Therefore, if any [are] in Christ, [they are] new creation[s]; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. (v. 17)
John Bishop tells of a London slum child whose major refuge was his Roman Catholic day school. In the course of things, his school was visited by a physician who did medical examinations for the students. As the skinny little fellow left the doctor’s room, one of the nuns asked, "Well, Jimmy, what did the doctor say to you?"
Jimmy answered, "He took one look at me and said, ‘What a miserable specimen you are!’ " Now the boy paused for a moment and his face brightened. "But he didn’t know that I’d had my first Communion, did he, Sister?"
Perhaps that story will strike you as little more than a quaint bit of sentiment. I report it, however, as a profound declaration of hope for us human creatures. We need to know what we’re worth. And sometimes, Lord help us, we need simply to know that we’re worth something!
We live in a world where, as you know, it’s difficult to realize our worth. Daily headlines tell us that life is cheap. If thousands die through violence and millions through neglect and malnutrition, life must indeed put a cheap price on us. And it’s such a big world; how can we seem to have any worth when we are one in four billion? If one of us stops breathing, how much difference does it make in the totality of things? Then, too, there’s the distortion in our human values: if scoundrels grow rich peddling dope while nurses are paid modestly for saving lives, then what is the value of a human being?
Mind you, we are often told some measures of our worth, but too often those measures have a way of leaving us diminished. Someone, in the common language of measurement, says of a person, "He must be worth at least a million." But if the person described is astute, he has to think to himself, "Is that all I’m worth? Suppose I lose that million, in a change in the fortunes of the market: then I’m not worth a thing."
So often it seems that people estimate our worth on the basis of things which can change; and because others measure us that way, we’re inclined to make the same kind of measure. Some have the impression (and society encourages it) that it is their youthfulness which makes them desirable. So what happens, then, when youth is replaced by lines in the face and sags in the body? If our worth lies in being young, where is our worth when youth goes?
Or suppose our worth seems to rest in some skill or achievement, even a very worthy one. A concert pianist or violinist may enjoy the feeling of artistic achievement, and with it, public acclaim. But if one day arthritis diminishes the dexterity of the performer’s fingers, is her worth gone, too? So often society (and we, in turn) judges our worth by measures which time can change.
No wonder, then, that fear and bitterness sometimes intrude upon us in this question of worth. A young wife loves to hear her husband extol her beauty; but forgive her if she sometimes wonders if he will still find her so desirable when her figure has less winsome lines. An athlete exults in the thunders of applause when he catches the game-winning pass. But next week he drops the ball and the game is lost, and those who cheered so recently seem now to have been replaced in the stadium by a new crowd who fiercely call for him to be benched. A politician wins big and everyone adores him; then a faux pas or two, and he is rejected by an even greater margin than in his former victory. It’s no wonder that old-timers in sports, politics and entertainment say cynically, "They love you when you’re up, but brother, they don’t even know you when you’re down."
Nor is it too surprising, then, that sometimes people who seem to have a great deal going for them are unsure of their worth. Often, as a pastoral counselor, I have talked with some young man or woman who is healthy, bright, attractive - and with it all, self-despising. I’ve reasoned with them: "How can you look at your grade point and think anything but good of yourself? Or how can you look in the mirror without saying, ‘Wow, I’m terrific!’?" But all that surface worth is undercut by a feeling that the person down below the looks, personality and grades is not really loved or appreciated. Strip me, they think, of these things, and would anybody care much about what’s left? What am I worth, below the surface which people see?
No wonder, then, that we sometimes do perverse and stupid things to seek affirmation of our worth. The child that throws a tantrum, the teenager in rebellion, the husband who barks and grumbles all day Saturday, the hypochondriac who never tires of reciting her imagined ills: these may only be trying to get someone to pay more attention to them, to assure them that they have value.
So I stand today at this table of holy communion and extend an invitation: Come to this table, and learn your worth.
Almost immediately I think I hear someone saying, "But in a communion service, we are told that we are sinners. You know - it says something like, ‘Ye that do truly and earnestly repent of your sins.’ And there’s even a special place for confessing our sins. How can it help us feel our worth when it makes so much of our sins?"
I’m glad you’ve asked that question, because that’s really my first point. You can’t know your worth unless someone takes you seriously. I think of a little child bringing a crayon drawing to an adult who looks just long enough to say, "Oh, that’s beautiful, honey, just beautiful." It’s not a compliment, because the adult isn’t taking the child seriously. Which is too say that thoughtless praise isn’t praise at all. Rather, it’s the ultimate insult, because it says that the person doesn’t really matter. I think of a seminary professor who wrote no comments on term papers and offered no grade; he simply put a check mark in the corner to indicate he had seen the paper. I dreaded writing for him because I didn’t feel he took me seriously. By contrast I remember a professor in graduate school who often wrote scathing comments about grammar, logic and scholarship, in half-a-dozen different colors. He called it "rainbow treatment." While I smarted under the vigor of his criticism, I cherished that professor. I knew he cared enough about me to demand my best.
The communion service reminds me that God cares about me. My sins trouble him. He doesn’t wink at them, nor does he pat me patronizingly and say, "They don’t really matter." Nothing so much diminishes a person - child, spouse or friend - as to be told, "I don’t care what you do." I learn something of my worth at the communion table because it calls me to repentance. This service reminds me that God is in earnest about me.
That is, I am complimented by the very fact that I am capable of sin. When the communion ritual asks me to repent, it reminds me that I have the capacity for decision. I am no puppet, acting from pulled strings; I am no animal, responding helplessly to instincts; I am a human being, able to choose between right and wrong. If I were incapable of wrong, my stature would be next to nothing. But the communion ritual pays me the honor of declaring that I am capable of doing wrong, and it insists that I am able also to do right, and that I ought therefore to be sorry for any wrong I do. And above all else, it tells me that God thinks so highly of me that he is upset by my wrongdoing.
But the communion service says a still greater thing: that Jesus Christ died for our sins. As Saint Paul put it, "For our sake God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."1 Here is the most dramatic evidence of our worth: Christ died for us. The Ultimate One made the ultimate sacrifice. In our common world our worth is often measured on the basis of who will stand up for us, or speak in our behalf. In juvenile court, for instance, a youngster is sometimes spared if a responsible citizen will vouch for him. Then hear this: the Christian Gospel declares that Jesus Christ has not only spoken for us, he has acted for us, and has acted decisively.
Some of you may remember the name of Muretus. He was a poor, wandering scholar in the Middle Ages. He became ill while in an Italian town, and was taken to a hospital for strays and helpless creatures. The doctors discussed his case in Latin - a mark of learned men in those times - never thinking that this nondescript begger would understand. One of them suggested that since he was only a worthless wanderer, they might well use him for medical experiments. Muretus looked up and answered in their own learned Latin: "Call no man worthless for whom Christ died."
Here, indeed, is the measure of our worth. However much of a failure we may have been, God - who knows us best - thinks us worth the death of his Son. Could there be better evidence of our worth? Sometimes life lays us low and like Muretus we hear the analysts of the world muttering their mumbo-jumbo over us. "An average I.Q.," one voice says. "A bit psychotic," another answers. "Given to delusions of grandeur." "A failed marriage." "Captive to his glands and instincts." And to all of this heaven answers, "She is of such worth that my Son became sin for her and died on her behalf."
The communion table affirms our worth; indeed, shouts it. In a world of four billion people, this table says that you are singular; there is no one else like you. In a culture that can easily cast you aside when you are too old, too slow, or too ordinary, this table says that your age, your speed of mind or body, and your appearance does not matter. God loves you for what you are, for the intrinsic, ineffaceable worth of you. Sometimes, in the press of living, we get so we don’t even like ourselves. We grow tired of our own failings and even of our own best strivings. We need no one else to depreciate us because we have already downgraded ourselves. And just then this table declares, "You are one for whom Christ died. How dare you think badly of yourself when God thinks so ultimately well of you? How is your opinion of yourself to be compared with his opinion of you?"
The Apostle Paul makes a grand insistence. "From now on," he writes, "we regard no one from a human point of view ... if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation ..."2 I must look at each person, including myself, as one whom God loves and for whom Christ died. I must know that every person is capable of becoming a new creation. A person’s worth is very great if he is able, through Christ, to become a new creature.
Those of Scottish heritage may know a familiar tale which is said to have begun with the MacDonald clan. Donald Gorm was in London and was asked to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet. But they set him rather near the wrong side of the salt, as if he were nothing more than a country squire. Midway through the banquet, someone told the host that Gorm was actually a great prince in his own country, and that at that very moment he was negotiating a treaty with King Henry VIII.
The Lord Mayor quickly sent a messenger to invite Donald Gorm to sit at his right hand. Gorm’s reply is legendary. "Tell the Lord Mayor not to be fashing himself. Wherever MacDonald is sitting, that is the head of the table."
Such is our mood this morning as we kneel at the table of the Lord. Whether you or the world about you sees you or me as success or failure, whether we feel pretty or ordinary, whether we are solvent or destitute, hear this: Where Jesus Christ sits, is the head of the table; and he has chosen that you and I sit next to him.
Come to this Table, my friend, and learn your worth.
- Ellsworth Kalas
1. 2 Corinthians 5:21 (RSV)
2. 2 Corinthians 5:16a, 17a (RSV)