Romans 11:33-12:8
August 23, 2026
As we prepare to celebrate our 25th anniversary this fall, with great joy and anticipation, there is another upcoming 25th anniversary that will be very different, as it will be filled with great sorrow and sadness. In a few weeks our nation will commemorate the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on our country. On September 11, I’m sure there will be several television specials and memorial services to remember those who were killed in New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania, especially those who gave their lives trying to help people who were hurt or in danger.
I’m sure we will hear about firefighters like Gary Box, who was off-duty on 9/11, but rushed toward the twin towers as soon as he learned of the attacks. He could have stayed home, but he didn’t and he died trying to help people out of the towers. Or firefighter Stephen Siller, who had just finished his shift, and was on his way to play golf with his brothers when he learned over his scanner that a plane hit the North Tower. He could have continued on his way to the golf course, but he turned around and headed back to the firehouse. He drove his truck to the entrance of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, but it had already been closed. Instead of giving up, he strapped 60 pounds of gear to his back and ran on foot through the Tunnel to the towers to help his team but died trying to save others.
Welles Crowther was a 24 year-old equities trader on the 78th floor of the South Tower when it was hit by a plane. The people near that floor huddled together, frightened and confused, as there to be no escape; but Welles Crowther suddenly appeared from the wreckage and smoke and guided the people to a stairway, leading them to safety. He could have saved himself, but he made three more trips to that floor, saving many people, until the building collapsed on him.
I mentioned these 3 individuals for their self-sacrifice, because they, along with many others, passed up opportunities to save themselves in order to save others. In fact, I’m sure many of us have actually seen the television footage from the news agencies that showed some of these individuals passing up opportunities to save themselves, as they made their way into the towers and up the stairs, while others were coming down to get out. Our nation was truly moved by their self-sacrifice as they did some extraordinary things in order to save others.
But the transformational power of self-sacrifice is impossible to fully understand or receive apart from Jesus and His sacrifice on the cross for our sins. For example, August marks the beginning of a new school year for students of all ages; and in some high school biology classes across the country, students will hear from teachers or read in textbooks about the evolutionary origins of human beings. How through some kind of big bang of atoms and acids life was started, and we are all the product then of random chance. We are all accidents in a fatherless universe in which only the fittest survive. This is the basic model of evolution.
But the Gary Box, Stephen Siller, and Welles Crowther self-sacrifice gets in the way of believing in evolution, because it demonstrates the difference between evolutionary hope and real hope. What I mean is, if survival of the fittest really is the rule of nature, as evolution claims, then everyone who saw or heard about the heroic events surrounding Gary Box, Stephen Siller, and Welles Crowther’s death should have declared them to be tremendous fools and not heroes. After all, they had given up all that they had and all that they would ever have – their lives. If evolution was true, then it doesn’t make any sense for those guys, the fittest, to save those who were less fit. In other words, if the survival of the human race depended on the strong living and the weak dying, then it’s impossible that every culture in every age could have developed a common understanding of right and wrong that calls it noble when the strong sacrifice for the weak. And yet, in every generation and every culture, self-sacrifice for the sake of the needy and less fortunate has been celebrated and glorified.
Of course, self-sacrifice is the way of our Lord, and it is the message of our second lesson for today. In Romans 12:1 Paul writes, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” (Paul is talking about serving God and one another like Jesus.) And the power of self-sacrifice is really the power of love. In fact, self-sacrifice is the center of genuine love – the kind that we see in the crucified Christ. But sadly, the power of the world to make us believe in false, pleasure-based love can be seen in the way that so many people perceive love in marriage.
When people today say, “I love you,” what they often really mean is, “You give me pleasure.” Sometimes when couples come to see me and ask about marriage, I will ask them why they want to get married. And the answer I usually hear is something like, “Whenever I’m with him/her, I am happier than ever. I want to spend the rest of my life with this person, because he/she is my best friend, I love every minute I’m with him/her, and he/she makes me a better person.” Now, there’s nothing wrong with that answer, but it really doesn’t describe love. It describes pleasure. That’s not “for better or worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health” talk. Our wedding vows are a call to sacrificial love, and it is common for people as they prepare for marriage not to recognize or believe that the “worse” or “poorer” or the “sickness,” and the sacrifices these require will ever really come in their lives. As a result, many marriages dissolve because the pleasure ends and, sadly, some believe that means love has ended as well. “We grew apart” or “We just stopped loving each other,” people will say, when these trials were really the opportunity for genuine love to reveal itself and gain strength.
The language of love is the language of self-sacrifice. It’s a sacrifice that begins with the fittest, Jesus, willingly giving His life on a cross, so that we, the unfit, can live. In fact, as you look at the cross – the one behind our altar, on a piece of paper, or as a piece of jewelry, I don’t think the word, “fun,” will come to mind. But I’m sure you will think of the word, “love,” because no where is love more evident than the cross. Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Through Jesus’ self-sacrifice on the cross we stand forgiven, renewed, restored, and hopeful of eternity with Jesus in heaven.
Today, we are invited through God’s Word and through His body and blood given to us here at this altar in bread and wine to receive not only the benefits of His sacrifice, but to participate in its giving to others. We are invited to love and be loved, not according to the selfish, pleasure-seeking ways of our sinful world, but according to the pattern of Jesus, who reminds us in His Word that to follow Him will not be easy. Just as Jesus had to bear His cross, we will have to bear ours as well. But the good news is that Jesus will give us the strength to bear our crosses, and He will use those crosses – those hardships and difficulties – to increase our appreciation of the cross He bore for us.
God has established the Church in which He distributes His gifts to us to be used in the same way He used His gifts – in love for others. Paul tells us in our second lesson that “We, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.”
Many of those firefighters on 9/11 acted as lifelines to people as they went into burning buildings to save others. We have been given a lifeline to heaven through Jesus’ love and sacrifice, but it is a lifeline for us to keep and to give away at the same time. We are called to give and to love as Jesus did, and when we turn away from the self-serving patterns of this sinful world and use the gifts God gives to us, it is amazing what God can do through forgiven people like us.
