Romans 12: 1-8, Matthew 16: 13-20
When I began to prepare this sermon, I thought in my mind “Thats’s what I’ll say, it will make a brilliant sermon.” I then checked the lesson again and discovered there was mistake on the page of the magazine which gives the readers the lessons and what I planned to say was actually based on next week’s readings!
So I had to think again. However, I would just like to anticipate next Sunday with one important fact. As you probably well know, Jesus, after his words to Peter, goes on to say that the Messiah must suffer. Peter then says “God forbid it Lord”. He, like many Jews, expected the Messiah to be a triumphant leader - never one who suffers. But the reply of Jesus is “Get behind me Satan”.
Peter has just made the most amazing leap of faith in recognising that Jesus is the Messiah but then gets it all wrong. And this can, and quite often does happen, if we are given some great spiritual experience - Satan immediately tempts us to go wrong and sadly we may well do that. Let me give an example.
Very many years ago, I went to a pastoral course and really experienced the gift of the Spirit. I left on a high and it was very high. Shortly after I was with some friends and was confronted by a man, a beggar, desperate for help. Instead of praying for him to be healed, I took him to the hospital which was actually just across the road. Wrong! For he had pleaded that he had been to hospital many times. I should have prayed openly for him. Jesus has forgiven me for that bad mistake - harder for me to forgive myself.
The lines from the service of Compline, quoting verses from the first letter of Peter,
“Discipline yourselves; keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith”,
are very true. We often don’t realise even when faced with so many evil tidings, how much Satan is at work in our world.
Well, to leave Peter, I want you to think about the lesson from Romans and to concentrate on Paul’s words, present
“your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”
Not your minds or your spirits but your bodies! And the more I learn about our bodies - with cells, mitrochondial DNA, how it develops from a tiny dot in the womb to a baby and then slowly to a full-grown adult - it is a miraculous creation and something which Jesus Himself honoured by being born as a baby, growing up as a boy and then to fully man.
The church, in the past, has spiritualised things following a Greek tradition that the body is simply an earthly vessel for the spirit - and the spirit is what counts. This is quite wrong, for we believe, as the creed says, in the resurrection of the body. True our body will eventually perish but it will be resurrected. Too often the church has encouraged the belief that somehow the body is sinful often teaching that virginity is better than the married state. This is quite wrong. It is true that Jesus taught that some are called to be celibate but most of us are not.
Present your bodies as a living sacrifice - everything we do is an act of worship. So often we think we go to church to worship God. That is certainly true but we also “go to work” to worship God. Hard to believe that if we are employed in a job we are worshipping. That doing the washing is a part of our worship. We honour God even with daily household chores as well as serving God in whatever God’s special calling is - one of mine being involved in Climate Change.
Remember George Herbert’s hymn “Teach me my God and King” with the words “who sweeps a room as for thy sake makes that and the action fine.” What I do during the week is worship, equally important as our worship in church. That was true for Jesus - working as a carpenter, helping with the harvest, caring for his family - that was all part of his service, his worship, of God.
Paul then goes on to use one of his favourite teachings - the church is the body of Christ and each of us members. Just as our bodies have different parts, arms, legs, brain, heart, each member having a different function but contributing to the whole so each one of us has an equal part to play in the working of the whole - the body of Jesus Christ. And that isn’t just the church in our benefice. We contribute to the work of the body of Jesus in the whole world and are necessary to that whole church of Christ.
After this, Paul lists some of the ways we can play our part by writing about the various gifts. The list isn’t conclusive - there are other gifts listed in one of his letters to the Corinthians - but each of us has something to contribute.
Thinking of these gifts for a moment - “Ministry” - The church including our local church is pretty good at ministering to others through the work of clergy, the pastoral care helpers, others when we look after our neighbours and especially when we pray for people. “Giving” - Christians, including ourselves, are generally very generous and quite a large number of charities are run or founded by Christians.
“Teaching” - perhaps not so good. We teach through Sermons which are part of our worship, through small groups, through magazine articles. But teaching the nation and those who are not Christians? I am still trying to get the Archbishop to speak to the nation about Climate Change including giving some spiritual guidance. In the past we have had some very good Bishop’s - William Temple with his care for the under privileged: my own tutor David Jenkins regularly reported in the local press for his concern about the unemployed and often invited to speak to secular groups. I know some of his teaching was controversial and misunderstood but he often spoke to the public about Jesus and got them to talk about Jesus! But I don’t think we try to exercise the gift of teaching as well as we should.
“Prophecy”. We desperately need people with this gift both locally - when did the PCC last hear someone saying “I think God is calling us to do this?” And to the nation or the world. The Pope has a prophetic voice but tends to wrap it up in concyclicals. When has our church given a prophetic voice to the nation? Some would say with some truth, that Bishops speak in the house of Lords but how many of us have a clue about that. Each Christian does have some gift from the Holy Spirit either a natural gift enhanced by God or a new gift directly coming perhaps from the laying on of hands pray that we may exercise the gifts more fully to guide the church forward.
I could go at length but to finish with just one last point from the section of Romans we have heard. “Do not be conformed to the standards of this world”. Too often Christians follow particularly the Western World’s values in what is acceptable. Let me give just one example to illustrate this.
One of the ways of the world very difficult to get away from is the idea of retirement. True quite a number do volunteer to take part in charitable work but the general consensus is “I’ve worked hard all my life, I am entitled to free time to do whatever I like - tending the garden, going on cruises, being at leisure. The Christian rejects this idea. You never retire from being a Christian. True you can take a holiday, you can have times of leisure and enjoyment but at heart, no matter what our age, our aim is to do what God is calling us to do.
Do not be conformed to this world ... but discern what is the will of God. So we try our best, as many of us already do, to live a life in the service of God a life directed by the Holy Spirit.
Amen.