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From Conformed to Transformed

Rev. Cindy Maddox
August 21, 2005

175th Anniversary of the King Street United Church of Christ

When I first checked the lectionary texts for today, I was thrilled. What a perfect text for Anniversary Sunday!

For as in one body we have many members...so we, who are many, are one body in Christ.

For weeks I planned on preaching on the body of Christ. I was pretty much ignoring the first part of our text: the "present your bodies as a living sacrifice" part, the "do not be conformed to this world" part. I guess it reminded me too much of my junior high Sunday school class (which was not a particularly good memory). After all the Bible studies I had participated in, I assumed I knew what it meant: don't conform to the world; don't give in to peer pressure; give your bodies to God, blah-blah-blah, yada-yada-yada.

In my teen years, the language of sacrifice brought to my mind images of giving up everything fun, and, later, connotations of God demanding blood in exchange for sin. I didn't want to preach on that. I was going to focus on the happy part, the "one body in Christ" part.

A professor I knew in seminary used to say that if you want to preach an easy sermon, never read the text more than twice; because if you do, your eyes will stray to what comes before and after, and reading in context is much harder than taking a verse and doing what you want with it.

Besides, if you read the text more than twice, you start to hear what it really says
instead of what you think it says.

As I worked on this sermon, I came to realize that the "one body in Christ" part
doesn't make sense without what comes before it:

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.

But this is not about giving up everything fun and God demanding blood. The Interpreter's Bible Commentary declares:

The essence of sacrifice, even in Old Testament times, lay not in the death of the victim, but in the offering of the life to God. With animal sacrifices, this could only be achieved by the animal's death. But Paul sees that the truest sacrifice we can offer to God is that of living according to God's ways, in covenant with God.

The word sacrifice is rooted in words that mean make sacred. It is not blood that God requires. It is a life that is made sacred, a life that is devoted to God.

We sometimes assume this means full-time Christian service, but pastors and priests, monks and missionaries are not the only ones called by God. God needs chemists and printing pressmen and science teachers and astronomers. All of us can live a life that is devoted to God.

This week I met a Brazilian-American woman who unknowingly said something I found fascinating.

She knew my work number was the church, but she hadn't figured out yet that I am the pastor. She said to me, "You work at the church? Oh, you are lucky!"

Yes, I am lucky to work at the church -- especially this church. But her response is not typical in American culture. One day I'll ask her what in her background taught her to think that way.

But it got me to thinking, how lucky we all are that we "work at the church." How lucky we all are that we are called to devote our lives to God, to make our lives sacred. This is our spiritual worship.

The word translated here in the New Revised Standard Version as spiritual is not the usual word for spiritual. The King James Version actually translates the word in a more helpful way. The word is logikos, the root being logic. The King James Version says, "This is your reasonable worship" -- that which is in accordance with reason.

The Jerusalem Bible paraphrases it this way: a worship "that is worthy of thinking beings."

Here in the United Church of Christ, we value thinking beings. We do not insist, as the cliché goes, that you check your mind at the door. We do not insist that you can believe either in science or in God. We do not insist that we all even agree on what we believe.

Faith is not necessarily about what we believe, but what we perceive. And when we perceive God at work within us and around us, the only reasonable response is to worship God, heart, soul, mind, and strength.

This is our reasonable worship.

And when we do this -- when we give ourselves to God, when we make our lives sacred, when we worship God with our hearts and our minds -- then we are able to follow the next verse:

Do not be conformed to this world.

This verse is not about peer pressure...and yet it is.

For the world around us is always trying to get us to fit into a mold, trying to get us to conform to its standards, standards that are not God's standards.

The world says buy; Christ says give.

The world says gain power; Christ says serve one another.

The world says love your friends; Christ says love your enemies.

The world says believe in yourself; Christ says "Believe in Me."

The world says get even; Christ says forgive.

The world says look out for yourself; Christ says look out for the disenfranchised.

The world says we will gain peace through victory; Christ says we will gain peace through justice.

The world says to join affinity groups with people who think like you do; Christ says join the church with people who disagree.

The world says many things, and it is so easy to conform. It happens so slowly, ever so slowly, that we don't even realize we are being formed...and misshapen and deformed.

Paul says, "Do not be conformed to this world."

The Greek says age: do not be conformed to this age.

Paul is saying that we do not truly belong to this age, to this time, but to the age to come.

If we are not to be conformed to this age, we must be future-facing people. This is part of the call of Christ, to look toward a future ripe with God's promise.

The UCC has been this way since its inception, since the time when we were several denominations, rather than one.

The UCC and its forebears were the first to ordain women, the first to ordain African-Americans, the first to do many things that have since become tradition.

Our forebears fought to end slavery and worked for civil rights. They were future-facing people.

The eight people who started the First Christian Church of Danbury and Patterson
were no different; they were also future-facing people.

They gathered and promised to "watch over each other for good"...and it ended up being for better or for worse.

Through good times and bad times, our ancestors were faithful because they believed in the future of this church. They sacrificed and saved in order to build a little church in the middle of the country. Why?

Because they believed in the future of this church.

They stayed through times with good preachers and student preachers and no preachers. Why?

Because they believed in the future of this church.

They sold cinder blocks for 50 cents to build the parish house, and later went into debt for the first time to build the Martin Room. Why?

Because they believed in the future of this church.

They financed the educational wing, as well as the expansion of the sanctuary. Why?

Because they believed in the future of this church.

And so here we are today, on a hot Sunday in August, gathered together to celebrate 175 years of history. Why?

Because we believe in the future of this church.

Oh, we honor our past, our history, the legacy passed down to us by our ancestors in blood and in the faith.

We honor our past, but we do not live there. Why?

Because we believe in the future of this church.

We celebrate our present; we live in the joy of the now and all that God is doing among us.

We celebrate our present, but we do not stop here. Why?

Because we believe in the future of this church.

We are a future-facing people. We are the body of Christ. Made of many parts, diverse parts, but parts united to "watch over each other for good."

And that promise still lives; it lives in our hearts and in our covenant:

We welcome into this church family all who seek fellowship with God, and we promise to watch over and care for one another.

This is our covenant.

This is our calling.

This is the body of Christ.

Thanks be to God.