The word sacrifice is one of those words which doesn’t exactly gladden our hearts. Though we know it is necessary to make sacrifices in life, we don’t relish them. Perhaps, at best, sacrifice conjures up the realistic wisdom of “No pain, no gain.” 

Interestingly, the Hebrew word for sacrifice originally had the meaning of “draw near” and “be vulnerable.” Those associations begin to make sense if we consider that when, say, a parent willingly makes sacrifices for the sake of a child, or a person offers to do something for another, it’s a way of one person drawing near to the other person and sharing life with them. Sacrifice of this kind does make us vulnerable; it takes something out of us.

This “drawing near” also makes sense if we think about Jesus Christ as God’s sacrifice for us. What is God doing in Jesus but drawing near to us in flesh and blood. God offers himself in Jesus so that we might share more deeply in God’s life. 

In this week’s Epistle, Paul urges Christians in Rome to respond to what God has done in Christ by “presenting your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1). A “living sacrifice” is not a detached spiritual exercise for which we hope to get credit on some heavenly balance sheet. Rather, as Paul describes, it’s turning all of life into a form of worship, responding to God’s mercy and grace by showing mercy and grace to others. 

Eugene Peterson, a Bible scholar who wrote a contemporary version of the Bible called The Message, defines a sacrifice as a “readiness to interrupt whatever we are doing and build an altar, bind whatever we happen to be carrying with us at the moment, place it on the altar, and see what God wills to do with it.” Sacrifice is a way of orienting everyday life. 

In that vein, Peterson in The Message rewrites Paul’s words to the Romans in verse 12:1 this way: “So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.” 

See you in church,

Pastor David