Sermon:  “Transformers”

Prayer:   “May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts and minds here together be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.”

I have to admit my bias here, because this is among the list of my favorite passages of the Bible. It is challenging and yet comforting to me. It tells me that I am allowed to be me, and at the same time says that God is working within me to make something big happen. Allow me to explain a bit more – perhaps in a bit of a roundabout way.

Let’s hear the words that Paul begins chapter 12 with again. “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies (or as other translations say, your very selves) as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable, and perfect.”

This, of course, is part of the challenge…that word “transformed”. As I read it again this time all I could think about were the different forms that word takes. “Transform” “Transformed” “Transforming” “Transformers” And there you have it. Not just a possibly catchy title for a sermon, but an opportunity to exhibit a bit of what Paul is talking about here.
So a bit of background first.

The transformers – as in the cartoon, toys, and so on, was created in the early 80’s. The basic plot was that there were these robots who lived on a different planet that started to fight one against another for the power there. (Sound familiar?) Some wanted to use the power for good while the others wanted to use it for evil. The source of their power was a cube that eventually ended up on earth. In order to disguise themselves in search of the source of their power the robots came to earth as vehicles and other assorted mechanical or technical items – that could transform back into their true selves when necessary to truly use their powers in service to their race.

Transfomers first came out when I was in first grade. My brother was 10, so I truly grew up in their presence – the cartoon, the toys (although I wasn’t allowed to play with them so much), even the first movie – an animated one which was a far cry from the ones that are out now. But at the time that they first came out it was more of a strange “boy thing” to me. I was into Barbie dolls and Cabbage Patch kids.

So it took me until I was an associate pastor and a mom to truly catch the transformers bug. When the first of the new movies came out on the 4th of July in 2007 we were on mission trip in West Virginia. We had been warned by the folks at the mission where we were serving that if we went to see fireworks anywhere in the area that we were guaranteed hours of traffic, so we chose to go to see the opening of Transformers instead. It was so interesting to me watching a group of teenagers experience this movie for the first time. And then this year Brayden became the proud owner of Bumblebee – the transformer that started the Camaro craze all over again a few years ago.

Needless to say now that I have the bug I was super-excited when opening up Bumblebee’s package. First of all, now I was allowed to play with the transformers in my house. And I was old enough to figure out how to make them change from a car to a robot and vice versa. Then Bumblebee came out of his package and this is what we found… bummer.

I would argue that this is the kind of transformation we spend a lot of the time in our lives trying to make. We try to change our looks – lose weight, change our hair color, change our style. How many of us went through different stages of our lives (especially those middle school & high school stages) following every fad that came about? We change our hobbies in order to join in with people we want to accept us. We change the superficial things about ourselves in order to fit in – to conform – to transform into something that other people see, appreciate, admire, etc. etc. (Insert your word here.) But true transformation…not so much.

But true transformation…that is what Paul is talking about in his letter to the Romans – a letter that he wrote at the height of his ministry after years of working, wrestling with God, walking around and planting churches. And who better to talk about true transformation than Paul. A brief crash course on Paul includes the fact that he is the man who is either the subject or the attributed author of over half of the new testament, the planter of churches all over the Mediterranean following the teachings of Jesus without ever having experienced the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ. Instead he was an educated Jewish man, trained to be a Rabbi, and took his religion very seriously. And when we first meet him in Acts he is actually hostile to the followers of Jesus Christ – doing everything in his power to seek them out and persecute them – beat them, imprison them – because they were dangerous. Then the scene on the Road to Damascus takes place where Paul encounters a blinding light and the voice of Jesus calls him to trade his anger for love – to transform his energy from that of persecution to that of education and construction. UCC Pastor and author, Tony Robinson once wrote the following about Paul in a letter to his daughter, “Paul was changed, transformed. Where he had been Mr. Know-It-All, he became reliant upon others and upon God to lead him and teach him. Where he had been filled with hostility and anger, he became filled with faith, hope, and love. Where he had been trying to stamp out this new movement, the Church, he became one of its greatest leaders and thinkers.”

Paul struggled in his transformation. He was truly going against what his community, what his society, expected of him and asked him to be and to do – not to mention what the greater society was struggling with at the time, as this new movement spread and challenged old ways. The struggle, the work, the road to transformation – those are the things that Paul is not ashamed to talk about in his letters to the new churches forming around the Mediterranean. He speaks honestly and openly about his transformation and about what it taught him about God and who God calls followers to be.

That is where my second friend here comes into play. This is the new Paul. He started out looking much like that – but through much toil and struggle (and they say that a 5-year-old should be able to transform this guy) he became his true self. Paul could have been very successful – even after his encounter with Jesus – wandering around looking like Bumblebee #1. After all, isn’t it true that one of the best ways to woo someone is to make them believe you are on their side? Paul very well could have put on the mask – the false transformation – of someone who was working for God in the plight of the Christians and befriended them – only to round up even more of them for persecution’s sake. But instead he did the difficult work of digging deep, finding the true self that God planted in him at the time of his birth, and putting that true self – his God-given gifts - to work in God’s service.

In another translation of this passage, the Message, it says this, “In this way we are like various parts of the human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we’re talking about is Christ’s body…Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body…So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ’s body, let us go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t.” It is truly an amazing gift that we have in our shared faith – for in that commonality we become part of something that is so much bigger than just each of us standing alone. There is something about faith that lends itself to transformation – especially when multiple people of faith join together. It begs the question about why people would choose the church?

It is no longer the 50s or 60s when being a part of the church was a prerequisite for being seen as an upstanding member of society. Today people are members of various social and civic clubs that join together in very worthy causes. And Lord knows that the Christian church in this day in age gets a bad rap more than we hear about the positives, as Christianity regularly gets hi-jacked by those who would promote bigotry and hatred, rather than acceptance, affirmation, and love. So why the church? Why the Body of Christ? For some of us the answer may be that it’s just what we do. It’s how we were raised. But I would argue that we have a choice about whether or not to stay on that path. For others of us it is because it is in the church that we have had our true selves affirmed and accepted and can’t find another place in society that allows that to happen quite as willingly. And to that I say “Amen.” Then we are doing what God calls us to do.

But no matter what our reasons, I would say that many of them, when combined, would share in common something to do with transformation – that it is in the church where we are open to the Spirit and therefore to figuring out the special ways that we have been gifted. It is in the church where we are accepted and offered the opportunity to share ourselves and our passions – and in turn match them with the deepest needs of our community and our world. It is in the church that we have been offered the opportunity to grow closer to ourselves, to God, to our community and our world in ways that make us desire to use our gifts in service – as part of the Body of Christ – so that transformation can take place – not only in each of us but out there as well.

At the beginning of this message I mentioned that one of the reasons I like this passage so much is because it is both challenging and comforting. So the challenge in Paul’s words to the church in Rome - in God’s call to us – is that we are to try a bit less to “keep up with the Joneses” (as they say) and a bit more to assert our own individual gifts and talents – to be our true selves in service to God. The comfort in those same words today is that we get to be our true selves – and get to be loved and accepted and affirmed and used (in a good way) for being so. The challenge in these words is that God calls us to be transformed. The comfort in these words is that we don’t have to be transformed into something or someone totally new, but rather into a deeper and better version of our true selves. The challenge is that God calls us to be the best at using the gifts we have been given. Paul says, “If you preach…preach God’s word the best you can. If you teach…teach the best way you can. If you have the gift of encouragement…encourage others until the cows come home. If you are a leader…then lead fairly without manipulation and help others to realize their gifts. If you have the gifts of compassion, mercy, generosity…be quick to respond, cheerful in giving, and allow others the space to be themselves too.”

The good news in all of this is that in this very room we are allowed to take off the masks that we wear in other places and come to God as we are – truly transformed children of God – being fed and nourished to go out as transformers into this world. Thanks be to God for this good news. Amen.

Note: The two figures used to illustrate this sermon were both Bumblebee Transformer figures. One is a car that makes car noises, and when you stand it up to rest on the trunk there is a picture of the Bumblebee Transformer on the bottom (at that point it speaks like Bumblebee). The second one (the true Paul) was an official figure that transformed from a car into its robot form.