In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
“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.” These opening sentences of the 12th chapter of Romans are grand, poetic, and inspiring, but also quite dense. Paul exhorts those hearing his words to be transformed. But what does it really mean to be transformed?
Does it mean that we’re supposed to walk differently, get a new hairstyle, or speak a different language? The other day I ran across a line from Rowan Williams about transformation. He says that conversion to faith isn’t about taking on a new set of beliefs, but taking on an entirely new life – a life of the fullness of humanity, a life of relationship to God in the way that the Father and the Son are in relationship. And throughout Romans, Paul has used this sort of language to speak of transformation – he has written that we are dead to Sin and alive to God. The Christian faith and life isn’t about what you think, or even what you do, rather it is about what God is doing for and through you. And what God is doing is to make us a part of the new Creation which has its roots in the Resurrection of Jesus on that first Easter morning.
So, you see, transformation isn’t a little thing, it’s a change of our entire reality. It’s a transformation that means that love is stronger than hatred, that peace comes out of chaos, that life follows death. Often, when we think of transformation, I wonder if we sell ourselves short by not dreaming big enough. Perhaps we want to be transformed to be a little bit nicer, or maybe more prayerful. But what if God has a bigger transformation than that in mind?
CS Lewis offers us the following metaphor in his great work Mere Christianity: “Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of — throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”
And the thing to notice about this metaphor is that Lewis roots it in Scripture. God is the general contractor, not you. You don’t get to decide what the new floor plan will be, but you are assured that it will be grand. We cannot choose to be transformed any more than a caterpillar chooses to become a butterfly. And that is the sort of transformation that Paul is talking about – going from the equivalent of crawling around on six legs to flying around with wings. I’ll confess that sometimes I have too much fear, too much doubt, too much of a vision of how I want things to go to encounter that sort of transformation. But it’s there.
Now, of course, God is going to transform us whether it comes easily or whether it comes with our kicking and screaming; certainly St. Paul had an experience of being transformed as he went from a persecutor of the early Christians to the greatest evangelist for Christianity. But it is up to us whether we fight this transformation or whether we embrace the love of God as it takes deeper root in our lives.
The reason why Paul is urging us to become a living sacrifice is because, by virtue of our Baptisms, we are already in Christ, we have already begun this process of being transformed and having our minds remade. And this point is something to always keep in mind – that you are in Christ. Nothing can change that and nothing can take that way. Know that your identity is that you are in Christ and you are a part of the Body of Christ.
Our reading from Exodus this morning shows us the danger of forgetting identity. My preaching this summer has focused on Romans, but I do hope you’ve been following the stories that we’ve had from the Old Testament. Remember that Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery. Joseph ended up in Egypt and rose up the ranks to become Pharaoh’s chief advisor. When there was a great famine in the region, Joseph brought his entire family to Egypt, where he had stored up enough food for all because God had warned him that this famine was coming. This is how the Hebrew people got to Egypt. But as we transition from Genesis to Exodus, there is a verse on which the entire story of Israel hinges – “Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.”
The pharaoh forgot who Joseph was, and by extension, he forgot what God had done through Joseph. Pharaoh became afraid of the growing Hebrew population, so he enslaved them. And you all know how the story goes from here – the people cry out, God hears them, God calls Moses to tell Pharaoh to “let my people go,” and eventually the Hebrews are freed from slavery as Pharaoh’s army is drowned at the Red Sea. Pharaoh ends up becoming a tyrant, suffers the plagues, and loses his army all because he forgot the identity of Joseph and God.
That same danger exists for us – if we forget that God is love, we might give ourselves to hatred. If we forget that God cares about justice for the widow and orphan, we might up doing injustice. If you forget that you are in Christ, you might start to identify yourself in other ways. You might see yourself as something other than a beloved child of God, and that would be tragic. If you forget that Christ is risen from the dead, you might end up not dreaming big enough. If you forget that God created us, redeems us, and sustains us, you might unknowingly resist God’s transformation of your life.
One author, when writing about addiction, wrote that “People who quit addictions are able to imagine a future in which they aren’t addicted.” That’s a profound thought, and that is why it is so crucial to remember our identity in God. Can you imagine a life without fear, a world without war, a political system without division? As impossible as those things might seem, if we can remember that God raised Jesus from the dead and that we are a part of this new life, we just might be able to hope that boldly.
So as we strive to be a living sacrifice, as Paul exhorts us to be, we must always keep our identity in mind – and that identity is that God loves us and that God is continually transforming us more fully into the image of Christ. But when you hear that phrase “a living sacrifice” it seems a bit odd. Sacrifices are killed, but Paul wants us to be a living sacrifice. How does this work?
It has something to do with the fact that because we are in Christ, we, therefore, belong to God. It’s really about stewardship, about remembering that our lives do not belong to ourselves, but that they belong to God. The fact that we are to be the sacrifice reminds us that this is our task to claim – we can’t substitute an animal or person on our behalf. As one of our post-Communion prayers says, “And now, Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do.” This is a part of our transformation, of being a part of the new creation, that we give to God what is God’s, namely our lives.
Paul then notes that there are many ways for us to be transformed in God’s grace. We can prophecy, minister, teach, exhort, give, lead, and show compassion. But Paul notes that we are “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.” In other words, there’s no blueprint for this work. You aren’t going to be transformed in the same way that I am because you have different gifts than I do. If you don’t know what your gift is, talk to me or ask those around you, because I know that God’s grace is alive and well within you. We need all of these gifts together for the transformation of the whole body.
So, we ought not the think of ourselves more highly than we ought to. We ought not to look down upon the gifts of anyone else, ourselves included. We ought not to think that someone doesn’t have a gift, we should rather ask why we’re blind to it. Because in the Body of Christ, there is no dead weight. Everyone has a purpose, everyone has a gift, and everyone is invaluable. In our reading from Matthew, Jesus says “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” One way of reading this is as a statement that what you do matters. The love that you show matters. The love that you withhold matters. The things that you do, like making a casserole for a friend in need, like sending a card to someone, like giving money to a charity, like volunteering with Communities in Schools, like standing up for justice, these things all matter in heaven as much as they do on earth. And this is so because you are a part of the Body of Christ. So never doubt your ability to be a part of God’s transformation and never forget your responsibility to be a living sacrifice.
God is doing amazing things through you and through all of those around you. Don’t let yourself be conformed, or deformed, by the world. But rather open yourself to the transformation that God’s grace, mercy, and love is doing in you. In closing, I’d like to pray with one of my favorite prayers in our Book of Common Prayer. As we pray, let it be an oblation to God, offering ourselves as a living sacrifice, that we might be transformed more fully in the Resurrected life of Jesus.
Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to you, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly yours, utterly dedicated to you; and then use us, we pray, as you will, and always to your glory and the welfare of your people; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
