You on the Altar

You on the Altar

First Sunday after Epiphany

Collect: O Lord, we beseech thee mercifully to receive the prayers of thy people who call upon thee; and grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Epistle: Romans 12:1- 5

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.

Homily Text: Romans 12:1

From the Prayer of Oblation: And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee.

Imagine you’re Isaac. Your father Abraham says that you and he are going on a trip to make a sacrifice to the Lord. When you arrive at a place called Mt. Moriah, and the two of you begin to ascend, you say to your father, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” You father replies enigmatically, “God will provide for himself the lamb.” When  you reach the top of the mountain, your father builds the altar, lays on wood, and then...he ties you up and puts you on the altar. You’re the sacrifice.

The Apostle Paul calls on all Christians to make ourselves voluntary Isaacs by offering ourselves to God as sacrifices.

1. Paul’s Approach

There are different ways you can approach someone you want to do something. If you’re an Army sergeant, you might say, “Private, shine those shoes now!” If you’re a husband, you’re more likely to say, “Honey, you know how I love your chicken and dumplings. I wonder if you might make them tonight.”

St. Paul shows great pastoral wisdom in the way he approaches the Roman Christian to ask them to do something that is very hard and must be done not once but for a lifetime.

1.1. He calls them “brethren.” Paul was an Apostle. Apostles were appointed directly by Christ to represent him and to speak and act with unique authority. Ultimately the writings of the Apostles were included among the Holy Scriptures as the “rule” of what Christians must believe and how they must live. While Paul sometimes reminded churches that he was an Apostle appointed by Christ, here he does not do that. He puts his arm around these Christians and calls them brothers and sisters.

1.2. He does not command them but beseeches or urges them. Paul did use his Apostolic authority to issue commands to churches. But more often he encouraged people. St. Peter told those of us who are Presbyters to “shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight...not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock” (1 Pet. 5:2,3). Paul does not issue orders to his inferiors, but entreats them as one brother to another.

1.3. He appeals to them on the basis of “the mercies of God.” Notice he does not use the singular “mercy” but the plural “mercies” because God has many and all kinds of mercies. On Christmas Susan and I went to the grand buffet at the Hotel Roanoke. They did not offer an appetizer, meat, vegetable, or dessert, for they had many and many kinds of  appetizers, meats, vegetables, and desserts. The abundance was overwhelming, and that’s the way it is with God’s mercies.

• For 11 chapters Paul demonstrates and describes God’s mercies. He begins by showing us how much we need God’s mercy, because no matter who we are, however good or bad we may be, we are sinners who deserve God’s condemnation and wrath. Paul tells how God without obligation acted to deliver us by sending Christ to be the sacrifice for our sins so that we can be forgiven and accepted by God as righteous. We forgiven and accepted as righteous not by any good we do we do but by faith alone- resting on Christ entirely.
• The work of Christ saves us not only from condemnation but from sin’s controlling power. Because of Christ’s death we can die to sin, and because of his resurrection we can rise to lead new lives.
• God also gives us his Holy Spirit who lives in us to guide us, to testify to us that we are God’s adopted children of God, to assure us that God will make all things work for our good and that nothing can separate us from God’s love.

Before Paul asks anything of us he reminds us what God

has done for us. We are all like the prodigal son. We

have lost and forfeited everything. But the Father has

shown us mercy after mercy - a robe, a ring, sandals, a

feast with a fatted calf, but most of all the love, welcome,

acceptance, restoration, and embrace of the Father.

St. Paul beseeches us as brothers and sisters based on the multitude of God’s mercies.

2. Paul’s Appeal

What is Paul’s purpose in approaching us in this way? He wants to persuade us to offer ourselves to God as living sacrifices.

2.1 Paul urges us to go to God and say, “Here I offer my body to you as a sacrifice.” Why our bodies?

• What would you have seen had you gone to an altar at the tabernacle or temple? The body of a sacrificed animal. What do you see when you look at the cross? The body of Christ offered as a sacrifice for sin. It is too common among Christians to think think of their bodies as shells in which their real selves live, bodies which they will shed at death so that their spirits are free. But humans are a union of body and soul. At death our souls and bodies are temporarily separated. But from conception to death we are are a union of body and soul and at the resurrection our sinless souls and immortal bodies will be reunited forever. When we offer our bodies to God as sacrifices, we offer our whole selves. You can’t put your body on an altar without putting your soul there, too; and you can’t place your soul on an altar unless you put your body there.
• When we offer ourselves as sacrifices that surely includes our bodily lives. Paul brought this up already in the 6th chapter:

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.  Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness...For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification (Rom. 6:12,13,19).

We offer our whole bodies and every individual member or part to God as sacrifices.

2.2. Three things should characterize the sacrifice of our bodies.

• Our bodies are living sacrifices. In the Old Testament, sacrifices were bloody and gruesome. The animal was put on the altar; the priest killed it with a knife; and then the body was consumed by fire. Isaac turned out to be a living sacrifice. He was offered to God, but his life was spared because God provided a ram to be killed in his place. Christ made the ultimate sacrifice for us, offering himself on the cross to atone for our sins. But now we are called on to offer ourselves as living sacrifices. We do not die, unless we are called to be martyrs. We go on living, but we are called to offer ourselves daily, continually to God. And this is one of the problems. As someone (D.L. Moody) commented, living sacrifices have a tendency to crawl off the altar. The challenge is to remember that God does not call us to make one big sacrifice, and then we’re done with it, but calls us to offer the rest of our lives as a living sacrifice.
• Sacrifices must be holy.The animal must be a perfect unblemished animal. Only the best could be offered. For us this means we offer God not some of ourselves, or the leftovers of our lives, but our all and our best.

The hymn “Take My Life and Let It Be Consecrated”

gives us some ways this can be fleshed out. Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord to thee. Take my moments and my days, my hands and feet, my voice and lips, my silver and gold, my intellect, my will, my heart, my love, myself.

• Sacrifices must be offered in the right way, so that they were acceptable - or pleasing to God. The picture was that as the smoke from the sacrifice went up, God smelled it and found it pleasing. For us to make pleasing sacrifices our ourselves means we offer ourselves willingly and joyfully. St. Paul told us about giving that it should be done willingly, not under compulsion, for God loves the cheerful giver. What is true of our money is true of all that we offer to the Lord.

2.3. St. Paul completes his urging by telling us that offering ourselves to God as living sacrifices is our “reasonable service.” Sometimes people take the attitude about serving the Lord in the church and in the world that we need to be “reasonable” - not to go to excess, not to get carried away. But St. Paul says, in light of the incredible mercies of God, in light of the immeasurable sacrifice Christ made of himself on the cross to pay for your sins, what is your reasonable response - your reasonable worship of God, your reasonable service to him? It just makes sense that you would offer yourself to God as a living sacrifice.

I hope these things will be on your heart when we offer the Prayer of Oblation this morning: “And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee.”