Why Change?

 Scripture   Romans 12:1-6a NRSV

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.   

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Good morning. First - A public service announcement. Because of all the fires around the state, the Air Quality  is really bad.  The air quality on  Monday is forecast to be even worse.  Please, if you love your lungs, and especially if you have asthma or other lung conditions, stay inside.  Don’t go for a walk.  Close your windows.  Hydrate.  Stay well.  Please. Thank you.

Paul said to the churches in Rome, “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.”

It has always been hard for the Church, for Christians, to live in a way that is substantially different from the way society expects folks to live.  It’s hard to resist peer pressure.  We know this because every mother in the history of motherhood has at one time or another responded to her child’s argument that, “Ma, everyone is doing that!” with “If everyone was jumping off a cliff would you do that, too?”  (A different example must be used if the child is asking permission to go cliff diving or BASE jumping.)   As we get older, the peer pressure changes, but it’s still there.  

(Warning:  I am about to enter into the realm of Generalizations.  Please know I realize that “not all whatevers” are the same.  Here we go.)   Baby Boomers, people born during the post-World War II baby boom, currently range in age from 56 - 74. (*raising hand*) This age group is pretty in charge of the world right now.   In addition to being called Baby Boomers, they (we) are known as the “Me Generation” because of the quality of being self-absorbed that they (we) are known for.   Hence the rise in the popularity of American Individualism as a way of life in the 1960s, where “my rights” or wellbeing are more important than the rights or wellbeing of the whole.  We  invented the term “My way or the highway.” We also invented Team Building Exercises in the 1990s because it’s hard to work as a team when it’s all about me.    And yet, although we are all about ourselves, we seem to want to be ourselves in  the same way everyone else is being about themselves.  We love to join stuff.  We love to organize in big groups with a common goal. Like AARP.   And church.  Heaven forbid anyone should try to change that thing we belong to, even if the change will “improve” it.  We are suspicious of “improvements.”   It’s ok if everyone else is doing it, but we aren’t going to do it first. 

Society has always found it a bit strange when a group of people put the well being of the community ahead of their own desires.  That’s why Christians stood out so much from the rest of the population.  It’s not that they dressed differently or anything that obvious.  But they behaved differently. They responded to situations differently.  They were learning to think differently.  And Paul encouraged that.  Paul told the Church in Rome, “You need to take on a whole new way of thinking and doing.  You need to be transformed from the way you were so that you aren’t focused on what you want, or what your friends and neighbors want or what internet influencers say you should want, but rather on what God wants.”. (Ok, that is from the Maria translation of the Bible.) 

On October 2nd, 2006 a man walked into an Amish one room schoolhouse in Lancaster County, PA, and shot 10 young girls, killing 5, then shot and killed himself.  Within a few hours the Amish community reached out to the shooter’s family to comfort them and offer forgiveness, and then, they set up a charitable fund to help support his widow  and three children.  The world went nuts! What?  They are forgiving that man?  They should hate him!  He was evil!  But . . . A grandfather of one of the murdered girls warned some young relatives “We must not think evil of this man.” One of the fathers said, “He had a mother and a wife and a soul and now he is standing before a just God.”.   They did not conform to the ways of the world, which was screaming for revenge, but rather sought to do God’s will, follow God’s commandments.   Love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Forgive even as you are forgiven.  Take care of the widows and orphans among you.   

Renewing our minds, being transformed, so that we may discern the will of God . . .  This is hard!   We do “my way or the highway”.  We do “but we’ve always done it this way.”  We do “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”.  

Thing is, the way we’ve always done it doesn’t really work for everyone.  Racism is the way of the world. But it isn’t right and it really only benefits white people.  Skin color has nothing to do with ability, or intelligence, or potential for criminality, but judging people on their skin color is the way of the world.  When a teacher told me that my step-son would probably end up in jail - not because the kid had ever been in trouble, but because he was not white - that was not right!   But the school to prison pipeline for young men and women of color is the way of the world right now.  The Black Lives Matter movement and other movements intended to bring greater awareness to the injustices that people of color experience daily stand against the way of the world.  Their purpose is to seek justice for the oppressed.  The oppression they speak of is hard for white people to grasp, because trying to understand a reality we have never experienced requires opening and renewing our minds to a huge degree, but justice for the oppressed is one of the things God requires of us.  

Hating on people because of their political affiliation or gender identity or sexual orientation or nation of origin - even just treating them differently than I would treat someone who is more like me - those things are not right, either, even though they are the way of the world.  Loving one another, regardless of the  differences between us - that is God’s will.

I want you to know - I really hate change.  I tend to default to the things I learned growing up.  I have to deal with the fact that I am now aware of a lot of things that I would have been perfectly happy never knowing - like my white privilege, and the way Native Americans have been and are still being treated, and the one-sidedness of our history books.  I will never forget my shock when my late mother-in-law told me she didn’t mind if her son married a white woman.  It never occurred to me that might be an issue. Him being Navajo might be an issue for my family, but me being white?  I have learned that I don’t know what I don’t know, so I have to be willing to listen, at least.

Lest anyone think I am saying it is God’s will for all of us to think alike and agree on everything, I am not.  I am saying we need to be willing to listen to diverse opinions, to accept that people have different experiences of the world, that there might be another legitimate viewpoint.  We need to try to understand where the other is coming from before we reject their position.  Don’t start shaking your head as soon as someone presents an opinion that is different from yours.  (And yes, I know I do that.)  We need to learn to communicate with one another - to listen in order to learn, not in order to formulate arguments.  It isn’t easy.  Because we know what we know.  And it takes real work to replace what we already know with new information.  

Paul told the church in Rome, “present yourselves as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.” Being Christian requires sacrificing our desire to be like everyone else.  It requires doing things the hard way - forgiving the murderer, accepting the demonstrator, loving the hater. Being Christian requires that we give up being all about ourselves, and become all about the community - the Beloved Community, where God’s righteousness and justice prevail over the ways of the world.  Let us go out to face hatred with love, anger with a peaceful spirit, cruelty with compassion, so that Christ’s sacrifice is not in vain.