We are nonconformist to this age, and transformed by the Spirit in one mind together, one Body in Christ, and through God’s grace, it is that Body that will bring God’s healing and life to the world.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 21 A
Texts: Romans 12:1-8; Matthew 16:13-20
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.
Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work. Neither are you free to abandon it.” [1]
These words paraphrased and expanded from a Talmudic teaching by Rabbi Rami Shapiro have become precious and strengthening to many of us here at Mount Olive. Some members recently commissioned artist Aaron Silver to create a work of art portraying the last two sentences of the saying in his beautiful cut paper renderings of Hebrew script, and we celebrated its arrival here last week.
This wisdom gives us encouragement in a world filled with grief and pain, human evil and suffering, and great injustice. It may seem overwhelming, the rabbis say, but Micah had it right: do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God. You don’t have to do it all. But you also can’t walk away.
Today, though, Paul’s beautiful words suggest adding a final sentence to this rabbinical wisdom. “You are not obligated to complete the work. Neither are you free to abandon it. And you can’t do it alone.”
We live in a culture that’s long emphasized the individual over the community.
True, the indigenous peoples who’ve lived on this continent for millennia certainly had and still have a communal ethos, villages, tribes care for each other, see kinship, share the challenges of life together. And the many who flocked to these shores these past 400 years, some willingly, some desperately, some dragged here in chains, also had communities that cared for each other, helped each other face difficulty.
But the American ethos has a dominant self-reliance/independence tone. We are shaped by a culture that values not depending on others, on sorting your own life out. That far too often values individual rights over the needs of the many. A culture that privatizes faith expression, resists collaboration, idolizes competition, praises self-made people.
And this costs us. We have difficulty witnessing to our faith because instinctively we feel it’s a private thing. People who are elderly, or suffer from disabling challenges, or simply have greater needs than others, often say they don’t want to be a burden on anyone. Even though the very definition of being loved by another means you are a burden to them. It’s how love works, and it’s beautiful. Far too often we believe we’re on our own in facing our own life challenges, and don’t let others know. And then there are the world’s overwhelming problems that often lead each of us to doubt we can make any difference.
Because of this, when Paul speaks of the Body of Christ, we often focus mostly on the individual parts and differences.
But for Paul, it’s all about the Body. To the Romans today he says, “individually we are parts one of another.” To borrow language from Paul’s first Corinthian letter where he also speaks of the Body, the toe’s connection to the whole body means there is no separation in the body. No barriers between the toe and the eye. The same blood flows between them, the same air gives oxygen to them. If the toe gets hit by a hammer, the eye weeps.
So it is with Christ’s Body. In Christ we all belong to each other. We can’t exist apart from each other. There is no distance between God, and us, and neighbor. The blood that flows between us is God’s love and the breath we take together is the Spirit’s life. Even our individual callings to be Christ can’t be lived apart from this Body in which we live in Christ. We are called together. Christ together.
When Paul says today “be transformed,” he’s talking to this whole Body.
“Conformed” and “transformed” are plural in the Greek. “Don’t be conformed to this world, you Body of Christ.” “Be transformed, you Body of Christ.” Paul speaks not of my transformation or of yours, but the transformation of the entire Body of believers.
So the gifts Paul talks about are the way the Spirit empowers the whole Body to move and work in the world. It isn’t a Body conformed to the world’s way: self-interest, greed, and all the things that have led to the pain the world is in today. A body could conform that way, we’ve seen it. We’ve seen Christian groups, even our own, become embedded in the world’s ways and become unrecognizable as Christian. We’ve seen a nation with great ideals become ever more hateful to the most vulnerable, ever more self-centered.
But the transformed Body of Christ is shaped by God’s Spirit, transformed into Christ. It has gifts, Paul says, of faithful prophetic word speaking God’s concerns to the rest. It has gifts of generous giving, so all share in the bounty of the creation. It has gifts of diligent leadership, so people are constantly lifted up who help the Body move to where it is called to move. It has gifts of cheerful compassion, so no one is left behind, all are joined into this love of Christ. Most of all, as Jesus will tell us next week, this Body lives a life of sacrificial loving, where all lose themselves so others can be found.
And not even the gates of hell can stand up to this transformed body, Jesus says today.
Jesus isn’t describing the Church as a gated fortress, sheltered, saying no one can hurt us. It’s exactly opposite. Yes, the word “church” here is “ecclesia,” those called out of the world to become Christ’s Body. But then Jesus sends this Body to the gates of hell to bear God’s love. To break down the gates that keep people in or out, break the chains that enslave them.
Walls of hate, walls of violence, walls of greed, walls of ignorance, this Body shaped in love will go to them and break all barriers with love. Until all God’s children, every being on this planet, is part of this transformed Body of God’s love.
What chance do even the gates of hell have against that onslaught of love? Or the gates of death or fear? What systems, what rooted prejudice, what depressing litany of the world’s grief and evil could prevail against such love?
So, dear family of God: let’s not be conformed to this age, but be transformed together by God’s grace.
Let us do justly now, together. Love mercy now, together. Walk humbly with our God now, together. Transformed together, with the Spirit’s grace, we will do what God needs done. And not just in this Body here at Mount Olive, but the far more challenging Body of Christ of which we are a part across this planet. Even the parts that make us disgusted and angry. Paul says we can’t discard them. Christ has put us all together.
And through God’s grace, it is this transformed Body that will bring God’s healing and life to the world. And nothing will be able to stop the love of God this Body incarnates.
In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
[1] Rabbi Rami Shapiro, paraphrase and trope on a portion of the Pirke Avot (Sayings of the Fathers, Talmud); from Wisdom of the Jewish Sages: A Modern Reading of the Pirke Avot (Bell Tower, 1993)
