Romans 12 "Transformed" Scott Hoezee

It was back in early August when I chose to preach on Romans 12 for October 21. At that time I didn't yet know this would also be a youth service and I surely didn't have any inkling that by the time October 21 rolled around, another date--September 11--would mean what it now means. Chalk it up as yet another item in that long list of things that have changed in our world over the course of the past six weeks, but the simple fact is that whatever I had in mind when I chose Romans 12 for this morning no longer matters. This passage has taken on a new meaning and a new poignance.

As Neal Plantinga said to me last month, the very acoustics of our faith have changed. Christian phrases and words that are so familiar to us sound different now, having a new timbre and resonance, as though we were saying them in some vast cathedral where everything echos on and on and sounds so much deeper. These days we may find our voices catching when praying the familiar line, "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us." Forgive the terrorists? These days we may find ourselves returning a bit more often to the image of God as "our refuge and strength." A friend of mine in New Jersey, who lives just fifteen miles from lower Manhattan, reports that in the days and weeks after the attack, she found herself regularly singing the words from the hymn "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." Somehow it calmed her troubled heart and settled her frayed nerves.

A similar deepening of meaning has happened with Romans 12. I am part of an email group that consists of the sixty or so pastors who were in the Pastor-Theologian Program out of Princeton the last three years. At the suggestion of one of our leaders, we have been posting for everyone else to read the sermons we preached the first couple of Sundays after September 11. Not surprisingly, several such sermons were based on the final verses of Romans 12. A pastor from California used these verses to remind her congregation of some of the same things I tried to convey a few weeks ago when we looked at Psalm 10; namely, that the gospel refuses to let us go down the road of vengeance, insisting instead that we find ways to love our enemies.

According to this pastor, the week she worked on this sermon, she mentioned to her husband the direction in which the message was headed. So he asked her, "Do you think your sermon will make people mad?" Her response was, "Probably! It makes me mad! The gospel makes you a little mad sometimes because it doesn't permit you to hit back." Indeed, it doesn't. The government, of course, is not the church, and as John Calvin would be the first to remind us (and as Paul will say in the very next chapter of Romans), the governing authorities do not possess their God-given sword in vain. The government needs to punish wrongdoers, pursue justice, and in this case go after some very cold-blooded people.

But even so, we as Christians need to cultivate a different set of gospel attitudes. If you sit in waiting rooms these days or eavesdrop a bit on conversations at other tables at restaurants or peer into the average Internet chat room, you will hear any number of average Americans speaking the language of revenge and finding satisfaction in the detonation of every bomb. I recently overheard someone remarking on a story in the Press about some Pakistanis who wanted to go into Afghanistan to join the Taliban. This person couldn't believe these folks would want to do that, but then he shrugged and said, "Well, let 'em go and then we'll bomb the (blank) out of them, too!"

In a time such as this, Paul's clarion cry that we do not conform to the world hits us with renewed punch. We are not to conform but be transformed. At the depth of who we are, in our hearts and minds, we are to be renewed, Paul says. As Romans 12 makes clear, the first fruit of that transforming renewal will be an abundance of love--a love so fierce and all-encompassing that it will allow you to bless those who persecute you. It will help you avoid repaying evil with more evil. It will let you leave revenge to God while you stay busy feeding and clothing your enemy, hoping (against all worldly odds) that evil really can be overcome by good after all.

But maybe you're thinking, "Well, that's all very well and good that Paul wrote that way back then, but he doesn't understand the reality of the kind of evil we're facing!" Lest you think that way, remember that Paul wrote this letter to Christians living in Rome. So when Paul mentioned a word like "enemies," the Roman Christians didn't need to look very far to find some real-life enemies--they could look across town at the Roman Senate, the Emperor's palace, and any other place where anti-Christian folks gathered to plan the next round of expelling believers from the city, beating them up, arresting them for their faith, and worse. But even so, Paul wrote what he did.

By now, however, some of you are probably wondering if Rev. Hoezee remembers that this is a youth service! In a way everything I have said so far applies as well to you young people as it does to anyone of any age. Nevertheless, I do want to spend some time this morning talking specifically to you. It's difficult for someone like me to know how much, if anything, has changed in terms of your outlook on the world and on your future. To a large extent, your view of the future has probably changed about as much as anyone else's, except that because you are still young, you have that much more of a future span of years to anticipate and so wonder about.

Probably, though, you figure that you'll keep going to middle and high school and then move on to college or a career. But maybe you've heard the word "draft" mentioned now and again, and so you're wondering if you might have a future in the military whether you planned on it or not. Maybe you're wondering the same thing most of us are wondering: how is this all going to turn out? Will President Bush and company succeed in making the world safer, or is it going to get even more dangerous? Despite everyone's stated desire that it not happen, will this war expand into some Christian versus Muslim conflict after all?

Thoughts like that may well cross your minds now and again. I was struck a week ago today by the front-page story in the Grand Rapids Press about the fears people now feel and the belief that life will never get "back to normal." Most striking was a quote from a seventeen-year-old who still plans on going to college and so going on with his life but who nevertheless commented to the Press reporter, "I still say we could die any day." Again, I can't know for sure whether or not any of you feel that way, but we adults surely worry that you might.

So we try to reassure you. We bring counselors and psychologists to schools to help you feel more secure. The president keeps telling us to get on with our lives, to board airplanes, go shopping, buy stock, attend football games and do all of that with the assurance that the government is as on top of things as possible and so somehow or another the authorities will make things more secure and safe again.

And how I wish as your pastor that I could tell you it will all pan out just that way. How I wish we as a church could proclaim that all things being equal, life can and will go on pretty much as it always has before. But we're not sure. Those of you in high school now have come of age during an outrageously long stretch of prosperity in this country. You've heard about the Great Depression, but you have yourselves not even experienced much of a recession. You've heard about the 1960s and all of the fear and uncertainty and unrest in that decade of the Vietnam War and multiple assassinations of national leaders, but you yourselves have experienced mostly peaceful times.

Things have been good. You've got your own email accounts, laptops, cars, nice clothing, video cameras, and whatnot. We have a lot to be thankful for, young and old alike. But can we ever get back to enjoying all that the way we used to in the heady days of the 1990s? Can we have any assurance that the future will ever be that economically golden again? No, we can't be sure. I saw an editorial cartoon recently of a bewildered looking person passing through a dizzying array of airport security measures. When the person finally got to the counter, the ticket agent asked, "Where would you like to go?" The would-be passenger replied, "September 10, please." But we can't get back.

And plenty of people are angry about that, angry about what the terrorists stole from us. The so-called "American Dream" of freedom turns into a nightmare as our very freedoms get exploited by those who want to hurt us. We're upset, and so many seek vengeance. We want to give it right back to the ones who inflicted this on us. Back when you young people were in Kindergarten, maybe you memorized Psalm 23. Your sweet little voices intoned the phrase, "He prepareth a table for me in the presence of my enemies," but back then you didn't have any enemies. But now you do.

In some ways it is your future that got the most clouded over with uncertainty on September 11. So maybe the temptation to think in certain angry ways hits you young people more than some. That's why Romans 12 fits better today than any of us could have imagined when we first slated this passage for this morning. Who knows what I would have said to you about not conforming to the world if September 11 hadn't happened. Maybe I would have talked about cultural attitudes toward sex or perhaps we would have thought about drugs or violent video games or maybe even greed. And true enough, there are so many things in our world that you as Christian young people must simply not go along with.

But for today in this autumn of the year 2001, the great challenge you face is to nurture love in a world of hate; to grow compassion in your heart in a world where evil is sometimes on such raw display; to figure out how to overcome evil with good instead of just hitting back because that feels so much better after someone has slugged you in the gut. If your generation can figure out how to bless those who persecute us and to feed and clothe our enemies even in the midst of war, then you will greatly enhance the gospel's presence and influence in our world.

But the only way you will have even a slim chance at doing that is if you are transformed on the inside through the renewing of your minds in Christ Jesus. The only reason you or any of us would be motivated even to try to let love show us the way is if Jesus' love is the bedrock truth that you come back to again and again, day after day. It won't be easy even so. In verse 2 Paul says that even once your mind is renewed and your life is transformed, even then you still face the daunting task of testing and checking out what God might want of you in any given situation. That sounds like hard work involving a lot of head-scratching, hand-wringing, and maybe even some trial and error. It's not a cinch to know at every moment what it means to glorify God in our living. It can even be really difficult and hard work! But if Jesus is not your core hope, you won't even try.

As I said a few minutes ago, we all wish we could tell you for sure that the world is safe, or will be one day soon. We'd all love to make you feel secure just knowing that the FBI is on the case and that our bombs are bigger than their bombs. But the images burned onto our brains from September 11 inevitably remind us what a fragile thing life is. But the gospel has something to say to us even so--something that no news headline can ever touch.

In a recent column in the Christian Century a writer reminded us of something C.S. Lewis preached at Oxford University sixty-two years ago tomorrow on October 22, 1939. Hitler had invaded Poland only six weeks earlier, and England was at war. The undergraduate college students there at Oxford were frightened--many of them would face death soon, and altogether too many would die. Here is what Lewis told them: "If we had foolish unchristian hopes about human culture, they are now shattered. If we thought we were building up a heaven here on earth, if we looked for something that would turn the present world from a place of pilgrimage into a permanent city satisfying the soul of man, we are now disillusioned, and not a moment too soon."

The world is a dangerous place. There is much that is good about this world and this life--we are surrounded by God's gifts and we are right to take joy in them now and hope that we and our children can take joy in such things in also the future. But final security and ultimate hope are not going to emerge from what we or any nation can achieve this side of God's kingdom coming in all its fullness. That hardly means that as Christians we have nothing to say, however.

There is something to say, and that's why I want to invite all of you young people, 5^th graders through 12^th grade, to come up right now and join me by the baptism font--consider this a more mature form of the "Children's Sermon," if you will, but I really do want you to come up here.

For probably every one of you there was a time when your mom or dad or both brought you to this font or one like it in some other church. I don't know exactly what was going through your parents' minds back then or how precisely they pictured what baptism means. But when Christian parents bring a child to the font, we are admitting that on our own, we cannot guarantee the child's future. So in baptism we let God claim you. We handed your soul over to God through Jesus, in whose hands alone you would be safe forever, in life and in death. The Jesus who met you in baptism is your and my only comfort. There is ultimately no other security in this world, not really. So we let God claim you. Today Christina answered God back some fifteen or so years after her baptism. In baptism God told Christina and every one of you, "I've got you!" Today Christina replied and said, "Thanks! And I'm staying put in your love, Jesus!"

It's a rough world. So I urge you, young people of Calvin Church, in view of God's mercies to you, not to conform to the roughness of this world, not to go with the flow of anger and revenge, but to be transformed from the inside out. Return every day to the love of God in Jesus that scooped you up at this baptismal font some years ago. Rest secure in that love. And then let it help you be loving, too. Let that love motivate you to do the hard work of figuring out what God wants out of us Christian people. Let love, not hate; good, not evil, guide you until that day when the love and goodness of Jesus is all in all. Remember: you're baptized kids! And so whether you live or die, you are the Lord's. Live in that hope, rest in that hope, and so go forward with courage, knowing that our world belongs to God and so do you. Amen.