Finding God's Intention Through Tension

Thank you, music team, for that song. It reminds us how good God is and how amazing Jesus is. My prayer is that the love we experience in Jesus will be the bond we experience as a church.

Over the next two weeks Perosa and I are looking at the idea of the body of Christ. I’m sharing part one this week, and Perosa will share part two next week. With nominating committee coming up and new roles about to be taken on, we want to capture what it means to be the body of Christ and to share a bond of love that unites people.

That bond matters, and not just in church. How many of you watched the Olympics over the last few weeks? I didn’t follow it as much as I’d have liked because I was away. But what I find really interesting about the basketball is seeing superstars like Steph Curry, Kevin Durant and LeBron James unite around one cause: winning gold for the USA. They’re expected to win with the players they have. But to do it, they have to put aside their egos and agendas and unite around a common goal.

We’re like that as a family of believers. Part of being the body of Christ is putting aside our agendas and preferences and uniting around Jesus, sharing a bond of love.

A divided church

Today’s text is Romans 12:1–8. While you find it, here’s the context. The church in Rome was very divided between Jews and Gentiles. The emperor Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome, and for about five years the Gentiles ran the church. When the Jews were eventually allowed back, they found a very different church. It no longer followed the Jewish practices they’d left behind. It had become a very Gentile church, with differences in theology and tradition.

Paul wants this divided church to be united, which is why he writes the letter. I think Romans is a call to abandon our individualism, live out a cross-cultural Christian life, love one another and experience genuine community.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

— Romans 12:1–8

Father in heaven, thank you for your word and that it speaks life today. Help us lay some things down before you. May this not be a message that just pats us on the back. May it change us and alter our perspective. Transform us by the renewing of our minds. Help us repent and live in line with you. Holy Spirit, speak through me and make these words come alive, so that we live the calling you’ve set out for each of us. In Jesus’ name, amen.

The blood bank

There are two ways I like to contribute to the community around me. One is serving in church. The other is the blood bank. Has anyone here given blood? Wow, I was expecting a few more. Church, you’ve got to step up your game!

My first visit didn’t go smoothly. Lifeblood in Ringwood texted me instructions: drink eight or maybe ten cups of water, be well hydrated, eat something before you come. I thought, “I’ll be right.” I’m not good at following instructions. On planes I push the boundaries a little: put the window shade down a bit, recline a bit, see if they’ll catch me.

So I didn’t follow the instructions. I’d exercised the day before and hadn’t drunk much water. Then I walked in, and the first thing I saw was free food. If you’ve been to the blood bank, you’ll know: spinach and ricotta rolls in the oven, chocolate milk, kombucha, all sorts of snacks. I thought, “This is good.” Before I even got to the chair I was helping myself. You’re supposed to eat afterwards, but if it’s there, I’m eating it.

At the interview they asked, “Have you had enough water and something to eat?” “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be right.” Then they put the needle in my arm and asked, “Have you really drunk enough water? Your veins are a bit dehydrated.” “Can’t be! Let me drink some more and we’ll be fine.” It doesn’t work like that.

I walked out with a sticker that said First Time Blood Donor and was told to come back and try another time. All I’d done was eat their food. I didn’t give anything of myself.

We laugh, but sometimes we treat church the way I treated the blood bank. We turn it into a program we attend, and we take and consume but don’t give. Church isn’t a place where you just come and consume. It’s about giving, laying your life down for the people around you. That’s the essence of church.

Do you know why the Dead Sea is dead? It has several sources of water flowing in and nothing flowing out. Vitality, life and meaning come when you’re not only receiving but also giving. Maybe you feel spiritually dead because you’ve made a habit of receiving, consuming and taking without ever giving. When you never give, life becomes stagnant and meaningless.

Jesus says the way to find your life is to lay it down: “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it” (Matthew 16:25).

Not burnout, but sacrifice

I want to be very clear: I’m not advocating burning yourself out by taking on as many church roles as possible. Nominating committee comes around and it’s, “I’ll do Pathfinders! I’ll do AV! I’ll do offering! I’ll do youth!” That’s not what I’m saying.

You can be busy running a program on Sabbath morning and still be a consumer. Busyness can become an excuse for being unavailable to the person around us who is hurting. We get so caught up in running programs that we don’t actually live as the church in everyday life. Jesus calls us to be disciples who lay down our lives for those around us, not volunteers who burn ourselves out doing every program that comes along. I’m advocating the life Jesus calls us to: denying ourselves, taking up our cross and following him.

That’s what Paul tells the believers in Rome: “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.”

“Sacrifice” evokes the Old Testament burnt offerings, when an animal was laid on the altar as an offering to God, its death metaphorically giving life to the one who offered it. A living sacrifice means a life of sacrifice not one day a week or sometimes, but every day and every moment.

Paul writes in Ephesians 5:1–2: “Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Giving your life up for others and for God is sacrifice, and that’s what genuine worship is.

Think of the Good Samaritan. A man is lying on the road needing help. The Levite and the priest walk past on their way to worship at the temple. The Samaritan stops and reaches down to help him up. He’s the one truly worshipping, not the religious men on their way to worship.

The pattern of this world

Sacrifice is very countercultural. Paul says, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” The new pattern is a way of life that resists individualism and focuses on the needs of others.

So do we run church according to the patterns of our culture, or according to sacrificial love? Our society runs on production and consumption. I want a phone, so I’m a consumer, and companies like Apple produce phones for people like me. That’s how our society works.

We sometimes forget that the church is meant to be countercultural, and we let consumerism shape how we operate. Culture shapes the church far more than we realise. You only need to look at church history to see how strong that pull is. There’s a well-known quote:

In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centred on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece, where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome, where it became an institution. Next, it moved to Europe, where it became a culture. And finally, it moved to America, where it became an enterprise.

In the New Testament people weren’t invited to church to hear a sermon and sing a few songs. They were invited into a new way of life, vastly different from the culture around them, with extravagant, sacrificial love in every part of it. Their pattern wasn’t production and consumption but laying down their lives for one another. As long as we “do church” by the pattern of consumerism, we’ll never be the church God has asked us to be.

Consumer or contributor?

Here are some signs you might be a consumer. I say this with heaps of love, because I’m so guilty of it. I grew up in church, and I know how to consume church. These are things I’ve noticed when I’ve fallen into the trap of being a consumer rather than a contributor:

• You engage when it’s convenient, rather than out of conviction about your calling to join in what God is doing.
• You’re a great sideline critic. You’re very good at talking about what’s wrong with the church but never contribute to making it right. You review church the way you review restaurants on Google.
• Worship is about God and people meeting your preferences and comfort.

I’m so guilty of that last one. It’s easy to think, “We didn’t sing the songs I like today.” (No, sorry, Monica, I actually really liked those songs. That was great!) Or, “This sermon from Paul…” No, just kidding! He’s supposed to do that to me, because I’m the intern. But I’m so good at critiquing and reviewing: “The worship wasn’t it today. It wasn’t for me.” That’s so selfish and so far from what worship is.

Worship is about sacrifice. The first time worship is mentioned in the Bible is when Abraham goes to sacrifice Isaac. Worship is laying down your preferences and agendas for something bigger.

A contributor, a disciple of Jesus, is someone whose conviction drives them to forsake convenience, whose holy discontent drives them to radical service, and whose posture of worship is sacrifice and surrender. They realise they’re part of one body with many parts.

One body, many gifts, and tension

Paul says every believer has a spiritual gift, and those gifts must be used with humility: “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought.”

I think consumerism grips us so strongly because of pride. We treat our preferences and agendas as if they were the gospel, and anything outside the box we’ve built is wrong. We think church is about God meeting our needs and wants.

But this text says everyone has different gifts, which means different personalities and different expressions of faith. And where there are differences, we run into tension.

Tension isn’t the problem. How you handle it is. Tension is normal, and it can even be good. It depends on how we deal with it. Paul is more concerned with how the Roman church treats one another in the tension than with whether they’ve got everything right.

You can have all the right knowledge and answers and still be far off the mark. Jesus said of the Pharisees, “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practise what they preach” (Matthew 23:2–3). What they taught was right, but they didn’t embody it. They didn’t love people or care for those who were hurting.

Being part of the body of Jesus doesn’t only mean having a relationship with God. It means having relationships with a bunch of other people: people who’ll rub you the wrong way, people who’ll “stink a little,” metaphorically speaking. Maybe. There will be tension.

I don’t think we fully grasp what it means that we’re the body of Christ. Jesus’ body is no longer physically on earth, so we now represent him. Yet sometimes we’re better known for our conflicts and arguments than for the love of Jesus. We’re known for all the wrong things.

In Ephesians Paul speaks of the mystery hidden for ages and pointed to by the prophets, and he reveals it to be the church (Ephesians 3:9–10). Sometimes I look at the church and think, “Really? That’s it?” Sometimes I don’t see us being the hands and feet of Jesus. But Paul wants us to catch the vision of what the church can be: a unity that binds us together.

Unity is harmony

Let me grab my guitar to explain unity.

Many of us think unity means uniformity: everyone thinking, believing and preferring the same things. I think unity is more like harmony.

You can play a song with just the melody, like Amazing Grace one note at a time. It works, but it’s not very rich. When you watched the musicians earlier, there was so much harmony going on behind the scenes, and harmony is what makes music beautiful. Now listen to Amazing Grace with harmony. It sounds fuller, right?

Harmony requires different notes played at the same time. A basic chord is three notes: the root, the third and the fifth. You can add more notes for richer chords, like a seventh. It sounds a bit odd, but it’s beautiful at the same time. There might be some odd people in the church, and they make the church beautiful, like that seventh in the chord.

So unity isn’t uniformity. It’s harmony, and harmony requires differences: people with different gifts using them together.

The guitar string

Let me take the analogy further. A guitar has a headstock and a body, and then there are the strings. Strings don’t come attached. Guitarists know you have to put them on yourself.

We’re like the strings. To do what we were made for, we have to attach ourselves to the head and to the body. Some of us think, “I don’t want to. It’ll limit me.” It doesn’t limit you. It frees you to do what you were made for.

But when you attach yourself to the head and the body, you experience tension. And the only way music comes out of a guitar is through tension.

To operate the way God designed you, you have to place yourself in tension: connect yourself to the head, who is Jesus, and to the body, which is his church. And I don’t mean turning up to a program every Saturday morning to attend and consume. I mean living out Jesus’ commands: loving others, caring for people who are hurting, and forgiving people when tension comes and they rub you the wrong way. That’s being the body of Jesus.

When you experience tension, you discover God’s intention for your life.

The church at its core

If there’s one thing I love talking about more than anything in preaching and pastoring, it’s the church. Even though we fail so much, I believe there’s so much potential, and God sees it too.

But as long as we think church is a place where spiritual consumers get their needs, wants and preferences met, we’ll never be the church God has called us to be. The church is meant to be a breeding ground of sacrificial love, the most selfless place on earth. Unfortunately, I sometimes see more selfishness than anything.

The church is meant to be a radical movement of many temples flooding the earth and changing culture one step and one relationship at a time. It isn’t meant to be contained in this building or this hour of the week. It’s meant to influence every place its people touch. At its core the church is meant to represent Jesus and his love, not our preferences or the traditions we’ve treated as truth. It’s meant to represent his great command: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34–35).

That’s what being the body of Christ is about: connecting yourself with people and experiencing the tension. And in the tension you discover God’s intention for your life.

Prayer

Jesus, you died on the cross for us and showed us sacrificial love. We’re sorry for the times we’ve responded by arguing with one another and treating our preferences like the gospel. We want to centre ourselves on what you’ve called us to: your love, loving one another as you have loved us, so the world will know we’re your disciples.

May we not be spiritual consumers who come once a week expecting our needs and wants to be met. Change our perspective so it’s not about taking and receiving but about giving and pouring out. Fill us up so we can pour ourselves out. That’s the pattern you’ve called us into.

Jesus, may we be your body. May we connect ourselves to you as our head, and to all the people around us, including those who rub us the wrong way. May we be the church, the movement, you’ve called us to be. In Jesus’ name, amen.