A Sermon Preached By

Rev. Peter W. Shidemantle

Sunday, October 23, 2005

PEBBLE HILL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

5299 Jamesville Rd., DeWitt, NY  13214

Phone:  315-446-0960     FAX:  446-0672

phillchu@twcny.rr.com     http://pebblehill.presbychurch.org

          Well, I think that’s actually breaking down more and more these days.  Aside from it always being more a caricature than reality, it is also true that more and more people in churches like ours are coming from backgrounds other than Presbyterian, and often with little or no religious background at all.  Even for those of us who have been part of the Presbyterian family our whole lives, we wouldn’t still be at it if our hearts were not touched along the way.  Phrases like “all things decently and in order” sound so containing and stifling these days.  Don Byers reminded me a while back of another phrase, which I believe goes back to John Calvin himself, and that is “ardor and order,” that there is a balance to be struck somehow between the two.  And if we have been more about order than we have about ardor (makes us nervous), there is today among many a greater desire for “ardor,” that it’s not just about what you believe - but how you feel it, how you express it – or, that it makes you feel, leads you to express not just in the right words, but with your hands and your feet and your whole body.

          So, to the degree that it has been frozen, I think things are thawing out in the old Presbyterian ice house.  A renewed interest in “spirituality” is also part of this thawing – the yearning for a faith that in Henri Nouwen’s words, descends “from the mind to the heart.”  This is all to the good, or it can be if we don’t forget that it is also important what you believe, that we stay clear that our experience cannot be the final measure of the truth, because, our Presbyterian forebears would also remind us, the human heart and mind is a veritable “factory of idols.”  When Moses went up the mountain to receive that commandments of the Lord, and the Israelites were getting restless and tired of waiting so long for him to come back down the mountain, Moses’ brother Aaron led them in an ecstatic religious dance around a hunk of gold that they had shaped in the image of a calf.  It must have felt really good to them, to break lose from that oppressive waiting and adopt the methods of the culture all around them that said how you get action from your gods.  But it was all about their ecstasy, and nothing about the true God, Yahweh.

          Regardless of our worship forms or our experience of spirituality, we still have to contend with what lay at the core of our faith, and that is the transformation of the human mind and heart for the sake of the beloved community that God intends; to live in accordance with God’s will and not our own, or more accurately, that our will would become more and more aligned with God’s will.

          We are speaking in these weeks of “sacrifice,” of giving up, letting go, of handing over something that is important to you for the sake of something that is more important.  God does not need or demand our sacrifice, but it is rather a response of our lives and our resources, a participation in the self-sacrifice of Christ, a conscious and intentional response – to give of ourselves, not out of our abundance, but in a way that actually costs you something.  We are speaking of it in terms of the seasons of the year, which reflect the seasons of our lives and frame them within the cycle of life and death and rebirth.

          We began with “winter” as the season of stillness and quietness, when life moves inward.  We viewed this as a metaphor for the life that stirs beneath the surface of our visible lives, of how we need to be attentive to those stirrings, for that is where the work of new and transformed life has to take hold if it is to grow.  And so now we come to the “spring” of sacrifice, to begin to identify what is emerging, what needs to emerge in our lives, yours and mine, emerge in our lives and from our lives in terms of sacrificial living, sacrificial giving – which amounts to the same thing.

          As surely as winter gives way to spring, so there must be a thawing or a warming, where what we have considered in the depth of our hearts would begin to show in our lives.  The Apostle Paul wrote, in one of his most sublime verses in his most sublime letter, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed but the renewal of your minds, that you may prove (or “show”) what is the will of God, what is good, and acceptable, and perfect.”  You see, we are not to live as someone once described, as “practical atheists,” living as if what we believe as Christians makes no practical or identifiable difference in our lives.  For those who have died and been raised with Christ, Paul says, “this age” can no longer provide the regulating principle of life. We’ve got to be transformed creatures, not just changing our mind about things (though that may be part of it) but our whole life, our whole orientation toward the world, which, as transformed creatures we can see is no longer just of this age, but contains within it the seeds of the kingdom of God.                                                              

          Clarence Jordan talked about this kind of transformation as like the process of metamorphosis, the changing form of a caterpillar into a butterfly.  What is the caterpillar’s life like?  He plods along, putting one leg after another and after another and after another - moving all in order until he gets, gradually, where he needs to go.  He’s quite limited, that caterpillar is, by his shape and form.  But he is content, if he can stay clear of human feet - he is what he is.  But as his transformation sets in his form changes, he sprouts wings and begins to fly – it’s a whole new life.

          It’s like that, Clarence said.  Life that is not weighed down, limited by the agenda of this age that wants your soul but can’t give you freedom, not the kind of freedom that those who have died and been raised with Christ realize.  You see, “this age” is about acquiring and protecting, about securing a place.  It is as it is, and though there can be significant happiness and fulfillment in it, it is fleeting at best.  There is always a better way, a more recent model, and this age is quite adept at moving from one to the other, and pushing aside those who are in the way.  In the end, the powers of this world, this conforming, non-transformed world, control through fear and are the enemy of real and lasting hope.  Transformed life is unencumbered life – not trouble free, not even worry free – but life that has felt the breeze of the Spirit beneath its wings, known the free-flight of the children of God.  As in the words of the old spiritual, “Sometimes I feel discouraged, and think my work’s in vain.  But then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again.”

          But before we’re flying too high I want to bring us back to that tender shoot of sacrifice that is emerging, or needs to emerge, in our lives.  Sacrifice, in the sense of our Christian stewardship, is a sign of transformed life.  We struggle with it, precisely because growth is uncomfortable.  To be “conformed to this world” in our stewardship is to be guided by conforming words like realistic, reasonable, reachable, achievable.  But Paul did not write, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, to present your bodies as a ‘reasonable’ sacrifice . . .” But rather, “. . . present your bodies as a ‘living’ sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.”  We are to be guided not by conforming words but by transforming words – not what is realistic but what can be imagined; not what is reasonable but what is hoped for; not what is reachable or achievable but what is dreamed about and longed for.  Who knows where it will lead?  We’ve got to give God something to work with, something he can make “holy and acceptable” to God’s own self.  If we “hold back” in our lives, God doesn’t have anything to work with because it’s all under our control.  We determine the outcomes, and we can be assured that only our lowest projections will be met. 

          It is holiness that we should seek, above all else.  The way to holiness is the way of self-surrender, the way of sacrifice.  What is growing within you that is moving you toward a more holy life, a freer life, a life of joy, framed by love?  Whatever it is, I can guarantee you it isn’t something you need to have but something you need to give.

          To the glory of God.  Amen.

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