Romans 12:1,2
Kalamazoo Mennonite Fellowship
Sunday, September 6, 2009
So, let me encourage all of you, my dear ones, by God’s mercies, to take your bodies and present them as living sacrifices, sacred and pleasing to God; this is your logical service. And do not be conformed to this present age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, to prove out God’s will, which is good, and pleasing, and complete.
When I was in high school, I was in a singing group at our church. We were called “The Joymakers,” and it was nothing but a good experience for me. I don’t suppose that we were amazingly wonderful or anything, but we had a little community, we learned a lot about music, and we even sang in the big city of Grand Rapids at Eastbrook Mall. What I remember best is singing Ralph Carmichael’s youth musical, “Tell It Like It Is.” One of the songs in the musical is based on Romans 12:1-2, “Conform.” The words, if I remember correctly, are something like:
Conform, conform, I really must conform To think that I should be myself Would cause me alarm.
Conform, conform, I really must conform I’d die of fright at the sight Of being on my own.
The group would all sing this together, and on that last line:
Of being on my own…
one of the singers would hold on to the note for a long time, and we’d all stare at him as he realized he was on his own, and chagrined, he would come back to “conform” to the rest of the group.
After we sang, we would all recite together:
Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Since this was the early 70’s, the idea of “non-conformity” had a lot of appeal to it. It was clear to us that the adults had really messed things up and we didn’t want to be part of that. We would not conform—we’d wear our hair long, strum guitars, wear bell-bottoms and sing youth musicals by hippy thought leader Ralph Carmichael. And other than the depletion of the natural environment that threatens our existence, rampant materialism, the capture of much of evangelical Christianity by the radical right, military adventures, and shocking sexual mores by those even in the church, I think we did a pretty good job!
I think my confusion was that somehow I was mixing up in my mind a lot of things. I certainly heard the first part of that verse—“do not be conformed to the world”—more than I heard the second—“but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” I assumed that whatever we did in “non-conformance” was in fact the good thing to do. But, of course, that was a young and naive thing to think.
Remember, Paul has just given us the whole story of God’s interaction with God’s human project, to create a people that rightly related to God through the means of Jesus’s sacrifice and the power of the life-giving Spirit. And so, it’s almost an understatement with Paul says:
So, let me encourage all of you, my dear ones, by God’s mercies, to take your bodies and present them as living sacrifices, sacred and pleasing to God; this is your logical service. And do not be conformed to this present age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, to prove out God’s will, which is good, and pleasing, and complete.
God has done so much on your behalf. But it’s not just that God has done a great thing for you, and therefore you should, in gratitude, do something good for God, a “tit-for-tat.” God invited you to a sumptuous banquet; the least you can do is pay for his coffee when you meet him at the coffee shop. God takes you on a four-week cruise to Alaska; the least you can do is let him use your canoe paddle for the weekend.
No, it’s more than that: the thing that Paul calls us to do is the very thing God has gone to so much trouble to bring about. It’s like God paid for your college tuition, bought your books, and drove you to campus; you should be the best student you can be. Or God has given you one of his kidneys because God wants you to be able to raise your children; you should try to be the best mother you can be.
God desires a “good, pleasing and complete” life for you. God wants what is “good” for you—to make you good, to make you into the person you should be. God wants what is “pleasing” for you—a pleasurable, delightful life. When we see a toddler attempt to walk across the room with a big smile on his face, we know he is just delighted to be doing what he is supposed to be doing, and we are just delighted to see him growing just like he is supposed to. God wants that same kind of delight for us—delight we feel, and delight that God feels. And God wants what is “perfect” or “complete” for you—God doesn’t want us to remain toddlers, but grow into the people we really should be—physically, yes, but spiritually as well.
And God doesn’t just want this for each of us as individuals, but God is continuing to create a new people—a task God started at the beginning of the human project, continued through Abraham and the history of Israel, brought to a climax in the coming of Jesus, and continued in the outpouring of good news and Spirit since then.
So following this new life, set apart to God, is simply a reasonable, rational, logical response to God’s action to bring us to live a new life, set apart to God. We should take our bodies, move them from here—the world of this age—to there—the community and people of God. Paul reminds us that the world wants to squeeze us into its mold (as J.B. Phillips translated the first half of Romans 12:2), to fit its forms, its schemes and patterns. And we need (as I knew as a teenager) that we have to be people of resistance, working with all our strength to push back and say—a life lived for money? No thank you! A life lived for status?—No thank you! A life lived for entertainment and self-pleasure?—No thank you! A life lived for violence and power?—No thank you! “The American Dream” is not God’s dream for us.
Instead, God calls us to be turned into something new on the earth—to metamorphose into a people with a new mindset, a new way of living and being. We need new schemes—God’s schemes, and new patterns—God’s patterns, for living. We need to try these new schemes and patterns out, to test them out, to continue to see, on the one hand, how God’s schemes and plans actually work out for our perfectly pleasing good; and, on the other hand (as we get things wrong) how to get back into good patterns.
This September is a new beginning. For some of us, it’s the start of a new academic year; for some us, we start new job responsibilities; for some, a new stage of life. It’s a good time to be reminded of these profound truths. In what ways, I wonder, will God transform you this fall?