Thermometers and Thermostats
I shared with you about my mailman dad receiving a really cool New Testament as a gift and giving it to me when I was fifteen. I started to read the bible for the first time, loved it, and highlighted several verses, including the one today:
I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
After highlighting the verse, I placed a big asterisk next to the words living sacrifice and wrote in the margin “not a dead burnt offering!” I’m sure I didn’t realize the full meaning of the verse, but I did take away from it a notion that in following Jesus we needed to be lively. The practice of our faith needed to be real and alive in us.
The whole idea of a living sacrifice is an oxymoron. Things sacrificed are dead, not alive. So to be a living sacrifice must mean to be fully alive while being sacrificed. A young theologian-to-be, Gil Bailie, asked Howard Thurman, a black theologian and civil rights leader (rip 1981), two questions: “What am I going to do with my life? What does the world need?” Thurman responded: “Those are the wrong questions. The question is “What makes you come alive? Do that. The world needs people who come alive.”
Sadly, many Christians still have to learn how to come alive in their faith. In Paul’s words they live in the “old Aeon” of sacrificial culture which required death of some to bring peace and reconciliation for the many. They don’t realize that Jesus ushered in a whole “new Aeon” with his sacrifice on the Cross. His was the living sacrifice to bring about real reconciliation without the need for sacrificing people or scapegoating to bring about peace.
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.
The main purpose of the church is to be a laboratory of how to live in the new Aeon that Christ inaugurated. Martin Luther King, Jr. once lamented “Christians are the thermometers of the majority opinion of those around them, rather than be thermostats that transform society and regulate its temperature.” Thermometers take temperatures, thermostats change temperatures. Many can point out what is lacking or wrong in the present situation, thinking they are doing “God’s will.” But Christians know they are called to encourage others and make the context of their lives better.
A good example is today’s Gospel. Jesus goes to the regional headquarters of the Roman Empire, Caesarea Philippi, for a reason. It is there that Caesar was acknowledged as “Lord” and “Son of God” with complete authority to regulate everyone’s life. This was the best place, short of Rome itself, for Jesus to ask his disciples “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” They give the popular opinions, but Simon speaks up, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus acknowledges Peter’s statement as inspired by his Father and proclaims Simon “the Rock,” petras,Peter, upon whom he will build his church and the “gates of Hades,” meaning death, will not prevail against it. Now, the Romans were the ones who wielded the power of death, but Jesus was talking in even broader terms: his church will have ultimate power to free from death, not the Romans. The Romans “bound” people, but Peter and the Church have the keys to loose, liberate, and forgive. Jesus’ messiah-ship was not merely a counter force against Roman power, but was completely over it and all the powers of this world!
Protestants and Catholics have argued about Peter’s role and what Jesus meant (being great thermometers!) for centuries, instead of focusing on Peter’s confession: You are the Messiah. You are Lord. You are Son of God. You are the ultimate authority in life. Not Caesar. You have come to transform, change, and bring a new flavor the world. You are the Messiah who frees the world from its sacrificial culture of death and opens it to new Life.
In 1974 I was with a group of young theologians at Caesarea Philippi and celebrated the Eucharist there on the sight of Peter’s confession. I believe the nourishment of the Holy Eucharist we celebrate today, will help transform us from being thermometers to thermostats that change our environment for the better! We are alive in Christ! Go in peace to love and serve the Lord!
Amen!
John+
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| St. Alban |
Saint Alban Episcopal Mission (English, Anglican Communion) meets for mass every Sunday at 10:00 A.M. (see welcome letter at sidebar) at Casa Convento Concepcion, 4a Calle Oriente No. 41, Antigua, Guatemala.
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| The Reverend John Smith, Vicar 5235-6674 cell telephone (502 country code) |
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