sermons
For a Time Such As This
The Power of the Renewing of our Minds
Steve Watson
Mar 01, 2026
Let’s start by remembering what we’re doing this season.
This is our second Sunday of Lent, our annual early spring season of spiritual formation, of fasting and prayer, of drawing our attention more to God so that our faith, hope, and love, can deepen again.
People don’t agree on much these days, but one thing most of us agree on is that we are living in dramatic, important, challenging times. Our world is facing growing religious fundamentalism, nationalism, and violence. This weekend’s news of war is yet another part of that story. We have seen rises in tyranny and declines in democratic health in many countries. The harms, fears, division, and polarization in public life seem like they’re all getting worse.
And our political leaders and the economic interests that drive our biggest companies and marketing budgets don’t have a lot of incentives to make any of this any better! The United States is not alone in these challenges, but they are ours as well, and ours as a country with the largest economy and most powerful military in the world.
Many of these problems are familiar within the roots of our faith. Our Jewish siblings talk about resisting tyrants since Pharaoh, thousands of years ago. And the earliest Christian communities were born amidst many experiences of oppression and persecution under the violent, slaveholding Roman empire. Many of our ancestors in the faith have wisdom and help to offer in this season.
This year’s Lent calls us to faithfulness, resilience, and resistance in times of trouble. We draw upon the book of Esther and other biblical wisdom for pursuing love and justice and flourishing in hard times. We’re also utilizing the devotional For Such a Time as This, written by Hanna Reichel, that offers us the wisdom of the confessing church that resisted the Nazi regime in the 1930s and 1940s.
They call it an “emergency devotional,” for extreme and troubling times, wondering if in our faith and in each other, we have what we need to face this moment. Who knows? Perhaps we’re here for such a time as this.
This week we’re inviting you to set aside time each day for the first week in the devotional. The first section has seven short, three-page devotionals for you to slowly, prayerfully read each day. Each day’s entry is also accompanied in the back of the book by a study guide, that has a few questions for reflection and a couple of things you could try, if you feel so led.
If you set aside 15 or 20 minutes at some point in your day, you can make space for this each day, starting today.
This first week is called “Prepare yourself.” It’s an invitation to gather your thoughts, your feelings, your hopes as you begin the season.
And friends, what we’ll do today to being to prepare ourselves is to read a powerful chapter from the Bible that is meant to guide us in terrible times, and to hear an unfolding story in the life of this church that continues to surprise and inspire me, and to listen to a few invitations to prepare ourselves this week.
First, the bible chapter.
Romans 12 (Common English Bible)
12 So, brothers and sisters, because of God’s mercies, I encourage you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice that is holy and pleasing to God. This is your appropriate priestly service.
2 Don’t be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can figure out what God’s will is—what is good and pleasing and mature.
3 Because of the grace that God gave me, I can say to each one of you: don’t think of yourself more highly than you ought to think. Instead, be reasonable since God has measured out a portion of faith to each one of you.
4 We have many parts in one body, but the parts don’t all have the same function.
5 In the same way, though there are many of us, we are one body in Christ, and individually we belong to each other.
6 We have different gifts that are consistent with God’s grace that has been given to us. If your gift is prophecy, you should prophesy in proportion to your faith.
7 If your gift is service, devote yourself to serving. If your gift is teaching, devote yourself to teaching.
8 If your gift is encouragement, devote yourself to encouraging. The one giving should do it with no strings attached. The leader should lead with passion. The one showing mercy should be cheerful.
9 Love should be shown without pretending. Hate evil, and hold on to what is good.
10 Love each other like the members of your family. Be the best at showing honor to each other.
11 Don’t hesitate to be enthusiastic—be on fire in the Spirit as you serve the Lord!
12 Be happy in your hope, stand your ground when you’re in trouble, and devote yourselves to prayer.
13 Contribute to the needs of God’s people, and welcome strangers into your home.
14 Bless people who harass you—bless and don’t curse them.
15 Be happy with those who are happy, and cry with those who are crying.
16 Consider everyone as equal, and don’t think that you’re better than anyone else. Instead, associate with people who have no status. Don’t think that you’re so smart.
17 Don’t pay back anyone for their evil actions with evil actions, but show respect for what everyone else believes is good.
18 If possible, to the best of your ability, live at peace with all people.
19 Don’t try to get revenge for yourselves, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath. It is written, Revenge belongs to me; I will pay it back, says the Lord.
20 Instead, If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink. By doing this, you will pile burning coals of fire upon his head.
21 Don’t be defeated by evil, but defeat evil with good.
The apostle Paul wrote this letter called Romans in the late 50s AD to be read by the early house churches in Rome. These were mixed culture communities. The Jews in these churches were refugees, fresh off the trauma of a recent expulsion from the city of Rome, with the memory of their deportation and the ongoing fear of being othered or harmed. And many of the Gentiles in these house churches were held as slaves, subject to all kinds of abuse, not even treated as full persons. This letter tells them all that they are in fact glorious somebodies, adopted as children of God, who are part of God loving, redemptive purposes on earth.
And then in this part of the chapter, Paul offers them practical direction on how in all their troubles, they can live with resilience and faith and purpose in the way of Jesus. It’s a new take on Jesus’ ways of radical life formation that he taught in the sermon on the mount. These are pathways to radical transformation of themselves, their community life, and their society.
He encourages them to offer themselves just as they are to God.
To pay attention to the world around them and not fall in line with its lies or its harm.
Paul encourages these vulnerable communities to not withdraw or hide away in fear, and not to search for some perfect life that’s out of reach but to wholeheartedly join into the communities and opportunities available to them.
And he encourages them that the radical path of faith, hope, and love can in time defeat evil and transform the world.
I want to say a little more about all those things for us, but let me tell you a story first of how I’ve seen this all getting lived out among us, a story most of you haven’t heard but that many of you had a part in.
Seven years ago, I met a man I’ll call Bob. That is absolutely not his name, but I want to protect his privacy, so we’ll call him Bob.
I met Bob while he was locked up in the ICE detention center wing of the Boston city jail. I had gotten myself involved with a religious resistance network to provide clergy chaplaincy visits to those who were in ICE detention and not allowed to even have their family visit them. Many of the men I visited weren’t there very long, since they were transported elsewhere in the country or deported. But Bob had gotten help opening an asylum case, so I continued to visit him, and was in touch with his lawyer, and present at his asylum hearing, which he won.
And now the great thing, but also the problem, was that he was going to be released as a free man. I say it was a problem only because he had been locked up something like three years, so he didn’t really have much of a life to come back to. His few possessions had been shuttled around between old roommates and there wasn’t much left. He didn’t have a place to live, didn’t have work authorization yet for a job; after three years in detention with a number of chronic conditions, his mental and physical health were in bad shape. And on his release date, he was dropped off on a Friday afternoon in front of one of Boston’s homeless shelters, with nothing but the clothes on his back.
It was my first really direct experience with this country’s broken incarceration and detention system, and it seemed to me like a set of terribly evil wrongs had been done to Bob. But it all also seemed like more than any of us could really do anything about.
But a few of you knew I’d been visiting Bob, and a few of you were praying for him, and there was this whole religious justice network we’d gotten connected to, so it was like, well, how about we all do a couple things that are in reach for us? How about we all love a little bit in the ways we know how to, and see what happens?
So a family here had an extra apartment in their home on a temporary basis and had told me they’d take someone in for a few days, if anyone ever needed that. And so I went and picked up Bob in front of the shelter and brought him to this family’s home to stay there for the weekend.
And Bob visited church and met a few guys from the region of the world he had fled from and that was encouraging to him how diverse and friendly this church is.
And then another family here in the church at the time had a bunch of space in their large home and offered to take Bob in for a while while he got himself settled. And I think he stayed with them a good two or three months.
And then the folks in the religious justice network connected us to an agency that could help folks who won asylum cases get set up with some temporary government financial assistance and career placement services, and Bob got enrolled with them, and found a job and a starter room to rent at a boarding house up on the North Shore, and one of my kids and I were able to give him a ride up there to help get him settled in.
The whole community, the Body of Christ, was finding ways to do the things that they had power to do – to pray for him, to help him with a few practical needs, to welcome him for a while into their homes, to greet him at church and make him feel he belongs here, to connect him with government resources.
It was beautiful, but honestly, it didn’t seem like anywhere near enough.
Despite all the hospitality, Bob was still in and out of the homeless shelter. The family who he stayed with for months was concerned, because Bob mostly sat at home and read the newspaper, he didn’t seem like he had much energy to look for work or make new contacts.
His health needs were also pretty large and overwhelming, and it wasn’t always clear he was going to get better.
Bob didn’t like the agency that was trying to get him settled into employment, so he stopped working with them, and he also quit his job.
We stayed in touch for the occasional call, but Bob got arrested again after what he said was a misunderstanding but was accused of something serious, and I was visiting him in jail again and helping him arrange to pay his own bail.
Honestly, it seemed like it was really sweet that our church and a bunch of other people had tried to live out our faith and love Bob, but maybe it just wasn’t good enough.
Well, friends, a few weeks ago, Bob called me again because he had some updates for me. He wanted me to know, not for the first time, that he thinks that Reservoir Church is a miracle, or at least that we were his miracle. All of that love and hospitality, turns out Bob told everyone he knew about it. And every time someone said Americans or Christians are cold or uncaring or hypocrites or whatever, Bob would tell them they’re wrong because of what the people of Reservoir had done for him.
Those families who took him into their homes, he thinks of them as angels. He still can’t believe they did that for him.
And yeah, things were pretty rocky in the first few months and years after he won his asylum, but that’s partly because Bob was so discouraged and so depressed, and he just needed some time to feel safe and find his energy again.
His health is doing much better, he told me, his employment is steady, and it was time for him to visit us and make a donation to the church to express his thanks. I told him he didn’t need to do that. Best as I can tell, Bob is still pretty poor, and I told him to keep the money and pay it forward, but he said: no. He’s kind of shy and isn’t sure what he’d do, but he knows this church helps people, and so he met me before service to make a $1,000 cash donation to our neighboring and justice fund.
Bob was glowing when he passed me the envelope with all that cash in it. He looked great. His health is in really good shape now, I guess. He didn’t want to stay for church. He had to go home and get some sleep before going back to work Sunday afternoon. But he was really proud to be putting some funding into this community so we can continue to be a place where faith, hope, and love really matter.
Friends, when the world or maybe even when your life seems grim, when you’re discouraged in your faith and wonder if it even makes a difference to be formed to people of more faith, hope, and love, I ask you to remember Bob’s story and his investment in this community’s expression of our faith.
- Thank you, Bob.
- Thank you, Reservoir Church.
- Thank you, Jesus.
I want to end by returning again to the calls of the Way of Jesus in the passage we read today, and how they line up with this week’s invitations to prepare ourselves in our devotional.
There are seven short readings, but I want to highlight four themes that align with our passage.
12 So, brothers and sisters, because of God’s mercies, I encourage you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice that is holy and pleasing to God. This is your appropriate priestly service.
There is this old saying that religion without sacrifice is idolatry. Now, I know that every word in that sentence feels out of date. But what it means is that religion that offers us things but asks nothing of us tends to be shallow and manipulative. Religion that asks nothing of us tends to us using the gods to get power, or justify ourselves, and feel better about ourselves. And Paul and the Way of Jesus agree – we’re asked not just for an offering, but the living sacrifice of our whole lives.
And our devotional begins with this offering. The first three days invite us to present ourselves to the attention of ourselves and the attention of God. Bring our stress, our feelings, and our bodies before God and see what we have to say, see what God has to say. See what we might do with it all.
Life is stressful. Our government, our media, and our economy are flooding the zone with crap every day. They all have a lot of incentives to keep us distracted, outraged, and afraid. This is not making us stronger. It is making us stressed. My wife Grace – trained in psychology and counseling – points out often that it is making us project our anger and our fears sideways in all kinds of places. And so our Lent this year invites us to gather ourselves – our fears and our feelings in particular – to notice them and consider what to do with them all. (Our retreat in two weeks will be yet another invitation to this.)
Secondly,
2 Don’t be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can figure out what God’s will is—what is good and pleasing and mature.
This is central to the Way of Jesus and the wisdom of our faith. That the drift of this world will often harm our souls. And so for our faithfulness and our resilience, we need patterns of resistance, of non-conformity – better, more wholesome paths to follow.
Paul calls this the renewing of our mind, but it’s not just learning, it’s personal renewal, the ongoing cultivation of an inner self that thinks, feels, imagines, and wants differently.
The work I got caught up with years ago in the spiritual care for those in ICE detention was a practice of the renewing of my mind. The patterns of this world teach us that those in jail can and should be forgotten about, punished, and shipped away from us. Our faith teaches us Jesus is with them, that they too are image bearers of the living God, worthy of fellowship, worthy of love, worthy of freedom.
This week our devotional offers us an invitation to the renewing of our mind – what it calls discernment or testing of the spirits.
Thirdly,
4 We have many parts in one body, but the parts don’t all have the same function.
Our world doesn’t need heroes. I talked about this last week. It doesn’t need us to start a hundred new things. It doesn’t need us all to have a new idea. It needs communities. It needs people who don’t isolate but join in and build with what’s there. Our brother Bob I told you about is where he is today not because anybody started a new initiative or did anything special all by themselves, but because a whole bunch of us – inside and outside this church – said yes to invitations to be part of the body of Christ, each in our own way, to join in and love and build alongside each other.
Lastly, Hate evil, and hold on to what is good…. Be happy in your hope, stand your ground when you’re in trouble, and devote yourselves to prayer.
13 Contribute to the needs of God’s people, and welcome strangers into your home.
14 Bless people who harass you—bless and don’t curse them.
15 Be happy with those who are happy, and cry with those who are crying…
21 Don’t be defeated by evil, but defeat evil with good.
We could preach on this every week, every year, all life, and not exhaust our questions, our creativity, or the depth and wisdom of the radical way of Jesus in non-violent, fierce, non-conforming love. Deep faith, deep hope, radical love are mostly foreign to our world, and yet they are the center of the Way of Jesus. I told you one story about their fruit today. I’ve asked you to remember Bob’s sacrifice of what for him is an enormous financial investment in our community’s ongoing commitment to be a community of faith, hope, and love.
Friends, again, the first week of this devotional will also invite you to consider a small part of your purpose in this story. This is really so good. I hope you can dip in through the week.
And I invite you to stand with me if you’re able for a minute – perhaps open your hands – as I pray for us as we get going in this Lenten season.