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The crowd made him who he was.  This last week Julie and I watched a movie called The Wrestler.  The movie follows Randy through the high’s and low’s of a professional wrestler.  Don’t worry, no spoiler alerts.  But I will tell you that it’s about a guy named Robin who likes to be called Randy.  When he’s wrestling in the ring he goes by the name, “Ram.”  He’s Randy “the Ram” Robinson.  Randy has bleached blond hair, a dark tan, and big muscles.  He looked the part of a professional wrestler, but it was the crowd that made him who he was.

Each professional wrestler has a character and a signature move.  To be successful in professional wrestling, it doesn’t really matter how athletic you are.  It doesn’t really matter how skilled you are.  All that really matters is whether or not the crowd likes you.  If the crowd cheered and yelled when you entered the ring, you would probably get to come back.  If the crowd booed and threw things when you entered the ring, you would probably get to come back.  At the beginning of The Wrestler the crowd loved Randy “the Ram.”  Randy loved them too.  It was the crowd that brought back every time.

Even after Randy’s time had passed he continued to bleach his hair and tan his skin and lift weights to build his muscles.  He would wrestle in little town halls around his home because he loved to hear the yell of the crowd.  Of course, it wasn’t as loud as it used to be.  There is one scene where Randy goes to an autograph sessions.  He’s there with half a dozen other washed-up wrestlers.  A slow crowd trickles through the door.  Some of the wrestlers are in pretty bad shape.  One of them has fallen asleep.  It’s pretty lame and Randy realizes it.  He suddenly doesn’t like the crowd that he’s keeping.

He decides to work more hours at the grocery store.  He tries to connect with a woman that he likes.  He tries to reconnect with his daughter.  He even calls all of his wrestling connections and tells them that he’s retiring.  Randy doesn’t need the crowd anymore.  He doesn’t want the crowd anymore at least for a moment.  He had a new crowd to be a part of.  But, things don’t go as well as he had planned with them. They don’t cheer as much as the other crowd did. He can’t decide which crowd he wants to be a part of.  Toward the end of the movie, Randy enters the ring one more time.  He addresses the crowd as if they were his family and tells them how much he appreciates them.  After all, it was the crowd that made him who he was.

We spend a lot of time in the after-school program telling the students that you have to be careful what crowd they hang around with.  Even if they’re not doing anything wrong it can be dangerous to be associated with the wrong crowd.  I’m sure the parents here can relate.  Teenagers are susceptible to peer pressure.  We can all see how the crowds they hang around with make them who they are.  If we’re honest, we can also see how the crowds make us who we are.  We like the people who like us.  We’ll do what we can to maintain that approval even if it’s not always good for us.  How many stories end with the phrase, “she started hanging around with the wrong crowd?”  He just got in with the wrong crowd.

“Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”  In many eyes, tax collectors and sinners made up the wrong crowd and Jesus was spending too much time with them.  Jesus spent too much time with tax collectors and sinners.  He spent too much time with prostitutes and lepers.  Jesus spent too much time with the wrong crowd.  As Jesus set at a dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples.  The Pharisees, the guardians of the pious and pure crowd, asked Jesus’ disciples why Jesus spent so much time hanging out with the wrong crowd.  It’s not likely that there concern was about peer pressure or for Jesus’ well-being.  No doubt they were trying to find some way to discredit Jesus.

Jesus had an answer for them.  “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.”  It makes perfect sense to us.  Jesus came to heal, to welcome, to find, to save.  You can’t heal the healthy.  You can’t welcome those already inside.  You can’t find someone who’s not lost.  You can’t save someone who is safe.  You heal the sick.  You welcome the outcast. You find the lost.  You save someone who is in danger.  As far as Jesus was concerned that was what life was really about.  That all sounded well and good but, as far as the Pharisees were concerned, there was a big problem with all of that.

Those people who were sick, those people who were cast out, those people who were lost, were most likely people who were also unclean.  The Pharisees knew what kind of effect a crowd like that could have on a person.  If you were around a crowd of unclean people, you would probably end up unclean yourself.  If you were unclean you might cause people in your family or among your friends to be unclean.  What’s worse, if you were unclean there wouldn’t be able to go into worship like you were supposed to.  You’d have to go through all of these rituals of washing and offering.  At best it was a big hassle.  At worst it would leave a kind of social mark that couldn’t be washed away.  The Pharisees, it seems, had no time for the unclean because they had devoted their lives to God.

For the Pharisees worshipping God was central and primary in their lives.  In their minds, God wants pure sacrifices offered by worshippers that are clean and pure themselves.  So, in their minds, the only crowd worth spending time with was the one that was equally pure and clean.  We can relate to that.  The Pharisees weren’t bad people.  They were upstanding citizens.  They knew every letter of the law and tried to keep every letter of the law.  You would find them in the synagogue and the temple when they were supposed to be in the synagogue or the temple.  They valued holiness and did their best to stay pure and unstained by the world because they knew that’s the way that God wanted it.  In fact, through many eyes, they were models of religious faith and practice; many eyes except Jesus’ of course.

“Go and learn what this means,” Jesus said, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”  What does it mean?  Jesus is quoting the prophet Hosea who said, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”  Hosea looked at God’s people and their worship.  He saw their burnt offerings and grain offerings and sin offerings.  He saw the sacrifices and the blood shed on the altar.  But Hosea also saw their lying, their cheating, their stealing.  He saw their idolatry.  So, Hosea had come to tell them that they had it all wrong.  Their worship meant nothing to God if their lives weren’t going to be touched by it.  Worship was not a magic covering for a multitude of sins.  Pious acts of worship was not what God wanted.  Hosea knew that God wanted steadfast love and mercy.  He wasn’t the only prophet who said this.

The word of the Lord came to Isaiah saying, “I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams…I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity…Learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”

The word of the Lord came to Amos saying, “Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; take away from me the noise of your songs; but let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

The word of the Lord came to Jesus saying, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”

The word of the Lord also came to the apostle Paul, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

Remember, we’ve taken a good portion of the last few months to listen to Paul’s letter to the Romans.  We’ve taken the time to hear what he has to say about all of these grand theological ideas.  We’ve remembered that what Paul is trying to accomplish is to get a group of very diverse people to worship together; Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free.  All of them would have come together from their own religious traditions with their own practices of faith.  Many of them, Jew and Gentile, would have been familiar with the need for ritual and animal sacrifices.  Paul has joined a long list of prophets and teachers in reminding them that dead animals are not really what God wants.  God wants a living sacrifice.

Paul is telling the Christians in the church of Rome that if they really believe everything that he’s written so far, if they really believe in Jesus as Lord, if they really want to worship Jesus’ God, then real worship involves their whole bodies.  Real worship means taking their all their hearts, all their minds, and all their strength and giving them to God.  God would take those many hearts, many minds, and all that strength and mold them into one body, the body of Christ.  “For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members of one another.”

In this body, no one thinks too highly of themselves.  There’s an abundance of wisdom and service and generosity and compassion.  Everyone has something to offer.  All those gifts are given graciously as everyone has ability.  Its sounds nice, doesn’t it?  It sounds like one, big, happy family or at least like a good crowd to be a part of.

We all know that crowds can be dangerous.  There are things we want because of the crowds we surround ourselves with.  It might be drugs and sex.  It might be leisure and style.  It might be education and achievement.  It might be work and wealth.  The danger comes when those things stop serving us and we start serving them; when we stop transforming for God and start conforming to the world. Worship offers that same danger.  If we show up to serve a certain way of worship, worship loses its true meaning.  Worship serves us, we don’t serve worship.  Jesus, of course, didn’t worry about any of that. Jesus spent time with the unclean, with the outcast, with the knocked down, with the dragged out because he had this uncanny ability to change the crowd rather than be changed by the crowd.  He could transform others without conforming to them.  Let’s face it, he could do that because he was Jesus. Jesus could do something on his own that we could never do…unless we stick together.

This crowd can make us who we are meant to be.  Paul was saying that if you surround yourself with this crowd, with the crowd that calls themselves the body of Christ, then we can do together what Jesus did on his own.  What I mean is, if we can stick together and offer our gifts to one another then we can really worship.  True worship is about being transformed by the renewing of our minds.  Yes, worship can be exciting and enjoyable, but if we are not transformed by it, then it’s not really worship.  Yes, worship can be holy and reverend, but when we stop sharing our gifts and show up just to be seen, then it’s not really worship.  God doesn’t need a life full of worship.  That’s what the Pharisees did.  What God really wants is a worshipful life.  That’s what Jesus did.

Church only makes sense if it’s worship transforms those who participate.  Church only makes sense if worship sends us out to heal the sick and find the lost.  That’s because what God really cares about is that those who are lost get found, that those who have been cast out get welcomed in, that those who are sick get healed, that those who are knocked down get lifted up, that those who are dragged out get brushed off.  God desires steadfast love and mercy, not rituals.  So, if our rituals stop transforming us into the body of Christ, we need to stop our rituals.  Church only make sense if, in our worship, we become members of one another.  That’s because what God really cares about is that you have support for your faith and people to walk with your in your service and someone to lean on in hard times.  God has given each of you a gift to share, a story to tell, a way to participate in the mission and ministry of Jesus Christ and God has given it to your for the sake of others and God has given others to you for your sake.

Randy “the Ram” could have used a crowd like the body of Christ.  A crowd that helped him leave behind the old life and embrace a new one.  A crowd that told this story about a Savior who died and who God raised again so that we could walk in a newness of life.  A crowd who could transform him into what God wants him to be and what he wanted to be.  A crowd who was focused on steadfast love and mercy.  That power that raised Jesus’ body from the dead, is the same power that can shape this crowd into the body of Christ.  “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.  Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.”  Amen.