For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision,
but a new creation. GALATIANS 6:15.
If I were asked to sum up the Christian message for our time in two
words, I would say with Paul: It is the message of a "New Creation." We
have read something of the New Creation in Paul’s second letter to the
Corinthians. Let me repeat one of his sentences in the words of an exact
translation: "If anyone is in union with Christ he is a new being; the
old state of things has passed away; there is a new state of things." Christianity
is the message of the New Creation, the New Being, the New Reality which
has appeared with the appearance of Jesus who for this reason, and just
for this reason, is called the Christ. For the Christ, the Messiah, the
selected and anointed one is He who brings the new state of things.
We all live in the old state of things, and the question asked of us
by our text is whether we also participate in the new state of things.
We belong to the Old Creation, and the demand made upon us by Christianity
is that we also participate in the New Creation. We have known ourselves
in our old being, and we shall ask ourselves in this hour whether we also
have experienced something of a New Being in ourselves.
What is this New Being? Paul answers first by saying what it is not.
It is neither circumcision, nor uncircumcision, he says. For Paul and for
the readers of his letter this meant something very definite. It meant
that neither to be a Jew nor to be a pagan is ultimately important; that
only one thing counts, namely, the union with Him in whom the New Reality
is present. Circumcision or uncircumcision—what does that mean for us?
It can also mean something very definite, but at the same time something
very universal. It means that no religion as such produces the New Being.
Circumcision is a religious rite, observed by the Jews; sacrifices are
religious rites, observed by the pagans; baptism is a religious rite, observed
by the Christians. All these rites do not matter—only a New Creation. And
since these rites stand, in the words of Paul, for the whole religion to
which they belong, we can say: No religion matters— only a new state of
things. Let us think about this striking assertion of Paul. What it says
first is that Christianity is more than a religion; it is the message of
a New Creation. Christianity as a religion is not important— it is like
circumcision or like uncircumcision: no more, no less! Are we able even
to imagine the consequences of the apostolic pronouncement for our situation?
Christianity in the present world encounters several forms of circumcision
and uncircumcision. Circumcision can stand today for everything called
religion, uncircumcision for everything called secular, but making half-religious
claims. There are the great religions beside Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism,
Islam and the remnants of classical Judaism; they have their myths and
their rites—so to speak their "circumcision"—which gives each of them their
distinction. There are the secular movements: Fascism and Communism, Secular
Humanism, and Ethical Idealism. They try to avoid myths and rites; they
represent, so to speak, uncircumcision. Nevertheless, they also claim ultimate
truth and demand complete devotion. How shall Christianity face them? Shall
Christianity tell them: Come to us, we are a better religion, our kind
of circumcision or uncircumcision is higher than yours? Shall we praise
Christianity, our way of life, the religious as well as the secular? Shall
we make of the Christian message a success story, and tell them, like advertisers:
try it with us, and you will see how important Christianity is for everybody?
Some missionaries and some ministers and some Christian laymen use these
methods. They show a total misunderstanding of Christianity. The apostle
who was a missionary and a minister and a layman all at once says something
different. He says: No particular religion matters, neither ours nor yours.
But I want to tell you that something has happened that matters, something
that judges you and me, your religion and my religion. A New Creation has
occurred, a New Being has appeared; and we are all asked to participate
in it. And so we should say to the pagans and Jews wherever we meet them:
Don’t compare your religion and our religion, your rites and our rites,
your prophets and our prophets, your priests and our priests, the pious
amongst you, and the pious amongst us. All this is of no avail! And above
all don’t think that we want to convert you to English or American Christianity,
to the religion of the Western World. We do not want to convert you to
us, not even to the best of us. This would be of no avail. We want only
to show you something we have seen and to tell you something we have heard:
That in the midst of the old creation there is a New Creation, and that
this New Creation is manifest in Jesus who is called the Christ.
And when we meet Fascists and Communists, Scientific Humanists and Ethical
Idealists, we should say to them: Don’t boast too much that you have no
rites and myths, that you are free from superstitions, that you are perfectly
reasonable, uncircumcised in every sense. In the first place, you also
have your rites and myths, your bit of circumcision; they are even very
important to you. But if you were completely free from them you would have
no reason to point to your uncircumcision. It is of no avail. Don’t think
that we want to convert you away from your secular state to a religious
state, that we want to make you religious and members of a very high religion,
the Christian, and of a very great denomination within it, namely, our
own. This would be of no avail. We want only to communicate to you an experience
we have had that here and there in the world and now and then in ourselves
is a New Creation, usually hidden, but sometimes manifest, and certainly
manifest in Jesus who is called the Christ.
This is the way we should speak to all those outside the Christian realm,
whether they are religious or secular. And we should not be too worried
about the Christian religion, about the state of the Churches, about membership
and doctrines, about institutions and ministers, about sermons and sacraments.
This is circumcision; and the lack of it, the secularization which today
is spreading all over the world is uncircumcision. Both are nothing, of
no importance, if the ultimate question is asked, the question of a New
Reality. This question, however, is of infinite importance. We should worry
more about it than about anything else between heaven and earth. The New
Creation—this is our ultimate concern; this should be our infinite passion—the
infinite passion of every human being. This matters; this alone matters
ultimately. In comparison with it everything else, even religion or non-religion,
even Christianity or non-Christianity, matters very little—and ultimately
nothing.
And now let me boast for a moment about the fact that we are Christians
and let us become fools by boasting, as Paul called himself when he started
boasting. It is the greatness of Christianity that it can see how small
it is. The importance of being a Christian is that we can stand the insight
that it is of no importance. It is the spiritual power of religion that
he who is religious can fearlessly look at the vanity of religion. It is
the maturest fruit of Christian understanding to understand that Christianity,
as such, is of no avail. This is boasting, not personal boasting, but boasting
about Christianity. As boasting it is foolishness. But as boasting about
the fact that there is nothing to boast about, it is wisdom and maturity.
Having as having not—this is the right attitude toward everything great
and wonderful in life, even religion and Christianity. But it is not the
right attitude toward the New Creation. Toward it the right attitude is
passionate and infinite longing.
And now we ask again: What is this New Being? The New Being is not something
that simply takes the place of the Old Being. But it is a renewal of the
Old which has been corrupted, distorted, split and almost destroyed. But
not wholly destroyed. Salvation does not destroy creation; but it transforms
the Old Creation into a New one. Therefore we can speak of the New in terms
of a re-newal: The threefold "re," namely, re-conciliation, re-union, re-surrection.
In his letter, Paul combines New Creation with reconciliation. The message
of reconciliation is: Be reconciled to God. Cease to be hostile to Him,
for He is never hostile to you. The message of reconciliation is not that
God needs to be reconciled. How could He be? Since He is the source and
power of reconciliation, who could reconcile Him? Pagans and Jews and Christians—all
of us have tried and are trying to reconcile Him by rites and sacraments,
by prayers and services, by moral behavior and works of charity. But if
we try this, if we try to give something to Him, to show good deeds which
may appease Him, we fail. It is never enough; we never can satisfy Him
because there is an infinite demand upon us. And since we cannot appease
Him, we grow hostile toward Him. Have you ever noticed how much hostility
against God dwells in the depths of the good and honest people, in those
who excel in works of charity, in piety and religious zeal? This cannot
be otherwise; for one is hostile, consciously or unconsciously, toward
those by whom one feels rejected. Everybody is in this predicament, whether
he calls that which rejects him "God," or "nature," or "destiny," or "social
conditions." Everybody carries a hostility toward the existence into which
he has been thrown, toward the hidden powers which determine his life and
that of the universe, toward that which makes him guilty and that threatens
him with destruction because he has become guilty.
We all feel rejected and hostile toward what has rejected us. We all
try to appease it and in failing, we become more hostile. This happens
often unnoticed by ourselves. But there are two symptoms which we hardly
can avoid noticing: The hostility against ourselves and the hostility against
others. One speaks so often of pride and arrogance and self-certainty and
complacency in people. But this is, in most cases, the superficial level
of their being. Below this, in a deeper level, there is self-rejection,
disgust, and even hatred of one’s self. Be reconciled to God; that means
at the same time, be reconciled to ourselves. But we are not; we try to
appease ourselves. We try to make ourselves more acceptable to our own
judgment and, when we fail, we grow more hostile toward ourselves. And
he who feels rejected by God and who rejects himself feels also rejected
by the others. As he grows hostile toward destiny and hostile toward himself,
he also grows hostile toward other men. If we are often horrified by the
unconscious or conscious hostility people betray toward us or about our
own hostility toward people whom we believe we love, let us not forget:
They feel rejected by us; we feel rejected by them. They tried hard to
make themselves acceptable to us, and they failed. We tried hard to make
ourselves acceptable to them, and we failed. And their and our hostility
grew. Be reconciled with God—that means, at the same time, be reconciled
with the others! But it does not mean try to reconcile the others, as it
does not mean try to reconcile yourselves. Try to reconcile God. You will
fail. This is the message: A new reality has appeared in which you are
reconciled. To enter the New Being we do not need to show anything. We
must only be open to be grasped by it, although we have nothing to show.
Being reconciled—that is the first mark of the New Reality. And being
reunited is its second mark. Reconciliation makes reunion possible. The
New Creation is the reality in which the separated is reunited. The New
Being is manifest in the Christ because in Him the separation never overcame
the unity between Him and God, between Him and mankind, between Him and
Himself. This gives His picture in the Gospels its overwhelming and inexhaustible
power. In Him we look at a human life that maintained the union in spite
of everything that drove Him into separation. He represents and mediates
the power of the New Being because He represents and mediates the power
of an undisrupted union.
Where the New Reality appears, one feels united with God, the ground
and meaning of one’s existence. One has what has been called the love of
one’s destiny, and what, today, we might call the courage to take upon
ourselves our own anxiety. Then one has the astonishing experience of feeling
reunited with one’s self, not in pride and false self-satisfaction, but
in a deep self-acceptance. One accepts one’s self as something which is
eternally important, eternally loved, eternally accepted. The disgust at
one’s self, the hatred of one’s self has disappeared. There is a center,
a direction, a meaning for life. All healing—bodily and mental—creates
this reunion of one’s self with one’s self. Where there is real healing,
there is the New Being, the New Creation.
But real healing is not where only a part of body or mind is reunited
with the whole, but where the whole itself, our whole being, our whole
personality is united with itself. The New Creation is healing creation
because it creates reunion with oneself. And it creates reunion with the
others. Nothing is more distinctive of the Old Being than the separation
of man from man. Nothing is more passionately demanded than social healing,
than the New Being within history and human relationships. Religion and
Christianity are under strong accusation that they have not brought reunion
into human history. Who could deny the truth of this challenge. Nevertheless,
mankind still lives; and it could not live any more if the power of separation
had not been permanently conquered by the power of reunion, of healing,
of the New Creation.
Where one is grasped by a human face as human, although one has to overcome
personal distaste, or racial strangeness, or national conflicts, or the
differences of sex, of age, of beauty, of strength, of knowledge, and all
the other innumerable causes of separation—there New Creation happens!
Mankind lives because this happens again and again. And if the Church which
is the assembly of God has an ultimate significance, this is its significance:
That here the reunion of man to man is pronounced and confessed and realized,
even if in fragments and weaknesses and distortions. The Church is the
place where the reunion of man with man is an actual event, though the
Church of God is permanently betrayed by the Christian churches. But, although
betrayed and expelled, the New Creation saves and preserves that by which
it is betrayed and expelled: churches, mankind and history.
The Church, like all its members, relapses from the New into the Old
Being. Therefore, the third mark of the New Creation is re-surrection.
The word "resurrection" has for many people the connotation of dead bodies
leaving their graves or other fanciful images. But resurrection means the
victory of the New state of things, the New Being born out of the death
of the Old. Resurrection is not an event that might happen in some remote
future, but it is the power of the New Being to create life out of death,
here and now, today and tomorrow. Where there is a New Being, there is
resurrection, namely, the creation into eternity out of every moment of
time. The Old Being has the mark of disintegration and death. The New Being
puts a new mark over the old one. Out of disintegration and death something
is born of eternal significance. That which is immersed in dissolution
emerges in a New Creation. Resurrection happens now, or it does not happen
at all. It happens in us and around us, in soul and history, in nature
and universe.
Reconciliation, reunion, resurrection—this is the New Creation, the
New Being, the New state of things. Do we participate in it? The message
of Christianity is not Christianity, but a New Reality. A New state of
things has appeared, it still appears; it is hidden and visible, it is
there and it is here. Accept it, enter into it, let it grasp you.
