Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
23^rd of August 2026

Romans 12:1-8

‘I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, on the basis of God’s mercy, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable act of worship.’

I am so conformed to the age in which I live, twenty-first century Australia, late-stage capitalism, a consumer society, that when I hear Paul telling the Romans to present their bodies as living sacrifices, I immediately start thinking of diets and exercise and personal trainers shouting, ‘no pain, no gain!’ And that is completely ridiculous. Of course, that is not what Paul is writing about. While we twenty-first century Australians think about a sacrifice as the act of giving up something we value for the sake of something we consider to be even more important, giving up holidays overseas to pay off the mortgage, giving up sweet treats to get blood sugar down, the first thing the for the people to whom Paul was writing would think of when reading the word ‘sacrifice’ would be delicious meat. As one commentator I read this week puts it, ‘The mention of the word sacrifice would more likely set the mouth to drool than put fear in the heart.’[1]

Paul is writing to the Christian community in Rome to introduce himself before he meets them in person. Suspecting that the Romans have heard negative things about him, Paul uses this letter to explain his understanding of the gospel to them. The core of Paul’s message is that the resurrected Jesus is at work through the Spirit to bring about God’s liberating reign throughout the entire world. In the prophecies of Isaiah, we hear the Lord say to the Servant, ‘It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth,’ (Isaiah 49:6) and this is what Paul argues has happened. The promises that God made to Israel have now been extended to include all of creation; the covenant that God made with the Jews now includes the Gentiles. Gentiles do not have to become Jews to enter this new inclusive Israel; everything that needed to be done has been done by Jesus, and rather than following the Law, all both Jews and Gentiles now need to do is receive this gracious gift.

How, then, are we Gentiles to live, if we do not need to follow the Law to receive God’s mercy? We are to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. I talked last week about the two Jewish groups that survived the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 AD: the group led by the scribes and the Pharisees, which becomes Rabbinic Judaism, and the group led by followers of Jesus, which becomes the church. In this letter, years before Rome destroys the Temple, Paul explains that it is no longer necessary. Rather than making sacrifices of dead animals in either the Jewish or pagan temples, Christians are to present ourselves as living sacrifices, offering ourselves to God. This is a reasonable act of worship, giving God our own bodies rather than sheep or doves. This means that what we do with our bodies matters. Christianity is not a faith that ignores the physicality of life. Bodies matter: how we treat our own and others; how the world’s powers seek to control them. This is why Christianity cares when bodies starve, or are mutilated and maimed in wars, or are forced to work in unsafe conditions. We are an embodied faith.

Our minds also matter and, as Paul tells the Romans, they have been renewed by God’s grace. We no longer need to follow the Torah in every detail to ensure that what we are doing is pleasing to God. Instead, our Spirit-transformed minds can discern for themselves what is good and acceptable and perfect. Ethical guidance comes not from the Jewish law but from our own discernment, which is fortunate for us, because we are living some two thousand years after Paul wrote his letter, and our renewed minds are facing ethical dilemmas that Paul could never have imagined. Equally fortunately, we do not have to make our ethical decisions alone. We are part of a body, the church, in which we are all members one of another, and we can listen and learn from each other.

Today’s passage ends with Paul giving the Romans advice on living together as a Christian community. They are not to think of themselves more highly than they ought, but equally they are not to think themselves too lowly. Each of them has been given a gift, and they are not to hide those gifts, but to use them for the good of the whole. Paul goes into more detail about this when writing to the church in Corinth (1 Corinthians 12-13), a badly behaved church that he himself had spent months organising and teaching. Here his discussion is shorter: ‘We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the encourager, in encouragement; the giver, in sincerity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.’

It seems that the last three, the gifts of the giver, the leader, and the compassionate, all enable them to offer charity. The ‘giver’ is someone who can provide charity from their own resources, and is to do so with sincerity, rather than to be praised by others. The ‘leader,’ someone who acts as a patron for clients, is to be diligent in acting as the clients’ protector, sponsor, and benefactor. And the ‘compassionate,’ those who do not have the resources or position of a giver or a leader, are to be cheerful as they care for the sick and disadvantaged. Those who care for others, Paul writes, are to do so in such a way that recipients of their care know they see it as a privilege and not a burden to help them.

‘We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: the compassionate, in cheerfulness.’ I have spent much of this week thinking about these words. Yes, of course we should share what we have cheerfully; there is something off-putting about those who expect the recipients of their charity to be grateful, although I have discovered this week that there are companies that professionally advise not-for-profits on how to recognise their donors. But I think the idea of cheerfulness in compassion goes deeper.

The literal meaning of compassion is ‘suffering with,’ and suffering with those who suffer in a world in which we are constantly exposed to so much evil is painful. But if all we experience is that pain, if the pain of the world leaves us locked in suffering ourselves, then we will be unable to work towards alleviating it. Decades ago, when I was young, the Uniting Church sent me to the Philippines, a country full of poverty and injustice. I was taught there to celebrate even the smallest wins in the work for justice. Filipinos told me that if they only celebrated big wins, like the People Power revolution that overthrew the Marcos Regime in 1986, they would not have the strength to continue. To keep going, the people I met said, they needed to celebrate constantly, even if all they were celebrating was still being alive and together for one more day.

Aid organisations know that celebrating small successes can keep communities motivated and sustain long-term momentum. We know that magnificent visions can motivate people: think of Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘I have a dream’ speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. But the failure of magnificent visions can also demoralise and dishearten people: think of Bob Hawke’s 1987 campaign pledge that by 1990 no Australian child would be living in poverty. We need both: the magnificent visions of a world of justice and peace; and the celebration of each tiny success along the way, even if that success is only that we are still here and still working together.

If God has given us the gift of compassion, maybe we are to show our gratitude for it by exercising it cheerfully. Because compassion is a gift. To care so deeply for the pain of the world that we suffer with those who suffer is a privilege. It means that we are fully human. It means that our heart and soul are congruent with our mind and body. It means that we have not been conformed to this age or to a world that tells us we should only care about ourselves and those closest to us. It means that we are imitating Jesus, who was also moved with compassion for suffering humanity. And there is really only one proper way to receive a gift: to cheerfully thank the giver. So, thank you, God, for the gift of compassion. Amen.

[1] Paul L. Samuelson, ‘A New Vision of Righteousness: Paul’s Exhortation in Romans 12-15,’ Word and World (1990).