A Living Sacrifice – Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon

0:00 Peace be with you, friends. For this 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, I want to begin with a very brief second reading taken from Paul to the Romans. Now, I've said to you before, Paul, the first great theologian, in some ways, all of theology is a footnote to Paul, and then Romans is his greatest work. And so it's where all theologians look. It's where all Christian theology begins in a way. Well, the little passage today, it's only a few lines, but boy, is it pack a punch. And I want to unpack this a little bit now today. Let me just tell you now, here's how it begins. I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice. Now, to get this, we have to go back to the youth of St. Paul. So he's Saul, Shaul, they would have said in his Hebrew, from Tarsus. So he's a Jew of the Diaspora.

0:55 Brilliant young man, knows the Hebrew scriptures and also knows Greek philosophy and so on. He's then sent to Jerusalem, the center of the Jewish world, to study with Gamaliel, the great rabbi. And while he's there in Jerusalem, what would he have known? He would have known very well all of the rituals and practices around the holy temple. Now, what happened at the temple? Well, there's some teaching went on there. That's true, there were scribes and so on. But the main focus of the temple in Jerusalem was sacrifice, largely animal sacrifice. Though there was grain sacrifice, too, there were thank offerings as well. Now, sacrifice. We'll use that word, but in a very metaphorical sort of way. The man made a sacrifice, or there's a sacrifice bunt in baseball. But sacrifice was so essential to the religious consciousness of the ancient world, and especially of ancient Israel.

1:53 Our word sacrifitium in Latin comes from sacrifatere, to make holy. All the sacrifices of the temple, thank offerings, offerings of praise, grain offerings, and especially animal offerings, holocausts, offered up were what? They were attempts to affect a reconciliation between divinity and humanity. Now, that word, of course, is very interesting, reconciliation. It comes from, the Latin roots are eyelash to eyelash. Cilia are the eyelashes. So, to be reconciled means brought back eyelash to eyelash. See, we're alienated from each other and from God. We're wandering in a far country. To be reconciled is to be brought now face to face again with God.

2:52 To be made holy, Sacrum Fatere, right? To make holy. So that was what the sacrifice was all about. Now, some of these were relatively, you might say, peaceful and effortless. If I just want to offer thanksgiving to God, it didn't cost me all that much. But a sin offering. I know I'm a sinner and I'm coming seeking the forgiveness of God. I'm seeking to repair this broken relationship. What did I do? I brought an animal to the temple. The throat of the animal would be slit and the animal would die. The blood poured out and the animal's body offered up.

3:34 What was going on inside the psychology of someone making that sacrifice? Well, this animal represents me. This, by right, should be happening to me. In the suffering and death of this animal, I'm offering myself, Lord, painfully back to you. I'm being brought back online with the God from whom I have been unreconciled. So sacrifice was all about bringing divinity and humanity together. Okay, so young Shaul, young Saul of Tarsus, he gets all this. He lives in the shadow of the temple.

4:16 Then he met the crucified and risen Jesus. That experience, as he's going to persecute the church on the road to Damascus, he's knocked to the ground, and the light shines around him, and he hears that voice, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? He meets the risen Jesus, and everything changes. Or better, I really shouldn't say that, not everything changes. Better, everything he knew about his Israelite religion, including the temple, now has been transposed into a different key.

4:58 It now takes on a new purpose and focus. It's been brought into a higher context of meaning. What does he see now that he's met the risen Lord? He sees that all of Israel, and that means the covenant, that means Torah, that means the prophets, and it means the temple and its sacrifices, all have been brought up into Christ. Christ recapitulates, draws to himself all the great traditions of Israel. So that now, listen, listen, it's the heart of Christianity. Now, Jesus in person is the point of reconciliation. Don't we say in our theological language that in him, two natures, divine and human, come together? Right. In his person, he is the reconciliation.

5:55 of divinity and humanity. He's the fulfillment of the covenant and the Torah, and he is the supreme sacrifice. All of the millions of sacrifices made in that temple over hundreds of years are now gathered together into his one great sacrifice. Jesus is the fulfillment of Israel. Now, watch Paul, by the way. Shaul has become the apostle Paul, ringing the changes on this idea all throughout his letters. Okay? Now, let's take one more step before we get back to this little passage. One more step. When he met Jesus and he heard those haunting words, because they're repeated, Paul, they come up again and again in the Acts of the Apostles. Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Well, Saul is persecuting the church, right?

6:52 But Jesus so identifies himself with his church that he can say, Saul, you're persecuting me. The church, and Paul is so insistent on this, is not just a club of like-minded people, not a society of people that love Jesus. No, no, much more radical and dramatic than that. The church is a mystical body. cells, molecules, organs of the body of Christ, which means, here's the last step, the church itself, you and I, all the baptized, we are meant to be the place where divinity and humanity come together. We are the sacrifice. We are the reconciliation. what Jesus affected through his cross and resurrection. Now we participate in that.

7:50 Okay, with all that background in mind, listen again to Paul. I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice. Now, this is a Jew talking. He's not distinguishing body, soul here the way a Greek might. When he says your bodies, he means you. He means you. to offer yourself as a living sacrifice, you become the place where God's will meets the human will. God's mind meets the human mind. God's purpose meets the human purpose. God's will is determining your private life. God's will is determining your public life. God's will is animating your friendships.

8:46 God's will is what your professional life is all about. You see what's happening? Becoming a living sacrifice means everything in you is now turned to God. May every thought, every action, every impulse, every emotion, everything in you directed to God. And now, what does this become? Listen as Paul goes on.

9:16 You offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship. What was going on in the temple? Worship, by means of sacrifice. What's worship? I've said to you before, from the older English word, worth-ship. it's turning to what's of highest value that's worship now fellow sinners we all worship something right and it's typically something other than god which is our whole problem what's paul saying here in making of your whole life a living sacrifice you are now turned to god in right praise. You're not praising anything else, nothing in this world. You are praising God, turned in every aspect of your life toward God, becoming thereby a living sacrifice.

10:17 Now listen as he goes on. Do not conform yourselves to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. See, what's it mean to be conformed to the age? That means I'm worshiping things that every sinner around me worships. That means sex and pleasure and money and power and country and family and everything else that gets worshiped. When I turn my energies and my powers and everything in me to these false gods, I get off kilter. I become sort of cattywampus. I'm lost. See, what Paul's saying is when you worship a right, when you become a rightly ordered living sacrifice, now we're talking. Listen, as he closes this little passage, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect. Now, listen, I'm going to give you a model for your whole life.

11:18 Not that I follow this. It's very hard for us sinners to follow this. But here's the formula. What's the will of God? Okay, now, is my mind attuned to the will of God? Is my will attuned to the will of God? Are my passions and emotions in service of a mind and will that are attuned to the will of God? Are my friendships in line with the will of God? Is the way I seek entertainment in accord with the will of God? Is my private life in accord with the will of God? Is the way I lead my public life in my work? You see, you may discern the will of God and then turn your life in accordance with that will. You become a living sacrifice. Okay, just a quick word about the gospel, which sheds great light on this.

12:13 So Jesus now says to his disciples, whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. Now, for us, the cross has become a religious symbol. We put it up on walls, and it probably gives a sense of peace, you know, if anything. They knew about crosses. The people he's talking to here, they knew all about them. They saw them. They saw people writhing in their death throes for days at a time on Roman crosses. They knew exactly what that meant. It meant supreme suffering. So when he says blithely, whoever wants to follow me must take up his cross. Well, see, why? Why? Because we're off kilter. Because our wills aren't properly directed. Right? Because everything I just named is not ordered to God's will, but to something else. Therefore, bringing us back online is going to feel like a sacrifice.

13:13 And I mean now those bloody sacrifices offered in the Jerusalem temple. What's happening to this poor animal is blood poured out. He's dying in front of me. Ought to be happening to me. Getting online with God is not a walk in the park. It's a sacrificial business. Listen, whoever wishes to save his life will lose it. See, what's the life he's losing? That old one, that off-kilter, that weird life where I'm worshiping something other than God. You've got to lose that life, and that's going to be painful. But see, when you become, everybody, a living sacrifice, that means your life is getting