A Fourth Church Sermon by Judith L. Watt

Sunday, August 24, 2014 | 8:00 a.m.

Judith L. Watt
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 138
Romans 12:1–8

It is not just the interior of these walls; it is our own inner beings you have renewed. We are your temple not made with hands. We are your body. If every wall should crumble, and every church decay, we are your habitation.

George MacLeod,
Prayer written during the rebuilding of the Abbey on the isle of Iona

In the twelfth chapter of Romans, Paul uses a common word in the first verse. We usually race right over it. Therefore. Simply therefore.

“I appeal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters.”

If you sat down last night and read the first eleven chapters of Romans in preparation for this morning, you would know that throughout those first chapters Paul argues his case for justification by grace through faith, not by works. Toward the end of those chapters, he puzzles over why his own people, the Hebrews, haven’t accepted Jesus as Messiah. But in spite of his puzzlement, he still ends chapter 11 with a triumphant doxology, praising God’s indescribable mercy poured out on human beings. The doxology is beautiful. Let me read it for you.

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.
How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
“For who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?
Or who has given a gift to him to receive a gift in return?”
For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever. Amen.

In a lecture on the book of Romans, Gil Bailie explains that in the early chapters, Paul speaks of living in the old eon—or the old age—and also living in the new eon—the new age. The old age is one of sin, death, and wrath, and the new age is one of grace and faith. And so, as chapter 12 begins, when Paul uses the word therefore, he means “OK, so, now what?” We’ve been given the mercies of God, beyond our explanation, unmerited grace, forgiveness, reconciliation with God, justification by grace not by our works, so now what?

The words of Brian McLaren explain what Paul’s therefore means: “A therefore signifies a move from the what of God’s amazing mercy to the so what of how we should live in the light of that mercy” (Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith, p. 154).

So, with that therefore as a signal, Paul gives instruction about how to live in the new age, how to not get caught up in the old age, and how to conduct our lives in light of the Christian revelation. Therefore, because we’ve received this tremendous grace, how do we live in the new age—an age of grace and faith?

If the death of journalist James Foley has been on your mind this week or if you have found yourself, like me, trying not to think about that death, you know there is plenty of death around us everywhere. Plenty of the old age, the old eon, the old ways, pulling at us and tugging at us.

I think the old age, filled with sin and death and wrath, is threatening us at every turn. A man slaughtered as a symbol. He’s not the only one. Anger and death swirling around Ferguson, Missouri. Fear and anger escalating everywhere it seems. Within our hearts? Fear perhaps, anger maybe, and paralysis probably. I doubt I’m not the only one in this room finding it increasingly difficult to listen to the news.

And so, Paul appeals to us. I like to imagine Paul worried about us. I like to imagine him worried about how we might get sucked into the old-age way of thinking, when it seems to be all around us. “I appeal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, too numerous to count, in this new age, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice.”

The original Greek for “I appeal to you” has the feeling of “Please, will you . . .” So, I imagine Paul saying to us, “Please, will you, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, present your bodies as a living sacrifice.”

As Paul calls us to be living sacrifices, he denounces the old ways of cultic sacrifice—killing one person to make a point, using a substitute person upon whom to heap all of our blame and guilt. He affirms the new age, that old way of sacrificing to appease God being no longer necessary.

Even though we no longer offer animals to the temple priests as our form of worship and reconciliation with God, as our way of justifying ourselves, there are so many ways we, as a collective, sacrifice one group’s wellness and safety for another’s. We’re surrounded by this kind of thinking and these kinds of actions. We’ve participated in this kind of sacrifice, even if actual physical death wasn’t our mode. How, you ask? Think about it. Have you ever been part of scapegoating a person or a group, even if only in the privacy of your mind?

When Gil Bailie visited Howard Thurman in the early 1970s, he asked Thurman, “What am I going to do with my life? What does the world need?” Howard Thurman’s response was “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world needs is people who come alive.” Paul calls us to be living sacrifices in the sense that we try to live in such a way that those who are touched by our lives are better able to live without the sacrificial structures of the old age. To be a living sacrifice is to live in a way that the old sacrifices are no longer necessary. It is to live faithfully and alive to God and to God’s mercies. (See www.textweek.com, Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary, Proper 16, 24 August 2014.)

Just last night, we heard shots while we were on our balcony. I am so naïve that I thought they were firecrackers. But within minutes forty squad cars arrived to Clarendon Park, where shots had been fired. Fortunately no one was hurt, but gang warfare is in full force. I woke up this morning wondering how any of this sermon has anything to do with that. I could choose to just throw my hands up, discount the gangbangers as worth nothing and hopeless, or I could open myself to at least the acknowledgment that all of this unrest is speaking to us somehow, that people everywhere need to know how much God loves them, that their lives are significant and worth something, and that the new age of grace and faith is what the cross has won for us. In my most doubtful of times, when I wonder what any of our faith has to do with anything, Paul’s words in these verses remind me how thankful I am for the revelation of Jesus and his teachings and how I need to be firmly grounded in knowing the depth of the riches and wisdom of God. On most days, I take in just a tiny portion of that wonder. But today I’m reminded to ground myself again in it.

We can’t afford to let ourselves be conformed again to the old age. That’s what Paul says as he continues: “Do not be conformed to this age, this old age, of sin and death and wrath. But be transformed by the renewing of your minds.”

In a sermon on this passage, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of being transformed nonconformists. It was the title of his sermon “Transformed Nonconformists.” He said, “We need to recapture the gospel glow of the early Christians, who were nonconformists in the truest sense of the word and refused to shape their witness according to the mundane patterns of the world. . . . The hope of a secured and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists, who are dedicated to justice, peace, and brother/sisterhood” (Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love).

The nature of these days calls us to renew our commitment to being transformed nonconformists—in how we think, in how we read the news, in how we speak to one another, in how we think about one another, and how we think about ourselves and what we have to offer. If discouragement threatens you and makes you think the world’s problems are beyond your scope, outside of the reach of anything worthwhile you can do, you are conforming to the old age. Today’s verses call us to be nonconformists firmly rooted in a desire to live in the new age. Old age: sin, death, wrath. New age: grace and faith. Which do you choose?

Dallas Willard’s words in his book The Great Conspiracy are “We are made to be significant. We are built to count. We are placed in a specific context to count in ways no one else does. That is our destiny.”

Susan Andrews, former moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA), once told about having a dream as a child, a dream that she was tiny enough to fit into the offering plate at church and each Sunday be brought up to the front of the church—herself as an offering, each week, every day, always. It’s a wonderful image for us to hold onto. We are to offer ourselves in response to God’s great mercy.

The story of Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables puts us in touch with Romans 12 because it gets at the issue of response to God’s great mercy. So many of you know the scene that changed Valjean’s life. He is a thief just released from prison. He is given food and shelter and shown great kindness by a minister and his wife. But in the middle of the night he steals away with their precious silverware. The next day the police bring him back and ask the minister if the silver is his. “Of course,” replies the minister gruffly, “and I am very angry with this man. He was supposed to leave with the candlesticks, too. Here they are.” Though the police barely believe him, the police have no choice but to let Valjean go. Valjean is dumbstruck by this kind of treatment. The mercy is a mystery to him. What the minister says determines the rest of his life. “This silver will buy your freedom. Become a good man. I leave you to God.” Valjean responds to mercy precisely by becoming a good man. Paul says in Romans 12 exactly what the minister said. In view of the mercy you have experienced, "Go and become the eternally significant person God means you to be. I leave you to God."

Finally, Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of Romans 12 says all of the same in fresh ways; fresh ways that may help us absorb what Paul so urges us to do.

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. (Eugene Peterson, The Message)

Old Age: sin, death, wrath. New age: grace, faith.

Which will you choose?