Listen & Mourn.
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. // Romans 12:1-2
Which side are you on? It is so easy to ask that question at this emotionally and politically charged time. What side are you on? Do you respect life or not? Is the right to breathe and live something that you support or not? Do black lives matter or not? Do you believe in justice or not? Each of those questions is packed full of emotion and energy and could potentially draw blood in the right context or setting. That is not my reason for listing them.
My point is that we are all at a juncture in our Twin Cities’ history where we must make a stand and choose a position. What will that position be? In all things, we look to our Sovereign Lord Jesus for insight from his Word. In the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul says,
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. // Romans 12:1-2
We are to be living sacrifices. A sacrifice is a difficult and giving act. What particular difficult and giving act are we being asked to participate in as children of the Heavenly Father?
We are to live each day, each hour, with the idea of giving up time, energy, or equity for the sake of lining up our life with God’s holy and pleasing will. How do we know if this is happening? How do we initiate such activity? How do we raise the strength or gumption to act and act properly?
First we search out the mercy of God which is described as a deep, gut ache that God feels for all those who are hurting. He feels this because he looks deeply into our despair and into our broken lives. This deep emotional tug caused him to act by placing his life on the chopping block even though we were the ones who were broken and sinful. The alternative to action would have been for us to experience the full vent of God’s justice—Jesus took that instead. We would have had to stand, sit, or crumple under the weight of punishment for lies, angry thoughts, callous words, lack of care and concern for another human life, misjudging another person’s intentions, having false judgments on others while assuming that our judgments are all correct, etc.
We would have had to suffer under the absolute and thorough lens of God’s just eye. And the justice that we ALL would have experienced would have been literally deadly. None of us could survive such a thorough examination of God’s holy law. We would (Matthew 5-7 points this out) have fallen astonishingly short of his perfect standards of thought, word, and deed. In short, God’s justice would have completely crushed us. God’s deep regard for justice says that all are wrong. God’s deep regard for our hurt and torment caused him to send Jesus to sacrifice himself for us.
Now we are free. In light of that freedom, we are called to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice. What will that look like and how must we proceed?
Romans 12:2 points us to the very next step: examine how you have been shaped by your culture. “Do not conform to the pattern of this world.” God is alerting us to the natural formation of our actions; that natural formation is from the world and not from him. Again we must turn to him. At the heart and core of the Christian ideal is this concept of adhering to the pleasing and perfect will of God. In other words, we want to line up our thinking and our values and our actions with God’s pleasing and perfect will.
Several other passages that direct us into next steps:
My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry. // James 1:19
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: … a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, // Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4
Two actions that I would strongly encourage: Listen and mourn. Sit and listen to someone of color and learn about them. What is their struggle to get ahead? What is it that faces them every day when they get out of bed? What are their fears and dreams? What do they hope to accomplish this week or this year?
As you learn about what they suffer under, what is difficult, what systems confront their livelihood and their success, then you too can mourn with them and let your internal self be driven to positive actions.
May God bless you as you act in reflection of God’s mercy for you.
Pastor Al