Transcription
Here are God’s word this morning.
If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, let Israel say. If it had not been the Lord who was on our side when our enemies attacked us, then they would have swallowed us up alive when their anger was kindled against us. Then the flood would have swept us away. The torrent would have gone over us. Then over us would have gone the raging waters. Blessed be the Lord who has not given us as prey to their teeth. We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers. The snare is broken and we have escaped. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth, amen.
In our New Testament lesson from the epistle to the Romans, Romans chapter 12, verses one through eight. Hear God’s word, oh brothers and sisters.
I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned for as in one body, we have many members and not all the members have the same function. So we who are many are one body in Christ and individually we are members of one body, of one another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, prophecy in proportion to faith, ministry in ministering, the teacher in teaching, the exhorter in exhortation, the giver in generosity, the leader in diligence, the compassionate in cheerfulness. Brothers and sisters, this is the word of our Lord.
Let us pray.
Loving God, we thank you. We thank you for your word that guides our path and lights our hearts along the way. We ask that we would be able to hear your word today. It would show us how we, your people, can be a greater people, how we can lead into your kingdom here on earth. Bless us, Lord, as we hear, as we listen. Change our hearts, change our minds and transform us so that we might serve you in all that we do. In your blessed and wondrous name we pray, amen.
There are really two segments that I wanna highlight today in our reading from Romans. The first is at the very beginning when Paul writes about presenting ourselves as sacrifices. And then the second is when we consider ourselves as part or parts of one body and members of that body. As we begin, we hear Paul’s words to the church in Rome and his encouragement to offer ourselves as sacrifices, as well as being transformed by God. Now, it also comes with a negative assertion that we are not to let ourselves conform to the world. A more common way of putting this is to say to be in the world, but not of the world. This statement would tie back to Jesus’ teaching concerning his kingdom not being of this world as he states in John 17. But it’s not an easy statement to live out as often happens with scripture. It is easy to understand, easy to hear, but in living out comes the difficulties. The pressure to conform to the world is not one that is new to the church. It’s not one that we are just now dealing with. The pressure to conform to the world is one that existed when Jesus was ministering in Galilee, in Nazareth, in Jerusalem, and it is one that we face today. It is one where the cries of the modern Pharisees will say, stop it. That’s inconvenient. We don’t like that. That’s hard for us to do. Now we can conform. No, no, we can’t. Even when Jesus comes riding on a donkey on Palm Sunday, we look at that moment and we don’t see the push to conform. Jesus, we’re going to celebrate you, but we want you to be the Messiah we want. We want you to be the Messiah we expect you to be, not the one who teaches and preaches, heals and restores. We want a warrior who is gonna pull out his sword and drive out Rome. But does Jesus conform to the cries of the crowd? No. The church has faced that pressure to conform, be it pressure from nations, from people, from political parties, and it is a challenge for the church to forever prioritize following Christ, following God. This fight really manifests in a great way when Rome persecutes the church because of its refusal to state that the emperor was a God. We remember that tricky statement of the early church that there was only one God and Jesus was his son. That sticky statement prevented Christians from declaring that the emperor was God. And what was the weight of that? The weight of not conforming to what Rome called them to do caused persecution left and right. It caused executions, torture, all of these things were levied on the early church. And yet the church refused to conform. It refused to give into the pressures.
As we all know, these pressures happen. They happen in our world and in our lives. There’s the pressures that abound when we’re young, the pressures to conform to what our friends want, what our friends say is cool. Those pressures don’t go away as we get older. The pressures to conform to our world don’t decrease as we grow older. The fact is that pressure gets heavier and heavier. It’s harder and harder to remember that we are not owing allegiance to anything else but God first of all. And yes, it does feel like you’re swimming against the current to follow God in the current world we live in. Yes, it is a feeling of ice skating uphill as we seek to be God’s people in a world that is tearing itself apart. Like lions and hyenas trying to devour a carcass, it feels like that in our world. Where the slightest thing can set somebody off in the grocery store line. Where the slightest thing can cause somebody to scream at another person for no reason at all. And yet, we are called to not conform but to love one another. We are called to be God’s people no matter what. And that’s hard in these polarizing times, in these times where it feels like whatever we do is wrong, whatever we choose is wrong.
The challenge for us is to look at what God desires, to look at what God wants and do it. But then there comes this other part that Paul talks about in this letter. There’s this other piece where each of us has a role to play in God’s plan. Each of us is part of a greater whole. Each of us needs to look at where God is calling us and serve as best we can with the gifts and abilities God has given us.
It was funny, the other day, last Saturday, not this past Saturday, but last Saturday, I was up at Doug Hill Park with all the kids getting ready to show what they can do with flag football. And it was the younger kids up there. And we announced, hey, we’re gonna have you catch the ball or throw the ball. You can be a quarterback or a wide receiver. How long do you think that quarterback line was? Long, everybody wants to throw the ball. How long were the wide receiver lines? Really, really short, like three kids in a line. Everybody wanted to be the quarterback. Everybody wanted to throw the ball. And the challenge is not everybody is that gifted and not everybody has those gifts.
So what do you do? And that’s one of the most frustrating things as we serve God. Every one of us has an idea of how we are going to best serve God. And sometimes we line up with God’s plans. Sometimes we look at ourselves here and God has us out here. And that’s also a challenge. As we discuss where we are and how we are to serve.
I remember many years ago when I was first in ministry and we were discussing the incoming consistory and who we were gonna approach and who was gonna serve where in what office of the consistory. And I was floored mostly because I was newly in ministry and a seminarian, I had just gotten out of seminary. And one of the members of the consistory said, well, we can have them be an elder because they put in their time.
I don’t know. Have you read the book of church order? Putting in their time is not one of the qualifications that God has given us for deacon. Putting in their time is not something that is there about qualifications for elder. It’s not a qualification for minister either. Or for professor of, well, okay, professor of theology, they have put in their time. They went to a lot of school and a lot of hoops, but that’s not what God had in mind when God gifted them. The challenge is we have this odd view of where God is gifting us, how God is gifting us. Now I read at that time, the offices of deacon and elder again and again and again, and I couldn’t find anything about how a deacon needs to serve before they can be an elder because they got to put in their time. All the gifts listed for deacon, that’s not one of them. All of the gifts listed for elder, those aren’t it.
The challenge for us is to have a realistic expectation, a realization of where our gifts are, where God has blessed us and where God has not. Not all of us are called to be teachers. Not all of us are called to be exhorters. As scripture said, God has a plan and an intent for every one of us. God blesses us and gifts every one of us a particular way. But for me to say that David is gifted in a particular way, exactly like Sebi, you know what, I might be right, but I also might be wrong. And for Sebi to say, oh, I can do exactly what David does. That ignores where his gifts are, where David’s gifts are. All of us are built in a different form and manner than God built the next person to us. And that’s beautiful, but it’s challenging for each one of us because it means sitting down, understanding and assessing where God and how God has blessed every one of us. The reality is that there are members of our body who are gifted in one way, and there are members of our body who are gifted another. And the challenge for us is to accept who and what God is gifting us to be, but also, also making the most of those gifts God in that infinite plan of God’s intends something amazing for each and every one of us. But are we actually listening to how God is calling us? Sometimes it takes us having a hard conversation with ourselves.
I remember back in high school, I had a plan. I was gonna be the next Mike Ditka. I’m a Bears fan, allow me that. Or Shannon Sharp or Jay Novacek. You might remember that name, Giants fans. I was gonna be a tight end. I was gonna catch every ball near me. First couple of practices, coach pulls me to the side. You can guess where this is going. Bill, actually it wasn’t Bill. Pekich, I need you on the line. Nope, no coach, I’m gonna be a tight end. I need you on the line, you didn’t hear me. You’re going onto the line, Bill. I was crushed. I was devastated. All my plans. But coach was right. It’s not how I was gifted. I might have had great hands, but I was slow. I could have been covered by Leon Lett. Okay, I’m quoting 90s football players, at least give me a little grace there. I could have been covered by my grandmother. I was that slow. The fact of the matter is not all of us are blessed in a particular way. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t blessed. Just because our gifts don’t look like the person next to us doesn’t mean we are not gifted by God.
Think about this, and we’ll use the image God uses in Romans as well. What would it look like if a body was made up only of eyeballs? We laugh and we kind of chuckle about it because it’s a funny image. A body made up of eyeballs. It looks like an amoeba of eyeballs. There’s no feet, it’s just eyeballs. But we’re not all eyeballs. We’re not. Not a single one of us is in the same way gifted as the next person. Not all of us are separate in this. The problem is we need to accept what God has done with us and for us. Consider those gifts, and here comes the other hard part in this. Build up one another for their gifts as well. Because this is the other thing that breaks my heart. That we, that is the greater church do. We fail to help one another use their gifts to its fullest. We diminish or downplay them.
How many of you have ever heard, well, you know, the office of deacon and elder, elders are above the deacons? How many of you have ever heard that? Honestly, raise your hands, come on. I know, every one of us has at some point probably heard it. Is it true? Not in the least. All offices serve God the same, but differently. Whether you’re a deacon or an elder or a minister, whether you’re an organist, a Sunday school teacher, whether you’re helping with coffee, or whatever God has called you to, whatever God is blessing you to, God has called, and that gift is glorious. However you are called by God to serve, that is a glorious calling. The challenge for all of us is to build up this body, to build up one another, to not dismiss another’s gifts, to not say you’re too young to read scripture. I was over the moon when two of our Sunday school kids signed up to read scripture next week. And you know what? I love it, because it is two courageous young people who are willing to stand in front of all of you. I’m just as proud of the older members, and older, I mean everybody over Ellie and Stella’s age, who get up here and read scripture, because it is not an unsettling thing. You’re standing in front of everybody. You’re standing in front of God. It is courageous to do so. But do we build each other up about that? Not as often as we could. When someone volunteers to do something, do we build them up as we could? Sometimes the greatest gift that you can give is your willingness to serve. The challenge for us is to remember, to remember how God calls us to build up the kingdom, not tear it down. Tells us to serve and live and be, to not conform to the world where everyone and everything is devalued. God values every one of us. God calls every single one of us, be they tiny like Maddie and Parker, or older like Jim and Jim. The fact is God is calling all of us to serve. But we will, but will we nurture and encourage one another in doing that? Will we nourish and support each other so that we can build up this kingdom of God’s on earth, so that we might live into that great commandment of loving God and loving our neighbor. Remember, brothers and sisters, however you are gifted, please, please use those gifts. Use them for God’s kingdom. If you need to sit down and assess them, talk with a friend, help have them see the person that God has blessed you to be. If you need to pray about it, pray about it. But most of all, brothers and sisters, may we live and serve as God intends us to do. Children of God, amen.
And now let us respond to God through our gifts.