Romans 12:1-2 (The Message)
1-2 So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
Ephesians 2:1-10 (The Message)
1-6It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.
7-10Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish! We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
Memorial Day, like many of our holidays, serves to focus our attention – for one day at least – on an important topic or event. A Holiday marks something that has meaning for all of us, but for one reason or another tends to get lost in the ebb and flow of our busy daily lives. And so holidays serve as markers, reminders or signposts that point us to an event or subject that is worry of our attention.
Memorial Day, of course, is the day we set aside to honor all of those that have paid the ultimate price in protecting the freedoms and liberties we enjoy. The brave men and women we honor deserve to be remembered and deserve to be honored. All that we do this weekend – and in truth much more frequently than one weekend a year – should be done in their memory and to their honor.
For most of us I think it is difficult to picture or to really understand what these men and women do and have done. Until you have actually been in the position of risking your life to protect someone else’s I don’t know that you can really have a full understanding of what that looks and feels like.
I can’t even begin to compare any of my life experiences with that situation. For me, the closest I have come to some level of understanding of what that sacrifice might look like is through the movie Saving Private Ryan.
The highly acclaimed and Oscar winning Steven Spielberg movie is loosely based on actual events from WWII. The story begins with 4 brothers going off to war in different theatres of the fighting. In one day, just before D-Day, three of the brothers are killed in action. The army realizing the sheer tragedy of the situation decides to pull the last surviving Ryan brother from action and send him home to his family. This is complicated by the fact that James Ryan, played by Matt Damon, is a paratrooper and has just jumped behind enemy lines as part of the D-Day invasion.
The rest of the movie follows an Army ranger captain, played by Tom Hanks, and his squad of soldiers as they search the frontlines of the battle for Ryan. Eventually they find him and his unit in defense of a key bridge that is about to be attacked by the German army.
Vastly outnumbered, the paratroopers and the rangers hold off the Germans until reinforcements arrive. In the course of the battle all but one of the rangers sent to find and save Private Ryan are killed, including Tom Hanks’ character – who dies from his wounds just as it becomes clear that the reinforcements have turned the tide in favor of the American troops.
With his dying breaths the captain pulls private Ryan close and he says ‘earn this . . . earn this’. The movie ends with an elderly James Ryan, family in tow, kneeling at the grave of the captain that saved his life. He explains that not a day goes by that he doesn’t think about the sacrifice that was made for him and that he has tried every day to live up to that sacrifice. Breaking down emotionally, with his children and grandchildren looking on he turns to his wife and asks, almost begging: ‘tell me I have been a good man, tell me I have lived a good life.’ She does and the movie ends as emotionally as any I have ever seen.
This is an example of the type of sacrifice we are honoring this weekend, and for many of us, it is the only time of year that we are think about just how much has been sacrificed for us and for our freedom.
Few, if any of us will ever physically experience being saved like Private Ryan. The trauma of a moment, of an experience like that, it is little wonder that he says not a day goes by without thinking about it. How could something like that every escape your mind.
If any of us had ever had an experience like that, remembering it, celebrating it and honoring those that made it possible would certainly not be a once a year thing. But – and you all probably know where this is going - the truth is all of us have been saved in an even more extraordinary way, in a more profound way and in a more complete way.
Christ stepped into history walked among us, lived and then died on the cross to save you and to save me. Christ paid the ultimate price, made the highest sacrifice for each and everyone of us. However, Christ – unlike Tom Hanks and the other soldiers in the movie – chose to sacrifice, chose to trade places with you and with me. Christ, who is perfectly blameless, holy and in fact God, in making the ultimate sacrifice paid the price for our failures, our shortcomings and selfishness - our sins.
The obvious question then becomes – what should/could/must we do in memory and honor of what God, through Christ has done for us? Clearly one day, one weekend is not enough to recognize this kind of sacrifice. We all know that, but what can be done that can properly honor this kind of sacrifice.
Before we can even begin to answer that question, I think we must closely examine just what exactly it is that Christ did for us:
§ This passage from Ephesians 2 puts it into clear perspective:
Ephesians 2:1-6 (The Message)
1-6 It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.
And, of course, we all know this story. We all know how Jesus did all of this for us – all by himself, willingly he choose to humble himself from his throne in heaven, willingly Jesus walked all the way to the painful, shameful death on a cross. Willingly Jesus came to live and die, to suffer pain and anguish and fear and rejection and eventually to conquer death and bring freedom. All for us, all for you and for me Jesus laid down his own life for ours.
In some ways this is where the illustration with the movie must end: You see, there is no way we can live up to the charge that Tom Hanks’ captain puts on Private Ryan. Simply put there is nothing we can do to earn or live up to what Christ has already done for us. It just can’t be done, all of us have already fallen short of that mark. This is emphasized in the conclusion of the passage from Ephesians 2 – v. 7 – 10:
7-10Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish! We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
While we can’t earn what Christ has done for us, we are not only able, but we are called to respond to Christ’s sacrifice. To live our lives in light of and in response to what God has done for us. Listen again to the end of the Ephesians passage, as it sheds some light on what that response should look like: joining in on the ‘good work’ Christ has already begun and has prepared us to do.
· There is also insight into what this might look like from this morning’s passage from Romans, lets first look at v.2:
Romans 12:2 Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
Embracing what God does for you is joining in on the ‘good work’ that he is already doing. It isn’t all about us, responding to Christ’s sacrificial love is instead about working with Christ in the world. It is about living into the life Christ has saved you for.
Again, what becomes clear from both of these verses is that even our response is not about us – the best response we can have – that which will honor God most is simply being who he made us to be. Daily remembering Christ’s sacrifice and focusing our attention on him is the only way to see what he has planned for you and to know what he is calling you to do.
This brings me back to the last connection to Memorial Day and to Saving Private Ryan and a central aspect to the life that we have in Christ – Freedom. We all know that Our soldiers daily put their lives on the line, and sometimes give up those lives for your freedom and mine.
In the movie Tom Hanks and his squad of heroes gave their lives for Ryan’s freedom. But as many people say, and we all recognize as true, ‘freedom isn’t free’ – freedom bought at that price comes with more than a little bit of responsibility.
Private Ryan, very understandably, felt a very real responsibility to live up to the life he had been given, the life that those soldiers’ lives had bought. He felt a need to ‘live a good life’ and to be a ‘good man’ in response to that gift
We have each been given the gift of freedom as well, that is what Christ won for us on the cross. And we all know that it was a costly, costly gift. And just like it was for Private Ryan, our freedom bears with it a measure of responsibility.
We were not freed for ourselves and for whatever desires or impulses we might have. Rather we were freed from our bondage to sin and to the death that sin brings. Sin, the thing which traps us, trips us up and turns us into what we are not, were not created to be and don’t want to be.
We are freed to follow the call of Christ, to jump into the kingdom life of a child of God and to become the person that God has made us to be.
It is important to remember, however that our freedom, our salvation, our calling isn’t about special events, holidays or one weekend a year. Our faith, and the life lived in response to Christ’s love isn’t about showing up once a week on a Sunday morning to put in your time and do your duty. No, as the Romans’ passage says, ‘Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.’
Honoring and remembering what Christ has done for you is about living your life, every day, every moment in light of the love and work of God. I don’t know just who or what God made you to be – I have a hard enough time figuring that out for myself. But I do know that everyday, as we try to work out what it is we are supposed to be doing and who it is we are called to be, we are to live each day, each hour, each moment in the light of Christ’s sacrificial love.
Holidays and celebrations are all well and good, but it is in your everyday live, your eating, sleeping, hanging out with friends, going to work, doing work around the house, going to school life. It is that life – the one you live in everyday that has to be placed as an offering to God.
It is in our everyday lives where we can show that we honor, remember and understand what it is that Christ did for us. In his immense mercy and with his incredible love Jesus, despite our egos and our faults and all our sins, Jesus embraces us with his incredible, undeniable, sacrificial love.
And with that love of God we went from dead in our sins to alive – alive and free in Christ. That love of Christ, and the life and freedom it brings us is what we are called to remember, honor and celebrate every day.
Amen.
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