Transformation

Dear People of Christ Church,
Thanks to everyone who turned out last Sunday to hear Bob Wocjik speak about families and the prison system. I was surprised to learn that it was the first time he'd given a presentation like that to a group--it was an excellent one. This week after church, we'll meet for our final book group conversation on Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan's "The First Paul."

In very different ways, Bob and the authors of the book are emphasizing the same thing--transformation. Bob talked about how crime, like other professions, runs in families. Like father, like son--his uncle was his co-defendant in his trial, and it took a while of being away from his environment to imagine living differently. It took a while longer after that to realize that he could not just change himself, but also help change the world for the better in supporting the children of his fellow prisoners (as well as being faithful to his own kids).

Radical, personal change from what we have been to what we will be--what Borg and Crossan call "a spirit transplant." That's what the Christian life is about, and that's what Bob's experience testified to. We're accustomed to cynically dismissing the notion of change; we say that people can't change, or won't change, or can't be asked to change. But if Christ's death has any meaning, it must be that, as one person I know put it, "the future can be different from the past." That's the promise of the Gospel that Bob found in his faith, and that's what we're all looking for.

Rather than "justification" (or "salvation," or any of those other big religious words) being about something that happens in the future, Borg and Crossan talk about how it's about the ways we are changed in the here and now. The direction of that change is justice--justice on both a global and a personal scale. God's justice is what Borg and Crossan call "distributive"--not retributive, based on punishment or threat (act the right way or you go to hell), but equally given out to all, the Spirit freeing us to live new lives, and the forgiveness and love of God creating that new life in us--new life and the joy of freedom in Christ.

One of the ways this happens is baptism-as Paul wrote in the letter to the Galatians, "It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me" (2:19-20). We are freed and liberated in baptism. Of course, we renew those vows every time we welcome someone new into the community, as we did on Sunday with little Joe Leonardo's baptism. We need to remember and reaffirm our promises--we slip so easily into our old habits and bondage. The people of Israel were freed from slavery in Egypt and we're freed, too, from our own contemporary imprisonments. What do we get imprisoned by? Our desire for success, for material comfort, for power. Addiction, despair, hopelessness. For Bob, liberation happened to come when he was in prison. What gets you stuck? How does your faith help you to find freedom?
Blessings,
Sara+