Sermon Evensong 16th Jan

Paul talks about transformation a lot. If you read through the letters attributed to him, you will find he deals with a huge swathe of subject matter - some of which, like what to do with food which is sold in the market, but has come from idol worship, is of little apparent relevance. In other places he talks about how we are to get along and work together as the body of Christ - this is just as pressing now as it was two thousand years ago.

If Pauls letters tell us anything about the process of transformation it is that it is just that - a process. There are always things which are changing, which we get wrong, which need redefining but always there is also a way back and a fresh start in Christ.

Transformation, for Paul, starts with the person of Jesus - with encountering Jesus and allowing Jesus to change the way we are. Paul graphically describes this - he was in no way a religious slacker before he came to know Jesus. He was zealous to the point of persecuting those who he believed were acting in a way contrary to Jewish tradition.

And then he tells of this moment of conversion, where he was blinded by light on the road to Damascus. Where Jesus appeared to him and spoke to him.. This moment was pivotal for his transformation and he goes away ready to live in a completely different way. Everything for him comes from this encounter..

Some of us may have had moments of encounter where we have met Jesus so clearly, as Paul did. But for most of us our faith journey tends to be a bit quieter - a more gentle realisation and experience of the divine. But that experience of Jesus, however we find it, is where we begin from. We begin when we meet God in Word and Sacrament - that is when we find who we are and how we are, God is our being and our essence and everything else we do comes from that experience and knowledge.

The Epistles are often full of practical teaching and theology but then woven in, sometimes only to be glimpsed, there are moments where the writers can contain themselves no longer and they spill out on to the page as individuals - this is true they say, this is everything, I love this.

At Church during Epiphany and a bit beyond we are contemplating the idea of Christian Stewardship. The whole idea of stewardship is a hard one, especially when it comes to talking about money. What has that got to do with meeting God?

The answer is that being transformed has implications for our whole lifestyle including the way we use our money. Giving generously of everything which God has given us is simply a right response to our encounter with Christ. We cannot both walk with Jesus and hold tightly to the things of this world. When you read the Letter to the Corinthians, you can believe that Paul is prising them loose of their worldly attachments - the things which they have always thought they needed, one finger at a time.

Paul himself knows about this. He too had let go of the things which had once defined him and taken a brave new road.

For us, this brave new road, should not be mostly about money, money should slot in alongside all the other things in which we find our attitudes and living transformed - day by day. Sometimes, though, we set up a strange and unnatural dichotomy between the spiritual and the physical, we act as though we can put ourselves into separate boxes and determine our own health as Christians by how much we allow just one part of us to be transformed (and then we wonder why that is not working very well - there must be something wrong with us - never pausing to consider that we have attempted to place a great deal of ourselves outside the remit of God's transforming Grace.)

Christian living is about living as whole people and allowing God to touch everything about us, including those things which we lay claim to as our own in this world.

Just as Paul covers this huge swathe of humanity in his letters so we must allow God to touch and transform the whole swathe of humanity in each of us. This might mean some uncomfortable opening of long covered portion of our lives and some readjustment - our own adjustment might not even be about money - but we all have things which we need to invite God into more.

We are all called to the same sort of revolutionary change which Paul experienced, even if we are called to it in a somewhat quieter fashion - that means transformation and that means everything.