The Rev. Dayle Casey
The Chapel of Our Saviour
Colorado Springs, Colorado
August 31, 2008

Proper 17-A
Jeremiah 15:15-21
Romans 12:1-21
Matthew 16:21-27

Just a moment ago we asked God to “increase in us true religion.” And when I consider the readings God has given us this morning, I am reminded of the wise counsel that cautions us to be careful what we pray for, because we might just get it.

Last week Peter confessed that Jesus was the Christ, the Anointed sent by God to bring us true religion. And today Jesus tells Peter, and St. Paul tells us, what that true religion is.

True religion, Jesus says, is a way. It is a way of living and a way of dying, the way of the Cross. And Peter says, ”Oh, no, Lord! That’s not what we had in mind.”

Right after Peter confessed that Jesus was the Son of the living God, “Jesus began to make it clear to his disciples that he had to go to Jerusalem, and endure great suffering at the hands of the elders, chief priests, and scribes; to be put to death, and to be raised again on the third day.... ‘Anyone who wishes to be a follower of mine must renounce self,’ Jesus added. ‘He must take up his own cross and follow me. Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.’”

That’s true religion. That’s that old-time religion of Jesus, the religion Peter had such a hard time with. And it’s the religion we have such a hard time with as well. Maybe that’s why we ask God to increase it in us, because, like Peter, we know that we are powerless to increase it in ourselves.

And St. Paul gives us a long list of things to do, things to do to practice losing our lives in order that we may find them. True religion is doing things, he says, doing certain kinds of things in certain kinds of ways. For those who ask for practical suggestions about what it means to be a Christian, suggestions about what it means to take up one’s own cross and follow Christ, about what it means to have true religion increased in us, there is no better place to look than the twelfth chapter of Romans. “Practice!” Paul says.

True religion is different from false religion. False religion is the religion that we saw on the tee shirts several years ago: “How Much Can I Get Away With and Still Go to Heaven?” false religion asks. But true religion is different. Those who love Jesus and who have been baptized into Christ, Paul says, have “put on” Christ. They wear the Cross in the way they live out their lives day after day; they practice Christ. And that’s why this morning in the liturgy Romans 12 accompanies today’s Gospel reading about taking up one’s own cross to follow Christ.

So for those of us who like practical suggestions, I’m going to read Paul for us again this morning – Romans 12:1-21 – and offer some commentary along the way.

“Therefore...,” says Paul. And that calls for an immediate and full stop, because “therefore” is a very important word. It means that what Paul is about to say follows logically or necessarily from what he’s said earlier. And Paul has spent the first eleven chapters of this letter telling us about how Christ, who renounced his own life and gave it up by dying on the Cross, has worshipped his Father in spirit and in truth and has thereby redeemed us and the world. “Therefore,” says Paul, because of what Christ has done, we are called to live as befits his Cross.

It’s all just good stewardship. It’s a matter of recognizing where all our good fortune comes from. It’s a matter of recognizing that all life is gift. And since the only appropriate response to a gift is gratitude, then living a life appropriate to the gift and the Giver is the calling of the people of God. Because of the gift, therefore.... Because God has been so gracious to us, therefore....

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. Doing this is your spiritual act of worship.”

In other words, worship of God is not just standing around gazing up into the heavens in awe of God and of what God has done. Spiritual worship, true religion, is doing things ourselves in appropriate response to what God has done for us. Spiritual worship is self-oblation, the offering of our selves in some way.

Therefore, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” The word “minds” here, in the Greek, is not referring to just a change in one’s mental processing of ideas, but to a transformation of the whole self and life. And once you make this transformation – and only then, says Paul – will you “be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will.”

Well, what is the pattern of this world that Paul is telling us no longer to conform to? It’s the way of Peter. It’s the way of Peter, who said to Jesus, “No, Lord! You are not to lose your life. That’s not we had in mind; that must not happen to you.” The pattern of this world is to put “me” at the center of the world. The pattern of this world is to avoid the Cross at all costs, because the Cross would mean sacrificing the “me.” But avoiding the Cross is precisely what Jesus refused to do, because that kind of thinking, he said to Peter, is a stumbling block, a scandal to God. And putting his own life on the line for those he loved is precisely what Jesus determined to do, because that is what God does for those God loves.

And Paul continues by telling us how we are to replace the “me” at the center of things with the “we,” just as Jesus did, because that’s the way God does.

"For by the grace given me, I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others."

With these words, Paul turns the pattern of the world on its head, just as Jesus turned the pattern of the world on its head by walking up Calvary with his Cross, by replacing the “me” with the “we.”

Leon Wieseltier’s powerful book Kaddish is the account of a non-observant Jew who did not practice his religion – until his father died. But when his father died, Wieseltier decided to do what his religion expects. Jewish law expects a son to say the mourner’s kaddish for his father every day for one year following his father’s death. And that meant going to synagogue two or three times a day, whether he was in town or traveling, whether he felt like it or not. Wieseltier practiced it so much that he even observed the Jewish law of not grieving on the Sabbath even when his father had recently died, because the Sabbath is a celebration of the joy of the community in thanksgiving for what God has done for the community of Israel. And Wieseltier’s book is about how his deciding to observe the law changed his life by giving him an appreciation of the importance of the “we” of the community and the tradition, an appreciation of the importance of the “we” of his religion, which was so different from the “me” of life that he had been living for so long.

In a more recent book, The Year of Living Biblically, a book making the rounds of book groups today, A. J. Jacobs describes a similar experience. Jacobs was a young secular Jew who says that growing up Jewish for him meant that his family put a Star of David on the top of their Christmas tree. Jacobs is a writer, and after reading the entire Encyclopaedia Brittanica from A to Z in preparation for his book The Know-It-All, Jacobs decided to live an entire year keeping all the commandments of the Bible as faithfully as possible in preparation for a book about the Bible. The upshot of it was that his year of actually practicing the biblical commandments not only led to a wonderful – and wonderfully funny – book, it also changed Jacob’s life. It not only led him to a spiritual life he had never experienced before, it also introduced him to an extended family he had never known before, to a family of faithful people that stretched back in time for over 4,000 years.

We have different gifts, St. Paul reminds us, but we are one body. “We have different gifts according to the grace given us. If one’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully” – with all such gifts being offered by the “me,” of course, in service to the “we,” in service to the body, the community. And note that Paul in no way ranks the gifts in importance; each is as important as the other.

“Love must be sincere.” (Literally, the Greek here reads that “your love is to be unhypocritical.”) “Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves."

This calls for another substantial pause. In other translations of these verses, the translators include a note of competition here. Now competition sounds more like life as we know it, more like the pattern of this world, more like the pattern of Peter’s world, and ours! “Outdo one another...,” these translations read. But note what the competition is about. The sense of the passage is to strive, to compete with one another, not for the “me” to gain something, but to outdo one another in holding the other in high esteem.

"Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God's people who are in need; practice hospitality."

But the “share with God’s people in need; practice hospitality” of the RSV and NIV doesn’t quite deliver Paul’s full meaning. “Hospitality,” in the context of the culture in which Jesus lived and Paul was writing, meant a lot more than serving coffee and brownies to people. It means making sure that the stranger and those of low estate, the poor among you, are helped to understand that your home is their home; it means making sure they are helped to understand that what you have is theirs as well, if they need it. Hospitality is making sure the stranger among you feels at home with you.

So the Jerusalem Bible has an even stronger translation of this passage. It says that disciples of Jesus are ones who makes this sharing with the poor and the stranger, this hospitality, “our special care.” Then, in the New Jerusalem Bible, the translators up the ante even more, offering that the disciple of Jesus is one who “looks for opportunities to be hospitable.”

"Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited." Practice doing these things. This, you see, is the kind of competition the followers of Christ are to have with each other, striving to outdo one another in holding the other in high esteem.

But it gets more difficult still for those of us who see the world as Peter saw it: "Do not repay evil with evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: 'It is mine to avenge; I will repay,' says the Lord. On the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

This quotation from Proverbs 25 about heaping burning coals on the head of your enemy is not, however, about trying to make your enemy suffer. The Scriptures are talking about the coals of reconciliation and cleansing, a burning that can lead to repentance and a change of life. So what Paul is saying is that we are to return evil with good, so that, by our example, our enemy might turn, and we and our enemy might become friends. It is a very practical suggestion, is it not, as we approach our national elections and consider their significance for our future.

Therefore, Paul concludes, "do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."

Practice, practice, practice, my piano teacher used to urge, and so did my foreign language teachers. And I suspect that yours told you the same. And so does our spiritual teacher, St. Paul. Practice sharing with God’s people in need. Practice being faithful in prayer. Practice making hospitality your special care. Practice blessing those who persecute you. Practice rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep. Practice overcoming evil with good. Practice letting go of your lists of wrongs that your enemy has done against you, so that the “me” might die in order that the “we” of “me-and-my-former-enemy-but-now-my-friend” might be born.

This is what Paul means when he says that we are not to be conformed to the pattern of this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. The pattern of the world is to focus on the “me.” The life of the Cross is to replace the “me” with the “we” and to assume the burdens of others, for their sake and for God’s.

And is this not what Jesus means when he says that whoever wants to save his own life must lose it? It might mean saying kaddish for a year when that just hasn’t been your habit before. It might mean rejoicing with the community on the sabbath when your father just died on Friday. It might even mean responding to the call to serve on the library board or the school board or the Habitat for Humanity board, or even on the Altar Guild or as a Sunday School teacher, even if it cuts into your own personal time. It means responding to the call to serve not just if you enjoy it, or if you have a knack for it, but because it’s needed and is good for the community, and because you are called to do so, because of what God has done for you.

This is what Paul is talking about when he says that we have “put on” Christ. To pick up one’s cross and follow Jesus is to do as Jesus did, to wear in our lives the life and death of Jesus, to assume, as Jesus did, the burdens of the other. Is this not what our worship of Christ is, what true religion is, a way of life we have no way of really knowing unless we actually practice it?

“I have always lived my life in the red,” Paul Sherer used to say, ”because I’ve always been acutely aware of how greatly in debt I am to all the ways in which other people have made me whatever I am that is good. Anyone who claims to be self-made is a person built by unskilled labor.”

The Cross is not a piece of jewelry; it is a way of religion and a way of life. It may be worn as jewelry, of course. But when you do so, wear it not as a sign to others, but as a sign to yourself, as a sign of how you yourself are called to live and die the way of Christ. Wear it not as a sign to others of some special “in” group called Christians, but as a sign to yourself that you have been baptized into the way of the One who wore the Cross as his way of life and death, baptized into the way of the One you are called to follow, replacing the “me” with the “we” in life.

And then, if we do this worship, if we practice this true religion, others will be able to tell who it is we belong to, not by what we say, but by what we do. And evil will be overcome by good, and friends will be made of enemies, just as God, in Christ, has done for us.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.