Romans 12:1-8 I
appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to
present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is
your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed
by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of
God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me I say
to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to
think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith
that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the
members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ,
and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ
according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry,
in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the
giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in
cheerfulness.
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In most apocalyptic,
end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it kind of films you have one person or a few
people who are the heroes. The world has
been destroyed – by nuclear holocaust or plague or some other great catastrophe.
Most of the population has been destroyed.
But among the remnant, in the midst of chaos, there are a few
individuals who are, in a sense, pure; they still have their ethics intact, and
they will have the task of working together to re-create the world.
Before they get to that
point, though, these heroes have to fight the evil people because evil has
taken control of the world. It’s the
classic cosmic battle of good versus evil; in these stories, good always wins
the war, which is great. But the
important question that is not often asked is –
What then?
What will the good people
do once they have taken back control of their own lives, when they have created
a space where people can be freed from the tyranny of evil? What will be their next step? And the step after that? I guess it’s not the stuff that blockbuster
movies are made of, but I would like to know.
What will they do? Will they fall prey to the same temptations
that the evil rulers did before them?
Will they once again enslave people, only under a different name? Or will they create a new society in which
people are free to live in peace?
The last of the Hunger
Games films is coming out this month. I
am sure it will include some really impressive special effects in the final
battle between the forces of freedom and the evil, decadent Capital. And at the end of the day, the good guys will
win (I hope that doesn’t spoil it for anyone).
But there will not be a satisfactory answer to the question: What will they do next?
It simply isn’t that
exciting. And in the movies, it hardly
matters what they do next. But in real
life it does.
It’s the kind of stuff
that fills much of the New Testament.
The epistles to the churches are there to help Christians figure out
what comes next. After they have turned
away from a former way of life, which may have included home and job and
family; after having turned their backs on the Roman Empire in a subtle but
daring way; after they have turned their backs on idol worship and cultic
rituals that all their friends and neighbors are participating in, what do they
do next?
The Apostle Paul wrote
letters to churches all over the Empire, encouraging and instructing them as
they tried to live this new life, a life transformed by Christ. It’s a serious matter, because you don’t
become a Christian and then just continue to do everything the same as you did
before.
If you take seriously the
work that God did in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, you
can’t just go on with business as usual.
The letters Paul wrote,
which were usually addressed to a particular church about their particular
needs, show that these new Christians were having some problems figuring what comes next. We only have one side of the
conversation, but the one side reveals a lot.
They were having trouble
letting go of old ideas about socioeconomic status, the belief that those who
have more money also, by rights, have more privileges. They were having trouble letting go of
judgmentalism. They were having trouble
letting go of old ideas about fairness, that you should return insult with
insult, injury with injury. They were
having trouble letting go of the idea that you should care for your own but arm
yourself against everyone else because you are all in competition with one
another for scarce resources. As Paul
would say to the church, these were the ways of the world; these beliefs and
habits were the former ways.
The former ways include
everything before Christ. They include
all the stuff that Christ came to free us from – sinfulness born out of
fear. The former ways, which are so
similar to the ways people are always behaving in the post-apocalyptic films –competing
for scarce resources, killing or enslaving one another – these ways, are all born
from fear. Fear is what gets in the way
of freedom.
The people in the Roman
church, as well as the Corinthian church and the Galatian church, and all the
other churches of the time, were having to figure out how to live in a way that
was not determined by fear – fear of the powerful empire, fear of hunger,
sickness, death, fear of others who might want to take something away from
them. Learning to live a life in which fear
has no power. That is a very hard thing.
We know, because there
are many things that make us afraid. At
the top of the list this week is terrorism, which once again feels very urgent. Terrorism is the great fear of this age – but
it’s not alone. We are afraid of nuclear
war, plane crashes, car crashes, and weather events. We are afraid of disease. We are afraid of
the price of gas going up and the value of our investment portfolios going
down. We are afraid of losing a job or
losing our friends. We are afraid of not
having enough to survive, and of not being enough for the people we love to
love us in return.
The people Paul was addressing
in his letters also had fears, probably very similar to ours – including the
fear of being afraid. And the worst
thing about fear is that it prevents change. Fear clings
tightly to the way things are – which makes fear the enemy of faith.
Faith says,
“Change!” The invitation to faith is an
invitation into a life transformed, step by step.
The first step is
recognizing that something truly valuable is being offered. It’s seeing that the life you have been
living, a life ruled by fear and suspicion, and even vengeance, is no real life
at all. The first step is turning and
seeing that there is this new possibility – and stepping into it.
The first step is the
biggest, but it needs to be followed by more steps, into the life of
discipleship. To really know the freedom
of Christ, we need to follow the path of discipleship, taking to heart all that
Jesus taught, all that Paul reinforced in his letters.
And we dare not miss one
important thing in all this: It’s God’s
grace, and only God's grace, that makes it possible. Rest
assured, you don’t do this by yourself.
You don’t become a person of faith by your own bravery, cleverness,
strength, or goodness. In fact, God’s grace has already done the work; all you
need to do is step into it – present yourself, wholly and completely, body and
soul, as a living sacrifice.
A living sacrifice – let
us take care to understand this. This is
like the flaming candle that never wanes, the bush that burns but is not
consumed. As living sacrifices we give
ourselves to God, for God’s purposes, but instead of losing ourselves we get
life in return. It’s like Jesus said: Those
who want to save their life will lose it, but those who lose their life for my
sake will find it. To the world, this
may sound like nonsense. But what is
nonsensical to the former ways is
seen as truth to the new way.
Frederick Buechner offers
us an eloquent definition of grace in his book Wishful Thinking. There is
one part of it that has been speaking to me these last few days, which is this:
Grace is like God saying, “Here is the world.
Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you.”
Let you minds be renewed,
your spirit freed, your life transformed.
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