Proper 16, Year A | Romans 12:1-8
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
August 27, 2023
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
Due to technical problems, no video or recording is available this week.
Driving past the University the other night with Shannon, we started talking about whether or not we as Christians are trying to sell something no one really cares about. You’ll hear a lot of pastors and theologians blaming society around us for the change or the rise in religious “Nones,” but I don’t think that’s fair. People are going to be concerned about what they’re concerned about. The real problem seems to be that we as the Church are determined to keep asking and answering questions most of us stopped caring about decades ago. We talk about the afterlife, but it’s hard to pay attention to the future when you’re worried about how to pay for today’s crushing debt or tomorrow’s surprise expense. We hype virtues of quietude and inner peace to a world already overwhelmed with entertainment and advertisements and constant competition for our increasingly limited attention. And it’s no wonder people don’t care about “eternal life;” we’re all already tired of the one we currently have. It feels like we need to start over, to try to understand the kinds of things people actually wonder about. Once we figure those out, maybe we might finally be able to reassess our own traditions in light of what’s important to the world around us.
At one point I was questioning if anyone was even asking existential-level questions today when the radio suddenly chimed in:
I used to float, now I just fall down
I used to know, but I’m not sure now
What I was made for….
Takin’ a drive, I was an ideal
Looked so alive, turns out I’m not real
Just somethin’ you paid for
What was I made for?[1]
And there it was. Not one of the seemingly “important” questions we like to distract ourselves with or impose on others. Nothing about God or metaphysical angst or the End of the World. Instead, a genuinely big question standing quietly in front of us in the plainest of clothing. An existential concern born from the anxiety and stress of how we live today; not “what’s the point?” Not “why do I even exist?”
“What was I made for?”
We might look at this as a self-focused question, something along the lines of “what’s in it for me?”, in which case we can respond with our stock answers about life and death and Heaven and Hell and inner joy and lack of fear, but that seems to be more of a Boomer question. We could try approaching it as the question people failed to answer for my own generation, “Why should I even care?” But again, that’s responding to something that consumed young people in the late 20th Century. Those of us here in the United States can generally have what we want nowadays; we don’t particularly need to satiate some unmet inner craving for stuff or even self-importance. People aren’t wondering what to care about—each new day is already overwhelmed with fear and concern. The old questions might sound similar, but they aren’t the same. People aren’t asking how they might fulfill themselves or what the point of caring is when no one seems to care about you. Or at least they aren’t approaching those ideas from the same direction as we used to.
Personally, I see this new question as a sign of hope. We might finally be starting to turn beyond the self and beyond a sense of stagnation. People are growing dissatisfied with reality as it is—the reality we previous generations have built—and they want to do something about it. We’ve begun looking not just to quiet our own sense of inadequacy or to find inner meaning but for something outside of ourselves. We’re looking for purpose. “What was I made for?” is less about how I find satisfaction in the big scheme of things and more about how I can actually help, how I can improve things around me. Instead of a cry for love and attention, it’s an invitation for action and service. “I’ve got enough of a handle on me; how do I make things better for us all?”
Fortunately for us, “what was I made for?” is exactly the kind of question the Bible likes to address. Take the first verse from our Romans reading: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”[2]
Before going any further, we do need to address a blatant mistranslation here. The NRSV ends the verse with “spiritual worship,” but the word “spiritual” appears absolutely nowhere in this passage. Frankly, it undermines the point of what Paul’s saying, and I have no idea why the translators opted to use it here. The term he chose means “rational” or “reasonable.” Paul isn’t talking about some sort of intention or attitude or intellectual concept, some sort of noncorporeal offering. He’s saying that, in light of everything he’s already discussed about what God has done for us, presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice is the only logical response. And he’s about as close to giving a command as one can get without quite making one. He’s saying, “I know can’t necessarily make you do it, but you really, really need to—no other choice makes any sense.”
So one of Paul’s answers to our question of purpose is to present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice. But what does that even mean? Is this some sort of cult thing where we all commit mass suicide as a way to enter some sort of greater mystical reality? Is this supposed to be me laying myself before God, accepting a miserable or austere existence in this life in order to live it up in the next? No, although I can see where people might get those ideas. Our concept of sacrifice is the giving away or giving up of something valuable—creating some sort of present hardship for ourselves with no certainty of anything positive coming from it. In the ancient world, though, sacrifice was more frequently about gratitude and celebration. It was more like a town barbeque or church potluck than a form of self-abasement or means of making up for a sin. A wealthier member of the community would bring an animal to the temple as a way of saying thank you for the good things their god had done for them, and after the priests performed their ceremonies and cooked the offering, everyone got to feast on the meat. We present our bodies to God not as a means of simply giving ourselves away or as an apology for the past but in exchange for the uplifting and good of those around us.
And we’re to be living sacrifices. God isn’t interested in dead flesh or inert lumps of clay. The sacrifice God wants is for us to live, to be full of vitality, to carry the celebration and joy of God’s own festival with us, to impart that life to those around us through love and devotion and service.
What was I made for?
Not misery or despair. Not for hopelessness or acquiescence to a meaningless existence.
What was I made for?
Not to satisfy my own longings or to find my own fulfilment apart from those around me.
So, then, what was I made for?
You were made to live. To be. To grow. To change. To nurture the life you find around you. To burn with God’s fire, spreading light everywhere you go. You were made to get up off that altar you keep building out of your own shame and feed the world around you. You were made for meaning, for action, for service. You were made to love and be loved, to care and be cared for, to weep and to laugh and to be the best version of you you can be! You were made to enjoy God’s own love and sacrifice and self-giving, to find happiness and purpose by becoming that same love and sacrifice in the world around you.
“What was I made for?”
“…to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your rational response.”[3]
[1] “What Was I Made For?” by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, from Barbie: The Album; released July 13, 2023
[2] Romans 12:1 | All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[3] Alteration mine