Grace to you and peace from our loving God, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The major theme for today isn't hard to discern. Several of the hymns speak to it, as does the story about Peter's confession. Rock of Ages. The Church's One Foundation. Today is intended to tell us about the undergirding truths upon which our faith and the church have been constructed. Jesus is the foundation. Peter is the rock.

But I really don't want to address this story of Peter without the portion that comes next week. It has always seemed to me an incomplete story without both parts—the confession of Peter that we hear this morning that Jesus is the messiah, as well as the response that Jesus gives to that confessions, which we don't hear until next week. The juxtaposition of these two is, for me, far more interesting.

And so, I will let today bear yet another burden of ground-breaking—that of preparing you to hear what comes next week.

While that is what happens in worship today, I'd like to settle in on Paul in Romans and, especially, the women in the beautifully constructed and quite familiar narrative from Exodus. I chose to use the Exodus reading today—rather than the more common text from Isaiah 51—both because the Isaiah passage fits in better with the gospel (which I'm putting off) and because Exodus dovetails well with Romans. Isaiah too, by the way, speaks of rock—referring to the roots of ancestry and faith.

Well, on with it then.

I don't know about you, but I really appreciate the words of Paul here in the twelfth chapter of Romans. He has here put aside the convoluted language that so often marks his writing, and he speaks simply, forthrightly, and clearly:

By God's mercies, I appeal to you, my sisters and brothers, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice to God. It is the only kind of worship that really makes sense. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (my paraphases)

Clarence Jordan, in his "Cotton Patch" version renders this: "Don't let the present age keep you in its cocoon. Instead, metamorphose into the new mind, so as to be capable of discerning God's design, which is good and right and mature."

"The Message" paraphrase is worth hearing too: "Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what (God) wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you."

But J.B. Phillips does it best when he suggests simply: "Don't let the world squeeze you into its mold." That's the rendering that inspired my sermon title—"Breaking out of the Mold."

In his book of sermons, "Strength to Love," Martin Luther King, Jr. includes a sermon based on this passage. With typical eloquence and brilliance, King captures this powerful text in just two unforgettable words: transformed nonconformity.

King observes how the pressures for cultural conformity, to "condition our minds and feet to move to the rhythmic drumbeat of the status quo," are immense. Nevertheless, followers of Jesus have a higher loyalty than conformity to social respectability. Living in time and for eternity, Christians need to discover ways to live very much in the world but not of the world. We should never abandon the world, nor should we embrace it. We must make history, says King, and not be shaped by history.

As we begin a new school year, a new year of study at the university, and a new season of Christian education, this is a much-needed word. Education—including, indeed, Christian education—is not really an option, though many act as if it is. It is, rather, essential. The renewal of the mind through education is one of the primary means by which God works a transformation in us—a transformation from cultural values to Christian values, from worldly ways of thinking to Christian ways of thinking.

This is, of course, not only so for our children. It is at least as true for adults who engage in continued reflection of a spiritual kind. Christian learning ought never come to an end, for God is never done with us—the work of God in shaping us requires our participation and cooperation if we are to become all that God hopes.

For some unfathomable reason, it has become popular to believe that Christianity and culture are, at least in the United States, one and the same. Nothing could be further from the truth, and the propagation of such an idea only serves to point out the failure of our churches to educate in the ways of God.

It is also popular, apparently, to believe that the gospel is intuitive. People suppose that what the gospel has to say only serves to reinforce what they already think to be the case. That too, just is not so. Who would come, by her or himself, to the idea that in order to save ones life, that life must first be given up?! Who would come, of ones own accord, to value the company of the poor, the meek, the weak, the lowly, above that of the rich and famous?! We make much too little in the church of the supremely radical nature of this gospel that stands before us. Maybe, deep down, we know how much it would shake us if we were to study it seriously. Maybe that's why we avoid asking the difficult questions that scripture raises. The gospel is not obvious or intuitive. It calls for study. We need to seek, to search, to work at it together, in order to be transformed by the renewal of our minds—in order to break the mold into which our world is constantly seeking to press us.

Most people, says Martin Luther King, Jr. "are thermometers that record or register the temperature of majority opinion, not thermostats that transform and regulate the temperature of society." Social scientists tell us, for example, that believers divorce at about the same rate as the general population, we watch the same films and television shows, we read the same books, we give about the same percentage of our income to charity as others, our teenagers have pre-marital sex at about the same rate as other kids, and so forth. The church, King reminds us, has defended slavery and racial discrimination, wars and economic exploitation. We participated in the Holocaust—the Shoah.

We swallow cultural propaganda hook, line, and sinker. We believe that pleasure should be unlimited, that politics is the most important news, that poverty (not wealth) is the worst thing that could ever happen to a person, that a risky investment provides so-called security, that physical health is a right, and that whatever is technologically possible is scientifically imperative (even though it might be morally ambiguous).

It is important to recognize, of course, that even for those who choose the path less traveled and who try to swim against the tide, non-conformity by itself is nothing special. In college towns such as ours, non-conformists are everywhere. They ride funny bikes (or scooters), experiment with alternative energy, eat organic foods, dress down instead of dressing up, and generally flaunt what they think is an independent spirit, but which often is merely a different type of social conformity. Sometimes non-conformity is little more than exhibitionism.

In contrast, the non-conformity that Paul describes in Romans 12 has a specific direction, which is Christ-likeness through what he calls a "renewed mind."

The French sociologist Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) worked with marginalized teenagers on the streets of Bordeaux in the 1950s and 1960s. His goal, he always said, was not to make those marginalized and disenfranchised kids "adjust" to the normal patterns of society. Making them "fit in" would only make them cultural conformists. Rather, Ellul said that his goal was to help the kids move from being "negatively maladjusted" to society to becoming "positively maladjusted." He wanted them to become non-conformists.

King says something very similar: "There are some things in our world to which [people] of goodwill must be maladjusted. I confess that I never intend to become adjusted to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination, to the moral degeneracy of religious bigotry and the corroding effects of narrow sectarianism, to economic conditions that deprive [people] of work and food, and to the insanities of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence." Christian non-conformity, in other words, has a specific direction.

Our conformity, perhaps, is part of our sense of despair and powerlessness that I experienced again with poignancy on Wednesday evening here at St. Thomas. The film "The Devil Came on Horseback," is powerful. Its personal witness by former marine, Brian Steidle, leaves little doubt about the intentionality behind the genocide that continues in the Darfur region of Sudan. But is further violence part of a moral answer? And is it truly possible for this nation to intervene in a way that will lead to justice?

The frustrations that we feel about such issues are, I hope, part of the movement of the Spirit within us to transform hearts and actions beyond the tragic present. In the end, hope for our world rests in creatively and positively maladjusted believers.

The text from Exodus provides a helpful example of breaking out of the mold of this world for the sake of God's redemptive purposes. The Israelites are in Egyptian bondage, increasing in number and power, when Pharaoh gives the order for infanticide—to terminate all the male Hebrew births. But the midwives defy the state authorities because, the text says, "they feared God" rather than Pharaoh. Their civil disobedience provides the context for the liberation of their people from slavery—through preserving the life of the infant Moses (insights here adapted from Dan Clendenin, "Positively Maladjusted").

Transformed non-conformity isn't easy. Those courageous women of long ago risked everything. Martin Luther King, Jr. paid for his with his life. They were transformed by the renewal of their hearts, minds, and souls. They knew with clarity what scripture teaches. May God grant each of us the grace of education and transformation that resists the press of those who would mold us in ungodly ways, so that we may honor the will of God and do what is good and acceptable and true. Amen.

May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord, unto eternal life. Amen.