Be Transformed

Romans 12:1-8 and Excerpts from Braiding Sweetgrass

I invite you now to take some deeper breaths, breathing in peace, breathing out worry, giving ourselves the gift of now, knowing the spirit will bring whatever we need to hear today. And I invite you to join me in a spirit of prayer as you are so moved. God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. These are among my most favorite texts in the early Christian writings that we have in our Bible. which is why my husband Jeremy and I used them in our wedding, a ritual that I wrote about in the Echo newsletter not long ago. We recently celebrated 18 years of marriage. And I've been thinking a lot about the things that have allowed us to keep something good. And that's one of the answers, an ongoing willingness to change. And I'm sure I can get an amen from anyone else who's been in a long-term relationship to continually transform in all kinds of ways. Of course, there are lots of things that go into meaningful relationships that endure, but for me, that's one I know for sure.

Love is responsive, which means change. Being open to renegotiating what made sense in a different season. To own where we can do better. To apologize and change. To think differently because of what is shared or seen or experienced. To dare to shift with more information. Wow, does that feel radical right now. But to be able to keep changing because of love, to keep being transformed because of who we say we want to be, in my experience, it requires knowing our gifts and our light and our weaknesses and our shadows. Then each of us can be strong in who we are, carrying our gifts with conviction, sharing them mutually as part of benefiting the whole and being a part of the ongoing transformation. a continuous commitment to the evolution.

And so I have been thinking about how love in general is a powerful agent of transformation. Whether it be love of a person, of a place, of our bodies, of a vocation, of a relationship, a community, a property. In so many situations, it's love that compels a lasting transformation or doing whatever is needed to keep something good in the day in and day out. Yes, love actually asks something of us over time. Calls to us to keep changing and growing, deepening. Love and change are really intricately connected, which is part of why I paired the lectionary text with these excerpts from Braiding Street Grass. While we humans often resist change or chances to evolve, nature can't not change. It is change. And it shows us with seasons and cycles and life and death and with fungal bridges between trees and the web of reciprocity that our job is not to resist change. Rather, our job is to see our place in it, to claim our gift to the whole and to see ourselves as part of something bigger. To see transformation as part of love of ourselves individually and collectively.

I understand these words from Paul like this. Do not be conformed to this world. Do not participate in the human constructs of individualism or separateness, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind that comes from the evolution pulling us closer to love. Because it turns out that Paul wrote this letter. He penned these words to the churches in Rome during his three month stay. and what we now know is Greece and the city of Corinth. And I actually have some pictures for you. And Truitt's going to pull them up. It's so fun when I get to show you. So this summer I was in the city of Corinth and I just have these two pictures. My husband said when he was turning 50 that he wanted to go to Greece and I was like, "Are you sure that's what you want to do?" Because I know that's what I would want to do.

But when I told him I wanted to do a little side quest with Paul, he was like, "Baby, you're going to have to do that on your own." So, I did. I got a driver, Pericles and spent the day in Corinth and mostly it's columns and ruins and that kind of thing. But I've learned that places talk, right? And so I learned a lot even with just the ruins.

Paul spent more time anywhere than anywhere he in Corinth and he wrote the letter hoping all is well he wrote the letter to that you heard from Corinth and he is challenging their Romanness and there's lots of disagreement around what that meant and you know for a long time people would say oh he was mentioning it it's like Las Vegas of the time. Well that's not quite right.

It turns out what he was really addressing was the dramatic economic imbalance. Corinth was built refounded around the year 44 B.CE and it was a colony of the Roman Empire which you might remember. Before then it had laid in ruins sacked by the Romans. And now it's proud in its rebuilding. But Paul is saying to them, these these new believers, now be careful you don't conform to the very thing that we were trying to reform. As NT Wright points out in his book on Paul, the original members of the colony were Roman freed men, ex-slaves on the way up the social scale, businessmen with their eye on profits to be made in the ancient world. in Corinth had a large social imbalance with few rich and many poor and at least half the population in any case enslaved. Paul is asking them not to conform to the unjust economic practices that the Roman Empire was using. He is calling them to live into the Jesus way in a new way of being. Reminding them that even it was when it was uncomfortable or countercultural in the Jesus path, love asks something of us in every part of our life, even our economic life, calling us to change and grow beyond the culture of convenience, beyond what is easy or what everyone else seems to be doing. Love summons us to keep changing, to renew, transform day in and day out dream.

And here's the thing I've learned. Being transformed though by love takes discipline. As you heard from Robin Wall Kramer, it's not tentative waiting at the edge. Not being conformed to this world is a commitment, a day in and day out commitment to love. It is part of our call right now as people of faith in conscience and I feel it a lot not to be conformed with what is happening around us. We must be willing to continually be transformed to a dramatic model of love. Sometimes I hear people say that they will wait until they think they're ready before they do something. But in my experience it's the other way around. We do and do and do and show up and show up and show up and then we change our way of thinking. Our individual fragmented strands are woven into collective and wholeness that we show up together in transformation which is never accomplished by a tentative waiting at the edge.

Love calls to us to join in the ongoing work of transformation. the continuous commitment to ever evolving. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed.

May it be so. Amen.