Sharing the Goodness of God

I believe that when God is trying to say something to us, trying to teach us something, it will return to us over and over and over again.

The lesson will come in various forms until our eyes are finally opened to the wisdom of God.

Let me give you an example.

Our new friend Sean Dunbar, Director of Ministries to Children, Youth, and Families, brought a quote from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass to our staff meeting a few weeks ago.

It was beautiful, and I want to read it, and you can follow along on the screen.

This is what you shall do.

Love the earth and sun and the animals.

Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people.

Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men.

Go freely with powerful, uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families.

Read these leaves in the open air of every season of every year of your life.

Reexamine all you've been told at school or church or any book.

Dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh, your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and every motion and every joint of your body.

Something was stirring in me with this, but why?

I wasn't really quite sure yet, but I thought about this line for several days.

And your flesh shall become a great poem and have the richest fluency.

And your flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency.

And now fast forward to last week during worship planning when yours truly forgot she was preaching today.

I know, shocker, type A, didn't look into the calendar that said preaching, but that's okay.

So I looked up the text for this week in the lectionary, and it was from our friend Paul in his letter to the church in Rome, chapter 12, verses 1 through 8, which Katie read for us.

And I finally had this moment of realization reading Paul's words.

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.

There it was.

There it was.

The lesson had returned to me.

Different words, different author, different setting, but the same invitation.

Let your life say something.

Let your life become a poem.

Let your body become an offering.

Let the way that you move through the world become an expression of what you believe about God.

Paul begins Romans 12 with these words.

It sounds like something that we can give up, something that is painful, something that we lose, something that we do because we're supposed to, and we do it begrudgingly.

But Paul, Paul is saying something different.

He doesn't say present your beliefs.

He doesn't say present your church attendance.

He doesn't say remember to do your Sunday school homework reading.

He says, present your bodies, your actual, ordinary, imperfect human life.

Your hands, your feet, your mouths, your eyes, your minds, your schedules, your bank accounts, your relationships, your work, your homes, your politics, your grocery carts, your conversations, your bodies.

And I think what Paul is saying is that worship is not confined to what happens here in this place.

This isn't only worship here.

Worship happens when we walk out of this room and decide what kind of people we are going to be.

That is your spiritual worship, he says.

Worship happens in the way that we treat people who are sometimes difficult to love.

Worship happens when generosity, we choose generosity instead of accumulation of stuff.

Worship happens when we listen instead of assume.

Worship happens when we stand beside someone who has been pushed aside.

Worship happens when we use our hands to serve, our voices to speak out for justice, and our feet to walk alongside someone who is hurting.

Worship happens when our whole bodies, head to toe, begin to tell the story of who God is.

Our bodies become the great poem.

Our lives become the sermon sharing the good news.

Our actions become the theology that people encounter and say, Oh, that is God.

That is God.

Your flesh shall become like a great poem.

No, I don't think Walt Whitman was writing a commentary on Romans 12.

But sometimes God has this way of putting words in our path that we need to know before we know them.

That's one of the ways that God speaks to us, I believe.

A conversation happens at the right time.

A scripture passage suddenly sounds different than it did the last time we read it, which is the whole point of continuing to read scripture over and over and over again, by the way.

It hits us differently every time.

Someone says something that like gets underneath your skin or something stirs in us and we can't quite explain why.

And then weeks later we realize, oh, oh, that.

That was for me.

Maybe you've experienced that.

Maybe there's something that God has been saying to you for a long time because maybe it keeps showing up.

And perhaps maybe God is not being repetitive.

God is just being persistent.

Because sometimes we don't want to hear it, right?

Sometimes we don't want to listen because we're not ready.

But Paul says, don't just hear it.

Don't just hear it.

Live it.

Present your bodies as a living sacrifice.

A life continually offered over and over again.

A life that says, God, here am I.

God, here am I.

Use my hands.

Use my feet.

Use my voice.

Use my resources.

Use my gifts.

Use my failures.

Use my ordinary Tuesday afternoon.

Use all of me, God.

And I think that's like the hardest part about a life of faith.

We want faith to be something that we can tie up in a bow and present it.

We want faith to be something that we can contain, box it in, say, this is what I believe.

I believe in this.

But Paul is inviting us to do something totally different than that.

Faith is not simply about what we believe about God.

It's not some ivory tower, unearthly experiment to be understood over there.

It's a bodily expression.

It's a lived experience because that's how God works.

God's grace generates actions and movements.

Faith is not, faith is what we do with what we believe about God.

If we believe that God is loving, then our lives become more loving.

If we believe that God is merciful, then our lives should become more merciful.

If we believe that God loves the stranger, then our lives become more welcoming.

If we believe that our God sees those that others overlook, we are called to see them too.

The way that we treat people matters.

The people we notice matters.

The people we ignore matters because our bodies are telling a story, whether we realize it or not.

Every day, every day our lives are writing a poem, and the world is reading it.

The question though is, what story are we gonna write?

What story are we gonna tell with all of who we are?

And Paul continued his letter: do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.

Paul doesn't say escape the world.

He doesn't say, go find this holy place over here where there is absolutely no difficult people.

He says, do not be conformed.

Don't let the world tell you who you are.

Don't let the friends in your classrooms tell you who you are.

Don't let fear shape you.

Don't let outrage shape you.

Don't let consumerism shape you.

Don't let cynicism shape you.

That's hard for me.

Don't let the loudest voice shape you.

Don't let culture's definition of success become your definition of faithfulness.

Because we are constantly being formed each and every day by those around us.

Something is shaping us.

So as people of faith, who's gonna do the shaping?

That's what Paul's talking about.

The renewal of your minds.

Because transformation begins somewhere inside of us and then eventually becomes visible to those outside.

Our thinking changes, and then our speaking changes, and then our relationships change, and our relationships change, and then our communities begin to change, and then when our communities begin to change, with God's grace, the world begins to change.

But it starts with us.

It starts with the renewal of our minds by following God's wisdom.

It becomes embodied, it becomes visible, it becomes a life, it becomes a poem that we get to live.

But what I love about Paul is that he doesn't stop there.

He goes on in that scripture that Katie read for us, and he starts talking about community.

For as in one body, we have many members.

And the members do not all have the same function.

Paul says we are one body, but we don't all have the same gifts.

Some of us have gifts of teaching.

Some of us have gifts of serving, some encouraging, some giving, some leading, some showing mercy.

Our expression of faith is not going to look like your neighbors.

But the beauty of our God is that our God can use it all.

So maybe your gift is encouragement.

Maybe you're a person who notices when someone is sitting alone here in this room.

Maybe your gift is hospitality.

Maybe you create spaces where people feel safe and you become a greeter or invite people into your own home.

Maybe your gift is teaching and you sign up to lead the youth or the children or have a career shaping young minds.

Maybe you have a mind that asks questions and helps people think differently about life.

Maybe your gift is generosity and you have these resources and you understand that it doesn't stop with you and you help fund the operation of our faithful home.

Maybe your gift is mercy.

Maybe you sit with people who are in pain and join us in our community cafe.

Maybe your gift is just simply showing up.

Sometimes that's the most faithful thing to be done.

And you sit bedside with someone who is going to their heavenly home.

Paul says, use your gifts.

Offer them.

Don't wait for them to be perfect.

Don't wait for you to have it all figured out.

Your contribution is just right, just as it is.

Offer your life to God.

Because this place, and I speak to everybody here, this place, from the youngest among us to the oldest and wisest, God has something in you that is offered into the world.

Something that shows others who God is.

The beautiful thing about God's grace is that God is not waiting for us to become perfect.

God is writing this story with imperfect people.

God is writing this story, writing this poem of your life with ordinary people.

People who sometimes forget that they're preaching.

Some people who don't always have it together.

God is writing with us.

So offer your life.

What is your life saying?

What poem are you writing?

When I walk into my workplace, what does my life say?

When I sit down at the dinner table, what does my life say?

When I encounter someone who disagrees with me, what does my life say?

When I'm angry, when nobody's watching, what does my life say?

Faith comes out in our lives when we leave this worship area.

Our bodies are speaking.

Our lives are speaking, and the world, you better believe, is listening.

So God is inviting us to become a living poem.

Not a perfect poem, a living poem.

A body still being offered each and every day, a person still being shaped by grace.

So may our bodies become a living sacrifice.

May our faith become visible.

And when we encounter people in the world, in our homes, in our workplaces, in our neighborhoods, in our churches, and all the other ordinary places where life happens, may they encounter something of the love of God.

Because maybe that's what life is all about.

Showing other people the God of love, the God of grace, and the God of mercy and compassion and generosity through us.

So others can see their own belovedness.

Just before COVID hit, we had a prayer that we were saying.

And I want to close with this prayer.

A prayer that says, God, I give you every ordinary part of who I am.

Because I love it that much.

Present your bodies as a living sacrifice.

God, I give you my everyday, ordinary life.

My sleeping, eating, going to work, and walking around life.

Receive this offering so that everything about me is a reflection of you.

In the construction of my life, may you be the mortar between the bricks, building me up and holding me together.

And all God's children said, Amen.