Top Ten: God's Re-forming Work in Us All.

Last week leaders from across the Rocky Mountain Synod gathered in Colorado Springs for the 2017 Theological Conference. I offered my reflections at our opening worship: 

I need to begin with a sermon disclaimer: I’m not sure this is a sermon. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not. Let’s call it a reflection; call it whatever you want. All I know is that given our themes for this theological conference, the shape of this worship tonight, along with the request to have a Hebrew Scripture reading, I knew we had to hear this story of Moses. I wasn’t quite sure why, let alone how to preach on it. But I knew we needed to hear it. Only later did I bother to ask myself why. What kind of story is this anyway?

Part of me says it’s a call story, which is quite fitting for a gathering of folks called to public ministry. And as call stories go, you have to admit, it’s a doozy; I can assure you, as one who gets to hear my fair share of call stories. But it a call story the right way to frame it for our time together tonight?

Maybe it’s a mystical story of a God-encounter? That resonates with me, from the burning bush that’s not consumed, to the holy ground naked feet moment, to the voice that addresses Moses so personally. “Moses …” And then, of course, there is that revelation of God’s name: I AM that I AM – leads to all kinds of contemplation on God’s own nature! So, a mystical God-encounter story? Yes. And …

What about a story of redemption? That seems to fit. Moses was only in this particular neck of the woods because he’d run away from his secret murderous past. And now on this mountain God offers him a new future, a chance to redeem himself and make good. Feels like we’re getting closer. Sort of …

If finally occurred to me when I bothered to look at our theme, that the reason this story appealed to me from the get-go is because it’s a story of re-formation! Here in this redemptive mystical God-encounter during which Moses is called into leadership on behalf of God’s people … God is re-forming this man called Moses, re-shaping, re-purposing him if you will. Even as the external story of Moses’ life and ministry unfolds in new and unexpected ways, God is writing an inner story that changes how Moses sees and experiences that outer story.

If we use the lens of re-formation here we quickly realize that Moses is not the only subject of God’s re-forming activity. The story of Luther comes to mind; the man who launched the Reformation was himself re-formed by God. His outer story of church reforming was very much shaped by the way God re-formed the story he told about himself – no longer wretched unforgiven sinner, but beloved of God.

Turns out that the pages of Scripture, the history of the church, this very room, are filled with countless stories of God’s re-forming activity, where the way God re-writes our inner story shapes our engagement with the outer story. I include myself in that list, and I’ll share more of my own story on Wednesday. Suffice it to say that this re-forming activity of God’s that I’m talking about, this divine inner story-shaping work goes by many names and is accessed by many avenues: things like self-awareness, spiritual practice, the contemplative journey, life in community – all help give us eyes to see what God is about within us.

Tonight, I’d like to use this account of God’s re-forming work in Moses as a catalyst to explore the nature of God’s re-forming activity in your life and mine. What I’ll offer for your reflection are ten characteristics of God’s re-forming work in us – ten for the 10 plagues or the 10 commandments, take your pick. These are not original with me although I’ve wrapped some of my own language around them. For those of you already keenly aware of how God is active to re-write the story you tell yourself within, I suspect you’ll resonate with some or all of these observations. For those of you who at this point simply don’t recognize how God is working on you, but have your eyes focused primarily on the external story, the next 15 minutes or so are probably going to get long.

Here we go, ten characteristics of God’s re-forming activity in us. After each reflection, I’ll ring the singing bowl and invite you to a moment of contemplation about how this particular re-forming characteristic finds expression in in the story of Moses, in Luther’s story, in your own story. Let’s begin.

1)   God’s re-forming activity in us is first and foremost an experience of grace. It does not begin by our choice or decision or force of will. Instead it comes unbidden, often unexpectedly, in a manner that may tap into our angst or fear or both, but which ultimately wakes us up to that which we could never recognize on our own. It may come all at once or slowly. The catalyst for an experience of re-formation is usually great love or great suffering – more often it’s suffering; a wilderness experience is not uncommon. Either way, once you’ve become aware of God’s re-forming activity in you, there’s no going back to a pre-re-formed time. You can act like it’s not happening or try to ignore your own continuing re-formation, but you can’t undo what God re-forms.

2)   Re-formation is different than transformation. Transformation implies a complete change; the old is left behind as something new is brought about. Like the butterfly from the caterpillar – hard to recognize once it’s changed from its previous form. Re-formation is different. Re-formation recognizes that the same old raw material is still there; it’s just that something new has come in and of it, so that now the exact same reality is different: it is re-formed it, re-purposed, if you will. Re-formation seems inherently more Lutheran than transformation – a good both/and. Enneagram is particularly good at getting at this notion of how our way of being wired is at the same time our greatest obstacle to life in God and the very way God unleashes our true gifts. Which is why we can live with the fact that Moses was a speech-stumped liberator, Luther was a politically incorrect proclaimer of the gospel, and you … well, you can fill in the blanks for yourself.

3)   Re-formation and vulnerability go hand in hand. You cannot be re-formed without having that which keeps you from the fullness of God’s presence being stripped away – your own self-invented sense of self most of all. Re-formation places you on sacred, holy ground, without sandals, naked if you will to expose who you REALLY are before who God REALLY is. Which make re-formation both incredibly intimate and completely loving.

4)   Re-formation is not about thinking differently, having a new idea or changing your mind about something. God’s re-forming action actually moves you out of the realm of your mind, the realm in which most of us tend to be trapped for much of our lives. Re-formation is about freeing us from our own mind control and bringing us into the mind of God, where we discover more fully how to live in our bodies, how to love from our hearts, how to breathe in our souls.

5)   Re-formation brings into clarity to the difference between your ego and your essence, your false self and your true self, your old Adam/Eve and the new creation you are in Christ, your justus and your peccatur, your sinner and your saint. As we noted before, re-formation doesn’t erase what you are in yourself but holds that together with who you are in God.

6)   Re-formation is more than a one-time experience. It is an on-going journey, and you cannot drive it. It demands a continual letting go of control and waking up to a new perspective on yourself, on others, on the world. Re-formation is daily dying and rising. As my spiritual director told me when I began my own journey of re-formation: Jim, this is not your project; you are God’s project.

7)   Re-formation is intensely personal and yet it does not happen without community. Unlike navel gazing or being curve inward, God’s re-forming activity in you is ultimately not about you. Re-formation shapes both how you see and relate to God, and how you see and relate to others. Re-formation places you into the same world – the same outer story – in new ways so that you begin to see that our deepest calling is far less about the “what” we do in life and far more about the “how” we live it.

8)   Re-formation is not a progressive upwards and onwards experience of getting better and better in every way, every day. Re-formation certainly can have moments of deep joy and out-of-body euphoria but re-formation by its very nature takes you into the dark night of the soul, into your deepest fears, into your most uncomfortable places, into experiences of suffering and failure that by God’s amazing grace become yet another opportunity for you to grow and learn and be re-formed. The fruits of re-formation are many. What I personally experience the most often as God re-writes my inner story are gratitude, patience, trust, compassion.

9)   Re-formation is not about escape from your past, but integration of all that has been. Re-formation is not about avoiding your shadow side, but making peace with it. Re-formation is not about overcoming your limitations but learning how to embrace them.

10)   I believe no one is excluded from God’s work of re-formation. Why it takes some of us so long to recognize it for what it is, why some of us are so resistant to looking at what God is about within us, keeping our attention focused on the outward story, where things are either framed by how great we’re doing or how things are always stacked against us, this is a mystery. I do believe that the last breath of life is the great revealer. And I trust this: anyone blessed to recognize God’s re-forming artistry already at work within themselves can dare to believe that the church – flawed as we are – is still a chosen vessel for God’ re-forming work in the lives of all people, in the life of the world itself.

Doubt that? Here is the Table, here is the Meal; here we gather together in all our vulnerability to be met by the One whose forgiving love re-forms you again, re-writes the story you tell yourself, re-purposes each of us, not for our own selves, but for the life of the world …