Look Up and Look Out: A Theology of Reconciliation

A Sermon on 2 Corinthians 5:18-21

There is something about the verticality of life. Whether telephone poles or sky scrapers. But we don’t simply look up; we also look out. There is also something horizontal. In our embodied existence, we see the two dimensions. Even on the cross, there is a vertical and a horizontal directionality. One is ineffective without the other. Yet, in much of our American culture, we have not sustained this mutuality. In this sermon, Rev. Ralph West exhorts the church to remember and live in the fact of the battle won. The victory of the cross has brought in the horizontality of the message, and now we are all ministers with a message and a ministry of reconciliation.

Biography

Ralph Douglas West (DMin, Beeson Divinity School) serves as founder and senior pastor of The Church Without Walls (Brookhollow Baptist Church, Houston, Texas). He first preached as a sixteen year old in his native Houston. The church began with 32 members and now embraces 24,000 families meeting in three locations and conducting six services each Sunday.