Sermon August 23, 2026 “Throwing in the Towel” by Rev. Katrina Ross Zezza

Sermon August 23, 2026 “Throwing in the Towel” by Rev. Katrina Ross Zezza

Scripture Reading: Romans 12:1-8

We heard this week that our youth director, Eka, is joining an apprenticeship cohort this fall with 1001 New Worshiping communities, a program of PCUSA that allows ministers to create new forms of worship, which are based around the spiritual needs in their context. I’m so excited for Eka, because I went through the same training a few years ago and it really allowed me to open my heart to how God was calling me, in a genuine way. I know that over the next year Eka will discover many gifts for ministry, that he didn’t even know he had. And I’m excited for what God has in mind as he nurtures our youth ministry, here in Pleasantville.

I was in the cohort right after seminary and it met online every Thursday. One time, our facilitator Sara asked us a great question to think about. She said, “Has there ever been a moment in ministry when you just felt like throwing in the towel?” That’s a great phrase isn’t it? It comes from boxing, I guess. When a fighter wants to stop the match, their trainer tosses a towel into the ring to say we surrender, we know we aren’t going to win this match, so you win. When God called me to ministry there were doubts along the way. I was like are you sure? ME? Surely there must be someone better suited to this. Amazingly, that day in our apprenticeship program, I found out that every single one of us had also felt that way at some point. We couldn’t always remember our value or what we had to offer. But while I was doubting myself, it was easy for me to see the value of the other people in my group. I admired and respected them so much. It was easy for me to see that if they were not the picture of a typical minister, that’s actually what made them perfectly suited to do the work we were doing. The world needed them to do ministry because they were different. One thing I love about our denomination is that it recognizes that we need the unique and diverse gifts that each person brings to Christian community. When we all do what we are uniquely called to do and given space and support to live into those gifts fully, that’s when the true power of our body as a church- the body of Christ can be realized. 

In our reading today, Paul says to the Romans, “Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God.” In the early church, they were forming a countercultural identity shaped by the risen Christ, and counter to the domination culture of empire. Paul says, don’t look to the ways of the broken world around you to tell you if you’re on the right track, look to God. We often measure our goodness, or our self-worth according to external metrics, flawed metrics given to us by a flawed age. But God’s metrics are different.

In the ancient Roman world, it was a commonplace analogy to compare the functioning of society with the functioning of a human body. This rhetorical device was often used to warn members of the subordinate classes to stay in their places in the social order so as not to upset the equilibrium of the body by rebelling against their superiors. A classic example comes from an oration by Menenius Agrippa to the plebians of Rome, where he compares a revolt of the common people to a revolt of the hands, mouth and feet against the belly, which would result in the death of the body. It was essentially a warning to the underclass not to organize against the ruling class.

But instead of using this metaphor to intimidate and control the underclass, Paul turns it on its head, and says, “Because all gifts come from God, none is superior to another…For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”

There are no gifts of God that the Christian community can afford to ignore. The world needs people to come alive, to be lit up, to do the work to which they have been called. Superiority gets in the way of that. A lack of self-worth gets in the way of that. Every single member of the community has particular and important gifts and it’s our responsibility to discover those gifts and then use them for the glory of God and the good of our fellow human beings. I think churches need to be a place where we do that, where we light each other up and see the gifts in each other. It’s not only our responsibility to realize our own gifts, but also each other’s. When someone is hiding their light under a bushel, we are called to help them lift it off.  

Was there someone on your path who helped you this way, who could see you and believed in you, or showed you how to have faith? It’s not always easy to see our own gifts, but I think we can help each other. Have you ever been talking to someone and all of a sudden you see something profound about who they are, underneath it all, sometimes under clouds of hurt, or confusion? That can be a form of revelation, to see the light of Christ in another person, and to ask: How can I help this person shine their light, to realize their talents, skills, gifts? When we do that, it helps the whole community to thrive. 

It’s been awhile now since I’ve thought about throwing in the towel, but for those of us who periodically forget our value in community, I want to tell you something that a colleague reminded me of that day that we were talking about our self-doubt. She said, well Moses didn’t think he was suited for the job that he was called to either. Moses. The guy who parted the Red Sea and lead the Israelites out of slavery. When Moses met God in the burning bush he said, “Me? Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” he thought there must be someone better than me. He had doubts about his skills as a public speaker. He may have even had a speech impediment. And so he says again in the next chapter, “Please God I have never been a man of words…. I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue.” but God replies by asking “Who gave human beings their mouths? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.” Moses thinks there must be someone else more suited. But the truth is, because of his particular life experience- as an Israelite who grew up in the pharaoh’s household, he was actually perfectly positioned to carry out the particular task of leading the Israelites out of Egypt and into liberation. 

The Moses story helped me to look at the ways that I might be uniquely positioned in my context, to help others connect with God. All of my experiences and challenges, maybe they were part of preparing me for the work that lay ahead. But what really blows my mind is this- what if like Moses each of us, every person in the whole world, is uniquely positioned, because of their particular life experience, to serve in the way only they can? In exactly the way that is needed? Maybe like Moses, we have been called to this moment, and each of us has the exact combination of skills and experience to do what God needs us to do- to be the diverse and unique parts of the body of Christ in this world. Sometimes we just have to throw in the towel and surrender to what God has in mind.