Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
August 21, 2011

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

So. Transformation has become something children’s toys do, even if I can’t make them do it. Robots turn into trucks, and vice versa. One thing becomes something else. The something else has the same parts as the first thing, they’re just arranged differently, so they look like something else. I guess a lot of kids think Transformers are really cool. When you Google Transformers you learn that Transformers isn’t just a toy, it is an “entertainment franchise.” The Transformer phenomenon began with toys, but it has spawned movies and all sorts of promotional items. Transformers, it seems, are big business.

Transformers are big business, but what about transformation? Not transformation as something that gimmicky children’s toys do. Transformation as something people do. I hear a lot more about Transformer toys than I do about the transformation of people. After all, American culture doesn’t tell us that what we need is transformation. It tells us that what we need is more stuff, more Transformer toys and ten thousand things besides. Be transformed? No. That’s not what the world tells us we are to be about. Buy Transformers and ten thousand things besides. That’s what the world tells us we are to be about.

Saint Paul had a different vision. In the passage we heard from his letter to the church in Rome he wrote: “Do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God.” Paul calls us not to buying more stuff but to transformation. To be transformed, not to be conformed to the world.

OK, but as so often happens with Bible verses there is something going on in this verse that isn’t immediately apparent to us. Paul’s words “Do not be conformed to the world” may sound like Paul is telling us to focus on getting to heaven rather than on life on earth, but to understand what Paul is telling us we need to understand that that most definitely is not what Paul is saying. It turns out that there is a translation problem with our verse. In the Greek original of Romans the word translated in our Bibles as “world” actually doesn’t mean world. In biblical Greek kosmos means world, but here Paul uses not kosmos but aion. Aion doesn’t mean world, it means age. It is the root of our word eon, which clearly refers to a span of time on earth. So does it’s Greek root aion. A better translation of Paul’s Greek would be “Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed….”

OK, but what does that mean? To understand what it means we have to understand what Paul means by aion, by “this age.” By aion he means the world the way it is now. Paul believed, and I do too, that the way the world is now is not the way God intends the world to be. The world as it is now is a place dominated by domination. It is a place ruled by what Paul called “powers,” demonic spiritual forces of domination, oppression, and violence. Forces of greed and selfishness. Today we would say forces of materialism and consumerism. Forces of nationalism and imperialism. All of that is encompassed by Paul’s word aion, this age.

And all of that is what Paul is telling us not to be conformed to. We all grew up and live in the culture of this age. We can’t escape it. We can’t escape its influence on us. Paul knew that. He knew the worldly temptations the people of his churches faced. They’re the same temptations we face. Paul knew how appealing the ways of the world as it is in this age can often be. But he also knew that however appealing the ways of the world as it is in this age appear they are actually the ways of spiritual death. He knew that however appealing the ways of the world as it is in this age may appear they are not God’s ways. The way the world is is not the way God yearns for the world to be. The way we are in the world the way it is is not the way God yearns for us to be.

Paul called the world the way it is “this aion,” this age; but he dreamed of a new aion, a new age, a time when the world would be transformed from a place dominated by those demonic powers I talked about into a place that reflects the true will of God. A place of peace, a place of justice. A place where all people have enough to live and where all are treated with dignity and respect. Paul called that place a new aion, a new age. Jesus it the Kingdom of God.

In our verse this morning Paul says that we should be transformed “by the renewing of your minds” so that we may “discern what is the will of God.” Maybe we get it that Paul is calling us to transformation, but what are we to make of these parts of what he says? Here’s how I understand them. “By the renewing of your minds”: We renew our minds by coming truly to understand the world and how it is. We renew our minds by giving up our attachment to the things the world has taught us. We give up any uncritical acceptance of world’s values. We come to see the world as it really is, not the way the world’s reigning powers want us to see it.

Then when get some clarity about how the world really is, we do the same kind of discernment around the ways that we live and act in that world. We ask ourselves questions. How does the way I live my life conform to the ways of the world? How does the way I think about things conform to what the world wants me to think? Are there ways in which how I live and how I think already reflect the ways of God that we see in Jesus Christ rather than the ways of the world? These are the kinds of discernment to which Paul calls us when he calls us to be transformed “by the renewing of your minds.”

“Discern what is the will of God:” Then he says that reason we should renew our minds is so that we can discern “what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect,” as the translation we heard has it. An alternative translation that appears in the notes of that version of the Bible is “what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” Either way I think Paul’s point is relatively clear—relatively clear for Paul anyway. In order to discern the will of God, that is, in order to know what the new age for which God yearns looks like, we have to clear our minds of the biases, prejudices, and preconceived notions with which the world fills us. We have to clear out the old before we can discover the new. We have to stop discerning the way the world discerns so that we can discern the true will of God.

Then, Paul is saying, we are to start living according to that new discernment. We are children of this age to be sure. We live in the midst of the world the way it is to be sure. But the great pioneer of our faith St. Paul is telling us that our call as followers of Jesus Christ is to live the life of the new age to come even as we are physically in the age that is. What does that mean? It means that though we live in a world dominated by demonic powers, that is, powers that do not function the way God created them to function, we are to live the life of the Kingdom of God. We are to live not the values of the world the way it is but the values of the Kingdom of God that Jesus taught and lived and died for. In a world where domination of some by others is the norm we are to live the way of equality. In a world where some have far, far more than they need to live and a great many more do not have enough we are to live the life of the Kingdom in which all have enough. In a world where violence is the norm and is even glorified we are to live Jesus’ way of peace, Jesus’ way of nonviolence.

Doing that isn’t easy. Doing it cost Jesus his life. The Christian tradition says that preaching it cost Paul his life too. Living the life of the age to come in the age that is isn’t easy. It isn’t always safe. It is however what Jesus calls us to do. After all, we pray every week to God “thy Kingdom come.” How else is God’s Kingdom ever going to come if those of us who know God in and through Jesus Christ don’t start living the Kingdom now? That’s what Jesus did. It’s what he calls us to do.

So, my friends, let us by transformed by the renewing of our minds so that we may know the will of God. It isn’t easy. We’ll never do it perfectly. We know that, but we know something else too. We know that as we enter into that process of discernment, that process of transformation, God will be with us. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, will be with us, inspiring us, encouraging us, holding us up, forgiving us when we fail, and giving us the strength to go on. So giving thanks to God for God’s unfailing presence with us. let’s get on with it. It’s not just children’s toys that can be transformers. We can too. Amen.