Preached · October 12, 2014
Text · Romans 12:1-2; Romans 12
Habits and Routines
You can tell a lot about a person by observing their habits — how often they brush their teeth or shower, the time they go to bed or wake up, the things they do when they're bored or alone, when they're with friends or with family. If you observe these habits thoroughly, you'll begin to get a clearer image of what this person is like.
Habits, though, are more than just small things like cracking our knuckles or biting our nails or twirling our hair between our fingers. We can also think of routines — a series of habits strung together. A worn-out snooze button, a perfectly brewed cup of coffee, the search for a key, the sound of a garage door, an engine turning over, a route to work well worn.
And yet we're aware that something else is going on. When we try to quit a habit or miss a step in our routine, we become startlingly conscious of what is in charge of who. That desire to crack a knuckle seems to take charge. That missing cup of coffee seems suddenly more important than just a boost of caffeine. What if our habits and our routines are forming us to be certain kinds of people, with certain kinds of desires and thoughts and abilities?
When we first get behind a wheel, our dads make it very clear that we have not yet developed the habits of good driving. But then we practice and practice, and we take on the habits and rituals of what a good driver does. We go through the motions again and again until those motions become not an awkward appendage of who we are, but internal to who we are. Now look at us: a part of our brain takes over when we pull out of our driveways, and it allows a different part of our brain to have conversations and listen to music and respond to text messages — legally — all the while we steer our two tons of metal and plastic from one destination to another.
And we should be thankful for our mind's ability to do this. Research suggests that no less than 95% of our daily activities are thanks to pre-conscious processes that our environment and our habits have shaped within us. We don't have to concentrate on every muscle movement of walking and driving or forming words on our lips. So if it's true that our habits have the ability to change us, wouldn't we want to be intentional about what we are letting shape us or not? Wouldn't we desire to take on practices that form us to be the best possible people we can be, reflecting the image of Jesus?
Romans 12: Transformation
The Apostle Paul wrote this to the first-century church in Rome:
Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a sacrifice — living, holy, and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may approve God's will.
First of all, everything Paul is about to say is in view of God's mercy. What Paul is urging his audience to do is all in light of who God already is. Paul is not asking his readers to earn anything or to force God's hand toward mercy. God has already shown these qualities in the life of Jesus.
The second thing we must notice is Paul's goal for the Roman church. He's urging them to do something, but to what end? Metamorphose — being transformed. This Greek word is where we get our word "metamorphosis" — to change into something new and yet connected to the previous form. It's used in the New Testament to explain Jesus' transfiguration, as well as what happens to us when we contemplate God's glory. Notice as well that this metamorphosis is something that happens to us, but through someone acting in us. Paul says "be transformed," not "transform yourselves." It's not "force yourselves to change into something you're not," but rather "place yourselves into a posture in which the divine can be the one to metamorphose you, to transform you to be who God made you to be."
The Renewing of the Mind
Now, how does this divine, mercy-infused metamorphosis happen? By the renewing of your minds. When we hear the word "mind," we're quick to think of our intellects — what we think and what we believe. And this is pretty typical for us modern folks, since we are the inheritors of Enlightenment thinking that placed so much emphasis on our cognitive abilities. The 17th-century philosopher René Descartes said, "Cogito ergo sum" — I think, therefore I am. And ever since Descartes' statement, humans have been quick to define themselves as rational beings, as though what we know and what we believe is what defines us.
Yet there's a flaw in this definition of humanity. For we are all painfully aware that our knowledge and our beliefs are not always what drives our actions. It's not our knowledge of what fat and sugar do to the body that drives us to another scoop of ice cream. It's not our awareness of the dangers of distracted driving that urges us to answer that text message. Nor is it our belief that God the Son suffered on the cross that somehow leads us to pursue lives of comfort. Are we thinking beings? Of course we are. But even more powerfully, we are desiring beings. It's our desires — the things we want and crave and love — that drive our actions. It's what we desire that informs the kinds of people we are. And what we desire is inevitably what we worship.
So when Paul writes that our divinely powered, mercy-infused metamorphosis happens by the renewing of our minds, he's not just talking about the way we think or believe, though that's important. Paul is talking about the renovation of what we want and love — of our desires.
Offer Your Bodies: Liturgy
So where does this leave us? We know that the goal is metamorphosis. We know that the means is the renovation of our desires. We know that this is all in light of God's mercy. But this passage does have Paul urging his readers to act on these truths. So what is that action? Offer your bodies as a sacrifice. This is your true and proper worship.
To modern hearers like us, this may sound surprising. We've been talking about transformation and desire-shaping — these sound like very spiritual kinds of things. Yet Paul is saying: if you want to be transformed, not to the way the world wants you to look, but into Jesus' way of being; if you want your desires to be in line with God's desires, what you love to be what God loves; if you want this to be true of yourself, then offer up your physicality, your skin and your bones and your muscle, to God. What your body does shapes what your soul is becoming.
We've seen that habits — things our bodies do — can shape us to be certain kinds of people. Our habit to snack or to exercise, to check Facebook or to put away our phones, not only informs us about the people we are, but the people we are in the process of becoming. And when we string a series of habits together, we end up with a ritual or practice. There are, of course, religious practices like baptisms and weddings, the breaking of bread, the pouring of wine. But there are also cultural rituals — the national anthem, the pledge of allegiance, our carts going up and down endless aisles of choices. And so when we take a collection of our practices and string them together — habits and rituals that reflect our own and our culture's desires — what we end up with is a liturgy.
Now, "liturgy" is a word with a lot of baggage. It conjures up images of dull routine, of priests and monotonous prayers, of the heartless effort of going through the motions. And while these may be accurate depictions of some experiences, it would be akin to hearing the word "sports" and just thinking of jockstraps. The word "liturgy" is informed by two Greek words. The first comes right here from Romans 12: Paul says that the offering of our bodies is our true and proper latreia. If you've ever been to a worship service, then you have entered into a latreia. It is the service, the bodily exercise, that we engage in when we encounter God. The second word is liturgeo. It literally means "the work of the people." Liturgeos were typically acts of service done by a community on behalf of someone else, and typically these liturgeos were a way of showing allegiance to someone. In the first-century church, liturgeo referred to the way the church acted out their faith in God. And by the second century, liturgeo had taken on the meaning of the order of worship — the things that happen when a congregation gathers together to experience God. And today, a liturgy can be any series of practices that reinforce a set of desires or values.
Every Church Has a Liturgy
This means that none of us have ever been to a church that didn't have a liturgy. Sometimes they look formal, with robes and incense and readings and ancient prayers. And sometimes they are informal, with special music and spontaneous prayers or a video sermon. But these are all liturgies, the regular practices of a community. So the question is not if we will be part of a liturgy. Our lives are bombarded with them each and every day, each one attempting to conform our desires to what our culture holds most important.
The liturgy of going to the mall — with its cathedral-like corridors, its inviting sights and smells, its rituals of choosing and trying and buying — shapes us to be a certain kind of consumer with certain kinds of expectations. The liturgy of the Pledge of Allegiance — with our hands upon our hearts, our posture straight, our words memorized — is rarely criticized for being monotonous or boring, and is instead held in high regard for shaping our students to be certain kinds of citizens.
The worst of liturgies are derided for merely going through the motions. But I think going through the motions is underrated. We don't criticize the overweight man on the treadmill for merely going through the motions of being in shape. We don't stop a football team from doing drills, or a keyboardist for running scales, for just going through the motions. And it's not for nothing that we tell our children not to point their toy guns at other people, even though they're merely going through the motions.
And so, when the church gathers together with the expectation of our minds being renewed, our beings being metamorphosed, our desires being reconfigured toward God's desires, our loves being shaped to be God's love — all of this in light of God's mercy, all of this an activity done to and in and inside of us through God's work — Paul says, "Offer your bodies, the stuff of your physicality, as your true and proper latreia, your act of service, your act of allegiance, your liturgy unto God." How will we respond?
Will we merely choose the liturgies we like the most — the ones that make us the most comfortable, the ones that are suspiciously close to our own desires and our culture's desires? Instead of liturgies that shape and form us into the image of God, will we instead shape and form liturgies into our own images, with our own preferences and desires and cravings and loves? Every church has a liturgy. And every liturgy is shaping us to be a certain kind of person, a certain kind of community, with certain loves and desires and aims. Will we choose a liturgy of conformity? Or will we have the faith and the courage to choose liturgies of transformation?
This is a transcript of the sermon as preached, lightly edited for readability.
