I grew up on some of the “older” language in our Book of Common Prayer, and so, at an early age, I developed an emotional connection to some of the rich, elaborate, and perhaps “old-fashioned” ways of talking to God. There are a few phrases and ideas that appear only in our Rite One prayers that have taken deep root in my heart – like a moment in the Eucharistic Prayer when, at the altar, we “we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee.”
I love the emphasis on bringing our whole selves, souls and bodies, to the altar. Offering ourselves – our whole selves – to God, along with the bread and wine of the Eucharist, to be – like that bread and wine – a sacrament. A “sacrifice” in the sense of something “made sacred” - made holy – by giving it to God. A “reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice” – so that our lives are made sacred not by dying, but in the living of them. It’s exciting – a little bit romantic – to think that I can offer my whole messy complicated self to God and, in the offering, become holy, in ongoing daily life.
I fell in love with all of that years ago. But somehow it took me until this week to suspect that this phrase of prayer was inspired by – if not taken wholesale from – the bit of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome that we hear today.
“I appeal to you, siblings, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” Paul says that to the fledgling church at Rome, and reading it centuries later, I get a bit of that same feeling I get in the eucharistic prayer – an energizing sense of invitation to become holy, right in the middle of my everyday life. Paul expands that invitation, talking about our transformation, the renewing of our minds, aligning us with the will of God. It’s our whole selves, our souls and bodies joined together, that we’re invited to offer to God.
And – and this is key – to offer to God with the expectation that our offering will be accepted.
For some of us – for me, often – it’s radical news that the messy, imperfect, sometimes achy, often uncomfortable body I – we – inhabit is in its current form acceptable to God. This sometimes wonderful, often awkward, body that often does not fit the way I want to into clothes, that sometimes is full of absolutely delightful sensations, that sometimes wakes up sore because I slept wrong (!?)… this body is acceptable to God as is.
And that my mind or soul – full of gripes and ideas of wildly varying quality, of hopes both petty and powerful, of… something else I should remember?.. – well, forgetful, flawed, and imperfect as it is, my mind and soul are also an acceptable offering.
That God will take what I have to give and renew it, make it sacred, vital, powerful… holy.
So I can be holy, and live that way.
That’s amazing. I love that we can offer our selves – our whole messy imperfect selves – to God and become living holiness.
Because for goodness sake it’s too much work to make myself holy. It’s impossible.
Thank goodness the “mercies of God” will accept this mind and body in “as is” condition.
And go right ahead and use this imperfect offering for God’s work.
That’s the other thing about being “acceptable”. It’s an assurance that when we offer our selves – our bodies, as a living sacrifice, our minds and souls as renewable resources – to God, God is going to actually make us holy and make use of us.
That “sacrifice” – that offering of ourselves to be part of God’s practical daily work while we go on using our bodies for our practical daily
work – this being made sacred involves our bodies and minds in forming
community. We become part of one another – one body, inseparable – with
all the other folks offering their bodies, our whole selves, to God, and as a connected whole, we do God’s work of revelation, service,
teaching, encouraging, giving, mentoring, modeling, caring. Not by virtue of
our own efforts to be good at those things; not by personal merit, but by God’s
accepting us. By God’s making us sacred, holy.
Paul’s invitation to the Romans, to us, to offer ourselves to God is not about a valiant moment of “sacrifice”. It’s about what happens next. What keeps happening, in the living sacrifice, the day-to-day practice of being made holy by giving ourselves wholly to God.
I think Paul invites us to offer our whole selves to God because God makes sacred use of the whole of us, including the parts we don’t think are all that holy. That God makes holy use of our frustrations, sometimes, transforming us so we can follow those frustrations to make healthy change in a workplace, a relationship, a law. That God makes sacred work of the imperfections, the flaws, in our bodies. Maybe things my body does “badly”, or “wrong” (by my own or the culture’s standards) become opportunities to connect, to foster transformation by accepting help and love as well as offering it.
Or I find that my body is capable when I thought it wasn’t: for physical care for someone else, for persisting in showing up and putting my hands on a tool, or a keyboard, or in someone else’s hand.
I believe God makes holy use of doubts and gimpy knees and love of comforts and extra pounds just as surely as God makes use of love and joy and physical strength and charisma.
I’m pretty sure God makes holy use of stubbornness, and deceit. That shows up in a lot of Bible stories, including one of the ones we heard today. A story of two midwives, a mother, a sister, and a princess, all of whom were made holy part of God’s practical, sacred, daily work by persisting stubbornly in their daily work or deceiving the powers that were in their daily living. Midwives who offered their whole selves, a living sacrifice, not only by standing in front of Pharaoh and saying “Gosh, sorry, we can’t help you do a genocide, Hebrew women are just too good at birthing” and risking deadly anger. But also – maybe even more – in offering their bodies to be made sacred by the practical messy daily work of assisting in labor that probably made their hands bloody and their backs ache – AND thwarted genocide and revealed God’s will one birth at a time.
A mother, a sister, and a princess thwarting that same genocide with the daily embodiedness of nursing, errand-running, household management – becoming sacred, becoming holy, becoming part of the world-transforming work of God, in the ordinary use of their hands and bodies and voices.
I suspect that you and I – all these centuries, all these cultures later – can also discover ourselves becoming sacred, living holy, in very everyday uses of our bodies, minds, voices - our basic and our entire lives – when we too respond to the mercies of God by offering our flawed, messy, uncertain whole selves to God. Offering ourselves in the assurance that that sacrifice, that intention to become sacred, is acceptable to God. Is going to happen, because God accepts what we offer.
I suspect it may be just as joyful, just as ecstatic, as I want it to feel – even at the same time that it’s practical, grounded, and repetitive, every day after day.
And that it might be a little like falling in love. And then becoming love in the daily, embodied work of living together.
And I know that Paul’s appeal, God’s invitation, is not a one-time thing. Not just for the community at Rome all those centuries ago, not a once-or-never question for you or me.
That every time we come to the altar, every time we offer a gift, we have the chance to offer ourselves, our souls and bodies, a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice.
And that perhaps, even, every time we use our bodies – to stand, to walk, to eat, to touch, to work, to breathe – the invitation stands open. To offer our selves to be made sacred, to become – all that we are, as we are – a part of God, renewed and transformed.
To become love.
