Sunday, August 10, 2014

Becoming

sermon by Torin Eikler
Romans 12:1-8            Matthew 16:13-20

 

Those of you with children between the ages of 5 and 18 are probably quite familiar with the Transformers.  What with 4 (I think) summer blockbusters coming to movie theaters over the past five or six years, backpacks and other school supplies plastered with the pictures of warrior robots, and the ubiquitous Bumblebee costumes that have walked the streets on the last couple of Hallowe’ens, the Transformers have become a cultural icon.

This isn’t the first time, of course.  The 80s were the original decade of transformers.  We (at least some of us who were just the right age back then) were obsessed with the Autobots and the Decepticons.  There were no movies about them back then (and how could you have made one with computer-produced graphics) …. No movies, but there were daily cartoons that ran for years.  And it wasn’t just the robot saviors of humanity that were part of it.  There were also the Thundercats and Voltron.  They weren’t quite the same thing, but they had courageous warriors (human or otherwise) who piloted battle machines that transformed into a huge mechanized cat or a gigantic robot on demand. 

Those friends of my childhood and their action-packed adventures made for some pretty highly-charged Saturdays in our household.  Then, throughout the week, we would imagine new adventures and crash our toys together, and as we protected the weak from the depredations of the enemy, we got to express, in graphic detail, our desire violence and destructions without actually hurting each other.

 
That decade was also the time of some of my own first personal transformations.  I graduated from elementary school and Jr. High during those years.  And as my body grew and changed, my mind filled with knowledge and an expanding perspective on life.  I also started thinking about faith and spirituality for the first time somewhere during the middle of the 80s.  It was a time filled with changes.

Since then, I have graduated from adolescence into college and on to adulthood with all the rights and responsibilities that come along with that.  I got married and changed my name – a huge change that has affected who I am more than I thought it would.  (And I don’t just getting married.  Changing my name began a transformation in me that I never even considered.)  I went back to being a student again, and then I became a father and a pastor at just about the same time.  Talk about a change of perspective!  As I look back over my journey through those 25 years, I realize that it has been one long process of transformation that began, really, even before I became aware of myself in the 80s.  And I’m sure that any number of you could tell me all about how it will only keep on and on for the rest of my life.

Those kinds of changes are much deeper and more personal than the antics of Optimus Prime or the Thundercats, of course.  Their transformations only have to do with form or functionality, and while some of my own changes had to do with my own form, most of them went on below the surface.  Yet, even those deeper changes were only on the level of my own self-image, or my perspective, or my approach to living.  The transformation that Paul is talking about in this letter to the Romans reaches, I think, even farther down inside us.  He used the words “be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” but I think he was speaking of something more spiritual than it sounds like to us.

 
When we hear the word mind in this time and this society, we find ourselves thinking of intelligence and will power, at least that’s what I tend to think of.  Sometimes we may throw a certain “je ne sais quoi” into the mix if we are considering the nature of human consciousness.  The dictionary sums it up with the definition: “intellect or understanding, as distinguished from the faculties of feeling and willing; intelligence,”[1] but that isn’t what Paul was talking about.  At least it doesn’t seem that way to scholars who know much more about the subject than I do.

Among the Greeks, Romans, and Jews of Paul’s time there was a different biology of thinking, feeling, and being.  For them, emotions, intuition, and passion lived in the gut (an understanding that we preserve when we talk about our “gut feelings” about a situation).  All the things that make of intelligence – logic and reason, knowledge and understanding – were a function of the brain much as they do for us.  But the mind – the sense of self and will, the home of our true identity and the ground of our being – the mind dwelled in the heart.

 
So, when Paul speaks of a transformation, he isn’t just talking about changing our mind.  He means something much more serious, much more fundamental.  He means a change at the deepest level of our natures.  He is talking about a change of heart – a transformation of our very selves.  And for Paul that means three very specific things.

First and foremost, it is a move from being a non-believer to a believer, and by that I mean believing in Jesus as the Christ, as the Son of God come to set us free, as God himself made human to share in our lives and redeem our living.  Most of the people that Paul knew were believers in something else.  Almost everybody in the ancient world was a follower of one God or another.  Some few claimed to follow philosophy alone, but most worshiped the Roman Pantheon, the Greek Gods, or YHWH. 

The members of the community in Rome had been mostly Jewish to begin with, but there were a smattering of gentiles mixed into the group.  And while they had all come to believe in Jesus and had been baptized into the church, the pressures of the culture around them and the habits they had formed in their past tempted them back into practices like sacrifice.  Paul’s words to them called them away from conformity with those around them and reminded them to return to the Christian teachings that freed them from the need for those rituals.

Which leads us to Paul’s second favorite theme, and one which is especially prevalent in Romans: the change from being a people doomed by the law to failure and judgment to being a people redeemed from the law by grace.  Over and over again in this letter, Paul tries to help the people understand the gift they have received through Christ.  Where they had been liable to judgment under to the law of Moses according to which they would certainly be found wanting and in need of punishment, within Jesus’ embrace their sins were forgiven and their souls redeemed from damnation. 

All they needed to do was cling to their faith and try their best to follow the will of God, but in order to succeed in that they were in constant need of the Spirit’s guidance, and that guidance could only be discerned if their hearts were renewed.  If at the root of their being they had become open and ready to receive understanding beyond the selfish and limited truth that reason could provide.

 
 
If you find yourself a little confused or feeling lost in the tumble of words searching some clarity, you are NOT alone.  People have been struggling with Paul for centuries, and I’m not at all certain that the members of the community that he was writing to really understood what he was saying.  I’m not even sure that I do.

It seems like a lot to hold onto.  So, I’ll sum those us as two bullet points.  Be transformed from non-believer to believer and be transformed from legalistic people of the law to the committed people of grace.  Believe and be redeemed.

 

And now we come to the last of the three great transformations Paul wants us to understand.  When we are renewed through the grace of Christ, we become part of a greater whole.  We become part of the body of Christ.  That may seem minor compared with the other two changes, but I think holding onto that identity might be our greatest challenge, because it is a transformation that reaches to the core of our being.  And in this society, the idea of being anything other than an individual is a big change indeed.

I’m sure there was a lot of individualism in Paul’s day even with the greater stress on being part of the clan, but there is even more now.  From the time we are born, we are taught to become self-sufficient (which isn’t a bad thing) and to look out for #1 (which is not so good).  We are taught that our needs come before the wellbeing of the rest of humanity.  We think in terms of me verses everyone else most of the time, and our lives reflect that reality. 

We are isolated in our homes more and more.  We don’t know or care to know many of the people who live near us let alone the hundreds of people we pass by without a thought each day.  We find ourselves stressing out when we face difficult challenges that have to do with money or childcare or any of a number of other things because we assume that we have to deal with them ourselves.

 
Paul is speaking directly against that message.  We are not, he says, really individuals.  We are part of a body of believers that is connected in the same way that our physical bodies are.  Yes we are unique parts of that body, but we are not separate in any sense.  We are one … together … joined at the deepest level – the spiritual level – with one another, and that transformation changes a lot of things.

It shifts our way of thinking about each other and makes it possible to take Jesus’ command to love our neighbors as ourselves seriously.  In fact, Paul thinks that it can take one step farther so that we put the wellbeing of others ahead of our own which he certainly did.  It changes our approach to the world because we begin to see all of God’s children as part of our family – as long lost members, perhaps, of the body that we are a part of creating.  And it makes the struggle to hold onto our new identity a group effort instead of a personal trial.

 
Big changes … changes of the heart … change at the deepest level … transformation that comes to us a gift of grace and the Spirit’s work … transformation that began for all of us sometime in the past and will continue throughout the rest of our lives.

So, sisters and brothers, as we sit here in the beauty of a creation that we are not separate from by intimately connected with, I invite you to consider Paul’s words as if they were addressed to you….

“I appeal to you, therefore, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed [not just in body but in spirit] … be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may [become the children of God] who discern what is the good and the acceptable and the perfect will of God.”

 
May it be so.


[1] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mind?s=t

No comments: