Grace mercy and peace be to your from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Our text this morning is the epistle lesson from Romans 11, 12.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
St Paul writing in his letter to the Christian Church in Rome writes the following: “I appeal to you brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship.”
Paul commands us to present our bodies “living sacrifices”. The question is; what does it mean to be a living sacrifice?
We probably think we know. We probably assume that it means something like what we hear football coaches and motivational speakers talking about. Giving up something to achieve something else. Being completely devoted to one single purpose. We might think of Chris Gardner, the true to life character portrayed by Will Smith in the movie The Pursuit of Happiness. He held down a job, volunteered at an investment firm and raised a son all at the same time so that he could achieve his goal. We apply that same notion here and think they are the same thing. Work hard. Devote yourself to the task. Achieve and accomplish your goal.
The trouble is, Paul is not talking about achieving a goal. Paul is not talking about setting one thing aside to achieve another. Paul is talking about your death.
The first thing to note is that Paul is not saying that you should make the sacrifice. In other words, this isn’t a text about you giving something up or setting something aside. It is much bigger than that. Paul is saying that you should be the sacrifice.
In Paul’s context and in Paul’s day, sacrifices were not high achievers. Sacrifices were not the best of the best. Sacrifices were dead. A sacrifice was something you brought to the temple, slaughtered and then burned up. A sacrifice is not a metaphor. Not a symbol. A sacrifice was a thing that died.
So if the question is what does it mean to be a living sacrifice, the answer is the this: If you are going to be a living sacrifice, if you are going to be holy and acceptable to God, then you have to die. There is no way around it. You have to be completely gotten rid of, reduced to zero.
We think of sacrifice as “dream it and do it” go for it and achieve it. That might work in the business world or on the football field or maybe in the classroom. It doesn’t work with God. When it comes to our relationship with God we must be sacrificed.
This message is consistently given to us all throughout the scriptures. When it comes to God’s law and what he demands, we haven’t done it. Where we have tried we have even messed things up and gotten in the way. And because of not just those things we have done wrong, but even and especially because of our best efforts and those things we think we have done right, therefore we deserve to receive from God his anger and punishment. We deserve hell.
So Paul says to present yourselves for your death. Submit to your death. Stop trying to prove yourself. Stop trying to justify yourself. Present yourselves as meat, blood and bones fit for the fire, and he will make you holy and acceptable.
Paul commands us to be holy. Holiness is another one of those words that we don’t quite understand these days. It is a word that has changed meaning as it has been used in our own context and culture. These days to be holy means to behave in a very moral or ethical sort of way. A holy person is a person who lives their life by the book.
I was recently watching a 60 Minutes special on Albert Pujols, the St Louis Cardinal baseball player. He is a devout Christian. He doesn’t drink or smoke. He won’t even get on an elevator alone with a woman not his wife. He visits sick kids in hospitals. He provides aid for the poor in his native Dominican Republic. He is by earthly standard a guy who is devoted to living a holy life.
But the trouble is, Albert Pujols isn’t holy. Holiness isn’t another one of those “dream it and do it” ideals for us to live up to. Holiness isn’t what we should be or become or how we should behave. Holiness is what God is. Holiness is where God is. Holiness can only come from and through God.
In the Old Testament book of Leviticus the Lord has this to say: “You are holy because I the Lord your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2) Our modern translations often don’t quite do this verse the proper justice. Our ESV puts it like this: “You shall be holy because I the Lord your God am holy”. It sounds like a command, like one of those statements connected to an “or else”. Or a “You’d better”.
Not so.
The grammar is important. It’s an imperfect verb. It is a statement of fact. It is kind of like saying you wear red because you are a buckeye fan. The one necessitates the other. God is telling us, informing us as to what we are because of who he is.
He is holy. And because he is holy, we are also holy. Our holiness comes from Him. It’s not something we have concocted, come up with on our own, achieved because of our hard work and devotion, it is something that is ours only and always because it has come from him. God gives his holiness. God’s holiness comes to us as a gift.
In the Old Testament God gave his holiness by means of the temple and the sacrifices spelled out by Moses in the book of the Law. The people came with their sin to the temple, they offered their sacrifices, God received their sacrifices and sent them home with his holiness.
The New Testament changes the picture. If the Temple was the center of God’s holiness and the focus of God’s salvation in the Old Testament, Christ became the new focus of salvation and the new location for God’s holiness in the Gospels. People came to Jesus sick and went home healed. People came to Jesus oppressed and possessed by Satan and went home free. People came to Jesus with sin and went home forgiven. All the marks of un-holiness were taken by Jesus so that people left from their encounters with him as brand new and as holy. Holiness was, and is, the result of God’s power and God’s healing, and God’s forgiveness and God’s salvation found in Jesus.
Paul was aware of this as he was writing our text so here is the picture he presents: You come to God with nothing but your sin. Because of this sin you must die and there is no way around it. So present yourself for that death. “Present your bodies to God as a living sacrifice.” And here’s what God will do. He will take your body, he will take your death and in exchange he will give you his body, his life. You will be the body of Christ. You will have the life of Christ lived in you. And as such you will be holy.
Your life won’t be your life. Your life won’t be the life that you have built or achieved or earned or won. It will be the life that he achieved that he lived, that he earned and that he has given to you for free only because he has loved you.
This is the gospel. The gospel of Jesus Christ.
Just one week ago, here at St Paul Chuckery, there were three things that happened. Two were wonderful gifts and miracles of God, the third was somewhat tragic. Last week God gave out his holiness. God fulfilled this word in our text. First when he baptized little McCain Thrush; miraculously putting to death McCain’s sinful nature and simultaneously raising him and resurrecting him to a new life, to a holy life. And then, God bent the rules of heaven and earth as he tucked his body and blood in with and under ordinary bread and wine so that we ate and drank and were filled with the body and blood of Jesus. Our sins were forgiven and God gave his holiness to you and me to be shared by you and me. In these actions God gave to us right here in this place what the New Testament calls koinonia, unity and fellowship and life together.
I am concerned that we forgot this unity. Church ended. We sang the last hymn. And then from what I could tell, we proceeded to entrench ourselves against one another. Our words were laced with frustration and distrust and anger against one another. God gave us unity. You divided yourselves against yourselves.
Yes, St Paul Chuckery has money problems. You have this problem as the result of probably ten or more years of spending too much and then passing the bill along through Thrivent. You need to fix this and you need to commit yourselves to work together and to listen to each other so that you can fix your problems.
So far you have not. I have heard reports of finger pointing and blame and passing the buck. You have allowed new frustrations coupled with old sins to divide you. You need to repent of this spirit of division. You need to confess this sin here to each other. You need to learn to forgive and love and trust each other. We need to have our unity and fellowship and life together restored. I would propose that we do that right now.
In your blue hymnal open to Page 308 to an order for public confession…
In our Gospel text from Matthew 16 Jesus says something entirely profound and powerful. He says to Peter, “On this rock, that is to say on the confession that Jesus is the Christ, I shall build the church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
The foundation of the Christian Church is the forgiveness given by Jesus. Satan and his demons and all the gates of hell would try to lock us up in frustration and anger and sin and bitterness and self justification. Satan would try to tear us apart and drive a wedge into our fellowship and there are times that he has had an awful lot of success in doing that very thing. But Christ’s church is built on forgiveness. It is the very foundation of it. And this forgiveness smashes the gates of hell and obliterates the chains of sin.
And Jesus gives us the key. The key to unlock heaven. And Jesus gives the authority to administer his forgiveness to his church. “Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
I have heard your confession. As a called and ordained servant of Christ and by his authority I forgive you your sin in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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