Please read this passage before reading the homily.
My sisters and brothers,
I hope that you are enjoying being the new creation in Christ. The newness of the new creation is already here. The new creation is alive in our Christian community. All those who have a share in our community have this new creation and are in Christ.
In our civil societies, we live according to law and order. Those who break the law and order get punished and are called criminals. Law and Order are not Christian concepts.
In Christ, God has reconciled the world to himself. If at one time we put our faith in the world of sin and punishment, now we must put our faith in the power of God to destroy sin. God has stopped counting people’s transgressions. God has instead made us ambassadors of Christ to proclaim the mercy of God.
We are chosen ones, we are ambassadors. If at one time we saw ourselves as bad sinners or worthless people, now we must set aside such an idea. God has reconciled us to himself in Christ. God does not look down upon us because of our sins. God has taken away our fear of going to hell. Now there is no need for us to be afraid of not going to heaven.
You moms and dads always love and cherish your children, and you never disown them, no matter what they do. God is like you moms and dads. God can never disown us because we are in Christ God’s own children. If we can make God disown us, then we would be more powerful than God, which is impossible!
God made Christ “sin” in place of us, so that, united to Christ, we could receive salvation from God and become holy. Through God’s great power, God made his Son ‘sin” to save us. Through God’s great power, God now makes us “without sin”, like his Son, the One who is “without sin”. God has the power to bring all of us sinners into the fulness of the “sinlessness” of Christ.
Our history includes colonialism. Colonialism oppresses the conquered people physically, morally, and personally. Colonialism destroys the conquered people’s religious and indigenous systems, its language, its culture, and its history. Colonialism is destroyed when the conquered people affirm their human dignity and their dignity as those of the new creation of Christ. In Christ there is no colonialism but a new creation.
We are those of the new creation. We live in the fullness of the glory of God in Christ, our Lord.