Sermon: “A Year of Growth: Growing Together”
January 27th, 2019 Rev. Betsy Perkins
First Baptist Church, Delavan WI
Scripture passage: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31
A year of growth…
This past week our nation observed a holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr, recognizing his contributions in leading us to grow closer to embodying the truth that is part of our foundational beliefs, the truth that all people are created equal. So let me start with a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr., from his “Letter From a Birmingham Jail”, that is appropriate as we consider what we need for a year of growth, particularly in light of our scripture passage this morning about our connectedness in Christ:
“In a real sense all life is interrelated. All people are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be… This is the interrelated structure of reality.”
Reverend King was a Baptist preacher (the only Baptist pastor honored with a national holiday) and in his words you can hear the echo of the reality of life taught in scripture. Last Sunday we considered the variety of spiritual gifts that are given to each one of us by the Holy Spirit, grace-gifts that are essential for us to grow and to fulfill all that God hopes for us, so that you and I can be what we ought to be, what God created us to be. We could summarize what Paul said with the phrase, “every person has a part to play”, and that would be true, but as Paul continues in his letter with the portion we read today, we hear that it is way more than just that. Growing in faith as individuals and growing in Christ as a church, means we each have a part to play, yes, but how we play our part in relationship to others in the community of faith, how we are living and growing TOGETHER, is even more important.
UNITY: One Body
Last week I hinted at the fact that Paul was writing to the Corinth church because they had some areas in which they needed to grow. Their report card had a few checks in the “needs improvement” column. When it came to each person being active and involved in the life of the church, there was competition and rivalry over spiritual gifts: whose gifts are more important? Who gets to do the flashy jobs and who gets stuck with the dirty jobs? Which tasks are more important or less important?
So Paul reminds them, in verse 12-14, that they were each baptized by the Holy Spirit, thereby entering into one body, with grace-gifts poured out (that we drink in) given from the one Spirit. The church and each person in it have become members of that body, the Body of Christ. Paul’s emphasis here in on Unity, so he notes some of the areas in which they experience division. There was a great divide between the Jewish believers and the Gentile (non-Jewish) believers. There was a divide between the believers who were slaves and the believers who were free, the upper/middle class. And, their various spiritual gifts were causing divisions.
Today our points of division aren’t the same, they come from other aspects of our lives. What are the ways we might be divided? What are the things that can get in the way of our unity? Can you name them? (Politics – Republican/Democrat; Generations – young/old; Gender – men/women/gender issues; Race – white/Hispanic/black; Nationality – citizen/undocumented; Wealth – rich/poor; Work/IQ – abled/disabled; Theology – conservative/liberal; Language – English/other/accent.)
So with all this diversity, how do we overcome difference to become one? Both within this church, and as our church makes up one part of the larger, world-wide body of Christ? Paul begins to answer this question by imagining a rather absurd conversation between talking body parts.
VALUE: One Body
We hear first from a talking foot and a talking ear. The foot says, “I’m just a lowly foot. I’m not dexterous like the hand, I don’t have that opposing thumb, I don’t really belong.” The ear says, “I’m just an ear. I can’t see, so I can’t read, I don’t know what color things are, I guess I don’t really belong.” We can easily see how silly that is, yet don’t we often do the same thing? We think, “I don’t know as much as these other people, maybe I don’t belong. I don’t have a good singing voice, I can’t be a part. My politics are different, I don’t fit in. I can’t put anything in the offering, I shouldn’t go. I don’t say anything, so no one will miss me.”
Jesus would say to you, “That’s absurd! Just because you are not like someone else, doesn’t make you any less valuable or any less important. The fact is that when you put your faith in me,” Jesus says, “you become a part of me, and I love every single part.” We do not find unity because we are uniform, we find unity because each of us is part of Christ’s one body. In order to grow in unity, we must properly value ourselves and our identity in Jesus Christ.
The body imagery that Paul uses was not a unique image for the newly formed church. Body imagery was also used in secular society at the time, only it was used for a different purpose. Body imagery was used by people in authority and in power to justify their positions. A king might say that he is the head and therefore in charge. Everyone else is the hands and the feet, existing for the purpose of doing the dirty work. The way Paul uses the image of the body would have been surprising to the people in Corinth for he was not using it to talk about hierarchy, but to lift up a totally new idea, the new idea that every part is valuable, no part is expendable.
Just because Brian cleans the toilets doesn’t make him less important; just because Dianne keeps financial records doesn’t make her more important. Just because Dan is in the nursery today doesn’t mean he is being left out, in fact he is even more important since that allows others to be here. Just because I am preaching doesn’t make me more valuable, I am only here at the invitation of God and of all of you in this congregation.
Let me make it clear, you are valuable and you belong, regardless of whether you are old or young, whether you are a woman or a man, whether you are white or brown or black, whether you speak English or Spanish or Arabic, whether you are rich or poor or somewhere in between, whether you abled or disabled, whether you are an American citizen or a citizen of another country or no country at all, and even whether you are a democrat or a republican or independent! You are a child of God – a member of God’s family and a member of Christ’s body. You are valuable!
NEEDY: One Body
Then more talking body parts speak up: we hear from a talking eye and a talking head (not the kind of talking head we see on cable news shows who have been scientifically proven to not know what they are talking about. Did you know there’s a study showing that a dart-throwing chimp had better predictive value than the opinions of news show talking heads? https://www.wired.com/2011/08/do-political-experts-know-what-theyre-talking-about/).
Or that is like Paul’s talking head, that says to the feet, “I don’t need you! You’re job is phased out. You’re unnecessary. Get lost.” The talking eye says to the hand, “I don’t need you. You can’t see what has to be done. I have to guide you. I’m better off without you.” Again, it seems absurd when we hear this way, but don’t we so often do the exact same thing. We’ll complain about those who we see as dragging our country down, or giving our community a bad name. Those who are homeless or incarcerated are given the message that we’d be better off without them. Those who are addicted are dying in numbers which would imply we find them expendable. Furloughed federal workers are given an implicit message, “The needs and circumstances of your lives are less important than the possibility of appearing weak by compromising.”
Here is a quick quiz for you to take: put your thumb up if the statement I give is more true for you than not, put your thumb down if it is more untrue for you than true. Be honest.
I find it hard to ask for help.
I feel weak when I admit that I need something.
I’ll offer to help when I can, but it makes me uncomfortable if someone asks me for help.
My guess is that our answers reveal that one of the areas in which we need to grow in together as a community of faith, is in recognizing and admitting our need for one another. In order to grow, we must come to terms with our own dependence and vulnerability. We must be able to declare that it is okay to need one another. In the Message version of our scripture passage today, Eugene Peterson writes, “The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance. You are Christ’s body – that’s who you are! You must never forget this.” Paul tells us that God designed our bodies as inescapable networks of mutuality (Rev. King’s phrase), SO THAT there would be no division.
What difference does acknowledging our need for one another make? How might the confrontation last Sunday between a small group of Black Hebrew Israelite men and a large group of young, white, catholic boys turned out differently if each had recognized their need for the other? If instead of viewing the other as a threat to their own existence and voice, could they have seen the other as being necessary in order to be whole themselves? How might the images have been different if both groups had recognized the Native American elder as someone who was seeking to offer his unique gift of peace-making, his gift of wisdom? Can you imagine what might be possible if we stood at the border and said to those fleeing violence, “We need you.” Can you imagine what the next generation would accomplish if we said to children living in poverty, “We need you!”
I believe that you can imagine it, for last Sunday when Lisa Reshkus lifted up for prayer her concern about a 13 year-old girl who education is stunted due to the hardships of poverty, the difficulties of even getting to school through the cold, through the dangers of her neighborhood, Lisa left this church last Sunday with $170 in her hands to buy bus tickets so Nikia and others like her could get to school. Your actions spoke the words, “We need Nikia!”
If being baptized and becoming a Christian, for you, is just about becoming a voluntary member of a church, then you have not gone far enough. Baptism goes way beyond membership in a church, it is the absolute, conjoining with one another as a part of the Body of Christ.
On the night before he died, Jesus prayed a prayer that included these words, “I pray that all those who believe in me will be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. I pray that they also will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me. I’ve given them the glory that you gave me so that they can be one just as we are one. I’m in them and you are in me so that they will be made perfectly one. Then the world will know that you sent me and that you have loved them just as you loved me.” John 17:21-23
As the Praise Team comes back up to lead us in the closing song, I invite you to turn to the people around you, beside you, behind and in front of you, as say to each one, “I need you! We need you!”
Closing Song: “They’ll Know We are Christians By Our Love”
Add Your Comment