By: Matt Boga
Christian Living, Personal Reflection,

Your Spiritual Worship

Recently, a woman in our church asked if she would be able to come to the building during the week and clean. Yep. You read that right. She ASKED if she could come to do the work that a relatively small amount of people are even willing to do when they must, let alone volunteer for it. 

And when I say clean, I mean clean. She spent the better part of a whole workday down at the church. She was moving children’s ministry tables, taking down curtains to wash at home, and treating the wood paneling on the walls with oil. She was really doing it. 

At one point, I stopped to ask her just how much she intended to clean (just so I could set expectations), and her response was basically, “what needs it?” Now, we’re a small church staff, and we rent our space from another church. The other church cleans the common areas and the spaces they alone occupy, but we’re responsible for our rooms. As a small staff, we find ourselves able to keep things tidy, but it would be generous to say we keep them clean. For instance, the trash in the upstairs bathroom is regularly overflowing, and we’re all playing a silent game of nose-goes for who will take it out, there’s soap scum on the sinks, and the vacuum looks like it should be vacuumed for how irregularly we use it.

But without batting an eye or offering a complaint, she just put her head down and got right back to work cleaning. At one point from my office, I saw her arm reaching out of the bathroom window to clean the outside of the glass on the second floor. A bit later, I said my “goodbyes” and “thank yous” when I stepped out for a lunch meeting expecting her to be gone when I got back, but when I returned, there she was, working hard to make things clean.

And when I say clean, I mean clean. The bathroom sinks and mirrors were spotless. The urinal—which after the pest control comes is notoriously home to a small pile of dead cockroaches—was clean and free of insects. And as I looked around, I had to change my perspective because I realized what would have felt like torture to me was worship for her.

“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.”

Eugene Peterson

In Romans 12:1, the Apostle 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.” And in The Message, Eugene Peterson translated that verse like this: “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.”

She had taken what the Lord had given her (some free time, a desire to help, and an excellent work ethic) and made herself a living sacrifice to the Lord. What others may have called worthless, she called worship. The tasks that many could only see as beneath them, she could see as an opportunity for exaltation as she went low for others.

Is this not the way of Christ? Is this not the way of our King who reigns from his cruciform throne? The Lord Jesus, God from very God, the Word of power who upholds all of creation (Heb. 1:3), lowered himself, got deep into our mess to make us clean, and uttered no complaints while doing it. The one who formed us from the dust of the earth and breathed life into his creation, took on our dusty form and breathed his last on the cross so that we could be recreated perfectly into his image (Rom. 8:29). 

The one who formed us from the dust of the earth and breathed life into his creation, took on our dusty form and breathed his last on the cross so that we could be recreated perfectly into his image (Rom. 8:29). 

And now, we who have trusted in his sacrifice by faith follow him. We follow him who came not to be served but to serve. We follow he who teaches us that true power looks like service (Mk. 10:42-45). We follow in the way of him who shows us that to be great in the kingdom of God may mean that we must go into deep, roach-cleaning, bathroom-mopping, sometimes-thankless service to others as we offer our lives as a living sacrifice to him in spiritual worship.