Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.
I love the Mother’s Union theme for this triennium – of Transformation – now! (and don’t forget the exclamation mark!)
It has a real vibrancy and urgency about it. No matter how you are feeling, it makes you want to get up and DO something, or change something, immediately!
And what a lot there is that needs to change in our world.
I wonder if I were to invite you for a moment to think: ‘ What would I most like to change in our world today?’, there would be so much each of us might say.
We would like to see change in the direction of the climate catastrophe as global warming impacts further and further afield and in increasingly devastating ways, on nature, people and their communities. We would like to see changes in levels of poverty and issues of injustice, in the UK and around the world. We would like to see a change in the war in Gaza and Israel and in Ukraine and for peace to come. We would like to see change in our churches, particularly in the diversity of our congregations and leadership, and to see all our churches increasingly becoming safer, more secure and welcoming places for all.
Perhaps there are things in our own lives and families, in our churches and local communities that we each as individuals long to see change for the better.
So much that needs to change, and if not ‘now!’ (exclamation mark), then certainly very soon.
But ‘transformation’ is slightly different to ‘change’. All sort of things can change; situations, minds, hearts, the weather, (especially in the UK in June, apparently). Transformation is much more profound than simply saying that something was like this and now it is like that.
Transformation is change with a purpose.
Transformation is about a deep and lasting and intentional alteration in the way things are, for the better.
I love watching the kind of TV programme where a team of experts goes in and overhauls someone’s garden or house, and there’s that moment where they bring the owners back in and say ‘Open you eyes’ and they go wow! Its amazingly, wonderfully different – Transformation!
That’s the kind of transformation I believe is expressed in the Mother’s Union vision for transformation – and that’s why, in this kind of transformation, we can have hope for the future.
The word that the New Testament uses for ‘transformation’ is metamorpheo from which of course comes the word ‘metamorphosis’ which is what happens when an ordinary and, dare I say, slightly ugly caterpillar turns into a beautiful butterfly.
With God, that is what transformation is all about – changing the worst aspects of our world, our communities, our lives, our own hearts, and sometimes the ugliness of those things, into something that is beautiful to him – with hope for the future; hope that has wings, that can fly.
There are 3 things I find very encouraging about this idea of transformation, that I need to remember when I think that all the change in the world must be down to me and I begin to feel the weight of that responsibility.:
Firstly, transformation is God’s work and not something I have to, or indeed can do, for myself. This is not self-help, it is Holy Spirit transformation. God is the agent of transformation. In the passage from Romans 12 we heard, it is God who does the transforming: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”. In 2nd Corinthians 3.18, we read that “we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory”.
It is God who transforms. That is not to say that we simply become passive recipients of the transformation of God. We must be willing, and obedient, and play our part as members together of the body of Christ, as Romans puts it, all with our different gifts, but it is God’s Holy Spirit power that actually does the transforming.
Secondly, transformation is an ongoing process, not a once for all thing. The phrase has a sense of the continuous about it: ‘keep on being transformed’. Although the Mothers Union theme is transformation Now!, it’s also transformation then, and then, and on into into the future. It never ends. There is not one point when I can say, ‘Well now I’m fully transformed, and so is everything around me, so there we are’. Not this side of heaven anyway. Every day is another opportunity to be transformed by God’s Spirit. Whether you’re 3, 33 or 93, or 103 years old there is no end to the transformation ‘from glory into glory’ that happens with God.
And finally, when I allow myself to experience the transformation of God, into his ever increasing glory, then I can join in with God and with his help begin to bring about transformation that I long to see in in the world around me. I love that children’s song that goes Let there be peace on earth , and let it begin with me. It’s so easy to feel overwhelmed by all that needs to change in the world. But if we take God at his word there is so much reassurance that we, who who are being transformed can bring transformation in God’s name, to the world around us.
Martin Luther King said: Only through an inner spiritual transformation do we gain the strength to fight vigorously the evils of the world in a humble and loving spirit.
That is what brings hope for the future.
Mothers’ Union is a wonderful organisation that makes me feel proud and joyful every day. But our hope is not in what we can do, but what God can – and will – do in and through us.
That’s transformation now. And it starts within me. With you. With us. Together.
I’d like to close, if I may, with the famous prayer of our founder, Mary Sumner, with a very slight adaptation:
All this day, O Lord, let me touch as many lives as possible for thee; and every life I touch, do thou by thy spirit transform [quicken], whether through the word I speak, the prayer I breathe, or the life I live.
Amen.
