On Being a Living Sacrifice: Thanks-Giving, Thanks-Living

Romans 12:1-8

Rev. Stephen H. Wilkins

Georgetown Presbyterian Church

November 19, 2006

In the day before malls and supercenter stores, a boy was hired to work in a general store of a small town. He would sweep the flour, bag items for customers, put up stock. On one particular Saturday the boy heard the owner say to one of the clerks "It’s that time of the year again, it’s time to take inventory." Well, "inventory" was a word that had not yet entered into this young man’s vocabulary. When an opportune moment arrived, he went up to the store owner and asked, Sir, what is an inventory? Patiently the owner explained that it was a time when you made a list of everything that you had--from groceries on the shelves to wrapping paper and string. Still somewhat puzzled, the young man then asked, Why?

"Well, responded the owner, its easy to forget exactly how much you have each year. Every now and then you have to take an inventory just to see what all you have."

Isn’t that what Thanksgiving is all about--taking inventory of our blessings so that we can give thanks to God?

I think it no coincidence that the stewardship season of the church falls during this time of the year, because stewardship, too, has to do with taking stock of our lives, and then offering an appropriate response of gratitude for God’s blessings.

Paul says in Romans, "Therefore, my friends, in view of God’s mercy, offer your bodies as living sacrifices..."

In view of God’s mercy...

Isn’t that one of the great truths of stewardship, that stewardship—indeed, the whole Christian life—is a response to God’s mercy, to God’s gracious gifts and blessings? You know as well as I that Christian stewardship says that all that we have is a gift of God’s grace, and that we serve him and his kingdom by making our resources available as he needs them. All that we have comes out of God’s bountiful storehouse of grace, and we respond in trust and in obedience and in giving ourselves.

Now, as a relative newcomer to South Carolina, I have enjoyed the opportunity to experience real southern cooking. Of course, you can’t talk about southern cooking without mentioning grits. (Personally, I love grits, though not everyone in my family has quite warmed up to grits just yet.) The story is told of a man who was driving from New England to Orlando. And he stopped for breakfast along I-95 somewhere in South Carolina. And when the bacon and eggs came, he looked down, and then he said to the waitress, "What’s this white stuff?" And she says, "Hon, those are grits." And he says, "But I didn’t order grits." And she says, "Hon, you don’t order grits--they just come."

My friends, that’s what God’s grace is like. You don’t ask for it. You don’t do anything to deserve it. It just comes.

And you know as well as I that in response to the bounties of God’s blessings and grace, Christian stewardship calls upon us to make available to the Lord the use of our time and our talents and our treasure. Stewardship is a response of thanksgiving to the bountiful blessings that God has bestowed upon us. Actually, I would say that stewardship is a matter of thanks-giving and thanks-living.

I don’t have to tell you that stewardship involves giving of your financial resources. For generations, stewardship has been synonymous with the idea of giving to the church. And one of the reasons that we have emphasized Faith In Action as our stewardship theme this year is to bring balance to our understanding of stewardship.

Still, we dare not neglect the component of stewardship that addresses your treasure, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. And we mentioned last week some of those things that are the hallmarks of faithful giving: giving is intentional, giving is proportionate, and giving is generous. There is another hallmark of faithful giving, and that is that the faithful giver is cheerful.

Certainly you have heard it said in scripture that God loves the cheerful giver. That goes straight to the motivation for our giving.

Why do you give? Do you give because you feel like someone’s cornered you and you don’t have a choice? Do you give because you think the church won’t make budget if you don’t? Do you give because it’s the right thing for a good, upstanding citizen to do?

What is your attitude about giving? Is it a grrrrr-attitude, or is it gratitude? Do you give grudgingly or gratefully? You see, stewardship is about giving: it’s about giving cheerfully; it’s about thanks-giving. What we give is a response of gratitude for God’s blessings.

Later this morning, when you deposit your pledge card in the basket, will it reflect your gratitude to God?

Stewardship is about giving. It’s about thanks-giving.

It’s also about thanks-living. Stewardship is about how we use our time. It’s about how we put to use the talents that God has given to us. It has to do with how we invest ourselves in our relationships, and how our priorities in life stack up. Stewardship is a way of life lived in response to God’s grace, because the Christian faith is more than just what we believe; it’s also what we do.

Paul says, "Offer your bodies as living sacrifices..." He’s telling us that a proper response to God’s mercy and grace is to give our lives to God. I love the way that Eugene Peterson says it in his translation of this verse from Romans: "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."

Make your whole life an offering to God. I don’t know of a better definition of Christian stewardship than that: Make your whole life an offering to God. As we find ourselves at Dedication Sunday today, the call to an active faith is clear and unmistakable. In view of God’s mercy, offer yourself as a living sacrifice...

If we’re really going to get serious about stewardship in the life of the church, it means that we have to change the way we think; it means that we have to talk less about membership, and more about discipleship.

Sometimes we focus too much on membership. And that can be problematic at times. Out in the world, when you join a club, you become a member. Members of clubs enjoy certain privileges; all they have to do is pay the dues, and those privileges continue. When we speak of membership in the church, sometimes the world’s notion of membership creeps in: You join a church, you pay to keep the doors open, and in return you expect a few things: you get a nice worship service, the children and youth get taken care of, and you have a Sunday school program. If our emphasis is on membership, then ministry is something that we pay people to do for us, and mission becomes something that others do elsewhere.

But nowhere does Jesus call us to membership; he calls us to discipleship. And if our emphasis is on discipleship, rather than membership, then our focus changes. The church is no longer an end in itself; it is the means to the end, and the end is a relationship with Jesus Christ. The role of the disciple is to grow deeper in Jesus and to share the news of Jesus with others. Disciples don’t see church membership as conferring privileges; rather, we understand that we have a responsibility to grow in our relationship with God, a responsibility to participate actively in ministry, a responsibility to extend God’s love to the world through acts of service and through the proclamation of the gospel.

If our emphasis is on discipleship rather than membership, then we realize that mission field is not "out there", but right at our front door. We have high expectations of one another, that each of us will put to use the gifts that God has given to us, in order to build up one another and to serve the world in Jesus’ name. If our commitment is to discipleship, then it means that our responsibility has to do with more than showing up a couple of times a week at the church--it has to do with all of life. An emphasis on discipleship means that stewardship is not something that will be finished at the closing of today’s worship service; rather, it will continue into tomorrow, and every tomorrow after that, because stewardship is a commitment to a way of life in response to God’s grace.

In view of God’s mercy...

There was a brilliant young pianist who was going to give his very first concert. The concert hall was packed. He played powerfully and majestically. He played with flair. And when the concert ended, the audience stood with thunderous applause, row after row. He bowed once, and he bowed a second time, and he bowed a third time. And then as he looked out over the audience he suddenly stopped and ran back behind the curtain. And the stage manager said, "Go out, go out. They’re still all applauding." The pianist said, "No they’re not. There’s one man in the balcony, a grey-headed man, who is not standing." The stage manager said, "Okay, so one person is not applauding. Everyone else is. Why won’t you go back out?" The pianist replied, "Because that one man is my teacher."

We all have certain people in our lives whose approval is of utmost importance to us. In the end, stewardship is about living our lives in such a way that the goal of all we do is to receive a "Well done, good and faithful servant," from our Heavenly Father. It is about giving ourselves wholly and completely to God, because God has given himself wholly and completely to us. Let your whole life be lived as an offering to God.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer yourselves as a living sacrifice.

Do it today.

Do it every day.

Amen.