Ambassadors for Christ

sermon by Torin Eikler
Psalm 25:1-5, 11-22, 20-21 2 Corinthians 5:16-20

Have you ever had to entreat someone? You know … have you had to try and convince someone to do something very important that they don’t want to do … with just your words?

Perhaps it was a child in the grocery store (as I do every week) who is picking up the candy as you wait to pay for your food. “No, no, no. Hands off. … Please, Alistair, put that back. Put it back.”

Or maybe it was an elderly parent. “You know that you need to take your medicine every day. We don’t want you to go back to the hospital. Please, just take the pills. It only takes a couple of minutes, and then you’re done.”

Or your spouse. “George, would you please take out the compost. You said you would do it yesterday, and there are fruit flies all over the kitchen.”

Or … “Ceclia you're breakin' my heart. You're shakin' my confidence daily. Oh Ceclia, I'm down on my knees. I'm beggin' you please to come home.”


I think we’ve all been there. And if you think about the way it felt to have to wheedle and coax and bully that certain someone – someone you cared about so much – to do whatever it was, you get an idea of how Paul must have been feeling when he wrote this letter. He was entreating – begging, imploring, and pleading with the Corinthians to live the way they know they should be living. He’s concerned because they are doing all kinds of things that they shouldn’t be doing – sexual immorality, playing favorites, and taking advantage of each other’s weaknesses. They have turned away from the teaching of Christ when they should be serving as ambassadors for Christ, and they need to be reconciled to God so that they can show the rest of the world what it means to be followers of the way.

Now, an ambassador in Paul’s day was pretty much the same thing that it is to us – except there was no internet to keep them connected and no airplanes to take them back and forth to the capital for updates and new instructions. Back then, an ambassador was a trusted elder statesman who was sent by a head of state to represent the nation state to another nation state. They were a bridge, representing the interests of their own kingdom to the leaders of the other, and while their feet were on foreign ground, their hearts were firmly planted back home.

Paul liked that image, though he didn’t use it all that often. He saw himself as an ambassador who carried the interests of the Kingdom of God into the world that did not yet know Christ. He lived and moved among the people of this world, and his task was to encourage everyone he met to be reconciled to God and become ambassadors of Christ in their own turn. His feet walked in this world, but his heart – his primary loyalty was to the Realm of God. And as an ambassador, he was entreating the Corinthians to return to the way he had shown them so that they could take up the role as ambassadors as well.


That’s an important message for us as well – especially in these years of increasing anxiety and division. To borrow a metaphor that Ervin Stutsman used at Mennonite Convention this summer, “our nation today is like a big bus careening down the road heading first for one ditch and then another ditch. We’ve got Mennonites and Brethren on both sides of the bus. There are people in this congregation on both sides of the bus.

The exciting thing about this bus is that if you get enough people on your side, you get to choose the driver. So depending on who’s driving, you’re on the left ditch and if somebody else comes along you’re in the right ditch and people get all excited about getting more people on their side of the bus. “Come on. Join our side of the bus. We’ll get out of this ditch were in.”

And some people are even trying to figure out which side Jesus would sit on. “Where would Jesus sit?” – that’s the question. So you pull up to the bus stop and Jesus is out there. So we quick ask him, “Jesus, which side of the bus would you sit on?”

And I think Jesus is saying, “Well, where you going?”

“We’re heading for the kingdom of God!”

And I think Jesus would say, “I believe you’re on the wrong bus.”


It doesn’t mean that we don’t have discussions about tough issues. It doesn’t mean that we don’t have strong opinions, or that we don’t engage in the decision making process. But what it does mean is that when differences on issues divide us from one another (or from other congregations … or even other denominations), when they keep us from talking to each other and respectfully agreeing and disagreeing in love, when they keep us from engaging things from the scriptures and they get our attention focused only on the issues, we sin just a little. Our hearts stray just a little from the Kingdom we are representing. We get just a little lost. And we need to be called back home so that we can get ourselves and our message back on track.


Ten years and three days ago, Carrie and I were married. Three days later, we were on the way to the airport to begin our honeymoon when we heard the news of the planes crashing into the World Trade Centers, and in the midst of all the confusion and the fear and the pain of those hours, we also had to change our plans. There was no way we were going to fly out of O’Hare that day – a small inconvenience in the face of everything that had happened.

In the end, we spent the week after September 11, 2001 driving around the Wisconsin and Michigan. It was a good week. We saw lots of fascinating places and met a few interesting people, and we spent a lot of down time in the car – hours that went by quickly as we listened to updates on the situation in New York and Washington, DC and Shenksville, Pennsylvania and followed the mood of the nation carried by the voices of talk show hosts and DJs.

What we witnessed that week was an amazing process of public discussion about what had happened and how we, as a country, should respond. Never before and never since have I heard so many voices from all different backgrounds offering their thoughts and opinions so openly – and there were so many ideas about how we should respond. Some thought we should just ignore the terrorists … that we should mourn the dead and honor the pain and the suffering of their family and friends but deny the perpetrators the attention they wanted as if they were children misbehaving. Others were for an all-out assault on every location we thought Osama bin Laden might be. Still others spoke of digging into the situation to try and understand what was behind the attack and address those issues in order to prevent future incidents. And there were more.

It was amazing … and sad because, in the end, the discussion collapsed under the weight of fear and anger. By the end of the week, there were only two voices left. One that clamored for our military to invade Afghanistan, root out the terrorists, and kill them all. Another that said invasion wouldn’t work … that it wouldn’t make us any safer or take away the pain … that it would only lead to more death and more fear. Two sides of a bus with all of us on one side or the other.


In many ways, we are still on that bus. Ten years, two wars, and thousands of dead later, we are still split down the middle: should we be fighting or not. And I suspect that if I were to ask you to raise your hands, there would be people from both sides of the argument sitting here in worship this morning. (pause) I won’t ask that question … not only because it would only make us all uncomfortable but because there is a more important question to ask. Is this the right bus?

We are Christ’s ambassadors … or we should be, and maybe it’s time to reacquaint ourselves with what that means. While I’m sure that part of it is advocating for peace, I think it goes deeper and farther than that as well. The Prince of Peace was also the Friend to the Friendless, the Voice calling for Justice, the Healer of the Broken, and the Reconciler of the Nations. As ambassadors of his Way, we are called to model a new way of living together, a new way of agreeing and disagreeing with one another … in love, a new way of compassion and forgiveness not just to those we know and love but to everyone … even those who mistreat us … even those who hate us … and even those who highjack planes and use them to kill.


It’s hard … standing here in this world as representatives of a different reality. It means seeking out those places where people are in conflict and helping them find harmony or at least respect for one another. It means letting go of our own prejudices and fears to reach out to those we have our own differences with and trying to find respect and appreciation and love for them. It means stepping out of our pride and our own self-centered perspective and really listening to the pain and frustration of others, stepping into their shoes as we seek to understand them, and making their needs and interests our own. It means inviting others – through no more than our words and our example – to join in the grand vision of a world where people live together with respect and love, joy and hope, and a profound sense of peace that comes from caring deeply for one another. (pause) And as ministers of reconciliation, ambassadors of Christ’s way, we are asked to do that in our own individual interactions as well as in our communal lives – here and now as well as across time and space.


It would be easier, I sometimes think, to live wholly in this world … to settle down, make my peace with the way things are, and get on with my life … to live and let live. But we are new creations in Christ. Our hearts dwell in the Kingdom of God wherever our feet may roam. And we have been called … we are being called to spread the hope and the joy and the peace that come through the healing power of God’s reconciling grace.

An intimidating prospect to be sure … some would say impossible. But there is a bus waiting for us … a bus full of people eager to welcome us and share the work … a bus whose driver knows where we’re going and how to get there.

Let’s get on board.