Sunday, October 24, 2010


Sermon for the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost

October 24, 2010

Luke 18:9-14


A few weeks ago the adult ed. class heard Marcus Borg, in the video for the morning, offer a definition of religion. He said, “religion is about ultimate transformation.” I have always liked Borg for his ability to pack much wisdom and what feels like deep truth into a few well chosen words. “Religion is about ultimate transformation.” As soon as I heard him say the words I began to wonder why they sounded so solid, and I began to wonder what I might have said religion was about before I heard them. I came up with quite a list, and what I find about Borg’s definition is that if I lay his definition and all the others I can think of before me, his is the only one that can contain all the others. My list included the message of religion, its attempt to teach us how to live, teaching us about our place in the universe, about relationship with God and neighbor and about getting to heaven. At different times in my life I have thought religion had to do with all of those things. What I hadn’t noticed was that all of those aspects of religion have to do with being transformed.


The christian message is that God has acted in a new way in the world in order to be related to us in a new way. The message and new relationship have to do with a new chance for all of us to continue the journey with God upon which Abram set out so long ago. That journey was one in which God promised to transform the lives of Abram and his descendants. It was a journey of leaving behind trust in our their resources in order to learn utter reliance upon God. The Christian message is that that same journey which was abandoned in principle when Israel built its kingdom is still available to anyone who wishes to walk with God. The message is also about Jesus, the one who walked well with God. Who kept walking, even into a painful death, and discovered in the process that God is faithful.


If religion has to do with the question, how should I live? it is worth noting that the question assumes we need to ask it--that we still have something to learn about how to live, how to love, how to be faithful. When Jesus appeared on the scene, there was a struggle going on as there is in every age about who is doing a better job of keeping the rules, or whose life is more pleasing to God, or whose ideas are closer to those of the nation’s founders. (That is exactly the kind of thing we hear from this proud man in Luke’s gospel this morning.) Jesus said to the people he met that the goal was to let our hearts be changed into hearts that would know the best way and want to keep to that path. ‘The Spirit when it comes will teach you what you need to know,’ he said. For Jesus, learning how to live involves not just knowing the law, but it involves becoming people who don’t really need the law anymore. Learning how to live involves transformation.


Religion is also about knowing our place in the universe, and for Christians the teaching about our place in the universe is good news--it is that we are far more important than we might have thought. We are worth quite a bit of effort on God’s part. We are sought by God who would have us realize our potential as creatures created in the image of God. We each have a role to live into, and that role is different for every one of us. God’s creation is wildly diverse, from gnats to elephants, from goose down to mountains, there is no end to what is possible in creation and that applies to each of us. Some of us spend our whole lives learning who we are to be in this world. All of scripture either suggests or says very explicitly that we are to grow into what we are to be. It is a process that takes time. “We are being changed,” says Paul--not have been changed but are being changed--”from glory to glory.” Religion teaches us who and whose we are like schools teach us to read. See Spot run is fine for a while, but from there we move on to Mark Twain and Shakespeare. Learning our place in the universe involves our being transformed over and over again.


And of course, religion, especially for Jews and Christians and Muslims, is about relationship with God. And the Lord told Moses to say to the people, “You will be my people and I will be your God.” Protestant Christians often speak easily about relationship with God whereas those with more Catholic roots might speak more easily of sacramental connections to the creator. For a long time I wasn’t very comfortable with talk about relationship with God. It seemed kind of strange, foreign to my experience, and I wasn’t sure I liked or could trust a lot of the people who talked so easily about their relationship with Jesus. I understood something about having been joined to the family of God in baptism, and I would have told you easily as a young child even that Jesus shares food with us at his table every Sunday. I said some prayers most days and when life began to get complicated I said even more. It just took me a lot of years to realize that all that eating and talking together over a lifetime constituted a relationship. I think if you’ve showed up in this place more than a couple of Sundays, you have a relationship with God. Doesn’t most of the transformation we experience in our lives come about through relationship?


Jesus talked as much about loving our neighbor, especially those in need, as he did about loving God. Christians have known for two thousand years that caring for the poor and those at the margins of society involves partnering with God in a way that makes God present in the world through our actions. As our concern for our neighbor grows so does our reliance on God. You can’t work alongside someone for very long without developing a relationship with them.


Whether you connect through a strong sense of personal friendship with Jesus or through the sacramental mystery of water, wine and bread, this religion of ours is about being transformed over time in the close company of the source of all that is. Again, Borg’s definition holds. Religion is about transformation.


And finally, though it is not true about all religions it is certainly true about Christianity, religion for most of us has had a lot to do with getting into heaven. We believe there is more than just this life, that there are qualities of our lives, our relationships and loves that must continue beyond this life. Jesus passed through death and came to life in a new way and so shall we. I can’t think of a more ultimate sort of transformation.


And if religion is about ultimate transformation, then what do we have to do to experience that transformation? What is the plan?


All we have to do, pretty much the whole program, as best I can tell, is to be aware that we still have a lot of growing to do and be open to the process of transformation. In all the ways Christianity might be seen to work in our lives, what is required of us is that we be able to look at our lives and know that we still have a long way to go. If our lives are about transformation, about becoming, then we need to be aware of what we like to call our “growing edges.” We don’t have to be anxious or fearful about the growing we still have before us, though sometimes anxiety or fear or regret will move us to embrace the next bit of transformation that is being invited. Maybe the best way is to be able to apply some humor to ourselves and the process of becoming. We can be gentle with ourselves and our need for transformation the way God is gentle with us. In his fantasy about heaven, The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis is told by a citizen of heaven that all it really takes to get into heaven is the ability to laugh at ourselves.

Maybe the only real barrier to getting where we need to go is thinking we have already arrived.


The parable we heard a little while ago is so short I’d like to read it again.


Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded other with contempt. “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God I thanks you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner!’ I tell you this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”