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What’s Different? 
By Stephen C. Butler
July 12, 2020

2 Corinthians 5:17 – “If anyone is in Christ, they are a new Creation. The old has passed away and the new has come!”
 
Galatians 3:27-28 – “There is no longer Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female. All are one in Christ Jesus.”
 
Years ago, when I watched Sesame Street with our children, there was a segment  called “What’s Different?”.  With a split screen they showed four children doing similar things, with one not quite the same. “Three of these kids are like the others. Three of these kids are kind of the same. One of these kids is doing their own thing. Now it’s time to play our game.” The one I remember best had three children bouncing balls while the other swung a baseball bat. And with this kind of exercise, children could also learn to recognize letters, numbers, objects, sounds, activities, and situations.  Some are the same. Others are different. And when certain things happen,  we also learn that our situation is different. Times change, people change, situations change. What’s different?
 
Our courtship and marriage customs have changed dramatically in the last 50-75 years. Many years ago, on the day after a wedding, it could be very easy for newlyweds to understand that their lives were quite different than they had been the day before. Today, as we know, most couples spend at least one and often several years together before marriage, and it can be quite common for a couple to come home after the honeymoon and wonder, “What’s Different?” But over a period of time, especially if they start raising children together, they begin to understand. Yes, things really have changed. Whether the process is fast or slow, abrupt or gradual, over time, everyone’s life becomes significantly different. And while we may have never thought about it in these terms, over the years I’ve come to realize that Christianity is a lifelong conversion experience.
 
In the earliest days of what we now call Christianity, it was very easy to understand that when one became a Follower of the Way, their past, present and future existence took on a whole new and different meaning. Not only the original Apostles, but all of the early believers in Jesus of Nazareth immediately experienced a profound and long lasting change in their understandings of practically everything: not only their immediate human relationships but their prospects for all eternity. Jesus’ resurrection was proof to them that all of earthly life and the entire universe were vastly different from what they had previously believed to be true.
 
St. Paul’s conversion is perhaps the most famous in the Bible. He was a Super Pharisee, had dedicated his entire life to upholding the letter of the Jewish Law in all things, and set out to destroy this upstart new movement with every fiber of his being. He was present and helped with the execution of Christianity’s first martyr, Stephen, outside Jerusalem. Soon he was on his way to Damascus, Syria to arrest and capture any others he could find when Jesus appeared to him and Paul’s life was never the same. There are many others I could name. St. Paul is just the best known.  Books, lectures, and doctoral dissertations have been written on the history of religious conversion. It’s an ongoing study. I had my own conversion experience at the Riverside Institute I the summer of 1964 and it wasn’t until I got to seminary  that I really started  to understand what had happened. We liberal Methodists haven’t spent much time talking about conversion in a very long time. It’s basically the process of coming to a new understanding of what life is all about. And Christianity is a life-long conversion experience.
 
John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Movement had  a very powerful conversion experience. He was  basically a Perfectionist, trying mightily but never succeeding to do everything absolutely right. He was convinced he was a miserable sinner and certainly going to Hell until he realized  that God loved him, accepted him and was eager to help him.  Then he became the successful preacher, teacher and organizer of what later became the Methodist Church. One of his more famous sermons is called “On Christian Perfection” in which he explains that one’s initial conversion is only the first step in a life-long journey in which God’s Holy Spirit continues to work through those who seek to know and serve God through faith in Jesus Christ. This has become known as “going on to perfection”. Still today, before being ordained, every United Methodist pastor is asked, “Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life?” And the answer is, “With God’s help, I do.” God has continued to perfect me all through my life, and The Lord’s not finished with me yet! Our own experiences may include dramatic or not so noticeable changes in our relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ. But whether we can point to one specific time and place or whether we look back on a long, gradual time of growth in faith the process is the same. We are all called to grow onward in faith, hope and love.  But if our Christian faith and practice are basically the same today as last year, five, ten or twenty years ago, then there’s something wrong.
 
Does the name Alvin Toffler mean anything to you? Fifty years ago he published a book called “Future Shock”, predicting that the advance of technology would soon produce a condition he called “Information Overload”. Sound familiar? He went on to predict that people and groups would start rebelling against constant change, strong feelings of nostalgia would increase, and leaders would start clamoring for a return to the way things used to be. It started with retro-styling in clothing, consumer goods and music. Then came a rise of violent fundamentalism and racism in religion and government that continues today. This is human nature at its worst. It’s nothing new. And it is not God’s Will. God does not call us back to a nostalgic and imaginary “Golden Age” that never existed in the first place. God always calls us forward to the time first predicted by the ancient prophet Isaiah, when God’s Law might be written not just on stone tablets or ancient scrolls, but on the hearts and minds of women and men everywhere.
 
Where is God calling us today? Human nature hasn’t changed. The Gospel of Jesus Christ never changes, but our technology is very different, and that’s made our world very different. Our communities are different. Our understandings of the needs of our neighbors near and far are certainly much different than six months or even six weeks ago. And if the Spirit of God is not changing us in these present days, then something is very wrong with our Christianity!  
 
But please rest assured that this is not something we need to do by ourselves. Christianity is not a self-improvement society. It’s a life-long conversion experience through which we open ourselves to God’s leading and follow wherever we are called to go. Generations of mistaken preachers have urged and sometimes commanded their congregations to “build the Kingdom of God,” as if it was our kingdom to envision, design and construct ourselves. We are called to seek, to follow, and to become servants of the master. And the more we do that, the more things will absolutely be different in a very wonderful way.

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