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The Fifth Sunday In Lent
O Almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men: Grant unto thy people that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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The Fifth Sunday In Lent
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Scripture citation(s): Romans 12
A Sermon by
Fr. Austin
on
Romans 12
✛
To be Transformed, Present Your Body
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When Aurelius Augustine was about 32 years old, he was in great personal torment. More than a dozen years earlier he had read Cicero’s Hortensius, a book which changed his life, convincing him that nothing in the world was more to be sought after than wisdom. But now here he was, a man past 30, and he was no closer to having wisdom govern his life than ever. He had been an amateur student of astrology—and given it up. He had been a member of the Manichees, a “spiritual” religion that held there were two ultimate principles: God, the principle of good, and beside him, another principle or substance, that of evil. But Augustine had seen the falsity and incoherence of Manicheeism—and given it up. In fact, through the preaching of Ambrose, bishop of Milan, Augustine had come to believe that the Christian faith was true. But he was finding it impossible to make an act of commitment.
Poised in this state of indecision, convinced that Christianity was true and yet unable to give himself to God, Augustine opened his heart to a friend named Simplicianus. Simplicianus, to encourage Augustine, told him about a friend of his who had been the “rhetor” of the city of Rome, a man of great learning and high culture named Marius Victorinus.¹ Although a learned pagan, late in his life Victorinus read the Christian scriptures with care, and one day told Simplicianus, in the privacy of friendship, that he had become a Christian, but secretly. “Simplicianus replied: ‘I shall not believe that or count you among the Christians unless I see you in the Church of Christ.’ Victorinus laughed and said: ‘Then do walls make Christians?’”² This exchange was repeated often, Simplicianus told Augustine, because Victorinus was afraid he would offend his friends if he became known as a Christian. But as he continued to read the Scriptures, he grew in courage. It occurred to him that as he did not want Jesus to deny him “before the holy angels,” he shouldn’t be denying Jesus before unholy, far from angelic fellow citizens. So Victorinus went to the church and asked to be baptized. He stood erect on the raised platform (the ambo, something like a pulpit) as through the crowd in the church went the whisper “Victorinus! It’s Victorinus!” Then everyone eagerly listened as Victorinus proclaimed to the public that he believed in God the Father, in his only Son Jesus, and in the Holy Spirit.
I love this story, as Augustine clearly did also, giving several pages to it in the 8th book of his masterpiece, the Confessions. For although the customs in it and the culture of it are far from our world, its substance is as contemporary as an internet blog. The exchange which Simplicianus reported between himself and Victorinus could have happened this afternoon. And they are both right. Simplicianus is right to insist that Christian faith calls for public affirmation, preeminently in the public that is the church assembled. But Victorinus is also right: Walls do not make Christians.
Be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. These venerable words of Saint Paul to city-dwelling Christians capture the issue at hand in their verbs. Do not be conformed, but be transformed. To be conformed is to be “formed-with,” to take on the shape of, like plastic takes the shape of the mold it is poured upon; to be conformed to the world is to take the shape of the world. And we cannot take on the shape of the world because the world is the problem. The world is the locus of the rebellion against God. The world, which of course has many good and beautiful and wonderful things, also has murder, jealousy, hate, greed, and cruel indifference. We may love the world; indeed, Saint John tells us, God so loved the world . . . that he allowed his Son to be killed. It is in the world that the Son of God is killed; you may love the world, but do not be conformed to the world.
Simplicianus is right: Christians need to be distinguished from the world, and the easiest way to do that is for us to place our bodies here. Put your body in the church, present your bodies, as Saint Paul also says: then you are identifiable as Christian. Use your voice to proclaim your belief in the Christian faith (as you did, oh, 20 minutes ago when you chanted the Apostles’ Creed): then you are countable as Christian.
But Victorinus is also right: Walls do not make Christians. For to be a Christian is a matter of one’s whole life. That is what was bothering Augustine when he was 32. As he looked at himself, he found a divided, confused, conflicted person. Part of him knew Christianity was true, and part of his will wanted him to commit himself to God. But another part of his will resisted, resisted mightily. He had, with regard to God, a commitment problem.
It seems to me that, at the end of the day, faith is a gift; it is not possible for a human being to unify his will and thus make a commitment to God. Which is to say that we want something that we cannot achieve. But see clearly: we really do want it. I don’t know that I’ve ever met a person who did not want a certain wholeness in life, the integrity that comes from the various parts of life hanging together. Indeed, if the parts of your life don’t fit together (work, home, social, religious), it’s as if you aren’t really one person. And isn’t that what we say? “When she’s at work, she’s a completely different person.” Think about what that means. . . . It’s not, I think, what people really want. We don’t want walls in the middle of our lives.
God is in the business of tearing down walls. Victorinus, even though he was wrong to resist proclaiming his Christian faith publicly, was right to insist that walls do not make Christians. Indeed, Christianity is about taking down walls. Do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed. To be transformed is to be “formed-through” or “formed-across”; it’s at once something that goes through your entire person (being formed-through or even formed-thoroughly), while at the same time it’s a dynamism that changes things outside, a formation-across, not with the world but across the world, shall we say, for the sake of the world.
Present your bodies, Paul says, so that God can transform you and make you a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable. God can give to every one of us the things we most deeply desire. If you want integrity of life, if you want to be rid of the walls in your life that parcel you out into different compartments, if you want genuine love to characterize your life 24/7, if you want to be the kind of person who is patient under tribulation, who doesn’t get angry and pass it on, who doesn’t return insults or curses, a person who repays no one evil for evil; if you want to live in harmony with others, and to have that which is good characterize every part of your life—I know it sounds pie-in-the-sky, and we are trained to use cynicism and other techniques to suppress and deflect these deep desires, but are these desires not there in your heart? If this integrity and wholeness of good life is at all what you want, then you have done the right thing by presenting your bodies here this afternoon. But since walls do not make Christians, perhaps we need to ask God to transform our bodies, to give us the commitment to him that we long for but cannot achieve, to make us living sacrifices who are Christians not walled in or walled out but Christians all the way through, shall we say, 24/7 Christians, transformed and transforming.
Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb; it was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”
