Good Stuff Romans 12:9-21 It seems like every six months or so a new set of rules to live by becomes popular. Do this and your life will be great! Someone trying to sell their way of life while telling you what you are doing wrong. Most times it is rules for dieting. How many crazy diets have been created in order to help someone lose weight, feel better, change their whole lifestyle. There are rules for spending, especially concerning cars and homes. There are rules that will help build your confidence. How to be a better man, woman, spouse, coworker, parent. My favorite set of rules is for catching the man of your dreams. Surely if it were that easy we would all know those rules by heart. But someone is always trying to tell us how to live. On the other hand there is the quote “Rules are made to be broken.” This was never a mantra I lived by. I’m what you call a goody-two-shoes. That is not to say that I never broke any rules. But when I did, I usually owned up to it and lived with the consequences. Admitting I had done wrong was way better than getting caught. Getting caught, getting in really big trouble was way worse. When I was young my well-behaved lifestyle was not really based in my desire to be a good person. In reality, I was a good girl because of how embarrassing it was to get into trouble. I had to deal with upset lectures from parents. If I got in trouble at school I could be called out in front my classmates. Embarrassing! And to get pulled over by a cop, lights flashing. I would want to crawl under a rock. Whether the newest fad rules or rules set by our parents we base much of our lives around what is expected from us. We can see this in the expectations of early Christians. They lived by the rules of Jesus and his disciples. Expectations were set in place based on which leader had started the community. The book of Acts and all the letters show how these early Christians lived out the expectations placed upon them by the leaders. But these churches and individuals also lived within society, with a whole other set of rules and expectations. The church in Rome was no exception. The Roman empire was full of instructions of how to be a good citizen. There were expectations of loyalty to the state, and conformity in lifestyle. But how were these new Christians supposed to live as Christians in the midst of the Roman Empire? How were they supposed to be followers of Christ while living in Rome itself? They needed instruction, they wanted rules. That is where Paul comes in. Paul has written a lot of letters of rules for Christians. But this letter to the church in Rome is different. In fact, Paul is kinda presumptive. Paul writes to the church in Rome never having been to Rome. He doesn’t know these people, but he is giving them rules. And many of these rules are contradictory to the expectations of Roman citizens. In fact if we look only to the beginning of this chapter we find a call that sets them part religiously. Paul tells the Romans to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (12:1). “In the world into which Christianity was born animal sacrifice was almost universally the central feature of worship” (Dictionary of Paul, 856). If animal sacrifice was the central feature of worship, then asking for a living sacrifice would set them apart from their neighbors. This call was for something different. How Paul? How do we live as a sacrifice? Well, Church in Rome, I am glad you asked. And then he leads into a whole list of rules. But these rules are not like the ones listed in my student handbook in high school, or the rules that my parents reminded me of over and over or the laws that dictate our lives now. These are different. Especially these: Be patient in suffering Persevere in prayer Bless those who persecute you Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly Do not claim to be wiser than you are Do not repay evil for evil See rules, rules, rules. And these rules are hard. These rules are not the kinds which are made to be broken. These are the kind of rules that you have to aspire to. Because I don’t know how anyone actually lives up to all these rules. Looking at this list of rules, these guidelines for a Christian life I think to myself, “I wish!” That is what I want to do; those are the things I want to fill my life with. The good stuff. With these rules the church of Rome has an idea of how to live out their faith. And with these, the church then and now has an idea of what living as a sacrifice looks like. The sacrifice called for by most religions was a call for giving up livestock, crops, or a show of their livelihood. But the living sacrifice Paul talks of means giving up something else. Offering a living sacrifice meant abandoning self but not to death, rather to life a more full. So do these things and you will be a good Christian. I have already said these are the kinds of things I want to fill my life with, this is how I want to live. But these rules, the life we are called to as Christians is not simply because that is what good people do. Paul called the church at Rome to live by these standards not simply because that is what he expected them to do. And we today don’t simply aspire to live by them because they are contained in a letter that Paul wrote in a book that has been canonized. No, living out these things is done in response to what we experience as Christians. We take part in the good stuff because in Christ we come to know all that good stuff. That faith, hope, love stuff. The call to better to people than they are to you. That stuff is what we come to know when we get to know Jesus Christ. Paul talks about how to live as a Christian throughout all of the letters he writes. But more than that, Paul talks about why we live as a Christian. I can talk to all day about how to be good. I can tell you of what I understand a Christian life looks like. But until you know the goodness of Christ you won’t really get it. Last year the staff of the church headed to Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City for some training. Church of the Resurrection is one of the fastest growing United Methodist Churches in the United States. Their leadership institute is to help church leaders see what worked for them, get new ideas, and to have some time of renewal and excitement. Throughout the training the staff and the lay leaders of Church of the Resurrection all talked about how any change in a congregation has to be done through a change of heart. This church with 12,000 members understands itself as called to help people change, and according to Pastor Adam Hamilton’s online blog, the best way to change the heart is through the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. I think the desire for the heart to change, to be transformed by Jesus Christ is what any Christian truly wants. I know I still want to be transformed by God. I still want the Holy Spirit to work in me. I want be able to live into all these rules, all these hopes that Paul has for the church in Rome. And as a pastor, that is what I want for anyone in the congregation I serve. Of course, from the make up of these rules, it is obvious that this is not merely for individual lives. Paul calls upon the church in Rome to be changed. The hope is that the community of faith will have a change of heart. Now this change of heart calls upon individuals to change. But as a people, as a whole there must be a change. Where I attended church in Atlanta was a large church situated on the college campus. The sanctuary was full of tall pillars; there was a grand organ, and six tall candlesticks on the altar table. Every week there was a procession that began the worship service. The church had grand choirs that often sang in fancy foreign languages. It was kind of a haughty taughty church. I also should state that I have never seen so many bow ties in my life. After growing up in a parsonage, being known by most people in a church, to attend a large church where no one knew me was different. I would walk in and out of the church every week, sneaking in sometimes late, and darting out as soon as church was over. When I would make it in time for the weekly greeting then I would shake a few hands nearby, and exchange good mornings. But this was not a particularly friendly church. That was fine with me. I attended the church because of the preacher. While in seminary I wanted a good sermon. Using my worshipping experience as additional learning opportunity made sense to this soon to be preacher. And let me tell you, that senior pastor is still high on my list of favorite preachers.
In my last year there was a new senior pastor appointed to the church. My favorite preacher was gone. The sermons changed. For a while I wondered whether or not to look for a different church. The only reason I had attended was for the preaching, and it no longer seemed what I wanted. But I stuck around. The personality of the new pastor was very friendly. The demeanor he had from the pulpit was very engaging. And even greater was the presence he had with the people. He greeted everyone warmly, had a loud laugh he shared liberally. Eventually it was something else that made me stay. I don’t know if there was something going on behind the scenes. There may have been other changes that I didn’t see maybe in lay leadership, or other ministries in the church. Something besides the personality of the senior pastor. But what I do know is that in the last year of attending the whole culture of the church changed. People who I had sat near week after week made a point to greet me. I had conversations with people who had never spoken to me. And there were even people who invited me to Sunday School, people who made sure that I had found a place in the church to grow further. I started feeling like it was my church, rather than just a church I attended. In my last two months before graduation I experienced a Sunday service that let me know how much the congregation had really changed. The sermon was amazing (there had been many great sermons by this time. So it was good I stuck it out), the children’s choir had sang a touching song on loving all people, and there was a baby baptized. At the end of the service when the pastor gave the invitation for membership, there was a family and one other individual who made their way to the front. The family was well kept, had beautiful young children and the parents were young professionals. The other gentleman who joined that day stuck out like a sore thumb. He had been displaced to Atlanta by hurricane Katrina, he had been homeless for quite a while. Only shortly before joining the church had he been able to get back on his feet. He came to the front in a t-shirt and jeans. But as these people joined the church, they were all welcomed equally into the community. This was it; this was how the heart of the church had changed. They truly had found what it meant to be the community of Christ. I know they were still learning, they were still trying to be a better church, trying to be more faithful disciples. But there had been a change of heart. And it helped change my heart. They were trying to live out the good stuff. Because they had found the good stuff. And it made me want that good stuff. In The Message, a modern translation of Scriptures verse 9 begins: “Love from the center of who you are.” Those words capture it exactly. The change of heart, the life of a Christian, all this good stuff, it becomes part of who you are. We live it, we have it, we know it because of the love of Christ. And that love, well that love of is the best of all. | 
