“Life’s Little Instruction Book”

Rev. Patricia L. Liberty

Scriptures:

Exodus 31:1-15

Romans 12:9-21

These days, there’s a self-help book for just about everything. Just for laughs, I did a Google search of the phrase “self-help books” and came up with 43,500,000 hits. From alcoholism to xenophobia, it seems someone has written a book about it.

The explosion of self-help books in the 1980s provided a springboard for millions of people to begin healing journeys, to learn new skills, to overcome social relational or familial struggles, to loose weight, to gain weight, to treat a variety of emotional aches and pains, improve memory. I think you get the idea. There are even things that can help you with your disobedient dog.

There’s actually a self-help book called “Life’s Little Instruction Book” by H. Jackson Brown, Jr. It’s a collection of 511 sayings that he originally compiled for his son while he was going away to college. “Life’s Little Instruction Book” has been on the New York Times’ bestseller list for over two years. It is the only book in the history of the bestseller list that has had the soft-cover and the hard-cover versions in the number one spot at the same time. It’s been translated into 35 languages.

What I want to know is who knew things like “Don’t eat sugared donuts wearing dark pants” and “Plant zucchini only if you have lots of friends” would capture the heart of the world. Then we can add number 512 to the list “Don’t give up hope of being a bestselling author no matter what you have to say”. At 511, Brown is getting right up there close to the Old Testament. If you were here last week, you may remember that it’s not just ten commandments that are in the Old Testament but really 613. So, with 511, Jackson’s getting right up there. I guess there is something to be said for short, pithy little instructions on how to live your life—what things to avoid and things like that.

Romans 12 is kind of a short list of stuff that you should do if you want to be a Christian. A collection of ethical exhortations for believers, these verses from Romans are life’s little instruction book on how to live a Christian, ethical life. Now, not eating sugared donuts while wearing dark pants—most of these things like that seem fairly straightforward like “Let love be genuine. Bless those who persecute you. Live in harmony with one another.”

Of course, doing these things consistently is a whole different story. If it were simply a matter of willing ourselves to do those things, we would. But like most self-help advice, you discover quickly that it’s not just a matter of willing ourselves to different behavior. When it comes to the ethical Christian behavior Paul is talking about, it’s not just mind over matter.

So the key to this passage in really understanding what Paul is getting at here seems to me to actually be in the first verse of the chapter which we didn’t read. It says this, “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God to present yourselves as a living sacrifice to God. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” So, the mercy of God is kind of key in all this as a reminder that it’s not just up to us, and it’s not just about what we’re able to do and not able to do.

That first verse leads into another very familiar passage about all of the spiritual gifts that are intended to build up the body of Christ. Right on the heels of that, we pick up these verses we read this morning. So, when taken on the whole, which I believe is the only way to look at Scripture—we can’t pick and choose the parts we like—the overall message here is about what it means to live in community and how it is that we can be better human beings than we are. It all starts with the life-giving and dynamic relationship with God because as hard as we try, the reality is we just can’t pull it off on our own.

We can relate to Paul when he says in one of his other letters, “The good that I want to do I don’t do and the bad that I don’t want to do I keep on doing.” We are a lot like Paul and those first disciples. At least, I am—a mix of emotions and motives and desires. We don’t want to lose our tempers. I do. I don’t know about you. We don’t want to fight with our partners but … We don’t want to fight with our kids but … We don’t want to be cranky at work but …

Somehow, “Life’s Little Instruction Book” on powdered donuts and dark suits is not a lot of help here because it’s about something else entirely. What Paul says is it’s about our relationship with God because that’s the foundation of all of the rest of our relationships. When that’s on the right track, it provides a context for everything else. I’m not suggesting that religion is a cure-all because we all know people who hide behind religion and it’s not a pretty sight. Rather, I believe that this text points us in the direction of a how vital and life-giving relationship with God can be the thing from which all other things build and flow.

For Paul, it was always about that partnership. The love of God in relationship to another were two parts of the same reality for Paul. How one person acted toward another, in Paul’s mind was a reflection of how they understood their relationship with God. It’s an ongoing process. It goes back and forth. There are times when our own prayer and devotional life will inform the way we live in the world. There are times when the way we live in the world will inform what we need to be doing in prayer and study. We are challenged, day by day, by what goes on around us and by the insights that can come from quiet moments with God.

Who knew that, however many years ago—11, 10 or so—the building of a relationship with a Korean church halfway around the world would bring us face to face with such goodness and richness that it would provide an opportunity for us to learn about ourselves in a new way and to understand what it means to be Christian in a different culture? Who knew that the words of the doxology would be as beautiful in Korean as they are in English? Who knew that it doesn’t matter that you don’t have to speak Korean because a smile is a universal language and there are always ways that we can build a relationship outside of what we know how to say?

We know all of those things now because a small group of people were willing to take a risk and put before us a new and exciting ministry that’s given us an opportunity that, as a congregation, we never would have had. I think that’s the kind of transformation that Paul was talking about, when the world doesn’t fit us into its mold but invites us to think differently, to be outside the box, to reach out to people who, while they may appear to be different from us, are really not so different at all. It maybe that the greatest gift that ever comes from a mission project is that we learn that we are more alike than we are different, and that, when we stop looking and stop being afraid, we can build relationships that span age, distance, time, language and so many other artificial barriers that we seem to throw up in each other’s way.

Transformation is the foundation for fulfilling the ethical mandate of Romans. It’s how God makes us more of who we already are by helping us to become more like God. The best instruction for this thing called life is “Don’t be conformed to this world but be transformed.”

Those opportunities for transformation present themselves every single day. Perhaps, it comes in the box of food that we bring to ease another’s hunger or the meals that we serve at the Sunshine Kitchen or the time that we spend reading to children at the Shelter or the partnership that we build with a church that’s half a world away. Whatever it is, we end up the better for it. It’s about the best of life’s little instructions. Amen.