Alright, How Do We Do This?

Text:  Romans 12:1-8

Theme:  “Alright, How Do We Do This?”

11^th Sunday after Pentecost

Christian Education Rally Sunday

August 24, 2014

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Denton, Texas

Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

+In the Name of Jesus+

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. 4 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your[a] faith; 7 if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; 8 if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead,[b] do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

There are hundreds upon hundreds of sermons in these eight verses alone, so I’m going to cut it down to size and focus on just one verse.  There are hundreds upon hundreds in this one verse, but I’ll give it a shot anyway.  It’s the first verse of the eight, and I’ll read it again:  Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.

Today is Christian Education Rally Day.  Our session, the governing body of our church, decided on this Sunday, and that’s fine.   Special thanks to Carol Nance, our elder in charge of Christian education, for the good work she has done.   Rally Day, among other things, celebrates that very Protestant contribution of the Sunday School (or Church School) to American Christianity.  So, as children, youth, and young adults go back to school, head off to college or university, and experience this annual time of transition in life, I challenge all of you, as disciples of Jesus Christ, to learn more about your faith; to get more comfortable with your Bible; to share your experience, strength, and hope with your fellow brothers and sisters.  Yes, I challenge you and I challenge myself.

It is a day and a time when challenges seem to be popular.  I’m thinking, for instance, of the ice bucket challenge that has raised more for ALSA– the group on the front line in the fight against Lou Gehrig’s disease – in one month than all of last year.

But today, based on this one verse I just read, I present a challenge much older and far deeper.  For starters, it’s not my challenge at all.  I’m just here to give it a voice.  It is, again, the first verse of the text: 

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.

“I urge you” – challenge you, appeal to you, exhort you, call you out – “to present your bodies as a living sacrifice.”  That’s quite a bit different than getting called out to pour a bucket of ice on your head or pony up one hundred dollars, isn’t it?

Well, what exactly is a “living sacrifice”?  The noun is “sacrifice” and the adjective is “living”, so let’s start with the noun:  sacrifice.  Sacrifice here doesn’t mean cutting a check to a charity or giving up chocolates for Lent. 

Sacrifice means death.  Something or someone dies.  Sacrifice, most fully understood from the Bible’s perspective, meant the shedding of blood.  It isn’t pretty.  It doesn’t fit very well in “Better Homes and Gardens” or “Southern Living” magazine.  The New Testament book of Hebrews declares that “…without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.”  When body and blood are spoken of separately, it denotes sacrifice.  A body deprived of its blood is dead.  The Scriptures declare:  “the life of the creature is in the blood.”

The real kicker, though, in this verse, is the adjective:  living.  Offer your bodies as a “living sacrifice.”  The language here seems almost contradictory.  It certainly is mysterious:  a “living sacrifice”. 

“A living sacrifice.”  It doesn’t mean that your heart stops pumping blood, your lungs stop breathing, or your brain waves stop registering.  It means that you no longer live for yourself.  Let me repeat:  it means you no longer live for yourself.

You live for God, in faith, and for your neighbor, in love.  What you attempt to put to death is self-centeredness.  In the literature of Alcoholics Anonymous, it puts forth that “self-centeredness, we think, is the root of all our problems.  We have to be rid of it or it kills us.”  The difference between a typical person and chronic alcoholic is just that the self-centeredness is more on display. 

This past week, a friend of mine, and a Christian, said that with all this ice bucket challenge water flying around it almost seemed like baptism.  I got to thinking and it reminded me of the answer an old catechism gave to the question:  “What does baptism signify?”  The answer is:  “It signifies that the Old Adam in us should, by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die with all sins and evil lusts and, again, a new man daily come forth and arise, who shall live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”

That’s a tall order.  Who is sufficient unto these things?  Or, more succinctly:  “Alright, how do we do this?”

How can we accept, in our day, this ancient and ever-fresh challenge?  The answer is that, in and of ourselves, we cannot.  The apostle is asking the impossible. 

But, you see, there’s this little, verbal clause in the living sacrifice challenge.  It’s almost like fine print that is so easily overlooked.  Depending on how you translate it into modern English, it’s three to five words.  The five word translation is “…in view of God’s mercies”.  The three word translation is “through God’s mercies.” 

Without God’s mercies we cannot live for God or for the neighbor.  We cannot live in faith, real faith, or in love, real love.  The message of the Christian Gospel is that God, in Jesus Christ, is merciful to us.  That’s what the cross of Jesus Christ and His empty tomb are all about.  When those mercies are kept in view, well, miracles have been known to happen.

Most of the examples I’ve seen of the ice bucket challenge show people that don’t bring much with them.  In fact, all that they have on is usually a t-shirt and a pair of shorts.  There’s no luggage or excess baggage lying around. They don’t need it anyway. 

Similarly, when, through God’s mercies, you accept the challenge to become a living sacrifice, you leave behind all that spiritual, mental, and emotional “excess baggage” that only weighs you down.  Probably the heaviest and worst piece of baggage that we get to leave behind is what we call resentment.  The longer you carry a resentment over someone or over some thing that has happened to you, you’ll wake up one day to discover that you’re drinking poison.  You may even be entirely justified in that resentment.  But the more you hold on to it, the more it will eat you alive.  Why not, by the mercies of God, let go of that resentment!  Make, by the mercies of God, the amends that need to be made.  Then, by the mercies of God, offer yourself as a living sacrifice.

My own experiences of this do not constitute some dramatic testimony suitable for Youtube or social media.  But I will say this to the congregation where God has called me:  I’ve had just enough moments in my life, times of being a living sacrifice, to tell you that it’s the most incredible thing in the world.

For the person who, by the mercies of God, has accepted the living sacrifice challenge, what is it like?  In the ALS ice bucket challenge, you’re all wet on the outside.  In the living sacrifice challenge, you’re different on the inside. 

Here’s how one participant described it.  His name is V.V. Raman, and this is what he wrote after the Gujarat earthquake struck India in January of 2000:

When lightning strikes a praying crowd

And the pious burn and die;

When earthquakes bury decent folk

And orphaned children cry;

When sick and old are abandoned too

And people lose their mind;

Try not for these and disasters such

Answers clear to find.

There are times to ask if God indeed

Is fancy or a fact.

There are times at which we need to go

And soon begin to act.

With loss and pain and intense grief

We don’t have much to gain,

From arguments on heaven and hell.

They’ll all be just in vain.

Let’s search and see what we can do

For those who are in need,

How best we can console and heal,

How we can clothe and feed.

It does not matter if we do not know

Why there’s pain around.

What we need are helping hands,

Not learned views and sound.

Amen.