2009-05-17 - "Signs of New Life" | Timothy Eaton Memorial Church

Sunday, May 17, 2009

"Signs of New Life"
Living an uncommon life
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Text: Romans 12:9-21

I am going to assume that when you got up this morning, a butler was probably not there drawing your bath and getting your clothes ready for you on the rack. You probably didn't get up to Eggs Benedict, champagne and freshly squeezed orange juice served on a gleaming silver platter. You probably did not have a chauffeur-driven limousine replete with motorcycle cavalcade bring you to the church today, probably because it is not your birthday or a day when you are celebrating an anniversary, although it may be. It's definitely not Christmas today. It is just an ordinary Sunday, where you did common things.

On Tuesday morning, you will probably get in your common car and commute to your common place of work, work a certain number of hours, then get in the same common car and drive back home to eat the same common meal that you have every Tuesday. You will probably drop off your children to school again in the same common car, then pick them up, and have a common evening at home.

If you have not gone to work that day, you will probably have a common cup of coffee and read the common newspaper you read every day that is delivered more or less on time every morning, and you will spend your day seeking to do good things. At the day's end, it will be a common good night. Michaelle Jean will probably not phone you and invite you to tea at Rideau Hall, and Messrs. Harper, Layton and Ignatieff will probably not call you and ask for your opinion on matters of foreign affairs or economics.

Every now and again, a common life is punctuated by exceptional moments - graduations, transfers, promotions, anniversaries and celebrations, or maybe you will bring home a trophy from a golf tournament in which you have participated. But you will probably not be remembered with a statue at Nathan Phillips Square and there will probably not be that many memorials placed around the city in memory of your common life. You will have lived your days in a common, ordinary way. Doesn't that just sound dreadful?

Max Lucado, in writing a book, The Next Door Saviour, about the common, ordinary things of life, says that is the reality for many people, in fact for most people. Other than exceptional moments and achievements, for the most part, life is pretty ordinary. As a result, you might feel that you and life itself are not particularly exceptional or noteworthy.

He goes on in his book, however, to suggest that Jesus himself was common, that Jesus himself was a carpenter who entered into the daily lives of ordinary people and, for the most part, did mundane things. But, his argument is that in the midst of the ordinary and mundane, Jesus Christ appeared and appears again.

I have thought about the common, ordinary, mundane life a great deal over the years, and there is a sense in which it can grind you down. There was one day when I was shaken from that opinion and given an entirely different perspective. It was in 1979, and I was at what was then known as the famous SACLA (South African Christian Leadership Assembly) Conference when, contravening all the laws of the country and all the precedents that were set, 7,000 Christians of every colour, language and tribe came together to pray for the nation in one of its darkest hours.

I went all the way from Cape Town to Pretoria to participate in this event. We were somewhat frightened, somewhat concerned that the government would not allow this to continue, because we were contravening the laws of the land by gathering together as people of different races, but the government was wise enough to leave us alone. I remember looking at the list of speakers, and seeing one particular speaker listed who, frankly, I had never heard of. He was a theologian from Costa Rica named Orlando Costas. I went into the great plenary session and sat with the 7,000 other people. Before Orlando Costas spoke, I shook hands with the man sitting next to me and introduced myself. He was a migrant labourer who worked in a winery in the Cape. Unlike myself, who had flown all the way from Cape Town to Pretoria, was picked up in a taxi, and staying in a hotel room, this man, along with some of his friends, had taken time off work for which they would not be paid, had driven in a little VW kombi van all the way from Cape Town to Pretoria in the searing heat, and had arrived in a shanty town in Alexandria, outside of Pretoria, where he was staying.

He had made this long trek with his friends because he believed that he needed to pray for his nation. There the two of us sat, ordinary people in this incredible, extraordinary gathering. I had arrived somewhat in luxury and was feeling somewhat pampered; he had made great sacrifices to be there. I thought it was an ordinary conference; he had made extraordinary strides to make sure he got there.

Then, Orlando Costas got up and he began to speak. His title was, Contextual Theology in Contemporary Africa. Oh, my - did that sound boring! He said, “Friends, we are here for one reason, and one reason only: We believe that Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead. Not only do we believe that Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead, we believe that this same Jesus has bestowed on us the power of the Holy Spirit, and that this Holy Spirit works in us and creates something new within us. Behold, all things are new.”

He explained that, as those who believe in the risen Christ and the new life that comes from Christ's spirit, the challenge today is to live in the light of that spirit, and to make sure, “that the common part of life is transformed by the uncommon power of the Holy Spirit.” What I had thought was an ordinary life, doing ordinary things was all of a sudden transformed in my mind. It became something that should be lived in an extraordinary, uncommon way.

Even in the mundane, even in the ordinary, even in the common, there is a challenge and a calling to an uncommon life. This uncommon life is brought about by the resurrection of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit working in our lives. Even in the common tasks, ordinary realm, the rhythm of day-to-day activities, we can find something powerful and great.

In the passage from Romans, Chapter 12, the Apostle Paul is talking about that new life - a new life that is borne through the resurrection of Christ but lived through the power of the Holy Spirit. From Chapter 8 to Chapter 12, Paul is talking about life in the Spirit, that having been justified by faith in Jesus Christ because of his death and his resurrection, we now live a new life. This new life should be radically different from the common, ordinary and mundane. There is now something exceptional about being a Christian, and an identity to being a Christian that requires us to live a new life. For Paul, this begins with the notion of an “uncommon love.” Paul writes in Romans, “Let your love be sincere.” Why would he write something like that? It is because he knows that love, in its ordinary sense, can at times be self-seeking and self-serving. But love, he said, should be “sincere.” Another way to translate the word Paul uses is “genuine.” We should live genuine lives in the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul then outlines precisely how we should do this. We are to honour others above ourselves. Think about it. We do our ordinary work, have our common meals and live our everyday lives, but can you imagine how powerful it would be if we saw in those common ways of life a way to honour others? A way, not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought, but rather to seek the good of others?

The problem with the common life is that, in a sense, even by saying it, you are being self-indulgent. From the moment you see it as being ordinary, you have trapped yourself in introspection and only being concerned with vicissitudes of your own existence. But, the moment you decide you are going to honour somebody else, the moment you are going to live your life thinking more highly of others than yourself, you are in an uncommon realm, you enter a realm of opportunity that the common life cannot bring you.

When I think of the man who was sitting next to me listening to Orlando Costas give his speech, I couldn't help but be shaken by what he had to say. The man sitting next to me, so he told me, was called Caesar. Can you imagine, a mother calling her child Caesar? But, that was his name! Caesar was probably at, or very close to, the bottom of the social strata of South Africa that at the time, despite having a job in a winery for which he was paid hourly. But this great-named man had made huge sacrifices to be at the conference. When I looked at the state of his devotion, the passion in his life for God, his love and concern for his nation, and the way he came to the capital city of Pretoria and sat next to powerful white people, like myself - for he saw me as being powerful, even if I did not see myself in that way - I couldn't help but think of what his life must be like and I honoured him for being there.

For the next few days, he and I went everywhere together. We were tied at the hip. We went to meals together, we went to prayer together, and we went to worship together. Everywhere we went, Andrew and Caesar went hand-in-hand throughout the whole of the conference, and we stayed in touch when we went back to the Cape - he in his little kombi van, hundreds of kilometres away, and me in my one-and-a-half hour flight back from Pretoria to Cape Town.

I thought that if I got so wrapped up in thinking my life was so ordinary and so mundane, I would lose sight of the struggles, challenges and needs of the people around me. Paul understood this. Unlike the culture of his time that so often dismissed human life and treated it as something cheap and a throwaway, he said, “Honour others more than you honour yourself - an uncommon love.” It is an “uncommon love,” says Paul not to ever lack in zeal, to never become so worried or so burdened by the problems you have that you lose your zeal. The common life can take away the zing; it grinds you down, and you lose the zeal for challenges, the zest for life, and the passion for things, and the more common the life becomes, the less the zeal.

Paul says, “Do not become lacking in zeal, but maintain the fervour of the faith,” and the fervour of the faith comes about by being passionate and concerned about the world around you, being desirous for others to know and experience the power, grace and love of Jesus Christ. My friends, there is never a moment in which you can let your zeal lag if you are passionate about the world around you.

That often happens in the church. People lose their zeal; they get ground down by church meetings and the mundane life of the church that so often requires so much of us. Perhaps, the more committed you are, the greater the demands are in the life of the church, and I am always astonished by the level of volunteerism and passion in this congregation here at Eaton Memorial. But, let not the sun set on your zeal for the things of God, because it is an “uncommon love” that drives you.

That “uncommon love” also keeps you with an open hand to those around you. I love Paul's phrase, “Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.” Is that not the faith? Have you noticed how the whole orientation is not about yourself, but about others? You rejoice with others who rejoice, and you weep with those who weep. You are in solidarity with those who are at the high moments and those who are at the low with a love that is passionate about sharing in the lives of others. Notice the “uncommon love” that is there.

How often it is in the church that sacramentally and in every other way we rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. I often feel that I am on an emotional rollercoaster as a minister in the church. We talk about this as clergy, and I am sometimes sure that people are not always aware of just what a rollercoaster it can be. Whereas on one Sunday we can be baptizing little children and celebrating with parents who have a new child, the very next day we are burying someone who has departed from our midst. But, you “rejoice with those who rejoice and you weep with those who weep” if you love them.

Paul also wanted us to be hospitable, to share our belongings with those who are in need and give a helping hand to those both inside and outside the church. Never let the sun go down on your hospitality, but always look for the needs of those around you and seek to meet them, for if you do so, you will have an “uncommon love.” You will have an uncommon life, because all too often people are absorbed in being hospitable to themselves, but not to the world. An “uncommon love” and an “uncommon faith” practice hospitality.

The final thing Paul says is remarkable: “Do not take vengeance. Do not hate your enemy.” He quotes from Proverbs 25 and Mathew 5:44, words that Jesus must have resounded around the Early Church or else Paul would never have quoted them with such clarity. Forgive your enemies; let God carry out vengeance and treat them kindly yourself - an “uncommon love.” The common life says, “I am bitter towards those who rise above me. I am envious of those who have been able to have their names in lights. I see that there are others rising above the mire of the common and the ordinary. I see the enemies in the world around me.” And, even in righteous indignation we can look at people and point to them as our enemies because they do ungodly things. Even so, Paul says, “Let God be the one who avenges, but forgive your enemies and do not repay evil for evil.” What an uncommon approach to life! How utterly transformative it is and radically different from the common life that is absorbed with itself.

But, there is another element to this. We not only have an “uncommon love,” we are also moved and empowered by an “uncommon spirit.” I have always been a huge fan and follower of the French lawyer and philosopher, Jacques Ellul. He is a very devout Christian and during his early years he was part of the French Resistance. He was committed to the resistance against the Nazis. He spent his early days working with the Resistance, putting his life on the line and seeing others with whom he resisted being imprisoned, shot and executed. After the war, Jacques Ellul did a controversial thing. As a lawyer, he decided to defend those who had been Nazi collaborators. He was put down, belittled, criticized and ostracized for it. “How can you possibly do this? How can you defend the collaborators who, during the war, would have gladly tortured you and sent you to prison?” Jacques Ellul saw how the collaborators were being treated in post- World War II France; he saw the same affliction and the same terror in their eyes that were in the eyes of the victims in the Resistance, and he said, “I must defend them. Somebody must defend them and at least speak on their behalf, or else, what is the point of the victory?”

A bold move! A bold move by a man, who when he was young, committed his life to Christ even though his father was a sceptic and his mother never went to church. But, there was a moment in which Ellul came face-to-face with this challenge from Jesus Christ: “Will you become a fisher of men? Will you follow me?” And Jacques Ellul said he would; he made that commitment.

Throughout his life, he wrote about the relationship between Karl Marx and the gospel. He admired Marx for some of his critiques of the powerful and the abuse of wealth, although he could never be a communist and a Marxist, because he was primarily a Christian. He looked at the world and saw that it had become absorbed with its desire to follow techniques and that, in many ways, the desire for efficiency had replaced the desire for humanity and the desire for technology had overtaken the desire for justice and truth. Ellul was one of those writers who were continually passionate about the city and the welfare of humanity, and his writings and his life reflected a desire for the justice of God to be known.

Central to Ellul's life were the teachings of Romans 12. Ellul wrote, “Perhaps through my words or my writings someone has met my Saviour. The One, the unique One, beside whom all human projects are childishness. Then, if that has happened, I will be fulfilled, and for that glory to God alone.”

You see, Ellul was able to be compassionate even towards the collaborators. He was full of the sense of justice for the state of the world because he had been grasped by an “uncommon spirit,” the power of the Spirit of the risen Christ. So often, we look at the burdens of our lives and the common, mundane side of life and we see it all just wearing us down. We do not feel the power, strength and glory of the Spirit of God.

There is a wonderful fable called, The Fable of Creation that tells of all the animals on the day after creation. They are all strutting around, looking at all the things that they are able to do - to walk, to run, to bark, and to do all manner of things - but there is one group that is depressed - the birds. They are depressed because they have this huge appendage on their shoulders. It always seems to weigh them down when they walk, and they can't find a reason for it. They feel awkward moving side-to-side and swaggering with these huge appendages before them until, finally, one of them starts to move this appendage and all of a sudden, his wings start to go up. As he starts to run, he feels the wind lift his wings, and discovers he can do something none of the other creatures on earth, as proud as they are, can. When the wind got under the birds' wings, they soared and they looked down on the world. They thought that what they had been given was a burden. But when moved by the Holy Spirit, the common thing that they had been given made them fly!

May you never have a common life! May you never have a mundane existence! May you never have an ordinary day, because you have an “uncommon spirit” from an “uncommon Lord” and an “uncommon love” that moves you! Amen.