken in. 

The problem with the human perspective is not that it is bad, it's that it's incomplete. Since it can only see things from one angle, it cannot appropriately advise a person on what they should do with the information they have taken in. Imagine, for example, that a blind man is sitting on a corner and an elephant walks past him. As someone tells him that an elephant is walking past, he reaches out to touch it and grabs the tail. Then he says, “So this is what an elephant is.” On the strength of his perspective he walks off thinking that a elephant is very much like a snake.

That's the problem with the human point of view. It is limited, therefore it is not a good source for making life decisions. Paul understood this very well. He says that at one point he regarded Jesus from a human perspective. This means that at one point in his life he rejected the idea of Jesus being the messiah based off of a purely human point of view. His idea of messiah was probably after the mold of all the other so called Messiah's. Power, prestige, and influence were words that would be used to describe them. Therefore when Jesus shows up, they looked at him like, "Who is this guy homely character anyway." Even his own disciple said, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" The human point of view led them astray.

So Paul tells them about the possibility of a new way of seeing. That way is in Christ. Note, he is not telling people to just try and see the beauty, or newness, in all things. That approach is way the new "spiritual but not religious" group claims. But it's not possible for natural eyes to see on a deeper level. It's like trying to add the characteristic of dryness to a glass of water. It can't be done.

The way to gain the new vision is by being in Christ. It is by changing the ground on which you stand, as it were. For when a person is in Christ, they will see things as Christ sees them. They won't reject those who are, from a human perspective, ugly or weak, sinful or woebegone. Instead they will see these people as being beautiful ones created in God's image. Not worthless, but people of immense worth.

A story of Dorothy Day illustrates this difference in perspective quite well. 

On a cold night in New York, a poor homeless woman came to find shelter for the night at the place run by Day and her co-laborers. The poor woman entered the building, and here is what the doorkeeper recounted. "I looked at her and it seemed to me that she had syphilis — advanced syphilis at that." Then the woman with syphilis said to Dorothy, "Can I have a place to stay?" Dorothy welcomed her warmly and said, "Oh, indeed, you can sleep with me in my bed."The doorkeeper got a little worried about it. So she leaned over to Dorothy, and whispered, “Can’t you see that she has syphilis? If she sleeps in your bed you may get infected, too.” Dorothy responded, “You don’t understand, this is Christ who has come to ask for a place to sleep. He will take care of me.”

Both saw the same woman, but one of them saw her from a purely human perspective; the other saw her through the eyes of God. 

Where you stand determines what you see. If you are in Christ, you will see all things as they are.

The message is not, try to see everything as new. The message is to shift the ground of your being, and relocate yourself so that you are in Christ.