Romans has one of the best plot twists in all of scripture.

Paul, the author of the letter to the Romans, well, Paul had plenty going on. First off, this letter was written to folks he didn’t even really know. He was caught up in a web of finances and emerging communities and he was still trying to teach them the good news of Jesus Christ. Paul’s got a lot on his plate. I think of Paul often when our modern church life is a strange blend of spirituality and building management–apparently it wasn’t that different two thousand years ago.

Paul is writing to the people in Rome and is going to teach and organize them to the best of his ability. And the letter starts strong! Without knowing these people in person yet, he is giving out compliments and seeks out mutual encouragement.

Tonally though, at least in my reading of it, things quickly go downhill. The letter to the Romans for a long stretch seems a lot less to be a letter about encouragement and more to be a letter of discouragement. Paul puts all of humanity on blast for their sins, evil, malice, envy, murder, deceit, and so on. He does say grace abounds, sure, but Paul really seems to think things are down in the dumps for humans. God is great, humans, not so much.

For what it’s worth, Paul carries over the mutual encouragement right on into mutual discouragement. Sin is personal for Paul. Just listen to how he describes himself.

“For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.”

To top it off he says:

“Wretched man that I am!”

I have great sympathy for the Paul who writes this. This sense of something going wrong on your inside, that your mind is struggling or your emotions are out of control or even that there are impulses you don’t know where they’re coming from…all of these experiences are very human. And I think the severity of this self-talk, the unkindness Paul shows himself is also very common, unfortunately. If this was the entirety of Romans I could not in good faith recommend it to you.

But there’s a plot twist.

The turn is that Paul does not think this destitute state is all that’s possible. Instead, he has a belief in the transformation of humans. And that is what we read today.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Suddenly, hope is not just found in the goodness of God, but in the malleability of humans.

For Paul this hope seems to be found in a deep interior space, perhaps strangely or not the same place his struggles reside. His mind seems to be a refuge and a space for change. We might not have to fully accept his dichotomy of mind and body to appreciate that our thoughts and our minds are powerful. Our thoughts can change. Our minds can be renewed! Paul situates this within the framework of testing our thoughts against God’s will.

This word testing, it means to test, prove, examine, or scrutinize.

And I don’t think it’s a surprise that this idea of hypothesizing and testing emerges just at the same time that Paul indicates that minds can be transformed. This particular moment in scripture becomes a beacon of hope. Maybe, just maybe, Paul doesn’t have to be wretched forever. There might just be a chance for change after all.

It just might take a hypothesis or two.

I was drawn to the idea of a series on curiosity for our congregation because curiosity is so often the key to joyful transformation. This might be change on a personal level, or change on a broader scale. Curiosity says, “I wonder if this is the way things will always be.” Curiosity, not for nothing, in my experience, tends to be unfailingly kind.

One of the reasons I believe this verse in Romans has such power is it’s like a bright light of kindness after Paul’s pretty horrible self-talk. Life is not conformed and stuck, but free and open to possibility.

This past Friday marked what would’ve been the 100th birthday of James Baldwin. Baldwin was a writer, an activist, and a fashion icon. He was also a black gay man who was the son of a Pentecostal preacher. In his work The Fire Next Time, Baldwin proclaims, “If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, it is time we got rid of Him.”

People hear this quote in many ways. Perhaps you heard just the last part, it is time we got rid of Him and got a bit defensive. But I would encourage you to see the genuine good faith Baldwin offers us in this statement. It is not wrong to be curious, to test, and to discern the will of God. And I agree with Baldwin, that we will know it is of God if it makes us larger, freer, and more loving.

We can not be stuck with our minds, but be transformed through the curiosity they hold.

I’m always a bit relieved that for as highly as I regard scripture, quite often it has these arguments and tensions within it. Romans, for sure, is an argument. It's a defense, a reasoning, a working out of how a community is to live together. It’s a model of curiosity, of working through hypotheses to find a way together of greater flourishing and encouragement and to find a way to not be stuck in perpetual mutual discouragement.

And I wasn’t really fair when I said that our scripture today was a great plot twist. Because even if it is a new moment of hopefulness, we shouldn’t be too surprised. Paul took the burdens of his mind and worked them out with questioning and curiosity all along. In doing so, he found the transformative power of God’s presence that doesn’t have to be felt immediately, but in the careful and thoughtful testing of what will make us larger, freer, and more loving.

May we too be transformed by our own curiosity.

Amen.

He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.” -Matthew 13:31-33

My eye doctor is in the Beachwood Mall.  I am fairly certain I continue going back because whenever I’m done with my eye appointment, I get to go to the food court, or the Lego store, or some other fun mall activity.  The last time I was there, confirming that in fact, my eyesight is quite bad, I decided to stop by Sephora.

Do you know Sephora?  Entering Sephora is a dazzling experience.  There is makeup and moisturizers and free samples galore.   I happened to be there right as the store was opening and there was a literal line to get in.  I was mostly just browsing, but I had an idea that I might find some kind of lotion for the upcoming winter season.  It gets really dry here in Ohio when the weather gets cold and my skin definitely could use some help.

The trouble with the products at Sephora is they tend to be very expensive.  The success of Sephora is that their products can be very, very effective.

I went to one of those little free testers to put some moisturizer on my hand.  This tiny little tub probably cost $45 dollars. I have no idea what was in it.  But I put a little dab of that on my skin and the entire texture of my skin transformed.

Just right here on the back of my hand, but my skin was smooth.  My skin was soft.  My skin was beautifully hydrated.  And truthfully it was so dramatic that I walked away from whatever that magical product was and didn’t look back.

It’s not magic, it’s science, but I was still genuinely flustered by how this tiny little amount of something could affect my skin so much.  I kept feeling my hand all day.  It made me concerned that I usually have horrible hands or something.  And I honestly understand the price now.  A little of whatever that was goes a long way.

Jesus’ parables about this are almost folksy.  We know a little goes a long way.  If it wasn’t an experience at Sephora, it would be dish soap in a dishwasher (suds everywhere) or  axe body spray (as locker rooms will attest to).

You may notice I tend not to be a lengthy preacher.  In part, it’s because if we hear it in scripture and it makes sense, who am I to complicate it?

A little goes a long way, done and done.

This is almost the fullness of Jesus’ message.  Almost.

Because it’s really not a bad saying, a little goes a long way.  It’ll certainly help your shampoo costs.

When Jesus offers these little parables about a mustard seed and yeast, he’s doing it in the midst of other stories.  And they don’t all have happy endings.  

These stories of a little goes a long way are interspersed with sometimes you try things and it totally fails, like scattering seed on the rocky ground.  Or sometimes you go and try and tell important things to the people who love you, and then they reject you in your hometown.

So to edit the saying, Jesus would be more on board with: A little goes a long way–mostly.

All of these things are being taught in the context of what the Kingdom of God or heaven is like.  Kingdom is a tough word for us to use, because we don’t live in a kingdom.  You’ll hear me call it the kin-dom sometimes.  Feel free to think about it as a government, or country, or some kind of overarching collection of people that has been brought together.   The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, Jesus says.

This kingdom part is critical.  These stories aren’t just for our personal enjoyment and satisfaction.  They’re about some kind of community organization.  They’re about people who hear the message of God and then shape their lives around it.  Jesus gives us some kind of idea of what that organizing together looks like.  

In that space a little goes a long way.  

This to me is a profoundly hopeful take on people.  I need this kind of perspective.  

The philosophy of small actions having an impact is a guardrail against apathy. It’s a guardrail against inaction.  It’s a way of being we need as a small church to remember our mustard seeds, our yeast, can have an impact in a world of despair.

Because I’ve gone to bake bread before.  And I got all the ingredients from the cupboard, lined them up on our kitchen island.  I measured out the warm water to pour over the yeast and allow it to bloom.  And then I’ve come back to find that the yeast is not doing much of anything.  No bubbles, no foaming.  

And I’ve also planted seeds expecting many flowers and grasses and growing things.  And I’ve planted and I’ve watered and I’ve received dirt in response.

But neither experience has led me to never bake or garden again.  I understand that a little goes a long way, mostly.  And so I try again.

We vote and it doesn’t go our way.  We vote and the world changes.  We donate money hoping it gets to the right people and find out it filled someone’s refrigerator.  We don’t cut off contact, we instead keep making phone calls and sending emails and eventually they respond.  We wave hi, we don’t cross the street.  We keep showing up even when it’s small.  

The kingdom of heaven does not seem to be concerned with mighty, coercive, dominating power.  And so neither should we.  This scripture powerfully reminds us that the small, thoughtful orientation of your life toward all that is good does matter.  That your steady choices of offering kindness matters.  That justice is built slowly and steadily.  That we bake and grow and trust that a 100% guarantee of success would come from an imposing power we don’t want to build our lives around.  A little bit goes a long way.

Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will bring about at the right time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honour and eternal dominion. Amen.

As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

1 Timothy 6:6-19

I’m looking for clues.  I’m snooping through this letter like it was written for me, because maybe it has been.  This is a church letter for a leader who has inherited a church.  This isn’t the first generation, this is the second, or third.  The fervor of the early years has worn off.  It’s a lot more tedious now–more rules, more morality.  This whole church thing doesn’t seem to be going away so now someone has to figure out what to do with it.  

I feel this letter deeply as a young church leader.  It was just last month I did some of my own rearranging.  I carried the desk chair that had been in my office over to the main office area.  I had sat in it for five years–it’s a nice office chair.  But it never fit me.  I’m 5’2”.  My predecessor is not.  I could never quite get comfortable.  And for some reason, just recently, I decided to fix it.  I lifted that chair out and over (quite glad none of you saw that actually, it wasn’t very dignified) and moved in a chair that better suited my stature.  

It has made my life so much better.  

Even if you’ve inherited something, even if you’re working from old systems, you’ve got to have a good foundation.  

At least that’s what this scripture, this letter tells me.  

To be truthful, I’m not sure I trust this letter entirely.  I don’t know when the last time you read the whole of 1 Timothy, but it’s a doozy.  You’ll find details about what to wear for worship, who can be a deacon, and some interesting ideas about women.  There are plenty of pieces of practical advice I’m happy to file away as historical relics.  But there’s this underlying sense of a group of people left to actually figure out the rules that I can’t help but sympathize with, even if I’ve updated those rules a bit.  

I think the file folders with my handwriting on them in the office over there, the job descriptions I’ve written, the bulletins I’ve cataloged.  

I’ve been awake at two in the morning thinking about how we need an employee handbook.

I get the spirit of this letter even if we can disagree about the details.  So I’m listening to this ending.  Where it’s not just an outline of the exact rules, but some admonitions about the foundation.  

pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness

be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share

this is the firm foundation for the coming age

For all of those moralistic details from earlier, there is a looseness that shows what the guiding principles really are.  You can’t hold too tightly to money.  You can’t be so rigid you can’t be kind.  You have to be open and generous. 

This is the foundation that will endure.

I’m reading this hoping it’s true, because it’s not feeling like much is enduring these days.  I am part of the generation that has been blamed for killing cable tv, paper napkins, and department stores.  Fair, I suppose.  But I’m more concerned about the potential death of democracy, or retirement systems, or, you know, the existential threat that is climate change.  It’s hard to see what’s enduring, what’s foundational, what’s good.

I’m reading back to listen to what it was like in another tumultuous time, when things weren’t going as expected.  I’m reading this, hoping that some of it actually is for me.  Because I want to know what will endure.

I want to know that our organizing and our adapting matters.  I want to know that I’m not just rearranging chairs.

Be rich in good deeds, be rich in good deeds, I repeat to myself. 

Can I have fifty bucks to pay my phone bill, can you come on a Saturday to play piano, can I borrow some chairs.  

Yes, I say, thinking, be rich in good deeds, be rich in good deeds.

Can you help me pay for top surgery, can we host this at your house, can you help with my mother’s funeral.

Yes, I say, thinking, be rich in good deeds, be rich in good deeds.  

And there’s a way of doing this that doesn’t feel like emptying, but like rooting.  Like locking into that thing that you could do endlessly, because it’s so core, so foundational.  It’s not arrogant, but it’s secure.  It’s generous, because it feels safe, it feels true.  

You’ve inherited so much that you haven’t chosen.  And I know you’re trying to make sense of this all. 

All I can offer is what I have found, from looking beyond my own life into the letters of faithful people from long ago.  And I cannot in good conscience advise you to do exactly what they did.  They were organizing for their time and place.  We can even learn from their mistakes.  But we can also hear their wisdom passed through the shifting of so many generations.  

pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness

be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share

this is the firm foundation for the coming age

We will adapt and organize the world and the church we have inherited.  We will make what we need for this time and place, knowing even in its newness it is an old familiar cycle.  We will find underneath the change the foundation that is good. 

There may God bless us.

Amen.

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Luke 10:38-42

There are some nights when I go to bed, thinking I’m about to read a book for 10 or 15 minutes. I’m the type of person who always has a book I’m reading, a status made only more consistent because of how I can so quickly pull up a book from the library on my phone. Yet some nights, it’s not 10 or 15 minutes. Having made the wise choice to try to go to sleep at a reasonable time, to get my nine hours, I find myself instead awake in the early hours of the morning having instead just read an entire book. Hours and hours of reading. You might think, wow, good for you! Way to read! But I’d actually be a little more concerned, and have been, about how I’m stealing those hours of sleep just to have a little time to do what I love.

I’ve seen this phenomenon referenced. It’s these stolen nighttime hours. People aren’t always reading, mind you, but they’re certainly taking advantage of the time. There’s something about the freedom we feel late at night, after the work emails have gone quiet and the kids are sleeping, that suddenly, this is the uninterrupted time. People gleefully stay awake just to finally do what they want. This is the free time no one yet has commodified. And so there are people all over finally paying attention to what they want, watching that movie or reading that book or generally forgoing sleep just to have a focused moment, because who is going to call you at one in the morning?

I certainly know that feeling, to me which feels like the freedom to focus. Reading books is one of the great joys of my life and yet there often feels like little time in daylight hours to sit down and consume books in the way that I love. Instead, my daytime is about managing meal preparation, phone notifications, multiple jobs, and social and family connections.

There’s something a little depressing to think that my best reading is relegated to these midnight hours. I’ve often wondered if there was a way that I could use what is probably my best skill (reading quickly, joyfully, and broadly) to serve others. So far, that skill and attention surrounds the reality of what I actually do on a day to day. There’s just too much else. I’m distracted and busy.

It would be simple for me to think that this predicament is unique. Yet we can see the issues of attention and busyness in what is likely my favorite story in the bible, that of Mary and Martha.

At the heart of this story is the conflicting nature of attention and distraction. Mary, the one who is able to sit and listen. Martha, the one who simply cannot stand still. Jesus, who gently calls the sisters to their fullest, most attentive lives.

I wonder what that form of spirituality was creating in the lives of these sisters. Because there’s an interpretation of this story that falls in line with one of the traps of our current day. This is the lie of self-care. Here’s what I mean. We can look at unjust wages, or burnt out caregivers, or a world of inaccessibility and somehow think that the solution is on the individual. To just relax. To take a bubble bath or eat an indulgent meal. And suddenly all that stress would melt away. But of course that’s the lie of self-care, when what is so often needed is community care. To actually change the system that required so much work and burnout in the first place.

And so I find hopefulness in seeing that Jesus did not tell Martha to relax or just calm down. But instead he says this cryptic phrase, “Only one thing is needed.” This to me speaks more of attention, of focus, and moving from individual distraction to collective attention. For Martha to refuse labor perhaps then is less of a break for her to catch her individual breath, but to recognize what would be needed for the radical message of Jesus to actually take hold.

Think of it this way. We know that Jesus stood against much of the injustice of the Roman Empire. And yet, in his teaching, he did not simply organize a five step plan to take down the system (although I often wish he had). Instead he taught in parables! Parables! Long slow teaching that requires careful thought. He opened the door slowly but surely for people to find radical change through slowness, through one dinner, one story, one moment of patience at a time. Not to mention that he didn’t even really kick off his ministry until the age of 30! What was he even doing in the meantime? What was he cultivating? And yet somehow it was all at the right time.

There is a performance art piece called the Trainee by Pilvi Takala that I shared with you in the morning email–I invite you to take a look. In this delightfully subversive and honestly funny piece, Takala spent time integrating herself into a workplace, only after a month to cease acting in standard, productive ways. Instead, she did things like ride the elevator, up and down, up and down. Alternatively she sat in a single location just gazing off into space. How did she describe it to people when they would come up to her and ask what she was doing? Brain work. And unsurprisingly, her coworkers did not become cocospiritors, but instead panicked. In an inter-office email sent out about her behavior, a coworker described her actions as “weird and funny, but also scary to some extent.”

As it turns out, focused non action is weird, funny, and scary. There’s a power to stopping and focusing. Just ask anyone who has participated in a boycott or strike. Collective action is fundamentally about focus–about drawing attention away from individual distraction and constant movement and instead toward a singular focus. In recent years there have been many “die-ins”--moments of protesting police brutality. These often are large groups of people who find a public space and lie down on the ground, unmoving, blocking the typical movement of those who suddenly are drawn to focus, to pay attention.

This is not scrambling to find free time in the middle of the night. This is deliberate action, in the middle of what could be endless work.

To stop, focus, listen, redirect–in all of this is power. It’s more than a nice idea.

This simple story of two sisters reminds me of all these things. It reminds me of how to listen to Jesus’ voice, reminding, only one thing is needed. It is not a story, I believe, about shaming Martha. It is a story of rediscovering power.

Martha, too, can stop. And so can we.

Community Prayer:

Stop us, Lord, from what we are doing. Stop us from participating in unjust systems of hurry, where labor is exploited and workers are harmed. Stop us from believing the lie that the world needs our frenzy. Stop us from expecting unfair actions from others.

Call us instead to the attentiveness that the world needs. Time at your feet is not wasted, God.

Today I pray for each of those gathered in our community. You know all who gather by name. You can call each person gently, insistently, so that way they may know your teaching. Do so, Lord Jesus. Speak and be near to us. Let us hear your teaching so we are not guided only by our own wishes, but by your transformation of the worth.

Help us know you in this time of Holy Communion. Let it be for us an experience of the mystery beyond what we know, that we can taste the goodness of your Kingdom.

Challenge us to become your body, to know that there is no community unless we make it, unless we draw our attention to one another and your presence. Let us understand this sacred time as a chance to begin that practice anew.

Amen.