Sojourners Retreat
Sunday Chapel, Oct. 23, 2011, 9:00-10:30 AM
“Making the Most Out of Your Retirement and Serving the Lord”
Romans 12:1-3
1. Sing: Spirit Song
Cares Chorus
2. Read Romans 12:1-3.
3. Message
We know that the Bible was organized with chapters and verses so that we may locate particular passages. But the original manuscripts didn’t necessarily have these designations.
To understand Romans 12:1-3, we need to go back and up one verse to Romans 11:36 first. Paul writes, “From him (Christ) and through Christ and to Christ are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.”
By going back to this earlier verse, we now understand the meaning of the word, “therefore” in our retreat passage. We live lives of obedience and love because the gospel of the God who in Jesus Christ enters into a right relationship with the ungodly and therefore calls us into a right relationship with one another. The question for us is: “How do we glorify God?” How do we worship the one from whom, through whom, and to whom all things are?
The answer is that we worship with our bodies. That is, we worship the God who is all with all that we are. Our conduct is our proper sacrifice to God. Here we remember Micah 6:6-8—Read.
Growing Old
During this weekend, we have been talking about retirement—making the most of it or preparing for the most of it. We have talked about getting old.
But in Romans, Paul believes that, in Jesus Christ, history shifted forever. The old age of sin and death, where we tried but failed to obey the law, has passed away. A new age based on God’s gifts and our faith has begun. The verse “Do not be conformed to this word” could just as well be translated “Do not be conformed to this age.” That is, “Live as citizens of the new age of faithful obedience. Be who you really are.”
The Greek word, to “be transformed” has come to us into English as “metamorphosis.” Butterflies may be overused as symbols of the Christian life, but the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly is not a bad symbol of what Paul hopes for Christians. In baptism we are moved from our old citizenship and our old shape to the new shape of faithfulness. We move from the old age of sin and the law to the new age of grace and faith and faithful obedience.
One way to understand Paul’s own life is as a story of metamorphosis. He was a persecutor of Christians. Now he is a Christian. He was an enemy of Christ. Now he is Christ’s apostle. He has been transformed.
The metamorphosis we undergo as Christians is this: Our minds are made new. This doesn’t just mean that we have a lot of new information, as our minds might be renewed by learning geography or doing sodukos. It means that what we want and intend and hope for and trust in is all made new. Transformed.
As transformed people, we are asked to “discern what is the will of God…” Another translation is” “to prove what is the will of God…” That means both to discern God’s will or to discover it, and to prove what is God’s will in our own experience. To put it to the test. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. The proof of God’s will is in the living. What God’s will turns out to be is what is “good and acceptable and perfect.” If we obediently live lives that are good, acceptable, and (moving toward) the perfect, we will discover that those are the lives that serve God’s kingdom, that worship and glorify God.
Read Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Our many years of life can be represented in the hungry caterpillar. When the sun comes up, we become hungry. We search for food every day of the week. We eat many things and live through many years. And when there were times when we had stomachaches, those are the trials and struggles of life. And after living a long and full life eating through every day and working every day, we finally had enough.
The cocoon for us is like our baptism. We are buried under the water and when we come up, we are transformed. We go through a metamorphosis and become a beautiful person—the person that God intended us to be.
We have talked about “old age” in the sense of chronological aging. But there’s another form of “old age” that God has eliminated in Jesus Christ. We can live in a “new age” of grace and faith and faithful obedience so that we may glorify God.
4. Closing Prayer
5. Sing: Leaning on the Everlasting Arms