Romans 12:1-8
“Perfect Worship”
September 11, 2011 - Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

         While I was on sabbatical last month our family attended a perfectly horrible worship service at another church in town. I won’t tell you where. It surprised us because we liked two previous services there. But with Susan’s fiancé here, we went back. The third time was anything but a charm. They changed the music and liturgy in ways we didn’t appreciate. And the sermon, which before had been acceptable if not exciting, this time bordered on heresy. We walked out biting our tongues till we could get in the privacy of our car and explode with our comments and critique on the morning’s worship.

         You would think that churches would realize they are supposed to worship according to the clear order and directions given in Scripture. If every congregation would plan their liturgy the way Jesus taught us, if worship leaders would just select the music plainly ordained in the Bible, if preachers would just say only what the Holy Spirit tells them to, then it would all be just fine. Worship would be perfect.

         Oh, but wait. That’s right. Jesus didn’t give us an order of worship. The Bible doesn’t tell us what kind of music to play. The Holy Spirit doesn’t dictate every word of every sermon. Creating perfect worship is a little more difficult than that. It’s a bit more of an adventure than that.

         God hasn’t left us clueless about worship, however. In the first two verses of Romans 12, Paul talks about our “spiritual worship” and then expands that to include the “renewing of your minds,” so that we may “discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Or if you attach the adjective in a different way, to discern what is the “good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” In any case, he’s got some idea of what good, even perfect worship might look like.

         He begins with the idea of sacrifice. One of the more difficult aspects of Old Testament religion is the huge on animal sacrifice. If we pause and really imagine, it strikes us as primitive and barbaric. When we read newspaper stories about people in some Caribbean or even Satanic cult hacking up chickens or cats, it gives us the willies. Civilized people just don’t do that anymore.

         Yet sacrifice is at the heart of all biblical religion, not just the Old Testament. Part of its significance is that the offering up of an animal, a valuable piece of property in the ancient world, was an act of trust and dependence on God. In other words, to make a sacrifice was to act in faith.

         Jesus sacrificed Himself on the Cross for us. And now we place our faith in His sacrifice. So when Paul asks for “living sacrifices” in verse 1, we might think it’s only “spiritual,” some attitude or way of thinking. But though God no longer asks for animal bodies, He asks for our bodies and in verse 2 for our minds.

         Paul has argued for eleven chapters that faith in Jesus Christ was the aim and culmination of Old Testament religion all along. It was by faith that Abraham and his descendants entered into and remained in God’s covenant people. And it’s by faith in Jesus Christ that the covenant is expanded to include anyone who believes.

         And that’s just it. When God includes us in His people by faith, we belong… we belong to Him. He asks us to give ourselves up to Him, both body and mind. Our whole selves belong to Him. Good worship is a sacrifice of ourselves.

         Transformation and renewing of our minds in verse 2 is sometimes parsed out in terms of culture wars. We as Christians are to have a different world view, a different way of thinking from people around us. So we emphasize our belief in objective truth, our conviction of an absolute morality, our faith in a creator God who is the ground of all reality. That’s all completely true and truly important, but look in verse 3 at the very first thing Paul identifies as a mark of Christian thinking: “I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of yourself than you ought to think, but think with sober judgment.”

         Christian thinking begins with, says Paul, a sober assessment of yourself in relationship to others. To have a mind renewed by the Holy Spirit in Jesus is to have a mind which truly grasps who you are “according to the measure of faith God has assigned.”

         So a Christian mind appraises itself according to the “measure of faith.” There are two ways to understand that. One is to connect this with what Paul says in verse 6 about spiritual gifts, that they differ according to the grace given to us. So we might think Paul means to say we each have a different measure or amount of faith. And the required sober judgment is to realize whether you’ve got a little or a lot.

         But if Paul is talking about different degrees of faith, then it goes against what he’s been saying all along about our unity, our oneness in Christ. Think about what happens if you seriously go at the business of deciding that you’ve got more faith than one person does, but less faith than someone else does. It would be a disaster for church unity. We’d have superiority and inferiority complexes running rampant.

         What Paul has tried to tell us from the beginning, what we heard last week about branches grafted into a tree, is that we all stand in Christ by the same faith. In other words, the “measure of faith” is the same measure for everyone. It’s what the Church came to call in relation to Scripture a “canon,” a rule of faith to which everyone must measure up.

         I grew up living an hour’s drive or so from Disneyland. Some of my earliest memories are about childhood trips to that most original of amusement parks. One aspect as a child was that I was too small to go on some of the rides. In particular I recall little race cars. They ran along a rail, and were held in a track with raised curbs, but within those limits you got drive yourself, to press an accelerator pedal and turn a steering wheel. It was an eight-year old boy’s dream come true.

         The problem was that at the entry point to the line for the race car ride was a sign. It had a horizontal line on it. I think that line was about four feet off the ground, and the sign said, “You must be at least this tall to ride the race cars.” That was the measure. That was the rule. It didn’t matter if you were eight-years old or eighty, the top of your head had to reach the top of that line. That was the only way in, the rule of height.

         Faith, says Paul, is God’s entry rule. It’s the same for everyone. It doesn’t matter if you are the worst of sinners or almost perfect. It doesn’t matter, we’ve read again and again, if you are Jewish or Gentile. It doesn’t matter whether you’re male or female, young or old, wise or foolish, all that matters is that you believe in Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord. That’s the measure, that’s the rule of faith.

         Instead of being about the differences between Christians, “the measure of faith” assigned by God tells us that in the most fundamental way we are the same. No one has a reason to think too highly of yourself, because we are all here, all saved in Christ by the same yard stick, by the measure of faith. We all trust in Jesus, not in ourselves. That’s what it means to think soberly, to not think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think.

         Therefore, true, spiritual, perfect worship begins when we come together to acknowledge that basic fact. We are each and everyone here by the same measure, by the same rule of faith in Jesus Christ. Worship is all about Him, not at all about us, whatever our gifts may be, whatever our role in leading or serving might be.

         That’s why when starting in verse 4 Paul wants to talk about the differences that do exist between us, differences of gifts and places of service, he turns to his favorite image of the Church. As we present our own bodies as living sacrifices in worship, we are parts of a larger Body, parts of Christ body.

         But we’ve heard it way too often. We use the word Paul uses here, the word “member,” way too much to get the full effect of how Paul’s first readers would have heard this. When he says that we are members of the Body of Christ, he means way more than our typical talk of membership. We think of being a member of the Republican or Democratic Party. We think of being members of AAA or a credit union. We talk about belonging to a homeowner’s association or the Lion’s Club or a Facebook group. And we mean our individual, voluntary connection to people with whom we choose to be friends or partners.

         When Paul used the word “member” here in 50 A.D. it could only mean one thing, a body part. Hearing the word “member” didn’t conjure up images of club meetings or social groups, it made one think of arms and legs and hands and noses and ears and other less mentionable pieces of our bodies. When Paul told the Romans they were members of one body, they had to see themselves as physical components of a living being.

         It’s as body parts then, that there are differences of role and function and gifts between Christians. It’s not a matter of who has more or less faith. It’s the same faith that connects us all to the Body. It’s God’s grace, says verse 6, that spreads out different gifts for the good of the Body that is the Church, just as our physical bodies have different parts so that they can function well.

         It’s incredible something as complicated as the human body works. Any machine or robot looks like a toy in comparison. Make any simple facial expression—smile, frown, raise your eyebrows, stick your tongue out—and dozens of muscles and thousands of nerve cells are cooperating together to make it happen. Even with CGA, movie animators labor for hours to duplicate human movement. And it’s still only a picture, not the real thing.

         As fantastically as our body parts cooperate, that the members of God’s church fit together is even more fantastic. Parts of the human body come together at the same time. From conception, the components of our bodies are grow and function together. Yet God brings new parts into the church all the time, parts that grew up separately and now are supposed to work together.

         It’s like the Johnny Cash song about a guy who worked in a Cadillac factory in Detroit. He decided to steal himself (I’m not endorsing that particular moral point) one of those fancy cars he was building “one piece at a time.” He sings:

         The first day I got me a fuel pump
         And the next day I got me an engine and a trunk
         Then I got me a transmission and all of the chrome
         The little things I could get in my big lunchbox
         Like nuts, an’ bolts, and all four shocks
         But the big stuff we snuck out in my buddy’s mobile home.

Getting all the parts takes years. When he goes to put it all together he comes up with a wild and crazy “mowchine,” as the song says. His answer to “What model is it?” is “Well, it’s a ’49, ’50, ’51, ’52, ’53, ’54, ’55, ’56 ’57, ’58 ’59 automo­bile.”

         With the church, God takes in and welcomes all the parts—some of us are ’41 models, some are ’71s, and some will be 2011s. By the single measure of faith He connects us all together. Paul does not just say that the church is like a body. In verse 5 he says what we say at the Lord’s Table every time that “we, who are many, are one body in Christ.” We don’t by our own choice or ef­forts. We are put together by God.

         Let’s get right what it means to belong to the Body of Christ. “I belong to the church” is literal. It means I am owned. The end of verse 5 says, “we are members of one another.” To be a Christian is to come under the possession and ownership of the rest of the body. If you are in Christ, the people sitting around you this morning own you. What you are, and your gifts from God, belong to them as much as they belong to you.

         When in verse 6 Paul writes “we have gifts that differ, according to the grace given to us,” it means those gifts are for the sake of the rest of the body. Spiritual gifts are not our own possessions. We each have an obligation to make them available to the church. The grace God gives you is like the box of cookies that came in the mail when you were at camp or at col­lege. Your mother sent them with the understanding that you would share. Jesus Christ sends you His grace with the same thought. Share it.

         How we use our gifts affects everyone else in the church, like the condition of one body part affects the rest. An old backpacker’s rule says, “If your feet are cold, put your hat on.” Heat lost from the top of your head chills your whole body. One member influences all the others. If you hold back your gift, some­one else may be left in the cold. If you offer your gift in enthusiastic service, everyone is warmed.

         Verses 6-8 offer a few examples of gifts. There are three other lists of spiritual gifts in Scripture. They’re all a little different. It’s not a matter of finding some exact role on a list. The point is to use whatever you have, be whatever you are. If your gift is prophesy, which might be preaching, then stick to the rule of faith in Scripture. Ministers minister, teachers teach, and exhorters exhort.

         Verse 6 says these are gifts of grace. They are not supposed to be burdens. Using them should feel like grace. The rest of verse 8 teaches that we offer true service to Jesus and to each other out of healthy attitudes. If your gift is giving to others, be generous. If your gift is leadership, be diligent. If your gift is compassion, be cheerful about it.

         And it all goes back to worship, perfect worship. You might think that when it’s your turn to serve in the nursery that you are missing worship. But when you take care of someone else’s baby so she can sing and pray and hear God’s Word, you’re actually making your own worship better, more perfect.

         You might suppose that when we sing some hymn or song that you just really dislike that it is ruining worship for you. But when you patiently and in love sing a tune you don’t like because someone else here really loves it, then your own worship is being improved.

         You may say to yourself “I just can’t worship” when someone who hurt you or you have a problem with is present. But when you turn that pain into prayer for that person and for the church you belong to, then you are actually perfecting your worship.

         Worship happens when the Body of Christ comes together and each member does its part, like our women generously and cheerfully surrounding JoAnna today with love and baby gifts, while the rest of us minister to our neighbors by inviting them to join us next Sunday. That’s spiritual worship. That’s living sacrifice of our bodies. That’s minds renewed in Christ. Thank you for being His Body for each other. That’s perfect worship.

         Amen.

Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2011 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj