Proper 16(A) + L'Chai-im! + 8.24.14

M. Campbell-Langdell

All Saints/ Todos los Santos, Oxnard

(Exodus 1:8–2:10; Ps 124; Romans 12:1–8; St Matthew 16:13–20)

To life! To life! L'chai-im!
L'chai-im, l'chai-im, to life![1]
Life lived in its fullness; this is what I hear the scriptures calling us to today.
Which makes me think of a story, one you may know from the Victor Hugo book-turned play Les Miserables. Just released from prison, protagonist Jean Valjean stays with a priest and his housekeeper overnight. They give him shelter and food, but he is desperate, thinking he must now stoop to a life of crime. So he takes off with their silverware. The police find him and the reader thinks it’s the end for Jean Valjean. They cart him back to the priest, who says, “Yes that silverware is mine, I am just annoyed with him, he forgot to take these with him,” and he hands Valjean his precious candlesticks. Valjean is amazed, that rather than punishment he receives grace and gift. This is the gift that changes his life. Not only is it what he needs to build a new life, but it is the grace that he needs to find his dignity again, to re-connect with his honorable self.[2]

You might say that this gift, so much more precious than its mere monetary value, says something about God’s grace working in our lives. About how God reaches into our death-dealing world and gives us life.
It is pretty interesting that in today’s passage from Exodus we have the names of Shiphrah and Puah, the two midwives. We hear they are Hebrew midwives, but one scholar says that that word “Hebrew” was used by the Egyptians to denote a slave people, and that we do not know if they were actually Israelites or Egyptians, or from some other group.[3] These women’s names mean “beautiful” and “splendid,”[4] names that might have been theirs or might have been given them later. But the fact that these slave women, these helpmates of the slave women no less, have names is important. It shows that they are vital agents in this story. One scholar suggests that they are actually named because they are God’s agents in this story.[5] They preserve life when the culture deals death for male babies. God as a doula, what an image!
L’Chai-im, God claims life, and calls us to do the same! God is at the birthing-stool, God is snatching life from death.

In this letter to the Romans, Paul asks his readers to “present their bodies as a living sacrifice,” a short phrase that, if you pay attention, also occurs in our Eucharistic prayer this season. What does this mean? No longer are we called to sacrifice dead animals, but we are called to present the sacrifice of our own lives and bodies. This means a lot of things. First off, it means that, essentially, our bodies are good, already capable of being presented in such a fashion. Not when we drop ten pounds or get the right haircut, but now, however we find ourselves, these bodies of ours are presentable to God. They are worthy of being a living sacrifice. And we are called to life. L’Chai-im, not to death, or fad diets (which to this girl seem almost as bad).
Yes, it is true that our bodies and their desires can get us into trouble. I am not the head in the clouds idealist that I sometimes seem. I know that life does not always follow the romantic theology of a Victor Hugo plot. Not all Jean Valjeans presented with an opportunity will entirely renew their lives in a moment of grace. I know this to be true in myself. I know just how good and gracious God is, but I can still choose death-dealing things in my life if I am not careful. Yes, bodies and our desires can get us into trouble.

But Paul says, God still wants you. All of you, exactly as you are. All of you is welcome in God, is GOOD in God. This Jesus, whom Peter proclaims as Messiah in today’s gospel, came that we would have life, and have it abundantly.

I love the way scholar Stan Mast puts it, “So here he says that salvation includes our bodies.  Through Paul God says, ‘I want all of the life you live in your body—your sexual life, your work life, your recreational life, your health care, your finances, your relationships.  I don’t want you to be religious only in the sense of offering prayers, singing songs, and giving money.  I want all of your life to be an offering to me, a continual offering.’”[6]

What does this mean? Those of you familiar with the Christian tradition know that grace is free but that it necessarily changes us.

 “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all.”[7]

Yes, it does. The blasted irony of a God that accepts all of us, all of who we are, is that in being all-accepted, God claims all of us. Remember being marked as Christ’s own at baptism? Or if you do not, remember seeing that happen to someone else? God claims us, and in doing so changes us, Paul says, not in our physical bodies as much as in our minds, in the ways that we approach life. And chances are, the ways that grace change us won’t be what other people have told you you need to change, but will be unexpected. God may surprise even you.

Now, what’s interesting is that the word here in Romans for being conformed, what Paul says we should not do, is susxematidzesthe (how’s that for a mouth-full?) Which Mast describes as what a chameleon does as it blends into its surroundings.[8] This is not what we should do. We should, instead, be unafraid of showing our true colors for Christ, as loud and fabulous as they may be.

Rather than blending, Paul says, we must participate in a metamorphosis, which is what the caterpillar does to become a butterfly.[9] We are to be transformed in spirit and renewed in mind so that we can serve Christ in our place and time.

In receiving mercy, Jean Valjean cannot turn back. He understands that he can be free. Free to live the life that God has in mind for him. His mind and spirit are transformed.

We, too, can take God’s grace as an opportunity to be freed from addiction, fear, whatever it is that holds us back from showing our true colors; whatever keeps us from the metamorphosis into the beautiful creation God has created us to be. We are born to be alive in God, to celebrate L’Chai-im, the life that God has given us, each and every one!

---

[1] source: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/soundtracks/f/fiddlerontherooflyrics/tolifelyrics.html

[2] Stan Mast, “Illustration Idea: Romans 12:1-8,” http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/index.php.

[3] Thomas B. Dozeman, “Footnotes to Exodus,” NISB.

[4] Cameron B. R. Howard, “Commentary on Exodus 1:8-2:10,” http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2169.

[5] Scott Hoezee, “Comments, Observations on Exodus 1:8-2:10,” http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/index.php

[6] Stan Mast, “Comments, Observations… on Romans 12:1-8,” http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/index.php.

[7] Isaac Watts, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” Hymnal 1982 and quoted in Stan Mast, above.

[8] Mast, ibid.

[9] Ibid.