Ordinary Time Week 11

Psalm: Psalm 124 or Psalm 138

Old Testament: Exodus 1:8-2:10 or Isaiah 51:1-6 

Gospel: Matthew 16:13-20 

Epistle: Romans 12:1-8

This week, we have one of those classic passages from Paul’s letters. It is used as a means to exhort Christians to go deeper and to truly live the sacrificial, cruciform life. We are encouraged to be “living and holy sacrifices.” This alone is a strange concept because sacrifices in generally in that time were killed. And notice also that we are to present our “bodies” as a “spiritual service of worship.” The body and the spirit seem to be wrapped up together here. Nonetheless, the idea is that we are to wholly give ourselves over to following Christ. 

One thing I thought about today is what the “therefore” is all about. In some ways, what follows in chapter 12 doesn’t seem to relate much to chapter 11. First, I think the therefore is actually in relation to all 11 chapters that have come before the dense theological discussion Paul has been offering. In light of all that he has said before about God and his work in Christ, our behavior needs to change. But, I think that Paul is also thinking about the analogy he just made about the olive tree where Jews are considered the natural branches and Gentiles are the wild branches that have been grafted onto the tree through Christ. Paul argues that Gentiles need to remember that if the natural branches were able to be cut-off, the wild branches be removed all the more easily.

In light of this discussion, Gentiles need to guard against relying on dead ritual or family heritage to be a part of the family of God. God wants us to be living sacrifices to him. It is also interesting how quickly Paul turns to discussing unity after this. We are not the first generation to struggle with unity in the Church. We may be more divided in terms of official denominations than when Paul was writing, but on the local level, people are still people. Local churches still struggle with unity and strife. No matter how many times we hear Paul’s words, the message is still relevant to us. Just when we think we have it together and have fully sacrificed everything to God, something new comes up; either on the individual level and we realize we are holding something from God, or on the corporate level, someone new comes into the church, or a new leader arises, or a new carpet gets put in you don’t like, etc…Life is always changing and we have to continually work at sacrifice and unity.

Our reading from Matthew reminds me of one of the missionary books this year the Nazarene Church puts out. It is about the persecuted Church in Africa, and every chapter ends with the statement, “the church is Unstoppable.” It also frequently quotes Matt. 16:18 “upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.” It was interesting, however, that the book seemed to interpret “rock” to mean Peter’s confession of faith that Jesus is the Messiah, and not on Peter himself. I have never heard this interpretation and am inclined to disagree with it; however, it is a valid interpretation. The reason why I think rock means Peter, is first because it is the predominate view. But is also a play on words between Peter/“petros,” and rock/“petra.” We know that Peter’s actual name was Simon anyway and he was called Peter because Jesus gave him the name Peter. The final clue, coming from the context is that in verse 19, Jesus says he will give “to you” the keys to heaven. The “to you” he is talking to is Peter. I think what the book was trying to do was distance itself from sounding too Catholic, but I think we still have to remember and honor Peter’s role in the early church and the fact that he was the leader who preached and began things on the day of Pentecost.

I’m going to wrap it up this week with a challenge from those words from Paul. These words at the beginning of Romans Ch. 12 might be ones we want to return to often and check in to see how we are doing. Are we continually and daily presenting our bodies as living and holy sacrifices? Unlike a normal sacrifice which is given and left at the altar, it’s not a one-and-done for us. Let us look to and trust Christ, for it is only by his Spirit that we can live this life to the glory of God the Father.

Grace and Peace.