A Holy Balance (Sermon)

 A Holy Balance

Joshua 24:14:15 and Romans 12:1-8

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/19/23

 

Now, therefore, revere the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt and serve the Lord. 15 Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living, but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. (NRSV)

 

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, on the basis of God’s mercy, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable act of worship. ² Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

³ 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. ⁴ For as in one body we have many members and not all the members have the same function, ⁵ so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. ⁶ We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ⁷ ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; ⁸ the encourager, in encouragement; the giver, in sincerity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness. (NRSV)

 

 

         When reading through Paul’s letter to the Romans, one notices that the Apostle is both passionate and compassionate. He manages to be candid with his criticism and gracious with his readers. He demonstrates the kind of holy balance it takes to be both prophetic and pastoral. And he challenges us to find that same balance.

The word balance may be a little misleading. The dynamic to which Paul invites us is not like a gymnast on a balance beam. It’s more of a one-foot-in/one-foot-out kind of thing. “Do not be conformed to this world,” he says, “but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” This is one of the principal passages from which we extrapolate the adage, Be in the world but not of the world.

Holy balance becomes a kind of paradox that helps us to live amid all the world’s idolatry and fear without forgetting that God’s redeeming love and goodness flow without ceasing at the deepest core of our human being and of all that exists, because the Creation itself is God’s seminal medium for self-revelation.

Now, yes, the world is constantly plagued by both random and human-induced suffering. Then again, the story of Israel and the life of Jesus declare that we experience God no less immediately in the midst of suffering than in the midst of joy and thanksgiving. Being all about transformation and renewal, God demonstrates a particular preference for working through and being known in all that is weak and despised in the world. (1Cor. 1:27-28)

People who, by sheer luck, are born into contexts of privilege, and who feel empowered in that privilege, almost always dismiss the wisdom of being in but not of the world. Their situation tempts them to associate power and privilege with divine favor. It tempts them to deny things like, “Blessed are the poor…the hungry…the meek…the merciful…[and] the persecuted.” (Matthew 5); and things like, “what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)

Paul seems to find the Romans lacking in the crucial trait of humility. “For by the grace given to me,” he says, “I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment.”

Sober judgment.

A philosophy professor named Joe Sachs translated numerous ancient Greek texts, and where the NRSV translators chose “sober judgment,” Sachs would have chosen “temperance.” Either way, says Sachs, the Greek word, sophrosune, refers to the “condition by which one chooses bodily pleasures in the ways and to the extent that they enhance life, not by an effort of self-control but by a harmony of desire with reason.”¹ A willfully-chosen harmony of desire with reason. Talk about a holy balance!

Sachs says that the ancient Greco-Roman culture recognized human desire as crucial aspect of human nature that warranted satisfaction. Paul, himself a Roman, would not entirely disagree. Recall what he said to the Corinthians: “I have the freedom to do anything, but not everything is helpful…[because] I…won’t be controlled by anything.” (1Corinthians 6:12) So, the Apostle is always trying to temper runaway indulgence by encouraging sophrosune. And according to Sachs, this sobriety/temperance is “the stable state of character which, in any mature human being, replaces the overgrown impulses of childhood.”

 “When I was a child,” says Paul, “I spoke…thought…[and] reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.” (1Cor. 13:11)

Mature disciples of Jesus inhabit God’s creation with minds constantly open to transformation and direction. Childish minds are vulnerable to the intoxicating ways and means of the world. Greed and fear can overwhelm a mind that has not learned to recognize its longings as potential sources of blessing for others. Consumed by worldly wants, the untransformed mind fixates on its desire for possessions, power, and attention.

How many times has the story been told of people who reach the top of some ladder only to find themselves unfulfilled? How many times have each of us wanted one thing or another, expecting it to complete us in some way, only to have that thing expose nothing more than a deeper emptiness within us? When we strive only to acquire something, we may achieve what economists call “satisfaction,” but we usually end up unsatisfied and wanting more. And that leaves us out of balance.

While it’s important to recognize that reality, it’s even more important not to stop with: Quit wanting stuff. Just want God. Aren’t we physical creatures? And don’t we engage the world not only through our minds, but also through our bodies? Paul encourages us to be prophets, ministers, teachers, givers, andleaders, and we can do those things only in the context of physical reality.

Years ago, the great preacher and teacher Barbara Brown Taylor was invited to speak at an Episcopal church in Alabama. She asked the priest what he wanted her to talk about, and he said, “Come tell us what is saving your life right now.”²

The priest’s invitation made Dr. Brown Taylor stop and think very carefully and creatively. As she thought, prayed, and wrote, she realized that her saving conviction was that “there is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth. My life depends,” she says, “on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them.”

Barbara Brown Taylor is describing the holy balance that blurs the lines between secular and sacred. And she discovers that she becomes most authentically human when she trusts that an authentic path to God necessarily involves a faithful embodiment her own human, physical being in a beloved, physical creation.

Barbara Brown Taylor says all of this in the introduction to her book An Altar in the World: A Geography of God. And in that book, she talks about twelve physical practices through which one can encounter God and deepen one’s faith and one’s ability find blessing in the world and to live as a blessing for others.

It seems to me that Barbara Brown Taylor helps us to understand that inhabiting this Creation as Christian humans means accepting a magnificent and often-frustrating paradox. While we always have one foot in this world, as followers of Jesus, we also have one foot in God’s realm of grace—which is our true hope, identity, and home.

In this week of Thanksgiving, may we all open ourselves to the gifts God gives to each of us, and to the truest, deepest gratitude we find in the transforming presence of the One who creates all things, loves all things, and provides more than enough for all that has being.

 

¹All Joe Sachs references come from: Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle. Translation by Joe Sachs. Focus Publishing, R. Pullins Co., 2002. P. 211.

²All BBT references come from: An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, Barbara Brown Taylor. Harper One, 2009. Pp. xv-xvi.