Romans 12:1-8
Proper 16 / Year A
St. Paul writes:
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.
What have you brought
with you today to offer to God? Perhaps some
money. Some of you have come to offer a
song or a hymn, others an act of service such as ushering or reading or
preparing the altar. What did you bring
here today to offer? This is one
question I want you to ponder.
Here is
another: Why did you bring it? What are you hoping to accomplish by your
offering? If you are the Kitchen Queen,
perhaps you brought a tasty treat to foster fellowship and hospitality after
the service. If you are the organist
perhaps you prepared a voluntary to raise our spirits through classic music
composed to the glory of God. If you are
acolyting for the very first time, perhaps you want to do something useful for
the church all the while taking another step toward adulthood. Why did you bring your offering?
The Hebrew word for
‘sacrifice’ is korbán, which literally
means “to come closer.” Given this understanding,
the purpose of every sacrifice or offering is to get closer to God, and, in
some form or fashion, to get closer to God’s community in this place.
When it comes to
making an offering, Paul encourages us not to set aside some small part of
ourselves – what we have or what we can do – but rather to offer our bodies as a living
sacrifice. Like we pray in Rite 1 Holy
Eucharist:
And here we offer
and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a
reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee…
This kind of prayer
where we offer something to God is called an ‘oblation.’ We offer bread and wine in order that it may
be transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ. We offer our selves in order to be
transformed into the image of Christ.
There is a story about St. Jerome, the fifth century figure who
translated bible from Greek into Latin. God asks him, “What do you have for me
today, Jerome? He answers, “Lord, I give
you my prayer.” “Good! And what else?” Jerome cites his self-discipline, his vigils,
his love for those who came to visit him, and more. God responds, “Anything else?” Jerome, dejected, says, “I don’t know what
else I can give you!” The Lord then says to him: “There
is still something you haven’t given me.
You haven’t given me your sins!”
I like this story
because it suggests there is nothing we need to hide or hold back when we offer
ourselves to God. A prayer by Pedro de
la Cruz offers the same lesson, but in more detail:
Lord, I offer you
all of me, all that I am and all that I am not. I offer you every good decision and every
regrettable mistake, every great accomplishment and every missed opportunity,
every divinely inspired gift and every unapplied talent, every success and
every miserable failure. I offer you all
joy and all heartache, every kindness and every bitterness to be forgotten,
every twinkle in my eye and every tear flowing down my cheek, every great love
and each lost or irrecoverable act of charity.
I offer you every
quiet reflective moment and all of the unneeded chaos around me, all things
holy and good in me and all things in need of greater purification. I give you every joyful memory and every
bitter pain, each future moment and every missed opportunity to love, every
kind act and each regrettable harsh word, all meekness and humility within me
and every misplaced prideful thought, every virtue and every weak vice, every
laugh and all misery mixed with weeping.
I give you every
healthy breath and every weakness of mind and body, every attempt at chastity
and every unworthy lustful thought, every restful repose and every anxious,
sleepless night. O Lord, you can have
all of me, the beauty that you’ve deposited deep within me and the emptiness of
my sinful faults. I love you and I am yours
completely. Amen.
I ask
you again… what did you bring today to offer and why did you bring it. What are you trying to hide or hold
back? I appeal to you, 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.
