Home  Sermons September 27, 2009
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September 27, 2009 1 Corinthians 12.12-27
The Church Body
For the last couple weeks Pastor Mike has been doing a series on the church. What should First Presbyterian Church look like to outsiders? What should our church DNA be? What does God intend for this church? Today we are continuing that series by looking at 1 Corinthians 12.12-27.
1 and 2 Corinthians are great books to continue this series because they deal with a church struggling with its identity. By reading the first 3 chapters of 1 Corinthians we quickly discover a church torn apart by quarrels, boasting, jealousy, and arrogance. And by 2 Corinthians this conflict has grown to include a feud between Paul and Corinth.Yet despite all this Paul’s hope for Corinth is that it become a true community united through Christ. So let us hear Paul’s word for the Corinth church… and God’s Word for ours today.
Today’s passage is an analogy, describing how the church should function. How it can be “the body of Christ.” It is an analogy we church people talk about a lot. But lets be honest, it is a little weird… I mean come on, eyes and ears and feet are talking to each other. That’s not normal. Actually, the analogy reminds me of another story involving speaking body parts. I read it to my son all the time. The story is called “Hand, Foot, & Tongue.” It’s a modern fable and even includes a moral. It’s in the book Squids will be Squids by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith. And it goes something like this:
One evening at dinner, Hand, Foot, and Tongue got into a heated argument over who had the toughest job. “I have the toughest job,” said Hand. “Every day I work from sunup to sundown. I button shirts. I tie shoes. I hold spoon and fork to feed all of us. I have to be strong enough to punch with a fist, and gentle enough to pat a baby. I definitely have the toughest job.”
“No you don’t,” said Foot. “I have the toughest job. Every day I have to carry all of you. And I’m not complaining or anything, but I usually have to do it in the dark—stuck in a smelly sock and laced in a shoe. I have the toughest job.”
Then tongue spoke up. “I am a fleshy muscular organ attached to the floor of the mouth. I help in both speech and taste. I start the process of digestion by moving food into position to get ripped and mashed and crushed and smashed into little bits by the teeth, Then I cover the little food bits with saliva and shape them into slimy blobs of guck that I push down the throat and—“
“That’s sick,” said Hand.
“Disgusting,” said Food.
Moral: There are some things we don’t say at the dinner table.
It’s a silly story. It probably is even a good lesson on how to watch what we say at meals. But I think it also illustrates a common problem with some of the parables and analogies in scripture. You and I can sometimes be guilty of expanding an analogy further than the author intended.
I have actually heard people using today’s body passage in a similar vein as the children’s story I read… to show why what they are doing is more important than others. They may say, “I’m the hand. I’m what’s holding this church together. What are you doing for the body?” Or someone uses the idea of the “body of Christ” for why they are putting down others in the church. “I’m the eye of the church. It’s my job to look around and find out what people are doing wrong so I can get them to stop.” And even if we don’t actually use the body of Christ as our analogy, in my experience, often the church as a whole functions more like the children’s fable I just read than Paul’s description of the church (fighting with one another/ not trying to get along).
Let’s take the time to see what Paul meant through the analogy used in this text.
Reminder 1: You are important…
Actually there are 2 major points being made in this text. Paul sets up this dichotomy in verse 12. He claims that the church is in some ways like a human body 1) there is great diversity and 2) there is great unity. Then Paul goes on to expound on these two ideas—in verses 15-20 he discusses how the body is diverse then in 21-26 how it is united. Lets start by looking at verses 15-20
Paul’s first point is that there is incredible diversity in the body—and all the parts are necessary. In verse 15 and 16 Paul shows how absurd it would be to have various body parts say that they don’t belong to the body. And then in verses 17-19 he explains why. First, each part has an important and different function; our eye sees, our ear hears, our nose smells. There is a reason for each body part. Second, each part was created by God. God wants each part where it is… each part is important. And third, if there was just one body part that made up the body it wouldn’t really be a body at all. In the Message, Eugene Peterson describes giant eyeballs slithered around. If we saw a giant eyeball coming at us we wouldn’t think we are looking at a human, we’d be running away screaming, “Monster!”
Paul has an important reminder to make in this first section. You and I are important!! We have a vital function in the church!! We were placed in the church by God. You are needed!!
What a great reminder. Aren’t there times when all of us forget that we are an important part of the body?
Maybe we are feeling low or burned out or stressed and think we don’t have anything to offer. We need to be reminded that we are important; we have a place.
Maybe we are getting a little older and unable to serve the church in the ways we used to. We still are part of the body and have a part to play; it’s just a different one. We need to remember that the new part is still important… just different.
Maybe we’ve been doing things in the church because we know we’re supposed to. But we’ve been trying to be a hand and we’re burning out when we really would be better suited doing something else. We need to be reminded that we have a unique place in the body.
Or maybe we are serving God best (by what we say and do) at home or at work, but have forgotten to share what we are doing with others here at FPC. We could be an encouragement to others struggling with the same things in their own lives.
Reminder 2: But don’t get a big head…
It’s a good thing to remember that we are important to the church, but if that was the only reminder in this text we would all be destined for failure. It’s in our nature. If we build up our egos too much we have a tendency to become egomaniacs. We begin to look down on others.
Verses 21-26 remind us that we aren’t supposed to get a big head… because haven’t we all gotten big heads in the church from time to time?
Has there been a time when you wondered why someone kept coming to church because they weren’t contributing anything good to it?
Has there been a time when you’ve heard a TV evangelist, a “Christian” politician, or watched a street preacher speak and wanted to kick them for giving Christianity a bad name?
Has there been a time when you’ve decided that it would be easier to not be in community with other church folk because they just irritate you?
In 1 Corinthians 12 21-26, Paul addressed this problem. For a body to function as God intended it, every part is important and working together as one. There are no superior parts, no rank. What seems a weaker part may be more important to the body than what seems strong.
I know that I’ve seen that in my life. I am reminded of my time as a junior high youth director. Every year our youth went on a weeklong bike trip. We would camp in one location then bike all over the place. I was nearing the end of my time as youth director and I wanted to go out with a bang. So our team created the biggest and “bestest” “Bike Hike” ever. We went to a brand new location in eastern Oregon. And we did more than bike. We went white water rafting. We did this awesome bike trip that was downhill the whole way (probably the first time I enjoyed riding on one of the trips), stopping at spots to play in natural river waterslides. I created amazing complicated programs for campfire each night. There were multiple dramas and interrelated themes, and related songs that were built upon each day.
And about 3 days into the week I got a little worried. For all the biggering of the program, had we lost the message? The kids were having fun, but were they connecting to one another like in previous years? Were they connecting to God in the midst of everything?
Carly changed all that. Each night, a different college intern would come forward during campfire and share a “testimini,” something short about how God was using them. Carly was a BMW (burly mountain woman). She was small but just all muscle. She wouldn’t let any biker ahead of her. She held her own. With how the week was going, I was a little worried with what she would share during her “testimini.”
Carly shared about her struggles about being accepted; her struggles at school to meet her parents and her own expectations. About the emptiness she sometimes felt and how much she needed Christ in her life. Carly spoke from a place of weakness.
And as quick as one small “testimini” our bike trip changed. Carly’s talk brought the group together. They became focused on God. Sometimes the weakest part of the body is the most important part. Through being weak, change and transformation are possible.
The message of this text… You and I are important parts of the church but let’s not get a big head (because everyone else is important too). What a great reminder for the bickering church of Corinth. What a great reminder for us today.
Reminder 3: We are what we eat
And yet I have to admit that I love Paul because he seems to understand human nature. We will be messing up the church forever. It is good to be reminded that we are important to the church but there will always be times that we feel like we don’t fit in. It’s good to be reminded that others are important to the church as well but we will still make others in the church feel insignificant (even if we only do it accidentally).
But Paul doesn’t just shrug his shoulders, pat us on the head and say, “Too bad, just try harder.” There’s a third reminder in this text. Paul believes that only Jesus is going to make us better followers of Jesus.
So how can we be a better church, one that the more closely resembles the body of Christ? The answer is in verse 13. It reads, “For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”
We are one church not because we are trying really hard to be but because we are all holding tightly to the same Christ. It is the Spirit of God which unites us to God and to one another. Through baptism we are baptized into Christ and then spend the rest of our lives filling ourselves with God. There is another body metaphor in this verse when Paul talks about drinking in the Spirit. It really is true isn’t it? We are what we eat. I am mostly Hostess cupcake and you can tell it when you look at me. We are what we eat. And Paul suggests that we should be drinking in the Spirit, filling our lives with Christ.
Isn’t that why we come to church? To once a week spend time prayerfully considering our relationship with Christ, to remember what Jesus did for us on the cross (his death and resurrection to save us from sin), to praise God for creation, to ask forgiveness for our mistakes, and to include him in the problems and concerns we are mulling over that week. And as we get better at that each week, we hear those crazy pastors suggest that we could be doing that daily in some sort of devotion. Or maybe even twice a day? Or maybe each hour? How bout each minute? Could we go to Christ with every breath?
1 Corinthians 12. 12-27 has 3 reminders for the church. Which reminder do you need to hear today? Do you need to be reminded about how the church works, that you are important, that you have a role to play? Or do you need to be reminded that the other people in the church are important too? Or do you, like me, need to be reminded to fill our lives with Christ? Do you need to be stretched to grab a hold of Jesus more often.
Imagine what this church would look like if it was full of people pursuing Christ for all they were worth. I am convinced we’d look less like the body described in the children’s book, Squids will be Squids, and much more like the one described by Paul. |
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