University
Congregational United
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed, by the renewing of your mind”
-Romans 12:2a
Just about every really good story is about transformation. Consider this one. There once was a baby duck, a duckling, who looked very different from all the other babies. Instead of a cute little head sitting on a fluffy body, this duckling had a long awkward neck. Instead of fitting nicely with the other ducks under mom’s warm feathers at night, this duckling was large and clumsy and didn’t fit at all. And the other ducks wanted nothing to do with this odd duck. The ugly duckling just didn’t meet “duck specifications.”
Well, as I said, most good stories are about transformation, and this one is no different. As most of us know, this odd duck grew up, and changed from an ugly misfit into a beautiful swan. As it turns out, the transformation in this story was actually a process of the swan becoming what the swan always was.
And what of all the other ducks? What became of them as this swan emerged? Well, some versions tell that the swan returned to the community in all his beauty and mocked the ducks who had earlier mocked him. But I would like to imagine that this little gaggle of ducks was a faith community, and when the swan returned, transformed into himself, the community was transformed as well. And in their transformation, they discovered this truth: conformation, or meeting some sort of preconceived specifications of what one was supposed to look like was not what they wanted their connections to be about. Rather welcoming the differences, as each became all that he or she was created to be, was what really invited transformation and connection for all. And they all lived happily ever after.
Most good stories are about transformation. Sometimes the transformation happens suddenly. Like Paul himself on the road to Damascus, suddenly transformed into the very thing he feared, and in the transformation, discovering truth and freedom, sometimes we are struck so hard by a truth it changes us instantly. But sometimes, often in fact, the transformation happens slowly. Like Paul himself, living out the implications of Damascus in community after community, we discover, as Paul told the church at Rome, that transformation is a kind of renewal, day after day, as we live into the truth of our faith.
When Azar Nafisi wrote her stunning memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran, she illustrated for us all the power of stories to transform us. Even in the face of oppressive tyranny, Nafisi’s Iranian students (all women, in a society structured around the power and privilege of men) are invited to listen to great stories, and then to let those great stories change them.
Nafisi
is a daughter of politics and a daughter of literature. Her father was a mayor in pre-revolutionary
Her group of students consists of seven women, selected by her because of the promise they showed and the limits set on them by the oppression of restrictions in the name of religion. These “girls” (as she calls them), greatly diverse in religious and political beliefs and backgrounds, come to her house every Thursday morning for two years in the mid-1990s. As they remove their drab outer garments, required of all women, they reveal their individual differences. And they talk about books. In these books, according to Nafisi, evil is found in lack of empathy; in an inability to see and hear, to engage with, or even to dance with another person. "Humbert was a villain," she writes about one of the main characters in Lolita, "because he lacked curiosity about other people and their lives, even about the person he loved most."
The women in her classes came to see too that the
"desperate truth of Lolita's story is . . . the confiscation of one
individual's life by another." Like Nabokov's
character, they too had "become the figment of someone else's
dreams," the dreams of an ayatollah who wanted to "re-create"
all women in the image of a strict and literal interpretation of religious
texts.
One reviewer has observed: “Talking about the callous villain in "Lolita" - or characters in other novels, . . . enabled Nafisi's female students to challenge those in power. As they felt themselves slowly suffocating under the totalitarian regime, simply allowing their imaginations to roam freely became an act of political insubordination.”
And now we come to Paul’s
invitation to the church in
As one reads through the book of Romans, one discovers that Paul really is standing in the face of political and religious power and inviting his readers to discover a deeper, more revolutionary truth than anyone trying to hold on to that power wants them to know. In the opening chapter of the book Paul says “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is God’s power for healing for all people, Jews and also Gentiles.” In Chapter 8 of Romans Paul proclaims that nothing can separate us from the love of God. And here in chapter 12 Paul says, therefore, live that truth, live that costly truth, and become renewed, and be transformed. Paul offers an outline for transformation. Sacrifice, renewal, transformation, he says. Risk something. Then learn something. Then change.
So tell your story. Speak of your truth. But the key is that the story has to be a real story to really be about transformation; not a story carefully shaped to conform to some image of what is “supposed to be true.” Because finally, I would say, the transformation is ultimately, actually, becoming yourself. Becoming your deepest, truest self.
So tell your story, your real story. And be willing to hear other’s stories, to engage with them, even to dance with them. By such story telling, we will all be renewed, we will all become transformed. By the grace of God, we shall become exactly who we were created by God, in love, to be.
Amen.