“An Appeal for Wholeness”
Psalm 133 and Romans 12:1-8
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
8/27/23
Look at how good and pleasing it is
when families live together as one!
2It is like expensive oil poured over the head,
running down onto the beard—
Aaron’s beard!—
which extended over the collar of his robes.
3It is like the dew on Mount Hermon
streaming down onto the mountains of Zion,
because it is there that the Lord
has commanded the blessing:
everlasting life.
(Psalm 133 – CEB)
So, brothers and sisters, because of God’s mercies, I encourage you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice that is holy and pleasing to God. This is your appropriate priestly service. 2 Don’t be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can figure out what God’s will is—what is good and pleasing and mature.
3 Because of the grace that God gave me, I can say to each one of you: don’t think of yourself more highly than you ought to think. Instead, be reasonable since God has measured out a portion of faith to each one of you. 4 We have many parts in one body, but the parts don’t all have the same function. 5 In the same way, though there are many of us, we are one body in Christ, and individually we belong to each other. 6 We have different gifts that are consistent with God’s grace that has been given to us. If your gift is prophecy, you should prophesy in proportion to your faith. 7 If your gift is service, devote yourself to serving. If your gift is teaching, devote yourself to teaching. 8 If your gift is encouragement, devote yourself to encouraging. The one giving should do it with no strings attached. The leader should lead with passion. The one showing mercy should be cheerful. (Romans 12:1-8 – CEB)
Paul wrote his letter to the Romans about 57CE. Inside the city at the heart of the first century’s largest and most powerful empire, the young church seemed to have felt small and insignificant. And yet they also seem to have felt a disproportionate burden of scrutiny.
Nero, the emperor during Paul’s ministry, was known for a fearsome capacity for political tyranny and self-indulgence. Of the few ancient historians who left details about Nero, all but one say that the emperor himself ordered the Great Fire that destroyed two thirds of Rome in 64CE1. And some of those historians suggest that he did so in order to clear space for building projects that would glorify himself. Nero, however, quickly blamed the Christians for the fire, and thus began the practice of persecuting people who proclaimed the realm of God’s love and professed faith in Jesus rather worshiping the emperor and his empire.
While Paul’s letter was written before the fire, Roman culture was still characterized by violence. For both sport and crime-prevention, criminals were crucified or fed to wild animals who had been intentionally starved. The powerful and the poor alike were entertained by human beings fighting to the death in the Colosseum. Any culture which thrives on public execution, slavery, lynching, or oppression of the poor and powerless inevitably treats human bodies like injured livestock.
Let’s put ourselves in the place of the Roman Christians. How might we react when Paul says, “present your bodies as a living sacrifice…to God,” and that doing so constitutes our “appropriate priestly service”? That’s kind of like wealthy people saying to parents of starving children, Well, at least your kids aren’t overweight.
Then Paul begins to clarify himself. “Do not be conformed to the patterns of this world,” he says. And he’s saying not to mistake the temporary securities of military dominance and the material pleasures of wealth for God’s blessing. In the long run, those things tend to do more harm than good. They turn our trust and hope away from God and from God’s providence. They turn us toward detached individualism, toward personal comfort and status, things that are almost always gained and maintained at the expense of others.
The Caesars of the world, and those who worship them, cannot have excess without depriving someone of basic human needs. And to accept that disparity as the way of things is to “conform to the patterns of this world.” It is to decide that some people’s bodies, minds, and spirits are inherently less worthy. And one simply cannot conform to that worldly ideology and follow Jesus.
So, Paul says, “Be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you can figure out what God’s will is.” Overcoming the temptation to devalue other people or the Creation for one’s own benefit requires a transformation of mind and heart. And while transformation is a gift of grace and something we cannot make happen, we can make room for it.
The Message version of scripture renders Paul’s room-making words this way: “Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what [God] does for us, not by what we are and what we do for [God].”
Deepening this call to humility and service, Paul uses the image of a single human body to illustrate the diversity necessary for wholeness in human communities. He reminds his readers that just like heads, shoulders, knees, and toes everyone has their own unique purposes and gifts, and that all of them are necessary. And think about it, if a narcissistic Nero did burn his own city for personal gain, doesn’t that illustrate exactly what it means to cut off your nose to spite your face?
Human idolatry and arrogance—which might be defined as the gluttony of individualistic heads, shoulders, knees, and toes—is all-too-evident these days. And I’m not claiming high ground here. When I’m in a cozy room with like-minded people, especially when things aren’t going our way, I give in and conform to the world. And when shackled by self-righteousness and resentment, I can’t discern the will of God. I can’t hear wisdom in the words of scripture. I can’t see the humanity I share with those with whom I disagree. I don’t hold them in authentic prayer. Because my mind is no longer transformed, I can’t filter out the toxic anger within and around me so that I feel something of the universal pain underneath it all. And doesn’t that just make me part of the problem?
Now, I’m not saying that we should be so tolerant that we ignore the actions and attitudes that contribute to injustice and create human suffering. To do that would be to forsake those who are oppressed—which is to forsake Jesus himself. I’m saying that to participate in God’s transforming work in the world, we begin by looking for the God-imaged holiness in ourselves, in one another, and in the Creation. Then, like Jesus, we can recognize, name, and celebrate the gifts of those around us because none of us are complete without all that God has created, called good, and is, even now, redeeming.
And all this hard stuff just gets harder, because, out of this generous, beautiful, God-given diversity within the body of Christ, we’re also called to demonstrate onevoice of love for God through love of neighbor.
Discerning the will of God—something for which we pray every time we utter the Lord’s Prayer—is a life-long process of learning, unlearning, and relearning. It’s a process of dying to self and rising to Christ. And in that process, we seek and nurture challenging relationships with people who are suffering and with people whose understanding of the world seems at odds with our own. When we think of ourselves, as Paul says, “more highly that [we] ought to think,” we cannot see the humanity or the holiness in others. And so, we dismiss not just the poor and the oppressed, but those who exploit them, those who just don’t care about them, and maybe even those who advocate for them differently that we do. And who can participate in God’s transforming realm of love through antipathy or apathy? Doesn’t it require empathy, feeling and embracing the pain and the joy of others?
Love God with all you have and with all you are, says Jesus. Love your neighbors empowered by the awareness that to love them is the loving thing to do for your own self as well as for them. And so that you can do all that, he says, take up your cross and follow me.
Jesus calls us toward lives of compassion and understanding, lives in which we will claim our gifts and share them, lives in which we can recognize all the heads, shoulders, knees, and toes around us as neighbors, as brothers and sisters without whom we cannot be fully human or fully alive.
No comments:
Post a Comment