Conformed/Transformed

Matthew 16:13-21; Romans 12:1-21

I have had mixed success as a film critic. I thought the recent movie, The Tree of Life, was pretty good; four stars out of five from me. But almost everyone I ventured to share this view with thought it was a shocker, perhaps even the worst film they had ever seen! Hmmm ... shakes your confidence a bit! Well ... I have seen another film. Better than The Tree of Life! Four and a half, even five stars for this one. But before you rush out ... remember my last recommendation.

This film, Of Gods and Men, tells the true story of a group of French Trappist monks who worked on the outskirts of a largely Muslim town somewhere in Algeria in the 1990s. 8 or 10 middle aged and older men form the community. They live a simple life: of prayer, work on their subsistence farm, making meals, chopping wood. Their mission to their Muslim neighbours consists of a medical clinic, help with farming, some educational aid and general acts of kindness. But political unrest is brewing. A band of extremists move into town and bring murder, threat and pillage. They come to the monastery and demand medicine, which the leader of the community, a man called appropriately ‘Christian’, refuses to give. ‘Our meagre supplies’, he says to the raiders, ‘are for the sick of our town’. There is a tense stand-off. Then the terrorists leave. But everyone knows it’s only a matter of time. The local authorities implore the group to pack up and go home to France while they can. And this precipitates an anguished debate. The heart of the film is the way in which this tiny Christian community comes to a decision about whether to go or stay. It is all low key; but extremely tense. The drama touches the depths of life. Five out of five as I said.

I raise the film not just because I thought it was good, but because of our lectionary readings. Paul says to his community in Rome, ‘do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God ...’ That’s really what the film is about. It shows how faith in Christ which makes this community stand out from the world in which it lives; a faith that makes it not conform to the patterns that swirl around it, but be transformed towards something else ... towards the mind of Christ, towards the will of God, towards the truth of love ... however we might want to phrase it. ‘Do not be conformed but be transformed’. I want to note three things from the film that illustrate this injunction.

First, the community of monks is a community of prayer. ‘Well they’re monks’, you say, ‘what do you expect?’ True. But still it is counter-cultural. They meet in a tiny, whitewashed chapel and sing psalms in simple plain song; they read the bible; they share the communion; they pray the Lord’s Prayer. That’s it. Not so different from what we do here. But it is non-conformist. The world hasn’t much time for this sort of thing. The focus of postmodernity is not on God, but on human freedom. Our world tends to believe that there is no substantial criterion to judge human choices that is higher than the value and meaning of choice itself. It rejects any sense of a source of truth transcendent to the world; any idea of a living God. Politics, markets, education, military actions all run on this assumption. But these monks pray, and listen to scripture. They seek, in Paul’s words, ‘to discern what is the will of God’. It looks odd to the outsider. Yet in the film the effort to pray and listen has genuine vitality, authenticity, and depth. You can feel it. And it makes a big difference to these people and how they act. They are transformed towards another will. Those around them in the village know it, and even trust it. They see what it enables these people to become.

I know Christians aren’t the only group of people who pray. But prayer is a distinguishing mark of being Christian. Does our prayer, reading, singing and listening, make any difference in our world? Watching this movie I felt encouraged: yes, I thought, it does, or it can. The world may find our behaviour here strange and irrelevant. But it is behaviour with meaning. It is behaviour that acts on faith that God lives, and God loves, and God has intentions for the world. To try to discern the will of God may look odd and it may push us in strange directions, but it matters; because the will of God matters. And the will of God becomes perceptible in the world mainly through people who pray and sing and listen.

A second thing that stands out is the kind of group life these people live. This is non-conformity as much as their prayer. Paul writes: ‘so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another’. That’s a remarkable phrase: our individuality, our identity, is made by being part of one another; to be ‘in Christ’ is to be with other believers in community. The film portrays such communion powerfully. The monks live closely together, sharing all aspects of daily life. Yes, they retain their distinctive identities; they are (as Paul) says, ‘many members’ and they don’t have the same functions or gifts; and they don’t always agree. But they hang in together, ‘members one of another’. This process is vividly manifest in the way they try to work out whether they should leave or stay. It’s no easy job. Different members feel differently. Some want to stay. Some want, as strongly, to go: ‘I didn’t become a monk just to get slaughtered in Algeria’ one mutters. And some don’t know which way to jump. But they stick together: in groups around the meal table, in private prayer, in conversation with friends in the village, in one-on-one exchanges. Hard. But they do it. And it is impressive to watch. This kind of fellowship, friendship, shared life has a quality that is counter-cultural, non-conformist, in these days of strong emphasis on individual rights and demands. In the ‘me first’ society, it stands out.

I know we can’t duplicate the kind of intimate being ‘members one of another’ of a monk’s community. But in our community we can foster our particular version of it. We can try to tackle, at least a bit, what together we feel are the big human issues of our place, just as that little monastery tacked the big issue of terrorism and inter-religious hostility in their place. We can be ‘members one of another’, say, on climate change, or justice for refugees, or reconciliation, or understanding between different religions, or care for the sick and aged, or ... well any number of matters. Our life of prayer can lead to a life of solidarity, which can make a real difference to the way the world runs, precisely because it is a bit non-conformist. I know Christians aren’t the only ones who are seriously there for one another. But this, again, is a distinguishing mark of the church.

The third thing that stands out is the attitude to violence. This little community of prayer, this fragile bunch trying to be ‘members one of another’, is a community of peace in the middle of increasing and menacing violence. This too is non-conformist. Of course everyone in the town wants peace and quiet. Everyone fears the extremists. And they plead with the monks not to leave; for the monastery stands out in the world because it refuses to engage in violence. The terrorists come, brandishing weapons. But Christian, unarmed, stands his ground and says, ‘this is a place of peace, no firearms; if you want to talk while you hold guns, we will have to go outside the gate’. A tense and courageous confrontation. In the end his non-violent stand costs the community dearly. But their witness, a witness not just to their own convictions, but to that ‘will of God’ is powerful. ‘If your enemies are hungry’, says Paul, ‘feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink.’ Not just because Paul thinks it a good idea. But because peacemaking is part of the transformation of our minds that prayer and solidarity in Christ creates in us.

I know the issue of violence is huge, if for no other reason than that there is so much of it. But I feel the default position of much of our public life leans towards the use of violence. We need violent means to cope with violent times. We must fight fire with fire. Look at the problems in London. There is no simply solution. We know governments can’t act like trappist monks. But in this violent world there is also an urgent need for communities of prayer, members one of another, who bear witness in one way or another to the fact that God’s will, not human will, is the centre of the universe, and God’s will revealed in Christ is peace loving and peacemaking. ‘So far as it depends on you,’ Paul says, ‘live peaceably with all.’ Again, I know Christians aren’t the only people working for peace. But nonetheless peacableness is a mark of Christian existence.

Prayer, community, peacemaking, these are a few of the non-conformist marks of a faith that discerns ‘the will of God’ which is ‘good and acceptable and perfect’.

Finally, a brief look at our Gospel for today. Jesus asks his disciples, ‘who do you say that I am?’ Peter answers, ‘you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ And Jesus says, ‘blessed are you Simon ... flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father in heaven.’ Here is discernment of the ‘will of God’ that is central to Christian faith. The NT bears witness, nowhere more clearly than in this passage, that Jesus Christ is the living presence, the unsurpassable disclosure, of the heart of God in the world. To the extent that this Jesus is non-conformist in the world, so the Christian community will be non-conformist. To the extent that this Jesus transforms the world, the Christian community will be transformed. And these three things are strongly present in the life of Jesus. Jesus was a person of prayer. Jesus was a person who was there for others. Jesus was a person who lived for peace. If he is the Christ, the presence of God in the world, to be a people of prayer, to be a people who are members one of another, and to be a people of peace is to be the people of God, to be the body of Christ in this world.

Graeme Garrett

Canberra Baptist Church

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

21 August 2011