Over 50 people came together yesterday morning for Valley Worship at St Swithun’s in Martyr Worthy, after which the Annual Village and the Annual District Council Meetings for Martyr Worthy (both ably chaired by Sara Mason) were held. The service concentrated across its talk, music and prayers on the theme of offering ourselves as living sacrifices to God as part of our worship of him; the service was led by Nicky Barber and Sonia Cragg, Sarah Noble, Tim Clapp and John Barber all contributed to it. Mary Purser was interviewed as part of the service’s ‘Everyday Lives’ series and spoke powerfully about her really fascinating life as well as the strong foundations of her living faith.
In parallel with the service, a lively and well-attended session of ‘The Ark’ was held in the Village Hall, which was led creatively (as ever) by Verity Greig and, judging by the enthusiastic reports delivered by the children at the send of the service, was a great success.
The text on which the talk (given by John Barber) was based was Romans 12, verses 1 and 2, as follows:
1 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. 2 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.
The recording of the talk can be accessed by this link and the text can be found below:
Many of you joined us last Sunday for Parish Communion here in Martyr Worthy, at which Gerry gave an excellent sermon about Jesus’ invitation to his disciples to deny themselves and take up their own crosses to follow him.
Today I am going to be speaking on a similar theme – on what it means for our spiritual worship to involve presenting our bodies, in other words ourselves, as living sacrifices holy and acceptable to God, as verse 1 states.
In preparing this talk I was reminded of how critical it can be to understand the meaning of just one or two words. Nearly 20 years ago, having been very happy professionally at my then firm for nearly a decade, it was taken over by – dare I say it – an aggressive American investment bank. Overnight its culture and practices changed for the worse. In the midst of this wearying season I was approached to join one of the firm’s clients, to do much the same work I had done as an advisor to it, but instead in-house as one of its partners. My employment contract was very detailed and had strict non-compete terms, which — if enforced — would mean that I would have to stay out of the market for a year before joining the client. With a young family and a substantial mortgage I could not afford to be without work and income. As a result I engaged a law firm to review my contract and determine whether I could leave without triggering this clause. It delivered some expensive, but valuable, advice that I could do so, based on a very careful interpretation across the dense pages of my contract of just one word – ‘compete’ — and its meaning in different professional circumstances.
I think the key to understanding this passage is to focus on one word – sacrifice. What does it generally mean? In our day, I’d suggest it is mostly used and understood as a verb, typically meaning to give up something valuable, often voluntarily, but also at a cost, to serve a bigger purpose or achieve a larger goal.
In the Apostle Paul’s day, and in the centuries leading up to it for the Jewish people, its connotations would probably have been more as a noun, as in ‘a’ sacrifice. Very simply, in Old Testament times God allowed his people to deal with their sin by sacrificing precious things, ones that had to be freely offered and consecrated to him and were without blemish nor defect. Why was this necessary? Because God, who is both holy and just, had to deal with their sin by some means – he couldn’t ignore it and his people could not have access to him without bearing a cost as a penalty for it. But, as the Old Testament frequently recounts, these sacrifices were never enough, as the people kept falling short of the standards God set for them.
God’s eventual solution to this problem was to pay the penalty for his people’s sin himself, when his beloved son Jesus died on the cross. He provided the ultimate sacrifice as the perfect and unblemished Lamb of God. This was a once in history, entirely complete, unrepeatable act of sacrifice to pay the full penalty for the sin of all people who put their trust in Jesus – very much including us here today. Just as was the case with the Israelites, in our own strength we could never make ourselves right with God by trying to be good enough to meet his standards, nor by offering sacrifices when we fail and fall short of them. But – incredibly – we don’t have to, because Jesus has stood in our place in receiving God’s judgment; we have become holy and acceptable to God, not because of what we have done, but instead because of what Jesus has done for us.
Maybe this is all very familiar ground – covered in sermon after sermon and before every act of communion – and maybe we’ve become dulled to quite how astonishing these ‘mercies of God’ are, as verse 1 puts it. So let’s pause to consider them and their impact on us again — we are free, we are forgiven, we no longer have to bear the guilt and penalty of our sin; we have been reconciled to God and are accepted, just as we are – we don’t have to strive fruitlessly to achieve impossible goals; we can have confidence that nothing can separate us now from the love of God in Christ Jesus, not even all the many ways we have disappointed him by our thoughts and deeds. He has provided the means to be released from their burden. This is really good news!
What difference should this good news make in living out our lives? Now we don’t have to serve God nor make sacrifices to him to win his favour. Instead, having received his mercy freely and at no cost to ourselves, we can choose to serve him out of gratitude for his forgiveness and love. That’s what Paul is encouraging us to do as an act of worship of God.
But how do we do this? Paul is really speaking about the offering of our whole selves to God, body, mind, heart and spirit, all that we are. And, crucially, God wants this sacrifice to be a living one, one that is vital, active, continuous and engaged, again involving all of our energies, talents and time, all committed to him and seeking to serve him, wherever we are and whatever we do.
So let’s take a moment to assess where we stand in light of these conclusions. Have we really taken on board the mercies of God, confessing how we’ve fallen short of his best for us and accepting his free gift of forgiveness? Have we really thought about why we are here in church today – being completely honest with ourselves, are we seeking to check a box with God this Sunday morning and then go about the other 167 hours in the week under our own strength and following our own will, maybe even in ways that are inconsistent with all that we have been taught on Sunday? Do we take comfort in our spiritual rituals but could be missing out on a real relationship with God? For it’s actually not about being in a certain building, as wonderful an ancient space as one like this is, nor about saying certain words in the right order, as beautifully crafted, elegant and comforting as familiar liturgy can be.
God’s nature hasn’t changed – he is the same God who long ago spoke to his people through the prophet Jeremiah to say ‘I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the LORD. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart’ (Jeremiah 24:7). He longs for relationship with us and will always respond, whenever we turn to him.
He also gives us freedom to relate to him a way that fits our character. When I first became a Christian at university I was taught – quite rightly – about the importance of daily engagement with God through Bible reading and prayer and was encouraged to start my day in that way. Even though I am a reasonably studious person who loves the Word of God, and am quite calm and normally able to sit still to concentrate, for years and years I struggled with these practices. I found my mind often wandered off whatever Bible passage I was reading, I struggled to pray with consistency and much of the time I really just wanted to move on and launch into the day.
It was only when we moved to the country in 2004 that I discovered a new way of doing this that opened up a much deeper relationship with God. Before heading to London on the train, I started walking across neighbouring fields with our dogs early in the morning, revelling in the fresh air in whatever conditions, and listening to Bible passages while in motion rather than reading them in a fixed place. I also found that there was something about being out in his creation that made talking to God so much easier for me and I could hear his voice more acutely – it became clear that I needed the elements of motion and visual stimulus to make my relationship with God come alive afresh every morning.
Let’s return to the concept of our spiritual worship being to offer ourselves as living sacrifices. What does this really translate to in practice? Perhaps as a start not compartmentalising the ‘Christian’ part of our lives on Sundays from the rest of our days. This means acting and thinking across every aspect of our lives in ways that show our relationship with God really matters, in how we treat and judge other people, how we speak, what our priorities are, what our ethical choices are, where we direct our financial resources and how we spend our time, what occupies our minds and where we concentrate our attention.
But, beyond that, again the use of the word ‘sacrifice’ in these verses alerts us that whatever we are called to do in gratitude to God for his mercy will be costly. When confronted with whatever pain this involves, we may be tempted to offer only a fraction of ourselves to God, to hold back, to find ways to protect ourselves. That is when to think about how Jesus did the opposite – emptying himself completely to save us.
In the face of that depth of love, what is it that God is calling you to do for him that is costly? Whatever it is that will be your own spiritual act of worship.
Wonderfully, as we offer those acts of worship, we are responding to the clarion call in verse 2 of this passage not to ‘be conformed to this world.’ We are behaving differently than the world would suggest, not in our own self-interest and reflecting a different set of values. Progressively we will be transformed, not only in our hearts (as represented by our bodies) but also in our minds, as verse 2 of this passage encourages us to do. They will be renewed, or re-oriented, with new priorities, ones that reflect what is ‘good and acceptable and perfect’ in God’s eyes, again as verse 2 states.
Is pursuing God in these ways worth it? Does he merit worship through the sacrifice of our time, energy, commitment and attention to concentrate on what is important to him and what is lasting rather than passing?
Few of us are called to give up our very lives sacrificially to God, but in closing we can turn to the testimony of Alexei Navalny as we ponder these questions. It has emerged since his brutal death that, having been an atheist, he became a Christian during the final years of his life, saying that he was especially motivated by the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied”. At the conclusion of the trial that led to his sentencing under a special regime involving the harshest prison conditions in Russia, very movingly Navalny said ‘while certainly not really enjoying the place where I am, I have no regrets…. It’s fine, because I did the right thing. On the contrary, I feel a real kind of satisfaction.’ May he rest in peace and may his example of costly sacrifice both challenge and inspire us.
Amen.