Preacher: Jenn Hosler
Scripture: Romans 12:1-2; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
Romans 12:1-2 (CEB): So, brothers and sisters, because of God’s mercies, I encourage you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice that is holy and pleasing to God. This is your appropriate priestly service. Don’t be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can figure out what God’s will is—what is good and pleasing and mature.
I am a person who needs a lot of sleep. I’m also a person who tends to overfunction when there is scarcity. Something needs to be done and isn’t there anyone to do it? My internal thought process says, “I guess it needs to get done.” Which means it needs to be me. So I guess I will be up until 2am getting congregational documents together or putting together worship slides or x y z.
I joined the Church of the Brethren as a young adult for many reasons, one of which was the church’s strong emphasis on service. In the Church of the Brethren, people get doing.
Some time ago, after more than a decade in the church, I noticed that the opportunities to keep doing were endless. At the local level, my congregation needed my gifts and my time immensely. At the district level and even denominational level, my name kept rising to the surface as a young adult, willing to serve, maybe with some good ideas sometimes.
When I had a baby in 2018, I realized a few things, heightened by my life circumstances. The church often wasn’t thinking of ministry leaders whose spouses were also working full-time and who had small children. Spaces, activities, events, and support for leadership roles were not designed with my needs in mind. I was unraveling. I barely got time off for parental leave and my spouse had to go back to work so quickly. Feeling like there were so many pulls on my time, my brain, my well-being—and almost nothing in terms of support—I stepped back from all District and national involvement for a few years. It felt like I would be burnt to a crisp in sacrifice if I didn’t put a hard boundary on my time, my mental health and physical well-being at risk.
I kept serving congregationally. This didn’t always protect my well-being but did allow me to navigate my needs differently. Eventually, though, the needs continued to grow. As a Type A person (I suppose), I have really high standards for myself. “Good enough” was not really something I was used to doing, which led to me schedule sending emails at 2am or working on a sermon until 3 in the morning. It was difficult to say no, because it had to get done and someone had to do it.
There is a Psalm that stands out to me, which perhaps is a stick in the wheel of the grindstone of Brethren sacrifice. Psalm 127:2 says, “It is pointless that you get up early and stay up late, eating the bread of hard labor because God gives sleep to those he loves.” Oof. But, God, don’t you want me to be sacrificing?
“Another way of living” is a Church of the Brethren phrase sometimes used to describe how we try to “be not conformed to the world.” It is interesting that in our desire to have “another way of living” our church culture can actually start to mirror the daily grind of the world around us. Most Americans don’t take the vacation time they are due (if they get any at all). People with means keep adding more workload to get more prestige or a better position or career trajectory (note that I say people with means, because the working poor don’t grind themselves intentionally).
Volunteering or working within the church, we’re not here for the prestige or pay, to be sure. We are sacrificing ourselves for a cause. Certainly, that is at the heart of our biblical story – nonviolent love and sacrifice.
Yet sometimes we fail to be transformed and fix our eyes on the other part of God’s beloved story that we are being brought into, the one of the Garden, of wholeness, of Sabbath rest, of harmony and peace with our families and communities and all creation.
There is a dilemma and tension. How do we understand ourselves and our lives as an offering to God, while also being transformed from this notion that holy sacrifice requires grinding ourselves into the ground?
How do we radically work to change a church institution to cultivate God’s abundance, to provide the supports that people need to be the church together?
I was a volunteer pastor for more than a decade. Two years ago this month, my co-pastor and I started being paid quarter time, at scale. This was immensely helpful for my family’s well-being, because the financial pressure of serving for free had finally caught up in a difficult way.
As a congregation, we’re still not where we should be in terms of the load different people are carrying, including me. But I am more willing to say, “Good enough” to a sermon. I’m more willing to let tasks slide to the next day instead of doing them at 1am. Certainly, things are not always getting done when they need to be. We are still short on people for different roles. For instance, I’m filling functions that should be held by a church treasurer, which we don’t have right now.
I think our congregational culture has changed some, in that we are trying to be explicit about what is being done and what it costs (in terms of time or money). We’re trying not to keep tasks behind the scenes – to avoid suffering in silence and to enable problem solving. One strategy we are taking is tapping financial resources we have, “spending up” to give us space to reimagine our ministries and envision a sustainable future. It is scary spending our savings, but we recognize the need to risk and invest in our congregational future (including our Brethren House ministry), working towards transformation and sustainability. While doing so, we are trying to protect people’s well-being, paying staff, paying consultants, and trying to cultivate a mix of bearing burdens and resting well. We are trying to think and act theologically when it comes to both sacrifice and rest. We are trying to recognize where undercapacity is unintentionally harming us deeply and we are seeking solutions urgently to protect people’s well-being. We don’t always get it right, certainly, but we are trying to transform our organizational structure and practices to preserve and protect the people involved.
This work may not always be visible to everyone, so I think it is important to name these things.
I want us to circle back to the scripture I shared at the beginning, Romans 12:1-2:
So, brothers and sisters, because of God’s mercies, I encourage you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice that is holy and pleasing to God. This is your appropriate priestly service. Don’t be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can figure out what God’s will is—what is good and pleasing and mature.
Not being conformed but being transformed. Offering ourselves to the work of God – in ways that are pleasing to God. The God who rested on the Seventh day does not want us to grind ourselves into dust. Our Creator God seeks our good, our well-being. God desires that we build a community defined by both sacrifice and wholeness, along with nurture, and care.
Our passage in Thessalonians illustrates some of these juxtapositions. Paul openly talks about the difficulties he and his team faced getting to Thessalonica, the abuse or persecution they experienced, and harassment from hostile crowds. Paul also takes some time to address some accusations. In that era, traveling orators gathered crowds to themselves to build prestige and status. For Paul, preaching wasn’t about power or prestige. He and his team weren’t looking to line their pockets but to please God and welcome more people with the “Good news of God.”
Paul says that he and his co-workers were building relationships and nurturing the Thessalonians with tenderness like a nursing mother feeds her child. This is a powerful image. Breastfeeding is physically and emotionally consuming. It is both difficult and beautiful. A human body is feeding another human. A mother also gets to look into the eyes of her infant, connecting in a sweet, special moment. These special moments can also be exhausting and painful even amidst the love and beauty.
Our Thessalonians passage ends with, “So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.”
Recently, Nate and I had a childcare need. We rarely seek out babysitters for our kiddo – perhaps it stems from isolation parenting during covid or from the high costs of babysitting or the fact that we already use so much childcare during the workday. We love hanging out with our kiddo and sharing our life with him. Babysitters are rare for us. Unless something is explicitly adults only, he is along for the ride.
Last weekend, we had an engagement party that was adults-only so we decided to ask friends from church if they might be able to hang out with our child. I realized I felt a bit awkward and apologetic for asking someone to be inconvenienced and to help me. When I say this out loud, I realize this is foolish. If we are truly trying to build a beloved community, if we going to be sharing our lives with each other, sometimes we need to ask for help and sometimes we need to offer help.
I need to ask myself, “am I just conforming to the world when I (accidentally) try to be self-sufficient or don’t ask for help?”
Paul’s words in 1 Thessalonians 2 remind us that our community is tasked with sharing God’s good news with the world around us—and with each other. It also involves sharing our lives with each other, caring for one another tenderly.
We are at a pivotal moment in terms of how we imagine and envision our congregational life together: how we worship, how we gather, who leads us, and what we do together. We have an opportunity to play and experiment with how we do our worship service, as a nearby congregation has asked to use our sanctuary for a year while they undergo a renovation. They are theological aligned in many ways and they’d pay us too. This need for them is an opportunity for us to ask, “is what we’re doing really the best way to be the church together?” Could our worship services feel stronger on a different day or at a different hour, in a different room or in a different format? What opportunities could we take to create a different experience that strengthens our community?
With the funds that this income will bring in, we could even bring on another pastor to help cultivate our community and worship experiences in new and innovative ways. We have an opportunity to re-think how we gather and how we cultivate community and care.
I’ve talked about a bunch of things this morning: 1) a caution of overwork under the guise of “sacrifice,” especially in a congregation where volunteers are scarce; 2) the God of the Cross is also the God of the Garden and the God who rested on the 7th Day. Sacrifice is holy and so is rest, 3) the call of following Jesus involves doing it together, proclaiming the Gospel of God and embodying abundant, tender care for one another.
To close, I want to create space for us to discuss or share as a group:
- When have you seen the tension between sacrifice and rest?
- What organizational practices or structures do you think need to change in our congregation?
- Thinking about church or non-church contexts, when have you felt most cared for?
- What does “sharing our lives together” mean to you?
- What one or two things would you love to see or experience or build for our church community?
