Conversion is meant to have dramatic impact in our lives - throughout our lives as we’re called and formed to more faithfulness to God and experience of salvation life. We can focus mostly on positive feelings with this, but it is true that there are also things in our lives that we are tempted to hold onto, but that should be let go of and cut out for what is best. Sometimes folks have taken to calling some of God’s values coming to bear in our lives “toxic,” but that misses the point that God’s love and grace should be toxic to the parts of ourselves that get in the way of loving like God loves and experiencing the diverse community who are often overlooked that God’s Kingdom brings together.

We all are prone to looking to people that we can admire and be inspired by to help push towards our values, and that can even influence our sense of identity. There are plenty of examples of this in society, and we also may have figures of faith we look to in the Bible. This can sometimes take the form of viewing people as heroes that need to escape question or critique, and yet the Bible doesn’t do this with examples of faith - instead being honest about failure and frailty and encouraging us to see substantive faith of repentance, conversion, making things right and humbling continuing to be formed in the values of God’s Kingdom as we recognize our failures to live up to it. Can these values influence how we admire anyone and allow people to influence our values and sense of self?

Some people do have very dramatic conversion stories for their initial commitment to following God in their lives. Others may grow up in the church and not have such a big before and after. As we continue in faith, though, the dramatic transformation that faith is meant to have on our lives - including ongoing conversions for more faithfulness - can be taken for granted and normalized. Being “born again” or joining a whole new people group is a big deal, though, even if the language doesn’t have as much shock value today. Are we willing to let continued conversion to God’s values be as dramatic in our lives as that when it needs to be? Are we able to set our other identities and allegiances aside so they always come second to God’s values and we use God’s values to measure those camps, parties, and groups that expect us to go along and judge and ostracize those in other groups even though God also loves and includes them? It’s not the norm now, but it is implicit to salvation and Kingdom life.

It is commonly celebrated how conversion turns us away from what is in conflict with God and reconcile in relationship for our salvation. Sometimes we can mistakenly reduce this impact to something about only what we mentally agree with or feelings we have about God, but the examples of conversion in scripture also have concrete impact on people’s day to day choices, actions and lives as God brings the Kingdom more on earth as it is in heaven - for individuals and communities and creation. How can we faithfully pursue the conversions we need for that same impact and scope?

Conversion is a central idea to Christianity, but it can often get a fairly narrow conception or application. While the initial commitment to living life faithfully with God is vital, the Bible consistently shows continued conversions even of those who have been following God to be continually formed to be more faithful to God’s values. The prophet Jonah and the leaders of the early church responding to the question of how to integrate Gentile believers offer two very different examples of how to respond to these ongoing invitations to transformative conversion that we can learn from for living out our own faithfulness.

God has always moved within communities of God’s people with certain key values that help bind us together and form us to more fully participate in and embody the Kingdom. It is good to find opportunities to re-root ourselves in those values, show appreciation for ways people have committed themselves to the values that God has used for our edification, and to find inspiration for how to persevere together as God leads us. This was a great chance to be able to do that together.

Every year our church re-roots itself in our connections and practices together, as well as the values that God guides our church with, and we try to discern how best to embody all those things in the upcoming year. It is especially important to see how God holds us together as a community and is always rooting us through reconciliation and discovery with broader and broader community, even with those we wouldn’t expect - just as God always has done for God’s people and the manifestation of God’s Kingdom. Even when things are most overwhelming and disorienting, may we find hope and purpose in just those foundations.

God has given the amazing gift of coming close to us in the incarnation as Jesus, as well as remaining intimately with us through the Spirit today, and including us closely in work with God for the Kingdom going all the way back to creation. For whatever reason, though, we are often tempted to put other things between us and God, or to do that to other people in a way that can hinder them. With reminders in art and life of how we can do that even subtly, and reminders in scripture of how God looks to bring those barriers down, we can hopefully be as closely connected to and following God as possible.

“Speaking the truth in love” is important advice, and often necessary in a world where crazy and contentious things are frequently happening and people have very different ideas about what is happening and what should be done about it - even when those people claim similar identity, affinities and associations. Having a solid grounding in Godly values for discerning truth and expressing love is essential for this practice - and having some helpful inspiration from favorite songs and stories doesn’t hurt either.

We have a great hope for total fellowship with God and experience of fulfilled salvation life in heaven - a hope which also permeates our culture in many ways. There are also a lot different ways heaven is described in the Bible, with powerful but incomplete poetic language, and Jesus especially affirms to us an idea of God’s Kingdom being among us because of him, “on earth as it is in heaven.” How do we hold all this together and live in the reality of God’s Kingdom with others now - based most on God’s values over our presumptions?

Having a personal relationship with God is an amazing aspect of faith life, but it is also very important to remember that God relates to us in the context of the Kingdom that gathers people together and draws out how God has created each of us so that we can encourage and support each other for the full experience of salvation life. Like a strong cord of woven rope, or a body made up of all kinds of parts, or like a good, hearty stone soup, we can be thankful to God for how we are better together as connected through the Spirit.

There is a rich tradition and example of the practice of lament as a core and transformational aspect of our lives of faith. Because it deals with difficult and painful emotions and circumstances, though, lament is not something that is commonly lifted up and understood in the modern church. With reflections on scripture and contemporary examples like songs by Jelly Roll, we can still immerse ourselves in God’s gift of lament for our spirituality and see how the practice brings healthy expression for even the most challenging parts of life.

It often seems like it would be the most exciting thing to be called to be a part of things God is doing for the salvation and transformation of the world - but it makes sense that it can be intimidating, or stretching, to us, too. This is a pattern throughout scripture and Church history, but that doesn’t seem to deter God from still wanting to move and include us in what’s going on. Realizing how profound a question “what is in your hands?” can be for how God works, and seeing what God can do, can end up transforming all kinds of things.

It is often a fact of faith that we vacillate between states of boldness and bravado to go after something, and fear and confusion about what that will actually mean. We see plenty of examples of this in scripture - like with King Saul, Jonah and Peter. What helps us understand all that is involved in God’s values - both the beauty and the challenges - and find God’s support for us so that we might live faithfully and experience the fullness of salvation life, even when fear needs to be overcome?

There are plenty of examples for how attention and power work in the world for us to be tempted in our faith to think that proving ourselves as the best kind of people over and against others is a way to get God’s favor or ensure our place in the Kingdom. It is good to steep ourselves in the consistent stories in the Bible, and where we see God continuing to move in history and the world around us, of how God affirms value and who God ensures there is room and a role for. That can help us both see others and appreciate their contributions as God does, and to find encouragement to put forward what God raises up in us even if others might discourage or devalue it.

In Jesus, we see God’s glorious divinity revealed not to be something that keeps God distant from us, but that is most fully expressed through God’s loving, serving incarnation - taking on humanity, living life like us, and making new things possible with that presence. Because that was done for us, following Jesus and experiencing salvation includes joining Jesus in finding ways to relate to others the same way. It’s often not easy, but even in the most difficult to connect circumstances, it is a profound means for transformation and true live to be experienced together.

Worship can take on so many forms in our lives both within a particular Sunday service, and in our daily rhythms or unique things we have to face outside of church. This reflects the breadth, depth, and majesty of God, and also helps worship be incredibly transformational for us when we turn our attention to God in vulnerability, awe and thanks because it’s range of relevance can touch any personality in any experience.

Modern technology and social structures hold remarkable capability and power, and often offer it to us as well. Understanding and discerning the distinct and life-giving values for power that are embodied by God and extended to us as followers can be essential to navigating temptations and finding expressions of technology, socio-political influence, relationships and more that can bring holism and shalom instead of exploitation and marginalization. This has been true going back to well before the technology that fascinates us most now, and is still valuable to lives in today’s context.

The rapid rise of artificial intelligence technology can feel very hard to keep up with. It has powerful potential which can be received as either ready for amazing feats, or as set to overwhelm us into a dystopia. With something possibly seen as so all powerful, we can remember one of the best questions we can ask ourselves as people of faith is whether we are engaging with anything we come across as people of our own conscience as formed by God - rather than just getting swept along in either triumphalism or doom.

For many people, one of the most perplexing stories in the Gospels is of Jesus apparently calling a Canaanite woman a dog - using a slur and seeming to pick favorites for God’s love and power when that is so antithetical to the values expressed in the rest of his recounted ministry. But as we’ve seen in other sermons in this series, context often gives us a bigger and clearer picture with more faithful meaning. This story may actually help us encounter Jesus as more alive, clever, joyful and insightful than we can sometimes experience in the text - and encourage us in how we follow Jesus in our relationships too.