"Responding to the Mercies of God"

Romans 12:1-8

Preaching from the letters of Paul this summer has been both fun and challenging. In some ways, a letter is a very personal form of communication, but when we think of Paul’s letters, now part of the canon of scripture, we often forget that they were personal - that Paul had no idea that we would be reading them 2000 years later, or that he was writing what would become Holy Scripture.

Paul wrote from the heart with concern and compassion toward the churches he had founded. He usually wrote about some problem that had developed or some disagreement that was brewing. And, Paul did what was customary in his day – he dictated his message to a secretary, and then would sometimes add a few of his own words at the end, in his own hand.

I can just picture Paul, full of the vision he has for the church, and full of the message he wants to get out about his experience of the living, risen Christ, striding back and forth, pouring out a torrent of words, while his poor secretary tries to get it all down. And there was no grammar check or spell check or do-overs on the computer in his day!

The letter to the Romans is different than the others we have explored this summer in that Paul had nothing to do with the founding of the church in Rome, nor had he ever been there. So, Romans is more of a systematic presentation of Paul’s theology. Rome was the greatest city in the world, the capital of the greatest empire the world had ever known, and Paul was not sure if he would ever get there. So perhaps he wanted to set down his core beliefs in the hopes that this letter would build up the church in the great city of Rome.

Paul had a great vision for the church of Jesus Christ, and during his lifetime, he did everything he possibly could to extend the message of Christ’s love out into the world. Have you ever stopped to consider what the church would be today if Paul had not spent his life and energy planting churches and evangelizing the Gentile world? We cannot imagine.

The first eleven chapters of Romans lay out Paul’s core theology – no one is righteous, all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. But God’s mercy and love is shown to us in Jesus Christ. For Paul, the center of faith is that we can never earn God’s grace, nor do we need to. We only have to accept in gratitude and trust what God has already done in Christ. Paul concludes chapter eleven with a doxology of praise to the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.

Our text today is the beginning of chapter 12 where Paul begins to lay out his ethical, or practical ways of living out the faith. Let us listen for God’s word to us. Read Romans 12:1-8.

It has been said that life is enriched not so much by good answers as it is by good questions. I read of a seminarian whose theology professor asked one of those good questions that he describes as both beautiful and aggravating. Here’s the question. “Now that you do not have to do anything to gain salvation, what are you going to do?”

The question is beautiful in that it describes the good news of the gospel of Christ. We cannot do anything to earn our life in God. It is given freely as a gift. But it is aggravating in that we do not know how to answer. If we answer, “nothing,” then we cut ourselves off from responding to that good news.

The beginning of Romans 12 gives us one way of thinking about that question. Because of the mercies of God, referring back to all that Paul has written in the first eleven chapters – because of the mercies of God, present your bodies as a living sacrifice – that is the appropriate response.

Present your bodies (in the Greek, soma, which means not just the physical, but the entire person), present your entire person, your whole being, to God, as a living sacrifice.  And, Paul is after something much more radical than a contrast between the animal sacrificial system of Judaism. He is saying that the whole self is the only acceptable offering that we can make.

So our true worship is offering everything – every task we do every day, every word, every thought, every action. It means our everydayness – preparing and eating meals, going to school, to the office, to the factory, to the shop, to the garden – taking all of that and offering it as worship. Yes, we gather as a community here each Lord’s Day to offer our songs and prayers and reflections, but Paul is suggesting that to respond to God’s mercies, we offer up every moment of every day.

How can we ever learn to do that? Well, Paul continues by saying that to live that way requires a radical change. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by a renewal of your mind, until your very being is changed, so that, in your own life, you may prove that the will of God is good and well-pleasing and perfect.

J.B. Phillips translates verse 2 in this way: “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its mold, but let God remold your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all your demands, and moves toward the goal of true maturity.”

It is like we are in the middle of these two ways of being. We can let the world squeeze us into its mold, or we can let God transform us completely. The problem is that letting the world have us is often the easier way. And in many ways, it feels safer. We feel like we have some control because we know the ways of the world. On the other hand, if we really let God transform us completely, we don’t know what that might look like. And we like to think we are in control!

Last week, San used the analogy of God’s love being like a mighty river that flows eternally. Paul seems to assure us of the love of God over and over, that there is nothing that can separate us from this incredible love. But here he also seems to say that we have to let that flow into our lives. “Let God transform you by a renewal of your mind.”

All we have to do is step into that river, that river of forgiveness, healing, and wholeness. Each week, we declare, “In Jesus Christ, we are forgiven, healed, and made whole.” But, then do we live everyday like we really believed what we said? Perhaps there are moments of each day when we really do. But probably few of us live in the middle of that flow every moment of every day, and yet, because of God’s mercies, that is our call.

The rest of our passage describes specific calls within the body of Christ that would strengthen the community and build up the body – gifts that are given to each of us. And with each gift that is described, Paul urges us to use those gifts fully, with enthusiasm, imagination, and love. These gifts, given freely because of the mercies of God, are part of our response to present our whole beings as our spiritual worship.

This week at our last Supper and Substance, the movie the adults talked about was “Tender Mercies.” It is the story of a mother and her son – about 11 or 12 – who run a small motel and gas station outside a small Texas town. Robert Duval plays a country singer who is a drunk who ends up in a room at their motel. When he can’t pay for his room, he asks for work, and the story unfolds from there.

There is a wonderful scene where the boy, Sunny, and the singer, Mac, are baptized one Sunday morning. As the 3 of them are riding home in their pickup, Sunny says that people told him he would feel like a new person after he was baptized. But he doesn’t feel much different, so he asks Mac if he feels anything different. Mac says, no, not yet. They laugh and their conversation goes back and forth for a while, but every time Mac answers, no, not yet.

It is a hopeful answer. Mac and Sunny have risked stepping over into the flow of that river of God’s love. And they do so with expectation. They expect to be transformed, and to never be the same.

And so, because of God’s tender mercies toward us, we are called to present our whole beings – every moment of every day – a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God as our true and spiritual worship. We are not to let the world form us, but rather we are to let God transform us by renewing our minds, so that as we live our every day lives, we will come to know that God’s will for us is good and will lead us to wholeness and maturity. Amen.