Morning Prayer, Tuesday, November 15, 2011.
Romans 12:1 “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. 3 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. 4 For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the
same function, 5 so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members
one of another. 6 We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in
proportion to faith; 7 ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; 8 the exhorter, in
exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.
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Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; 10 love one another with
mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. 11 Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit,
serve the Lord. 12 Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. 13 Contribute to
the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. 14 Bless those who persecute you; bless
and do not curse them. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16 Live in
harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be
wiser than you are. 17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the
sight of all. 18 If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. …
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We are invited this week to think about the spiritual discipline of sacrifice; how sacrifice
might shape our relationships with one another and with God. We may not be particularly fond
of the idea of sacrifice – which we usually think about as giving away or giving up – our time,
our energy, our money, our stuff, our lives; in Lent, giving up a some guilty pleasure or habit.
Sacrifice is hard. All the same, this is a fitting time to consider sacrifice in our lives; here, in
these days between Veterans’ Day – which was observed last Friday – and Thanksgiving –
which is just…well, I don’t need to tell you how near, or far away, Thanksgiving is!
Neither of these is a liturgical, “churchly” festival – although we do, as a Christian
community, have much to say about such things as sacrifice and thanksgiving. Each week in this
place, around that table, we celebrate the life of Christ offered in love for us in the Great
Thanksgiving Meal that is vital to who we are as God’s people.
But we talk less about sacrifice, even in religious circles where the idea might have a
prominent place. Maybe it’s all that religious history of other altars on which animals were
slaughtered, and from which blood flowed. There's something uneasy about sacrifice. Yet, all
you need to do is go down those stairs, those stairs to either side of the steps that go up to the
Christus Rex; go down those stairs and you will find a crucifix, an image of Christ, nailed to the
cross. Perhaps we don’t talk so much about sacrifice because, well, words escape us…
We don’t like to make sacrifices, and we’re uncomfortable asking people to make
sacrifices for us. This has been one of the criticisms raised about our recent wars, namely, a lack
of “shared sacrifice.” A few individuals and families have borne the burden of a nation; some
have even made what we euphemistically refer to as the “ultimate sacrifice.” We honored those
war dead of ours last Friday, as part of our Veterans’ Day commemoration. Theirs was, finally, a
dying sacrifice.
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But our reading from Paul’s Letter to the Romans this morning talks about a “living
sacrifice.” Strange language. We know the sacrifices of the dead, but “living sacrifice?” “Our
bodies as a living sacrifice?” Our whole being? Not our stuff, or our time, or even our lives –
once – in death – heroic or otherwise; but ourselves, in life. What might that look like, this
“living sacrifice?”
Maybe this is what it is like, at least in part. Paul continues: “I say to everyone among
you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think.” There’s a sacrifice! How easy
is that? Many of us are pretty good at thinking quite highly about ourselves! A very real hazard
on a university campus! We know some of those with very high opinions about themselves: they
are the ones who know you but who walk past you on the sidewalk without even acknowledging
you are there; who pretend you’re not around when they enter a room where you are; who don’t
seem to care enough to learn your name; who think they can’t be bothered with the more menial
labors of our common tasks; those who, in these and other ways, big and small, let us know that
they will not be distracted from their much more important pursuits by the likes of us. I know
folks like that. I bet you do, too.
But what about us? Don’t we, too, think more highly of ourselves than we ought?
Consider how we are compelled to self-promote if we are to get where we want to be in the
world; how we must think and talk and write quite highly about ourselves to accomplish our
goals. Remember preparing those application essays for admission to college? You never looked
so good, right? What about when you struck up conversations with reps at the Career Fair, or
Graduate School Fair? For those who may be graduating next month: what are you planning to
say at that upcoming job interview? We tell others how brilliant, how wonderful, how hardworking and dependable, how creative and competent, how perfect we are. Truth be told, we also
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think quite highly about ourselves. And we imagine that we can overcome all our challenges in
life on our own because we have come to believe all the stuff we say about ourselves.
Then again, maybe by this time in the semester, we feel pretty shaky about this; as we
begin to doubt our own hype. With the pressures of the calendar: tests to take and exams to
write; projects and portfolios to complete; papers to finish –or begin; meetings, grading,
practices of all sorts, responsibility to family or club or committee… Nowadays, we may wonder
whether we’ve really got the right stuff to be here; whether we’re really prepared for all this.
Maybe we’re not cut out for this? We feel exposed. For some, these are days when it may be
almost impossible to think too highly of ourselves. Our trouble might be quite the opposite.
Our sacrifice these days, what we are to give up, might well be the lie about ourselves
behind which we live. Among the casualties we encounter may be our own false sense of self;
our “thinking more highly than we ought.” And that’s ok, I think. Paul goes on to write about life
together in community, in that body of Christ we heard about here, last week; where everyone
has a part to play; where each of us needs the other. How shall we live “in harmony with one
another, or peaceably with all?” By not being haughty, but associating with the lowly; by not
claiming to be wiser than we are. By not thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought.
Maybe part of that “living sacrifice” to which we are called is giving up or giving away
our sense of self-importance; maybe it is owning up to the reality about who we are: recognizing
our dependence on others; boasting not of our brilliance but admitting our weakness and our
need for others. Maybe it’s giving up all our pretensions to greatness and absolute selfsufficiency; and instead recognizing the truth of our needs, our limits, our loneliness, our
anxieties, our failures, and our emptiness. Our humanity. Maybe it is in this sacrifice - of
ourselves as we imagine ourselves to be - that we open ourselves to being filled by one another,
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and by God in Christ, so that we might become who we are called to be: creatures of God –
whole and holy – called into community.
Part of our living sacrifice, then, looks like this – hands and arms extended. It is a gesture
of sacrifice, of vulnerability, of giving up and giving away – Christ teaches us that. But it is also
a gesture of gratitude. With these same open hands - by which we have entrusted ourselves our
true selves to one another, and in which we have received the goodness of others; with these
same hands we offer up thanksgiving to the One from whom we have received that which
satisfies all our needs.
Amen.
MWB