This is our last week focused on the theme of already—but not yet. We are becoming mindful of the reality that, by the grace of God, the whole cosmos and we ourselves are in process of being made new, of being freed from the effects of sin, and creeping decay, and gradual death. This morning, we will go deeper into what we explored last week, then talk about the already-not yet of our life together as the Church, the Body of Christ.
Last week in this letter to the Romans, Paul said to us: If you have been baptized into Jesus Christ, then you have died with him and you have been raised in him. Your old self, the self that is curved in on itself, the self that resists love, the self that is self-protecting and afraid to risk, the self that is trying always to prove its worth, the self that competes and judges others—that self says Paul has already been crucified and raised to new life in Jesus Christ.
This is the great good news. We have already died and been resurrected in advance of our final death and ultimate resurrection. So we don’t have to live in fear death in any form—not physical death, not the death of reputation, not death by exclusion, not the judgment of others, not our own failures, not the death that threatens when we come up against our own limits, or all our best plans fall apart. Death does not own you. Death does not direct your destiny. You belong to God. You are alive, now and forever, in God. So you don’t need to be run by fear of death in any form. As Paul says it, you are already a brand new creation. The old self has passed away, and the new has already come! Hurray, hurrah, alleluia, Amen!
But, we know in our bodies and souls that Paul is overstating the case. And he knows it too. In this very letter, Paul admits that all that old stuff has still got its claws in him. Neither he nor we are completely transformed. We are still partly our own old selves, AND we are caught up in thick, sticky webs of sin, decay, and death just as surely as this world turns and creation groans, and we groan too in longing to be fully, finally freed.
But hear this. The selves that we are, this mix of old and new, dead and alive, dying and rising, scared and brave—God loves our whole selves completely. God loves even the stuff that we don’t love about ourselves. God delights in us just as we are. God made us. God knows us. God gets us. In love, God is patiently, graciously re-creating us.
By the time Paul gets to Romans 12, he is coming out of his skin with excitement and praise for what God has done to re-create the cosmos and transform the human situation. Without our aid, in great love and mercy, God has broken into our reality and turned things around. Romans 12 is the turning point in Paul’s letter. Paul has been going on about what God has done and now he asks us so what? So what now people? How then shall we live?
Here Paul begins to talk about how the already—not yet of new creation plays itself out in the Church. The Church is one of God’s craziest and best ideas. It is God’s idea to gather together in and through Christ and the Spirit people from every tribe and nation, into one Body made up of wildly diverse bodies. When we get baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus, we get joined to him, and that means, we also find ourselves joined to and hanging out with folks we wouldn’t necessarily have chosen to hang out with. The Church is a laboratory for love, and the more diversity there is in the Body, the more genuine will be the love that is produced in this lab.
The Roman house churches to whom Paul writes are immensely diverse. Jews and Gentiles, slaves and masters, rich and poor, men and women, educated and uneducated, some honored and some shamed by society. Some folks eat pork, others don’t, some drink alcohol, others don’t. Now here they all are, immensely diverse, gathered by God into one Body, sitting at table, eating from the same loaf of bread, sharing life together. This is not natural. By nature we prefer to hang out with people who are more like us than not. It is just easier. The more we have in common, the less likely we come into conflict, and the easier we find it to give ourselves to each other in love.
But here we are, gathered together in our diversity by the crazy love and grace of God. What then shall we do? How then shall we live? Paul says, “Let yourselves be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” Let happen in you what has already happened. Let it be with you as it already is. You are in Christ. We are in Christ together. And that means, among other things, that we have received the mind of Christ. We are out of our old minds, and we are thinking together from the mind of Christ. We have received a new mentality with which to think about ourselves, and think about each other.
And the way we think about ourselves and others is the absolute key: Paul writes, “do not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think.” I have to admit, this exhortation has always made me gringe. In Dutch Reformed Western Michigan where I grew up, thinking “too highly” of yourself was the cardinal sin. One didn’t give in to personal pride. Pride in self will always trip you up, so don’t be proud of yourself. What I heard in all of this was, “you ain’t that great, so don’t ever think you are!”
But that is not what Paul is saying here. Not at all! What he is saying is, “who you are, whatever gifts and talents you have, whatever self-giving you are engaged in, whatever faith you have, whatever passion and love pours out from you, however much time and energy to give to the ministry of the church and the good of your neighbor—all of this good stuff about you is God’s gift to you. It is all gift! It is all given. You didn’t create yourself! You aren’t renewing yourself! You are receiving yourself as God’s gift, and in thanksgiving you offer who you are, and what you have, as a gift to this local Body of Christ you are part of.
Now you know that not everybody in the Roman Church thought too highly of themselves. There were slaves, and women, and poor folk in that mix, and they were taught to think too lowly of themselves. And I know there are some here who think too lowly of yourselves. You’ve been judged, criticized, shamed, beaten down. You think you are not gifted. Haven’t anything to offer. That others are better than you. More talented. More passionate. More faith-full. More joyous. More this, more that. This way of thinking is no more helpful to the Body than thinking too highly of yourself.
Everyone of us differently abled, differently gifted, differently formed, differently experienced, differently blessed. Everyone of us is God’s gift to this Body. When we think about ourselves and each other from this point of view, then we are thinking with the mind of Christ, and we are growing in the grace to give ourselves to each other and receive each other as pure gift from God. The Church is a laboratory for love and our diversity here is a gift that tests and tries us and grows us. We push each other’s buttons. We get on each other’s last nerve. We challenge each other with our differing ways and points of view. We run out of patience and compassion. There are small explosions in this laboratory of love. And there always will be. Because, we are caught up in the already and not yet of God’s new creation. We are a mix of old and new, dead and alive, dying and rising, scared and brave. And here and now, in this Body, in our bodies, God patiently labors to form us in a love so rich, so genuine, so transforming that no body, not even our enemies will not escape love’s embrace!