Romans 12
November 2
David A. Davis
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It occurs to me that we would likely be hard-pressed to find a few verses of scripture that have more variation in translations and paraphrases than Romans 12:1-2. That was evident Wednesday morning as our small group read from the different versions of the bible being used in the virtual room. The variations seem to reflect an attempt to understand what Paul means by “present your bodies as a living sacrifice” and “your reasonable act of worship,” and being transformed rather than conformed. I don’t have time to offer much for your hearing, but I invite you to do a search this week on your device of choice.

I appeal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters, based on God’s mercy, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable act of worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect (NRSV)

An English translation commissioned by the Church of Scotland in 1964:

Therefore, my brothers, I implore you by God’s mercy to offer your very selves to God: a living sacrifice, dedicated and fit for God’s acceptance, the worship offered by mind and heart. Adapt yourselves no longer to the pattern of this present world, but let your minds be remade and your whole nature thus transformed. Then you will be able to discern the will of God, and to know what is good, acceptable, and perfect.

And maybe the most recent published translation to be found is in New Testament scholar Dr. Beverly Gaventa’s hot-off-the-press commentary on Romans:

So I urge you by God’s mercies, brothers and sisters, to present your bodies as a sacrifice that is living, holy, and pleasing to God. That is your reasonable service. And do not be shaped by this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that you discern God’s will for you, the good and pleasing and fully mature

 Do not be shaped by this age. Adapt yourselves no longer to the patterns of this world. Do not be conformed. The gift of the 12^th chapter of Romans. The gift and the wisdom of the Apostle Paul is that he continues in the chapter to describe for the reader what it looks like. A life transformed. A life of reasonable service. A life of sacrifice that is living, holy, and pleasing to God. While translators and scholars attempt to help you and me wrap our heads and hearts around some of Paul’s vocabulary in the first two verses, Paul launches into practicalities, paints a picture. Paul tells the church at Rome, and the church ever since, “here’s what it looks like”. Or as Dr. Gaventa puts it, “Following the summons, with its depiction of life as radical sacrifice, [Paul goes on] to promote an understanding of that life in terms of shared generosity made possible by divine gift and characterized by love”.

“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly that you ought to think…so we, who are many, are one body in Christ…ministering… teaching… encouragement …. Sincerity …diligence …cheerfulness … Let love be genuine, hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good,; love one another….rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep…. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.”   Interestingly, after the first two verses, there is a remarkable consistency across translations and paraphrases for the rest of the chapter. Paul to the church at Rome and the church ever since: “This is what it looks like!”

When I was in college, an itinerant campus preacher came to visit our Christian fellowship group one Friday night. The next day, Saturday morning, a few of us went with him to the University of New Hampshire. When I describe him as an itinerant campus preacher, I mean he would show up on a campus somewhere, find an outdoor central spot with student traffic, and start preaching. His goal was to get people to engage with him, talk back to him, and even argue with him. It was a form of open forum political debates that seemed to be popular on college campuses today. Even though I was in a different place in my theological journey way back then and felt a call to ministry and preaching way back then, I found it a shockingly strange way to try to share the gospel of Jesus. By means of picking an argument with people. Picking a fight instead of showing someone with your life what being a disciple looks like.

Of course, if we are honest about the tradition, about the history, about the church, in absolutely every generation, in every season, the followers of Jesus, the church, denominations of every persuasion, congregations of every kind, could learn, should learn, a whole lot from Paul and Romans 12.  “Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal; be ardent in spirit; serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in affliction, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints, pursue hospitality to strangers…live in harmony with one another, do not be arrogant, but associate with the lowly….do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.” A life of shared generosity made possible by a divine gift and characterized by love.

Our theme for this week in the Linked-In Adult Education/Small Group fall series is “Social Gospels and Smaller Tents”. In looking to the evangelical movement in the first half of the 20^th century, Dr. Heath Carter points to the conflict between the ecumenical effort working to serve the common good and improve equality for all people and those looking to draw boundaries and claim the right kind of Christianity. Professor Carter’s use of the metaphor of “smaller tents” is a reference to the beginning of an ongoing obsession for so many about who is in and who is out. Who is right and who is wrong? Who is a proper believer and who is not? The history tells that the arguments and the language and the vitriol were as heated and unchristian in the early and mid-twentieth century as they are today.

It seems to me that the lasting focus in the Christian tradition on who is in the tent and who is out of the tent could not be in greater conflict with the last 19 verses of Romans 12. At the end of the day, isn’t the persistent longing for smaller tents and more and thicker boundary lines inconsistent with lives of shared generosity made possible by divine gift and characterized by love? Or to say it another way, how often does the intramural nastiness in the Christian world distract from and diminish the call of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Understood in Paul’s language: “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good…Contribute to the needs of the saints; pursue hospitality to strangers…. Do not be arrogant but associate with the lowly…. Do not repay anyone evil for evil but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all…if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink….do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

As the infuriating inaction/incompetence/feckless behavior of elected officials in Washington has led to lost jobs, lost pay, and now lost SNAP benefits for upwards of 42 million of our fellow citizens including what must be a terrifying number of children, I found myself drawn to the very last paragraph of Princeton University Professor and Nassau Church family member Matt Desmond’s book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. His captivating sociological study of eviction rates and predatory landlord practices is chilling. But this week, his last paragraph is a prophetic, relevant lament about a whole lot more.

“Whatever are way out of this mess, one thing is certain. This degree of inequality, this withdrawal of opportunity, this cold denial of basic needs, this endorsement of pointless suffering—by no American value is this situation justified. No moral code or ethical principle, no piece of scripture or holy teaching, can be summoned to defend what we have allowed our country to become.”

I wonder how the Church of Jesus Christ has any time to be picking fights when there’s so much gospel work to do. Picking fights instead of showing the world what the life of discipleship looks like. The body of Christ is not conformed to this world but transformed to live a life of shared generosity made possible by divine gift and characterized by love.

In Romans 12, the Apostle Paul paints a picture with words describing for his readers, for the church, for you and me, a life transformed. A life of reasonable service. A life of sacrifice that is living, holy, and pleasing to God. “Here’s what it looks like.” Jesus, our Savior, shows us with his teaching, his life, his death, and his resurrection. Way beyond words.

Jesus said, “This is my body broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

“This is the cup of the new covenant sealed in my blood for the forgiveness of sin. Every time you drink it, do it in remembrance of me.”

Come, people of God. This is what it looks like.

Philippians 3:7-16
October 26
David A. Davis
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Arthur Link was a professor of American Church history at Princeton University and a member of this congregation when it was known as the First Presbyterian Church of Princeton.  In 1967 he edited a volume of the history of First Presbyterian Church that was published in celebration of the congregation’s 200 years. He wrote the first chapter on the earliest history and tells of Presbyterians settling in Princetown, which he described as a “way station on the stage coach line between Philadelphia overshadowed by its larger neighbors of Kingston and Lawrenceville.” Link makes the argument that Presbyterianism in Princeton had a direct correlation to the revivalism of the Great Awakening. “It is entirely possible”, he writes, “that organized Presbyterianism in Princeton was also a child of the Great Awakening.” A movement Link describes as “a revolt against the cold formalism that had begun to ossify the churches and laid great emphasis upon the personal experience of grace.”

 A personal experience of grace. A personal experience of grace, perhaps as opposed to a primarily intellectual exercise, dependent upon the clergy and the hierarchy of the church and the monarchy. Interestingly, Link points out that the Presbytery of New Brunswick turned down the request for a congregation in Princeton before 1755 more than once because of the proximity to existing congregations in Kingston and Lawrenceville. The minutes report that whoever was serving at Kingston might “preach a lecture at Princetown if they can.” “Preach a lecture” sounds like a bit of that cold formalism ossifying the church. A personal experience of grace. That might just be a working definition of the introduction of evangelicalism in this land. A personal experience of grace. An experience of faith that is between someone and God with no need of a clergy conduit. A faith that is not just a matter of the mind but is also a matter of the heart.

In the third chapter of the letter to the church at Philippi, the Apostle Paul comes to both the heart of the matter and the matter of the heart.  “Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ”.  Here in ten verses or so, the core of the letter.  “For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through the faith of Christ” Right here in the reading for this morning, after that great hymn in chapter two, the hymn that proclaims of the self-emptying of Christ on the cross and God’s exaltation of Christ giving him the name that is above every name, after his mention of his co-workers in the faith, Timothy and Epaphroditus, Paul comes to the crux of things. “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection of the dead.”

            After Paul warns the congregation about those who preach what is antithetical to the gospel, after he lists his own stellar credentials, his own CV, his life resume “If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh I have more…a Hebrew born of Hebrews…as to the law a Pharisee….as to righteousness under the law, blameless), the apostle then offers to the believers at Philippi, what is for him, the very center of it all, a center etched forever here in the Living Word. “Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. ..Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” 

These few verses of Paul’s letter, where Paul gets all personal, where Paul opens up about his relationship with Christ, where Paul writes about his own encounter with the gospel, his own longing in a relationship with Jesus, it’s like Act III of a Shakespeare play. The act where the play turns. The act is labeled the climax. Paul tells of what he has let go and considers worthless, how he longs for more of Christ and his resurrection, and how he presses on. These familiar and quotable, and memorable verses are the heart of the letter. It’s what drives the plot. The plot here, it’s not of Paul’s life. That plot line would, of course, tell of his conversion on the Damascus Road. No, it is the movement of the letter, in the structure of the letter; here we have the climax. The core, the key, the transformative part of his correspondence is his own witness to the “prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” Losing and gaining. Wanting more. Pressing on. Only this, just this, this one thing, Paul concludes, hold fast. Hold fast to this! Losing, gaining, wanting more, pressing on. Hold fast to your own encounter with the gospel of Christ Jesus. It is the heart of the matter and the matter of the heart.

In the small group I am leading on Wednesdays, I tossed out a question about the group’s earliest memory or understanding of the world “evangelical”. For me, as a young person growing up in a Presbyterian congregation in Pittsburgh, much like this one, I was taught that the term was to be understood much like Arthur Link’s brief portrayal of the Great Awakening. In the preaching that shaped me and my faith, a reference to “evangelical” was not political, not theological. It was a reference to the experience of grace in a relationship to God understood through the love of Jesus Christ. Yes, it was the 70s and television evangelists were “legion,” but they didn’t own the word “evangelical.” Pretty much ever since it has frustrated, to say the least, that the term has been co-opted, twisted, redefined, stomped on, misused, abused, and weaponized. I can remember the last time “evangelical” crossed my lips from this pulpit. It is similar to how I feel about the American flag. It is as if one side of the political spectrum thinks it owns the American flag. Anyone who has listened to a season of my preaching can hear that I believe the gospel of Jesus Christ touches the heart and is a personal experience of grace. I believe it because I have experienced it. A faith that moves me and never just stays above the neck.

Last weekend, I was the keynote speaker for another congregation’s Men’s retreat. 38 men staying in three Airbnbs in Avalon at the Jersey Shore and cramming into one large living room and kitchen area for meals and then for worship and my four sermons. I knew the pastor and one other person. They were all certainly welcoming to me, but they were also enjoying each other’s company. So let’s just say there were multiple times when I found myself alone in that crowded room. It takes a little while for that many people to go through a buffet line. On Saturday morning, as I finished my light breakfast and was waiting for the worship time to begin, I found myself sitting next to a young man who was quiet and not talking to anyone either. Instead, he was leafing through his obviously brand-new, big, annotated bible. I am guessing it was purchased or gifted for the occasion. Since the only instructions on the email thread for the retreat were to bring your own linens and your bible. He was not really reading it, he was leafing through it like he was seeing it for the first time.

I introduced myself and asked him how long he had been at the church. “Not long,” he said. “A bit more than a year. I wasn’t raised with any church background or faith. It’s all new to me. We took our 4-year-old daughter to some of the activities that the church advertised in town. Then we started going to worship. We just love it. This is my first retreat.” The rest of the morning, I couldn’t stop thinking about him, glancing over. It was clear that, like me, he was an introvert. Talking to people he didn’t know wasn’t easy for him. When I was preaching, he was hanging on every word. When we were singing from the little prepared songbook, he didn’t know any of the songs, but he was trying. Then, during those breaks or waiting for the next thing, he had that bible. He was enjoying it more than trying to talk to people.

On the two-hour drive home from Avalon late Saturday night, I was blasting Bruce Springsteen to stay awake and I kept thinking of this young man. I don’t know if it was admiration, jealousy, or nostalgia. The first for him was a whole lot more than that retreat. A whole lot more. Somewhere, along the Atlantic City Expressway, I thought of this verse from the Book of Revelation. “Don’t abandon the love you had at first.” It is from the second chapter, John the Revelator. His letter to the church at Ephesus. In John’s vision, the letters are the words of the Risen Christ. “I know your works , your toil and your patient endurance….I also know that you are enduring patiently and bearing up for the sake of my name, and that you have not grown weary. But I have this against you. That you have abandoned the love you had at first.”  One paraphrase puts it this way, “you have forgotten your first love”.  They may be able to rob us of the word “evangelical,” but don’t let anyone take away the love you had first when it comes to your journey of faith. Never forget, don’t give up on the matter of the heart and the heart of the matter.

In that letter to the church at Ephesus, John is writing to a congregation about its attempt to remain faithful in a world full of violence, evildoers, false prophets, heretical teaching, and untruth. Sound familiar. Sound eerily relevant? Sound timely? “I know you are enduring and bearing up for the sake of my name.” Don’t forget the first love, the personal experience of grace. When you can’t make sense of the world or what’s going on all around you, when from the neck up it is confusion and discouragement amid a world that seems to be apocalyptically shaking, maybe lead with your heart. Cling to the grace Christ offers. Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, press on, press on. Reclaim his steadfast love for you as if for the very first time.

Luke 18:1-8
October 19
Jess Winderweedle
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Luke 17:11-19
October 12
David A. Davis
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“How about a word or two on behalf of the nine lepers who did not return to give thanks?” That’s how Martin Bell begins his essay on Luke’s familiar passage of the ten lepers in an intriguing collection entitled The Way of the Wolf. “What about the others? It’s simple really,” Bell writes. And then he goes on to tell of the one who was so frightened that he could only look for a place to hide. He describes one of the former lepers who was offended that Jesus didn’t make him work harder in order to be healed. Another one discovered pretty quickly that he didn’t want to he healed. Bell imagines that one was a mother who did not return to give thanks because she was rushing to see her children. One was so happy he just forgot to say thanks. For one of those healed, it was going to take a long time to repair the broken dignity. There’s something that happens to a person forced to beg and shunned by all and still expected to say thank you.

In his sampler of poetic license, Martin Bell writes of a seventh leper who was convinced there would be a perfectly intelligible, scientific explanation for what happened. He didn’t return to give thanks because he believed Jesus had nothing to do with the healing event. And then a leper numbered eight did not return precisely because he did believe Jesus had everything to do with it. To return and give thanks when the Messiah had arrived, when the Kingdom of God was at hand, well that would be unheard of. He ran to tell the news. And one last leper, the ninth leper, Bell invites the reader to just ponder. Because no one really knew what happened to them. If you have ten, one is bound to fade away.

Perhaps you can anticipate this author/preacher’s conclusions. It is much easier to condemn the nine rather than understand them. It is good to give God thanks and maybe understandable sometimes not to because God doesn’t heal people and then stand around just waiting for the note. Jesus knew about the ten and where they were and where they went and why they were and who they were, and he healed them all the same. Martin Bell concludes with the thought; “perhaps the point is not in the one who returns, but in the ten who were healed.”

Perhaps. But then there’s Luke. There’s the author/preacher Luke. The stickler here is Luke. Here in the 17^th chapter of the Gospel of Luke, the account of the ten lepers healed falls smack in the middle of some very difficult teaching from the lips of Jesus.  “Occasions for stumbling are bound to come” That’s how Luke’s Jesus begins the chapter. “It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble!” And the Lord goes on to teach the disciples about sin and forgiveness, repentance and rebuke. The twelve beg Jesus to increase their faith. He tells them about the mustard seed. “If you had the faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘be uprooted and planted in the sea’, and it would obey you’”. Jesus warns them about doing the bare minimum, only what they have to do, when it comes to the life of faith. A life of obedience defined by only what has to be done and nothing more.

It is also here in this chapter that Jesus goes on to describe those days when the Son of Man comes in all glory. “Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it.” Jesus tells them. “On that night there will be two in one bed; one will be taken, and the other left. There will be two women grinding meal together; one will be taken and the other left.” And chapter 17, this chapter where Luke the author/preacher tells of  “the Christian life,” ends with this very uplifting quote attributed to Jesus: “Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.” Whatever on earth that means?

Luke’s account of the healing of the ten lepers rests at the very center of an entire chapter of challenging teaching about discipleship, God’s future, and figuring out how to live the faith. It is at the center of a chapter full of imperatives from the Teacher. Right in the center of all the tough stuff, between forgiveness and the coming kingdom, comes the healing story. And smack in the middle of the healing story, you will find that one leper flat on their face at the feet of Jesus praising God with a loud voice. While the disciples, and the reader, and the church, and you and I are scratching our heads trying to understand the Savior’s teaching, Luke invites us to see the one. One for ten. Luke crafts the entire chapter, inviting the readers’ eye to the very center, suggesting that we focus on the one. Just as Jesus does.

Ten lepers approached Jesus as he headed for the village that day. Ten lepers obediently kept their distance, living their own identity. Instead of shouting out the expected word of warning, “Unclean, unclean!”, ten lepers give the shout out to Jesus, a shout in response to his identity. “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Ten lepers were told by the Lord to go and show themselves to the priest. Ten were invited to head down that road toward the proper entry back into community and family. Ten lepers were invited to return to life. Ten lepers were made clean. Ten lepers were healed. Ten lepers were restored to life surrounded not only by the disease and the alienation that defined them, but here in Luke, they were restored to life amid the challenging, complex, even troubling teaching of the Master, teaching about discipleship and the life of faith and living in response to the identity of this Jesus.

But only one, one out of ten, one in ten, one for ten, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, threw himself at the feet of Jesus and said, “thanks.” Only one. Only one offered praise to God with a loud voice. Only one turned back.  And he was a Samaritan. You may recall earlier in Luke, when Jesus insisted on going with the disciples through a Samaritan town. When the Samaritans didn’t receive Jesus, James and John wanted to invoke the fires of heaven on the town. Jesus rebuked them. You remember the man who was a neighbor to the person in the ditch in the parable in Luke, he was a Samaritan. The lawyer trying to justify himself before Jesus couldn’t even bring himself to say “Samaritan.” No, he could only say “the one who showed mercy” was the neighbor. In John, chapter 4, the disciples were “astonished” that Jesus was speaking to a woman and to a Samaritan. The healed man at the feet of Jesus, shouting praise, was a Samaritan. He was an outcast. He had two strikes against him, on his skin and in his blood. He was a foreigner. He was an alien. He was an other. He was one of them. But only one turned back. He’s the one who came back. And Jesus looked around, and said to no one in particular and everyone all at once: “Only one for ten?”

It is interesting to note that one was heading down the road with the other nine. He was on the way with the others. He was headed in the same direction. Then he saw that he was healed. He had to have looked around. He had to sense the peer pressure to be on the way, to get back to life, to finally fit in. But he stopped, looked around, waited just a moment, and he turned back. I’m curious if that’s the moment of grace. The turning point. The work of the Holy Spirit. The gift of faith germinates like a mustard seed. Yes, he knew Jesus by name, but they all knew. Yes, he begged for mercy, but they all begged. Yes, he was healed, but they were all healed. But in that moment down the road a ways, to use the Apostle Paul’s language, “in the twinkling of an eye,” in that window of opportunity that shuts quicker than an instant, in that moment of grace, the person healed by Jesus decided to be the one. One for ten. He turned back.

A pastor friend of mine shared a story of when she was in high school. She volunteered at a food and clothing pantry in the lower level of the Episcopal Church in her town. It had something to do with community service credit for the National Honor Society. She told of arriving to volunteer on a cold winter afternoon. The line was already forming outside. The first thing she did was invite the folks to come inside out of the cold. As the staff and volunteers were assisting people one by one, an older man came down the steps struggling with several bags of clothes. Every month or so, he made the delivery from his congregation using the church van. he made several more trips. So many trips that some of the other folks waiting in line gave him a hand.

A gentleman came to the front of the line and asked the high school volunteer if she had any shoes, size ten. She went back to the box of shoes to check and came back to apologize to the visitor that there were only women’s shoes in the box that day. It was obvious to everyone in the basement that the man needed a new pair of shoes. My pastor friend recalled that the delivery man from the other church was heading back up the steps, but he turned back and asked the guest, “Did you say size ten? I think I just carried in a pair of shoes. Let me check.” It didn’t take long for the man to come back to the counter with a pretty new pair of size ten heavy-duty shoes. “Well, that’s good timing for me!” the man said, adding a word of thanks and putting them on before heading out into the winter afternoon.

After a few more trips out to the church van, soon void of bags of clothes, the man from the other church offered his thanks and good-byes to the staff and volunteers. It wasn’t until he made his last trip up the stairs that the high school student noticed what she said she would never forget. Yes, the man going back up the stairs was only in his socks. There was no bag of shoes.

Have you ever seen someone who knew what it meant to turn back? I have to admit, they are hard to find sometimes. It’s not because they aren’t around. People who turn back aren’t often seen. They seem to avoid the spotlight. They blend in while standing out. Their lives overflow with thanksgiving. They have learned that when it comes to the Christian life, it’s less about piety, it’s not about self-righteousness, or judgment, or having to be right all the time. It’s about being thankful. Their lives are characterized not just by giving, but by giving back. They embody thankfulness. They give back to God in little ways and big ways as a means of offering thanks and praise. There is a certain recklessness to it, to turning back. It’s daringly counter-cultural and by the world’s measure, makes no sense. No sense at all. That’s why Luke puts the one in ten at the center.

Maybe it’s Luke calling you and me. That amid the very real challenges to understanding the Christian life, the life of discipleship, what Professor Migliore describes in the signature title of his book “Faith Seeking Understanding”, that when it comes to understanding our faith in this world especially these days, still, yet, and always, at the center of it all, is our gratitude and praise to the One who heals us and makes us whole in and through Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our Savior who so loves us and yes, loves this hurting world.