Paul writes to the church in Rome, “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.”
It is a verse I return to a lot. When I pray for forgiveness I sometimes confess to God that I have conformed too much to the world and I ask to be transformed, to have my mind renewed by his Holy Spirit.
Do not be conformed to this world. There’s a challenge.
On Friday I was in London and I had a free morning so I went to visit Westminster Abbey. I’d never been there before. It costs £23 to get in. A price that doesn’t put people off – the place was heaving.
I don’t know if you have ever been to Westminster Abbey – it is stuffed full of plaques, statues, tombs and memorials. You’ve got your kings and queens of course but also a fine range of aristocrats and nobility. Then there are generals, cabinet ministers and colonial administrators and conquerors of foreign lands. And also poets and musicians and engineers – all the great people that made this country great – it is like the mother of all New Year’s Honours lists but in architectural form.
And what is really weird about going to Westminster Abbey is that on your way in they give you a set of headphones and a thing to plug it into so that you can have a guided tour in the language of your choice. Everybody plugs themselves in and sets off at a shuffling pace; everybody except me that is. I watched the other people. And watching them it was clear that the guided tour is a tour of all the famous dead people. The tourists are stopping every few paces and gazing up at a plaque or a statue before shuffling on. It was quite bizarre to watch. The people were generally not talking to each other because they were listening to their headphones but rather walking around a bit like zombies.
Walking round with these people, I was wondering whether this building was even managing to be a church. I was struggling to find a place to pray, a moment to discern the Holy Spirit. This was a building dedicated to celebrating human achievement dedicated to a cult of devotion to a human kingdom. It was a building that really seemed to have conformed to this world to use Paul’s warning. And it was full of people who were also conforming, allowing their footsteps to be directed by the voice coming through the headphones.
Then I got to the high altar, or fairly close to it. The high altar in Westminster Abbey is really beautiful. Behind the altar itself is a mosaic which depicts the last supper and over the top of the mosaic there is written part of a verse from the Book of Revelation. It says:
The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ. Chapter 11 verse 15.
I looked into the eyes of Jesus sitting at the table with his disciples, gazing out at the tourists who were marvelling at all the glorious celebrations of the achievements of Britannia and his eyes seemed to say to me, don’t worry; this kingdom is becoming my kingdom.
Across the street from Westminster Abbey is Methodist Central Hall. You don’t have to queue up to get into Methodist Central Hall and entrance is free. Well, I’d never been to Methodist Central Hall either so I went in there as well.
There isn’t quite as much to see in Methodist Central Hall if I’m being honest. But I knew straight away that I was in a church. There was a very nice chapel. And a noticeboard directed at the casual visitor and also the congregation that worships there. And there is a nice tea room and a book shop.
Actually many of the events that take place in Methodist Central Hall are not church events at all. All sorts of secular events take place there. So the Methodist Central Hall definitely engages with the world as it is but it doesn’t conform to this world. Although, there is no quotation from the Book of Revelation, there is a quotation from John Wesley written in large letters in the bookshop.
Do all the good you can by all the means you can in all the places you can at all the times you can to all the people you can as long as ever you can.
How do we get this right? How do we witness to the world, live as disciples of Jesus in the world, how do we minister to the world in the way that Wesley calls on us to do without conforming to it, just getting swallowed up by it?
As the Anglican vicar of this parish, there are a number of things that I am invited to do and also expected to do that bring me into close contact with this community (so that’s a good thing) but that also involve me conforming to the expectations of this world to some extent. Let me give you an example.
The penultimate Thursday in November is the day that my Christmas ministry starts because it is the day of the Christmas lights switch on. The year before last I spoke about darkness and light and I quoted from the first chapter of John’s Gospel and delivered a bit of a Christmas message. Then, together with a Cheshire Housewife I led the count down to the lights being switched on and wished everybody a happy Christmas.
Last year, I was asked at the last minute if I could remember to thank the sponsors and I was given a list of sponsors. And then I was asked if I could leave the Christmas message bit to the celebrity. It was a different celebrity and she gave a very nice Christmas message; but it was one which didn’t mention Jesus or God. Most of the people listening to us were children and most of the children round here get to listen to me talk about Jesus plenty of times so in the end I decided it didn’t really matter but I did wonder how it looked. I felt that I had just been seen to endorse Christmas as a festival of consumerism with Jesus taken completely out of it. And this just kind of happened; I am pretty sure this wasn’t a conscious attempt to exclude Jesus from the Christmas Lights Switch on. It just sort of fell out that way.
And this is the kind of compromise I get involved in quite often. When I work with schools, with the Parish Council, with the Royal British Legion, I am given a platform for which I am very grateful and we shouldn’t take that for granted but sometimes there are subtle or indeed not so subtle attempts to influence what I say and I have to make a judgement about the extent to which I should conform to the world. I have to ask myself whether I am still naming God’s presence in the world, am I still able to discern God’s will in these situations.
And I mention this because I know that up until about three years ago, this ministry to the community was shared between our two churches but for the last three years our church has carried much of this ministry on its own and I wonder whether you might be thinking about whether you want to get involved in switching on the Christmas lights on and other such activities in the near future but actually, I think there is something to be said for having a church that doesn’t necessarily get sucked into all these things. When I crossed the road from Westminster Abbey to Methodist Central Hall and spent a moment in the tidy unadorned chapel, it was actually a relief to get away from the statues and the tourists shuffling their way round them.
It is not easy to keep yourself from conforming to the world. After all we have to go into the world every day to make a living. And to make a living we have to get into relationships with other people and these relationships are far from perfect. Some of these relationships involve coercion, exploitation, deceit, bullying or abuse. And these things become normal to us and they shape who we are and how we behave towards other people.
When I was a teacher, my son said to me one day, ‘Don’t come home and behave like a teacher towards us.’ (meaning him and his sister). He wanted a Dad at home not yet another teacher. I tried my best to be a Dad for him.
Maybe this is what not conforming to the world means. Because it is a rough old world isn’t it? It is a world where people are sued for incompetence but we are commanded to forgive those who trespass against us. It is place where people are charged for healthcare if they are not a neighbour but we are told to be like the good Samaritan. It is a place where people respect rank and insist on their own status being respected but we follow a servant King. We live in a world of inspections and sanctions and retaliation and punishment and injustice and we have to deal with that every day without conforming to it; without bringing these values into our homes; or into our churches; without ever thinking that this is the way that we were created to live.
Can we really do that?
Well we renew our commitment to do that today. We give ourselves, once again, to God today. This is the covenant we make with God once again today.
And in doing so, we know that we have made this covenant before and failed to keep it and yet we are forgiven and so can make the covenant again.
And we do that because the covenant God offers us is a covenant of grace. This is the covenant which God establishes with humanity through Jesus Christ.
Jeremiah explains this new covenant by saying that God will put his law in us, he writes it in our hearts, he becomes our God and we become his people.
This is why Paul says we will be transformed by the renewing of our minds so that we will know what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
God is not making a transaction with us in the ordinary sense. He is not saying I will do this if you do that. He is calling on us to resist the world and do his will while also transforming us so that we are able to do so.
This is why it is a covenant of grace. God gives us the means to meet our side of the covenant. Effectively he has both sides of the covenant covered.
Which is why when we ask whether we can really live our lives without conforming to the world and according to God’s will, the answer is that yes we can; by the grace of God.
Even in the midst of the hustle and bustle of Westminster Abbey, even as you are surrounded by people walking around like zombies, even in the middle of this grotesquely arrogant celebration of human achievement and power, the Holy Spirit has directed somebody to write the words, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ.
And after you have read these words you can look into the eyes of Christ as he celebrates the last supper, explaining to his disciples that he will die for the sins of the whole world and those eyes invite you into the covenant the Father has established through him. It is a covenant of grace. Through this covenant we are invited to be transformed and renewed, to have God’s laws written on our hearts, to be his people.
As brothers and sisters in Christ, may we all embrace the invitation to be part of this covenant today. Amen.