Preached on August 24, 2008 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio, UCC.
Exodus 1:8-20; Romans 12:1-8
The title of this sermon comes from our reading from Romans. We’re talking about the will of God. But let’s be clear from the start: doing the will of God is never, ever what it takes to earn God’s favor, love, and mercy. That’s not the message of Jesus. We don’t exist as a church in order to crack down on the world and force it to follow the will of God – or else! That’s a rule-based, bookkeeping religion: keeping track of our good and bad deeds to see if we measure up. That kind of religion has never been effective, and it has not made God happy.
We are here because God gives us life and loves us more than we can ever know. God loves us just as we are, whether we know even the first thing about what God’s will is. So I have to say all of that before we come in here today and think about this passage from the 12th chapter of Paul’s letter to Rome, which is, after all, over halfway through the letter, and only comes after a lot of stuff about how much God loves us, through Jesus Christ, just as we are.
So we’ve got to start with God’s grace, and maybe we should just preach about that every Sunday from now until the end of our lives because that simple message of God’s unconditional love has been so badly damaged in the history of the church. And even so, God still continues to get through to love us, and when we come to know the love of God, when we feel ourselves surrounded and made anew by the grace of God, then we find ourselves overflowing with this holy gratitude, with love that seeks to give back, that wants to live in God because no other kind of living seems nearly as compelling or as fulfilling. So then we become interested in discerning the will of God so that we might live more fully.
This is exactly the place where Paul is at the start of chapter 12 in his letter to the church in Rome. (Actually, chapter 12 is just what we call it; to Paul it was just a letter: no chapters or verses). The entire beginning of the letter is about the good news of God’s love for us, shown in Jesus Christ. That’s my summary. Paul tends to be a bit more complex, but that’s what he’s saying. Here’s a good excerpt from what we call chapter 8 (verses 38-39):
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
That’s the first word about God and the most important word for the church. It is only after that word that Paul arrives at discerning the will of God. Listen again to his words we heard before.
“I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice…. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God.”
When Paul writes “therefore, in view of the mercies of God” he’s telling us that following the will of God is not a test of our worth or the payment we must make to appease God, but is actually what we naturally seek after we experience God’s love and realize that a Godly life is the fullest and most compelling way to live.
I sometimes use Paul’s language when I lead the prayer for our offering during worship. I say “with eyes wide open to your mercies for us, to all that you have given us, we offer these gifts.” We don’t make an offering to earn God’s love but because God has already shown great love for us.
Paul tells the church in Rome to offer their bodies as living sacrifices in view of the mercies of God, which is a way of saying that what God wants more than any empty ritual is for us to live the way that way that Jesus lived, to live by the will of God. But what is the will of God? How do we answer that question about our own lives, about our major decisions or our priorities?
I won’t try to define point by point what the will of God is for us. I don’t think we can define it so much as we can point to what it looks like, as we do week by week here in worship. This morning we have clues in our scripture readings. Paul gives us an important clue when he writes “do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God.”
Do not be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed. The writer Flannery O’Connor put it another way by paraphrasing the words of Jesus: “you will know the truth, and the truth will make you odd.” That seems to be the way of Jesus, because when we enter the kingdom of God, it is different than the other kingdoms and it makes us different. Two quick examples: First, the followers of Jesus were not the only ones who were critical of the brutal occupation of the Roman Empire, but they were the odd ones who did not take up swords against it. Secondly, the followers of Jesus were odd because they welcomed gentiles and Jews and treated slaves as equals.
The will of God is life affirming and outward reaching, and this often does not conform to the world’s motives of power and fear. We see what this looks like in the passage we heard this morning from the book of Exodus.
A little background: Last week we heard about how the families Jacob’s twelve sons flourished in Egypt, thanks to their brother Joseph’s preparation for the great famine, which saved the Egypt from hunger. At the beginning of the story in Exodus, we move many generations into the future, and the families have grown to become a great people, a growing ethnic group in a foreign land, and a new king rises in Egypt who does not remember Joseph’s relationship to the old king, and Joseph’s great work on the Egypt’s behalf. This sets the stage for a timeless story, one that is tragically and horrifically made new in every century. One nation, two rival ethnic groups. It is the story of the Jews in Egypt, repeated in for the Jews under the German Third Reich and Hitler’s final solution. It is the story of Tutsis in Rwanda at the hand of the Hutus. It is the story of the Darfur region, where scarcity of water and fertile land has led to genocidal abuse and murder of one ethnic group by the other. In our own country, the sad history of the Native Americans and the Africans sold here in chains is a legacy to remind us of that the evil abuses of power are not exclusive to other people.
It’s important to read these old stories because they keep us from thinking: well it was all well and fine to do the will of God, love your enemies and all that back in Bible times. But we live in a different world where evil has to be attacked and defeated. That thinking doesn’t hold up when you realize that Bible times had their own genocide. In the time of Jesus, Rome was hanging its enemies on crosses by the thousands. The world of the Bible is our world. Pharaoh said “kill the Hebrew’s baby boys,” and the story is repeated over, and over, and over again.
The order was given to the Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, since they were the ones present at the birth of children. The text does not tell us, but we can imagine the threat of dire consequences for those who disobeyed Pharaoh’s word. And yet they did disobey him, allowing the babies to live and cleverly claiming that the mothers gave birth too quickly for them to arrive one the scene.
These midwives are heroes, bold examples of living by the will of God, refusing to participate in violence, and working instead to give life. Most of us will never be asked to make such an obvious choice. Orders to kill are given in many parts of the world, but thank God, not in our neighborhoods. But we must ask ourselves another question: do we participate in systems of sin? Do we participate in injustice by our own fear, or in our silence, by which we condone realities like the imprisonment of vast numbers of men and women with mental illness and addiction, or a foreign policy that chooses investment in weapons over investment in diplomacy and human intelligence? Unlike the Hebrew midwives, no one will order us to take a life. Instead, they ask us quietly not to notice.
But what can we do about problems of such great scale? Our own lives are trials enough, aren’t they? What can we do that will make a difference? Shiphrah and Puah did it one birth at a time. One small act at a time – but what difference would that make? Well, what if each person, once a day, dropped one piece of paper on the ground? It’s only one piece. What difference would that make?
The will of God is done by those who follow an alternative way of living, one act at a time. It starts with speaking up in conversation when people are being put down. It starts with your one voice in the political system. It starts with your small act of generosity. It starts with your kindness to someone who is of a different race, class, or religion to counteract a history of fear and suspicion.
This is a great life, a compelling life. Living by the will of God releases us from fear and insecurity, although we will confront those feelings again and again. Living the will of God is something we seek because God’s love redeems us and frees us to love others because the love we received is overflowing. In view of God’s mercies, let us be transformed, that we may discern the will of God.
