Grateful? Go!

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Romans 12:1-8
Dear Lord: Send Your Holy Spirit now. Use these words to point to Your Word for us today. In Jesus' Name. Amen

A high school friend of mine, Bill, who worshiped with us a few weeks ago, always was the model son to his parents! Even when we were teenagers, there was never even a hint of Bill giving his folks problems. He always made his curfew. He never drank or did drugs. He studied hard and was even kind to everyone. Bill was no nerd either. He was one of the best athletes I’ve ever known and he was popular.

I often wondered why Bill always seemed to obey his parents and actually liked them...and why he never gave them any trouble or lip. I never, ever heard a cross word pass between his parents and him. But eventually, I came to realize what that was all about. Simply put: Bill was grateful to his parents for their love, their sacrifice, and their support. Gratitude affected the way he behaved and the choices he made.

The book of Romans, from which our second lessons have been drawn for some weeks, is remarkable. It was written in the first century by the apostle Paul to a church he’d never visited, but hoped to encounter soon on his way to Spain. In the first eleven chapters of Romans, Paul explains the basic facts of Christian belief: That all people are sinners separated from God. That God loves all of us and decides to call us back to Him, offering forgiveness and new life to all who will turn away from sin and believe in Jesus Christ. Three chapters of that first segment of Romans deal specifically with the spiritual status of Paul's fellow Jews and his earnest hope that non-Jewish (or Gentile) Christians would be particularly committed to reaching out to God's people with the Good News of Jesus.

Our Bible lesson for this morning begins a new segment of Romans, a section in which Paul talks about how we respond to God’s love and mercy. It starts, he says, with our grateful response to the forgiveness and new life that belongs to those who follow the Savior Jesus, Who died and rose for us. Paul writes, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God [in other words, because of what Christ has done for you on the cross and from the empty tomb], to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God---what is good and acceptable and perfect...”

Bill was grateful to his parents and it affected how he lived. Jesus Christ has done infinitely more for us than any earthly parent ever did or ever will do for a child and Paul says, we should willingly give ourselves to Jesus Christ, offering ourselves as living sacrifices to Him.

Her name was Charlotte Elliott. She was from England and she was a bitter woman. Her health was broken and she was disabled, in a time when little existed to help the disabled participate in life. “If God loved me,” Elliott told her family, “He would not have treated me this way.”

On May 9, 1822, in hopes of bringing her some comfort, guidance, and encouragement, the family invited a Swiss pastor to their home for dinner. They hoped that this gentle man could bring Elliott peace and hope. But as they ate, Elliott “lost her temper...[and] railed against God and [her] family.” The family quickly filed out and left her alone in the room with Pastor Malan. “You are tired of yourself, aren’t you?” Malan asked Elliott. “You are holding to your hate and anger because you have nothing else in the world to cling to. Consequently, you have become sour, bitter, and resentful.” What, Elliott asked Malan, was the cure? “The faith you despise,” he told her.

“As they talked, [she] softened, ‘If I wanted to become a Christian and to share the peace and joy you possess...what would I do?’ [she asked.] ‘You would give yourself to God just as you are now, with your fightings and fears, hates and loves, pride and shame...’ [the pastor replied.]” Elliott could hardly believe it, but asked God to help her believe it. She surrendered to Christ that day and later claimed the words of Jesus from the Gospel of John as her special verse, “...he who comes to Me, I will by no means cast out.” I’m sure that she, like all of us, had to keep giving herself to Christ each day because my own experience affirms the truth of what Pastor Rick Warren has written: “The problem with a living sacrifice is that it can crawl off the altar.” We crawl off of it often.

Charlotte Elliott was an invalid all her life, but through daily surrender to Christ, she came to live in a joyful relationship with Christ. She knew the depths of God’s mercy and grateful for it, she strove to live in response to His love.

Years after her fateful conversation with Pastor Malan, Elliott’s brother was raising money for a school for the children of poor clergy. She composed a poem, which was printed and sold to fund the effort. It sold thousands of copies. Later, the poem was put to music. When Charlotte Elliott died and family members went through her things, they found more than one-thousand letters from people telling her what an inspiration and encouragement her poem-turned-into-a-song had been for them. You may be interested in knowing what powerful words Elliott's poem contained. To give you a taste, I'll tell you that it begins this way: “Just as I am, without one plea, But that Thy blood was shed for me, And that Thou bidst me come to Thee, O Lamb of God, I come!”

The first response that God’s love in Jesus calls from us is humble surrender born of gratitude. When God calls us, we go where God sends us. We do that and as a result, get close to Christ and share Christ’s love with others.

It isn’t always what we want to do. Some of you have heard me tell the joke about a young man who didn’t want to go to Church on a Sunday morning. When his mother called to wake him, at first he didn’t say anything. She persisted and he asked, “Oh, why do I have to go to church anyway?” “Because, son” she said, “when we go to Church, God builds faith in us through the Word, the Sacraments, and the fellowship of other Christians. Because when we go to worship, we help strengthen others faith. Because God commands us to worship Him.” She paused. “But I guess the big reason for now, son, is that you’re the pastor.”

Paul says offer up your body—show up where you’re needed as an agent of Christ—as a way of telling Christ, “Thank You.”

Ann and I had been married about five years and we’d just moved into a house we rented from our home church in Columbus. I’d recently become a Christian after years of walking away from God.

It was Friday night. I was looking forward to relaxing with Ann when an emergency squad roared into our neighborhood, stopping at the house across the street. I’d met the man who lived there a few times. I'd never met his wife.

The squad was there for maybe twenty minutes when a police cruiser came. Another twenty minutes passed before squad car and cruiser both left without taking anyone to the hospital. I took furtive glances out the window, each time with a rising sense that I should go see if I could help. It was as though Jesus was telling me, “I love you. Love me back by helping your neighbor. Go across the street, Mark.”

Finally, I did walk across the street to what was now a darkened house. When he answered my knock, my neighbor had an expression of shock and incomprehension on his face. He flung the door open and threw himself down on a chair in the living room. There, on the living room floor, where she had collapsed, been attended to, and pronounced dead, was the body of his wife. The police and the EMS had left her body and this grief-stricken man who, in the haze of fresh grief, was unable to think or function.

They’d been eating dinner, he explained to me, when his wife of fifty years, the mother of his children, collapsed and died. He hadn’t known what to do. So, I asked where his address book was and if I could call his pastor, his family, and the funeral director. I stayed with him until they all showed up. Later, he thanked me. I told him that I couldn’t take credit for what I did; I just went where I thought Jesus wanted me to go.

Honesty compels me to confess that for every story I could tell you about my going where Christ wanted me to be, I could tell several more about how I ignored Christ’s call and did what I wanted to do instead. (Thank God for the forgiveness we can have because of Jesus!)

You and I don’t always feel like being Christians. We may not feel like showing up for worship on Sundays, for example. We may not feel like helping a bothersome neighbor, listening to a friend with problems, taking a little extra time with the person who has a story they want to tell, or sharing Christ with others. Sometimes, I can assure you, even we pastors would rather spend another hour with our heads buried in our pillows, worshiping at Saint Mattress of the Springs and not showing up where Christ wants us to be.

But, as Paul reminds us, the Lord Who went to a cross to die and rose from the tomb to give us life deserves our gratitude and He has an indispensable role for each us to play in His Church and in living each day.

Jesus Christ loves us just as we are. When we let our lives display our gratitude for that incredible fact, God can do wonderful things through us. God can build faith where there is no faith or little faith. God can warm our stone-cold lives made indifferent by sin, into lives pulsing with the life, passion, and compassion of the God we know in Jesus Christ.

When presented with the chance to go where you sense God’s love would send you this week, don’t hesitate, “Go!”