Peace Church Sermons: October 2012

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Always Being Reformed

Romans 12:1-18
Reformation Sunday

Elizabeth M. Deibert

October 28, 2012

Do you get discouraged sometimes, wondering if all your effort is not really accomplishing anything? Did you know that just before Martin Luther died, he wrote a friend about the failed reformation of the church? He had just preached his final sermon and guess how many people showed up? Five. If Martin Luther thought his effort had been a failure, then surely one never knows what God might do with our attempts at being faithful. It is easy to be discouraged about the church – big C, because as I mentioned last week, there is a rapidly growing group of people who mark none on the survey of religious affiliation. And many who claim to believe in God are not really very interested in being an active part of a church. And of those few who are willing to commit to a church, many are not interested in our kind of church, one that treasures our handed down tradition and lives with it in a fresh and vibrant way. And it is always clear that in order to thrive as a church, what we need is growth, and sometimes to be honest with you, I get tired of trying to figure out how to do that. And in my exhaustion, I have little tolerance for the little skirmishes that happen in all churches, including one that is named Peace, because sometimes we are NOT peaceable. And if they’ll know we’re Christians by our love, none of those people marking none on their pages will know. Perhaps tensions are high because of the election season, but what I have seen lately is the need for more respect, more gratitude, and more peace around here. It all begins with the transformation of character of which Paul writes in the 12th chapter of Romans. It is about the reformation of character – about internalized the mind of Christ.

Paul spends the first eight chapters of Romans talking about the amazing grace of God that trumps all sin. We a justified by grace through faith, not through works – the great emphasis of the Reformation. Then in chapters 9-11, he explains how the new covenant does not nullify the first covenant made with the Jews, but broadens it. God imprisoned all in disobedience to be merciful to all. Then in chapter 12, he gets to the huge transition moment – the therefore.

Because there is no more condemnation because of Christ’s gift of grace, then we are called to live as the free children of God, transformed by the renewing of our minds. And our text goes on to describe just what that renewal, that re-formation or transformation should look like. I could preach five sermons on this passage, one on each paragraph as it is laid out in your bulletin, but instead we will look today for the big picture view of the committed Christian re-formation.

Romans 12:1-18

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. 2 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.

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 exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

9 Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; 10 love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. 11 Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. 12 Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. 13 Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. 14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. 17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. 18 If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. (NRSV)

It takes guts to be a non-conformist. The opening lines of this scripture lesson call us to yield ourselves completely to God, like Jesus, to give ourselves thoroughly to a sacrificial life of service that brings meaning to others. This does not just happen magically. It is hard to work out your own salvation even with the help of the Holy Spirit. It requires the transformation of our minds – from our regular old self-absorbed, reactionary, reptilian brain, looking only to protect self and satisfy self, to a deeper, more humane, Christ-like mind that is sensitive to the Spirit of God, that knows what is good and right and holy – by prayer & study.

Transformation – Re-formation. It begins with our humility – not thinking too highly of ourselves and then recognizing our need for one another in the one body of Christ. Thinking too much of self gets in the way of seeing the value of others. We all have differing gifts – what a good idea –that we are not all alike – how utterly boring that would be. Forgive me, but I have to stop preaching and go to meddling now. There is just not enough gratitude in this church for all the different gifts that people bring. For the rest of gratitude season at Peace – that’s three more weeks, I am making a commitment not to complain about anything or anyone at Peace. Will you join me in this commitment (it is a big one) not to complain about anyone or anything at Peace. (Yes, that includes your spouse if you have one who goes to Peace and children and the person at church who bugs you the most.) Can we fast from complaints about people for three weeks? Will you make that commitment with me? Let’s give thanks to God that we are all different. Every time you get ready to complain about someone, stop yourself and find something to be grateful for, and I don’t mean sarcastic gratitude, which is not real gratitude at all. Life is too short to waste so much energy wishing people would be more like me, more like you.

Barbara and Don McIlwain handed me a wonderful little comic strip last Sunday. It says, “Dear God, so far today I have kept my mouth shut, have not lost my temper, have not been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish, or over-indulgent. I’m feeling good about that. But in a minute, Lord, I am going to get out of bed, and I’m going to need a lot more help from you. Amen?

We all have our excuses for meanness – for being un-reformed. Richard can tell you I’m not very nice, even first thing in the morning. Let me have my coffee and leave me alone to pray and walk in the garden and gradually I become humane. Now I could blame my irritability on menopause. Or I could say that being a pastor is challenging, exhausting sometimes, but so are other vocations, and the vocation we share is ministry – wherever we are, whatever we do. And ministry would be so easy, if it were not for the people. It is so easy to blame our irritability on other people, rather than looking at self more closely. Outdo one another in showing honor. We all can name any number of excuses for bad behavior. The kids driving you up the wall. Your aging parents needing more from you than you can give. Your stressful job or the fact that you lost it. Your financial situation, your health or that of your spouse. Your concerns about the future – who will take care of you in the end. There are many reasons for our grumpiness, for our lack of patience in suffering, for our inability to trust God, and to love others generously. Yet, there are no real excuses because God’s grace has been poured into our hearts and in Christ, behold, the new creation! Everything old has gone. See, everything is new. Everything is being reformed.

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what God’s up to... getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But then God starts knocking the house around in a way that hurts and stings and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is God up to? The explanation is that God is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but [Christ] is building a palace to come live in himself.” ― adapted from C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

We are called to be shining lights because of God’s grace. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, you are a light on a hill. Shine so that others will see your good works. The first letter of John says, “Beloved, let us love one another… whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

The last two paragraphs of our text today are a sort of checklist of attitudes and actions which I believe can be summed up with the words: Embrace the good, serve God your might, be compassionate and generous toward all people, and put your hope in God.

There are twenty-three challenges to live a devoted Christian life here in those two paragraphs. I’m going to end this sermon by reading them very slowly, hoping that each of us can internalize them and pray to embody them, as the transformed person God calls us to be. The great slogan of the Reformation was semper reformanda, always being reformed – according to the word of God. It does not just happen overnight – this sanctification process takes some effort, some cooperation with the Holy Spirit who wants to indwell us and re-form us – as a community and as individuals. Please pray with me for re-formation in these ways:

I challenge you to join me in working on this list from now until Thanksgiving. Take your scripture insert page home, and each day, take one imperative, one challenge. I bet if we all work on this together, there will be more Thanksgiving on thanksgiving, and people might appreciate the new you and me, the ever reforming servants of Christ, actively embracing the mind of Christ.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Don't Worry; Be Happy

Matthew 6:19-34

Gratitude Season #2

Elizabeth M. Deibert

October21, 2012

There’s a lot to worry about and both presidential candidates have been working hard to make us think that electing the other one will be a catastrophic disaster, as if one person, even the President of the United States, could bring us to ruin or correct the ruin all by himself. Listening to the debates tends to build fear, not faith, but I keep listening because it seems the responsible thing for an informed voter to do.

There’s a lot to worry about in the church too. I read this week that the nones – are on the rise. I’m not talking about women living in covents, but the people who mark “none” on religious affiliation. The number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling. In the last five years alone, the unaffiliated have increased from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. Their ranks now include more than 13 million self-described atheists and agnostics (nearly 6% of the U.S. public), as well as nearly 33 million people who say they have no particular religious affiliation (14%)those. It used to be easier to help churches grow than it is now.

There’s a lot to worry about and sometimes we even add worry to things that needed no worry, because worry tends to spill out over everything. I read some church bloopers this week that one of you sent me this week and my favorite one was this: Don't let worry kill you - let the Church help.

In hospitals and homes, in church meetings, over the phone, the internet and over coffee, I have heard these worrisome things in the last ten days : unexpected cancer diagnoses, heart disease, unsettled divorce issues, worries over lost jobs, academic pressures that kill the spirit, the death of dreams, minor surgeries that become major or repeated, the pressured need to move not knowing where, physical problems that have no good solution, close friends who die, concern over young children, relationship problems with adult children, people leaving the church in search of another. (slide)

Today’s text is not the lectionary reading for today. I chose it because the Spirit of God told my spirit that we were worrying too much about everything. I sensed a good deal of anxiety around here, for real reasons, understandable reasons. I’ve worried a lot myself, but we are people who trust in God. To be people of faith, we must keep our anxieties in check. I saw this pithy line somewhere: If you have time to worry, then you are not spending enough time in prayer, and at the women’s prayer group yesterday we prayed Reinhold Neibuhr’s serenity prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Matthew 6:19-34

¹⁹ "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

22 "The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; 23 but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

24 "No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

25 "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.

30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you-- you of little faith?

31 Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear?' 32 For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 "So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today. (NRSV)

Sometimes when Gia knows I worrying, she’ll start playing something she knows will make me sing and singing helps: Why should I feel discouraged? Why should the shadows come? Why should my heart be lonely and long for heaven and home? When Jesus is my portion – a constant friend is he. His eye is on the sparrow and I know he watches me. His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me. I sing because I’m happy. I sing because I’m free, for his eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me.

The grand Illusion of our times is financial security: Everybody wants it, nobody gets it. It is like the horizon - the more eagerly you approach it, the faster it recedes. You say that you would be happy if only you could attain financial security, if only you never needed to worry about bills or taxes. And so you try to earn all you can and to put aside all you can for tomorrow. That secure tomorrow never arrives. What comes instead? Inflation, financial bubble, recession, bank failures, crime, illness, environmental disasters, war, layoffs, takeovers, joblessness, forced retirement. The harder you try for financial security, the less secure you are! (slide) As J Paul Getty, the richest man of the 1960’s said, when someone asked him, “how much is enough?” he said “just a little more.”

A 2010 Princeton study of personal economics as related to happiness showed that about $75,000/year is enough for the average family. Another $25,000 or even another $100,000 will make you richer but not happier.

Actually, people become less content as they increase toward living with the six digit figure, and some of us are on the far side of this overconsumption curve. Pressures increase with more disposable wealth. Anxiety increases. What we need is just enough to live on, to pay for basic necessities and a little to spend on pleasures. But I promised that I would not talk about money so much every week of gratitude season, so let’s shift back to the issue of worry, which is the heart of the matter.

It is really about trusting God and believing God will not let you down, when you live according to God’s design, when you put God first. If our trust is expressed as obedience, then we will not worry unduly about food, shelter, and clothing.

As we take care of the things God cares about – justice, kindness, mercy toward all people, especially those in need, God will take care of our real needs and our trust will deepen, as we practice trusting. (last two paragraphs adapted from John Purdy, God with a Human Face, 1993)

(slide) A person once met with their pastor for counseling and after meeting many times and listening to much concern expressed by the parishioner, the pastor said, “You know, I think maybe you are worried about too many things. Remember that Jesus said, “Don’t worry about tomorrow – what you will eat, what you will wear, how you will pay your bills, who will be elected president and what will happen to the economy.” The pastor went on to explain that excessive anxiety was bad for the health and did not solve any of the problems. The parishioner said, “Well, I know for a fact that my worrying has helped. Because 9 out of the 10 things I worried about this week about never actually happened.” 1 Peter 5:7 says, Give all your worries and cares to God, because God cares for you.” Proverbs 3:5 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not rely on your own understanding.” Philippians 4: 6 says, “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

Sometimes we just have to step back and remember that God is in charge. Our loving God is sovereign over all the earth, then we can whistle along through life with Bobby McFerrin, singing “Don’t worry. Be Happy.” (watch music video on youtube.com)

Released in September 1988, Don’t Worry; Be Happy became the first a capella song to reach number one on the charts, a position it held for two weeks. Ironically, the celebrity status it created for McFerrin made it harder for him to not worry. (slide)

One way to alleviate worry is to count your blessings, so let’s take our gift cards and add five more to the gifts we named last week. Today I will ask the children to come during the offering time to collect your gift cards.

God has so richly blessed us with gifts. So let us now sing a grateful hymn of praise.