Contemplating Non-Conformity
3RD SUNDAY IN LENT
MINISTER
Rev. David J. Wood
SCRIPTURE
Romans 12: 1-2, 9-21
Remember how we used to talk about Millionaires like it was an exponential amount of money that only
the elite few could contemplate ever possessing? Then, we started talking about Billionaires the way we
used to talk about millionaires. We adjusted.
Now, we have begun to talk of Trillionaires.
We adapt. We adjust. What was abnormal, even unthinkable becomes reasonable and acceptable…
becomes a matter of course. We lose perspective.
Let me engage you in a little thought experiment.
If we translated one million in seconds, it would add up to 12 days.
If converted one billion into seconds, it would add up to 31 years.
If we converted one trillion into seconds, guess what it would add up to: 31,688 years.
Values morph. We adapt. We accommodate.Our perspective changes ever so subtly.
Lose our sense of scale…and value.
While we talking in the Trillions…and our sense of scale…
The US Budget Deficit in 2025 was $1.8 Trillion.
The National Debt is $38 Trillion.
That’s a total indebtedness of around $39.8 Trillion.
The total wealth of THE TOP 1% in the United States is: $55 Trillion.
I don’t pose those numbers to somehow diminish the significance of our annual budget deficit or our
National Debt or to somehow suggest that we could wipe out the deficit and debt by a simple transfer of
wealth. I share those numbers to illustrate that we probably have a lot more capacity in this country to
deal with deficits than we normally think or imagine.
Instead it’s easy to imagine that what really threatens our financial well being in this country is
• raising the minimum wage or
• being overrun by immigrants—legal and illegal—who are largely employed in low wage jobs…
• or that it’s impossible for us to consider healthcare for all…
• or universal childcare…
Our perspectives get skewed. Our imaginations atrophy. We don’t work at it, it just happens.
I was reminded a week or so ago of my experience on the evening of January 16, 1991.
That was the night CNN broadcast live pictures of our bombs reining down on Bagdad.
I was spending a few days on the coast of Maine, in Port Clyde…just sitting down to have some dinner.
As the “Breaking News” broke in, I remember how it shook me to the core.
It was the first time in my lifetime that we had launched a war. I immediately packed up my things and
headed back to Lewiston to be with Jennifer and the children…and my community.
A week ago, Saturday Jennifer called upstairs to tell me that we just bombed Tehran. My reaction was
nothing like that night back in January of 1991. Eventually I came downstairs and turned on the news to
see what was happening.
I wonder, are my senses being dulled.
Am I becoming numb to the tragedy of things?
Am I losing my mind…my heart…?
Am I subtly adapting to a kind of fatalism, resignation, cynicism…
As one farmer said about sheep:
Sheep don’t suddenly go astray…
they just nibble their way to lostness.
The Apostle Paul has a timely word for us who are prone to nibbling.
But before I get to that, let me say a brief word about the community to whom this letter was written…
Congregation of Gentiles and jews…with the heel of Caesar on their backs. Romans was written around
55 AD…Nero was Emperor of Rome from 54-68. Not too many years after this, he would launch one of
the first waves brutal persecutions of Christians. This little community was fighting for their existence
on the fringes of the most powerful, cultured, sophisticated, ruthless empire the world had known.
In the first 11 Chapters of this letter, Paul has been waxing eloquently about the love and mercy of God…
”God shows his love to us in this—that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Nothing will
separate us from the love of God…no hardship, no power, not even death…”. Now here, in Chapter 12,
he begins to spell out what it all means, how it translates into real life….
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.
“Spiritual”. Better translated…reasonable/logical/intelligent worship.
There is a logic at work here that is not of this world/age…even as it provides a logic/rationale for living
here and now. Everything that follows only makes sense in light of the reality of the MERCIES OF GOD.
Our response, our worship, is not a matter of duty or obligation…or guilt…
But of gratitude…thanksgiving… A logical response to the mercies of God.
Notice that Paul calls on his readers to make a LIVING sacrifice…not once for all…
but a way of life…a way of being… As someone once put it,
the trouble with living sacrifices is that they keep crawling off the altar.
He makes it very concrete…and basic:
“present your bodies as a living sacrifice…”
How do we do that? What does that look like?
THIS is a good start…
Your Being here…You chose to get your bodies up, fed, coffee up,
dressed and out the door…even after losing a whole hour of sleep…
You bypassed a plethora of other choices…to be here
Some of you traveled a few blocks..others several miles.
You don’t show up here by accident.
You don’t just stumble into this place.
In a meaningful way this morning,
you have presented your bodies to God AS worship.
The physical act is a deeply spiritual thing.
I don’t want to make too much of it…
neither do I want you to make too little of it.
You are cutting against the grain…
It is downright NONCONFORMIST.
Not the end…but a worthy beginning.
As we move through our days, bombarded as we are by gushing fire hydrant of information, appeals,
messages, and pitches: we inevitably retreat…we wall ourselves off for protection. Our sense of the
world contracts.
HERE we move out of that SMALLER world…into a LARGER, more CAPACIOUS world…something
larger and deeper…not isolated or etherial. BELONG TO SOMETHING LARGER…like the MERCIES of
GOD.
It is here you are called to remember who you are.
You, YOU, are HOLY and ACCEPTABLE to God.
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.
Just what this way of being in the world is that Paul is calling us to—
what does this NON CONFORMIST WAY OF LIFE look like?
Notice, Paul does not point us to some fundamental text, maybe the 10 Commandments…
He does not list some basic rules…or propositions that we have to believe. What follows is about a good
a yard stick that any congregation should use if it wants to test it’s non-conformity to the logic of this
world.
Let love be genuine;
hate what is evil;
hold fast to what is good;
(If we hate evil more than we love the good,
we become nothing more than good haters.)
love one another with mutual affection;
outdo one another in showing honor.
Do not lag in zeal;
be ardent in spirit;
serve the Lord.
Rejoice in hope;
be patient in affliction;
persevere in prayer.
Contribute to the needs of the saints;
pursue hospitality to strangers.
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.
Rejoice with those who rejoice;
weep with those who weep. (We are a people of LAUGHTER and LAMENT)
Live in harmony with one another;
do not be arrogant, but associate with the lowly;
do not claim to be wiser than you are. (Humility looms large not egos)
Do not repay anyone evil for evil,
but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.
If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
NOTICE that up to this point, his advice has come in
groups of 2 or 3 bullet points.
He breaks that rhythm here…given their reality, it makes sense:
Beloved, never avenge yourselves,
but leave room for the wrath of God,
for it is written, “Vengeance is mine;
I will repay, says the Lord.”
Instead, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them;
if they are thirsty, give them something to drink,
for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.”
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
We live in a world where evil is real.
We cannot afford naivety…we have no sentimental view of the world.
The phrase that stood out to me was his admonition that we “LEAVE ROOM FOR wrath of GOD!”
What happened to “the mercies of God?”
Here’s what I think Paul is saying,
“Leave room for God to be God.
God is God. You are not.”
Who knows what God is going to do.
Keep this in mind:
If, as we believe, Jesus was indeed God in the flesh,
We know he suffered greatly at the hands of evil people… beyond what any of us ever will.
We know that One of his last words before he died was to seek forgiveness for those who were torturing him to death.
Leave room for God…who knows what he will do.
“Leave room for God” is probably about as good a piece of wisdom that there is.
We are so ready to conform God to our image…
And when we do…war becomes righteous, evil become necessary, retribution becomes divine mandate that we are empowered to carry out.
A transformed life, a living sacrifice is a way of life that disrupts the logic of this world…
Elsewhere, Paul says, “In Christ, there is not jew or greek, slave or free, male or female…”
Being transformed by the logic of the mercies of God means We don’t get to divide people up and value them differently because of ethnicity or gender or legal status or citizenship…we don’t get to grieve 6 soldiers because they belong to us and call the deaths of 175 children and their teachers collateral damage…because they were Iranian.
To live by the logic of the mercies of God is to
Break up the cycle of violence.
And Sometimes it breaks our hearts.
Which is why we cannot live this way of life alone.
We need each other..side by side..in the pew…in life.
All this talk we do here about grand and magnificent things.
Like the mercy of God…must translate into minutia of our everyday lives,
It must be embodied in an actual way of life that
Defies the logic of this world….
Many years ago, I remember attending a national gathering of my denomination: The American Baptist
Churches, USA. I was recruited to assist in the leading of the final worship service of the gathering.
Much planning had gone into this final, culminating service. The plan was to conclude the service with
the parading of a large cross down the aisle and out of the arena: a symbolic gesture that all we had been
about in this gathering was meant be taken from here and into the world.
The only problem was, in rehearsal, we discovered that the cross was too big to get out the door! Hmm.
I am grateful for the Apostle Paul breaks it down for us…brings it down to life-size bits that translate into
our everyday lives.
I want to conclude with a quote from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, not known as a purveyor of
Christian wisdom…
“What seems to be essential ‘in heaven and on earth’ is that there be obedience in one direction for a long
time. In the long term, this always brings and has brought about something that makes life on earth
worth living.”
“A long obedience in the same direction.”
It doesn’t mean blind obedience to any cause.
It means fidelity to a path, even when it gets hard.
Not obedience as submission.
But obedience as rebellion — against chaos, against apathy, against drift.
Against mindless, acquiescence [from reflections by Dominic Medford]
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.
That seems like a good word for us…anytime..
But especially for us in such as time as this. Amen.