Fr Robert Hendrickson

"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."

If you have been to an ordination in the Episcopal or Roman Catholic Church there is a high probability that you will have seen the moment when the person to be ordained lies flat on the ground, face down, in front of the bishop. There is an additional step to this moment (called the prostration) in some monastic orders when the large veil of cloth that is used to cover caskets (called a funeral pall) is draped over the person as they lay on the ground. These are moments when we bodily enact the vows being made - we bodily enact death to self.

The verse in Romans we will hear in the service today is the one above in which we are exhorted to present ourselves (and it specifically mentions our bodies) as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable. So that moment in ordinations when the person offering themselves for ordination to the Church and to Christ enacts that offering - presenting her or his body to be, we all pray and hope, a holy and acceptable servant.

American mainline churches have a weird relationship - a very sanitized relationship to bodies. Our attitudes about death, physical relationships, kneeling, kissing things like icons, genuflection are all quite sanitary when you compare them to how churches live out their faith across the globe and throughout history. We have a mannered and tidy sense of how to live our faith, how to pray, and how to worship.

Over and over again in Scripture we are confronted with the physicality of Jesus's ministry. He heals by rubbing mud and spit on someone's eyes. He breaks bread. He washes feet. Over and over again what we see is that Jesus is presenting himself, his body, as a sign for the kind of spiritual and physical work we are called to as Christians. When we see moments we might call worship in Scripture they involve throwing everything (hair and expensive perfume for example) at the feet - on the feet - of Jesus.

In this time of physical distance from one another what does it look like to present our bodies as a sacrifice? What does it mean to love God enough that we fall to the ground on our knees to pray? What does it mean to love God enough that we long to reach him by kissing an image of him? What does it mean for us to not simply tolerate kneeling for a little while after we receive Communion but to long to be there - to long to rest on bended knee, head bowed, deep in prayer in the Presence of the Lord of Hosts?

One of the great faults of the churches of the West is that we have tried to domesticate and clean up and civilize the wildness of God. We have longed to make ourselves presentable when we are called to be holy. God is not calling us to present some stuff we have or some ideas we've come up with. He is calling us to present our bodies, all that we have and all that we are, which he has first given us. We are called to present them to be a living, holy, and acceptable sacrifice. None of that work of sacrifice is tidy, or well-mannered, or polished. Yet God is there blessing and loving our desire to offer all that we are so that we may become more and more the Body of Christ.

Yours in Christ,

Robert