Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
The Third Sunday of Epiphany
January 21, 2007
W. Gregory Pope
Connected
1 Corinthians 12:12-31
The third sermon in a series on
Being the Body of Christ in the World: Loving God, Loving Neighbor
The 1998 Dreamworks hit movie AntZ opens with worker ant Z sitting in an ant psychiatrist’s office, relating his woes of living in a modern urban ant colony. It is a parody of contemporary life. Z says (in the voice of Woody Allen):
All my life I have lived and worked in the big city, which, now that I think of it, is a problem. Since I always feel uncomfortable around crowds - I mean I have this fear of enclosed space. Everything makes me feel trapped all the time. I always tell myself there has to be something better out there, but maybe I think too much. I think everything must go back to the thought that I had a very anxious childhood, you know; my mother never had time for me. You know, when you’re the middle child of five million you don’t get any attention. I mean, how is it possible? And I’ve always had this abandonment issue, which plagues me. My father was basically a drone, like I’ve said. And you know, he flew away when I was just a larva. And my job - don’t even get me started on it because it really annoys me. I was not cut out to be a worker - I’ll tell you that right now. I feel physically inadequate. My whole life I’ve never been able to lift more than ten times my own body weight. And when you get down to it, handling dirt, you know, is not my idea of a rewarding career. It is the whole gung-ho super organization I can’t get - I have tried but I can’t get it. What is it? I am supposed to be doing everything for the colony. And what about my needs? What about me? I gotta believe there is someplace out there that’s better than this. Otherwise I will just curl up in a larva position and weep. The whole system makes me feel insignificant. (As quoted in Randy Frazee, The Connected Church, Zondervan, 2001, 41-42)
Ant Z gives voice to the angst common in many of us who live in the individualistic “me” culture. That culture that makes the individual supreme or sovereign over everything. When we gather with others, we often gather as a group of individuals who are concerned about our individual wants and needs, not as a community united around a common purpose.
At the end of AntZ, Z ultimately finds himself sacrificing for and serving the community to which he belonged. The individual is valued in community, but ultimately the community collectively values something larger than themselves as individuals. This is the lesson Z learned.
For the Christian community, the individual is valued. Our text for today says as much. We are each of us important and valuable to the work to which we are called. There is something each of us has to offer.
But that work, that calling, is larger than us as individuals. That calling, that ministry, has to do with a man named Jesus.
Jesus was a man who never used email. He never made a phone call. He never wrote a letter. I do not want to completely dismiss email, phone calls, and letters; they can be meaningful and helpful ways of communication when no other way is available. What I want to point out is that Jesus’ mode of living was physical. He used his body. His two legs carried him into people’s lives. His voice proclaimed good news. His hands blessed children and touched lepers and healed brokenness.
And when the politicians and religious leaders had had enough, it was his body they wanted. There was no Spin Zone to discredit him and turn the tide of public opinion. No. They had to go and find him. And when they found him, they arrested him. They took his body and they beat him and then they nailed his hands and feet to wood. And there, after six hours of his body hanging on a cross, he died. Witnesses say they saw him walking the earth after he died, but that he finally departed this earth, returning back to God.
Several years later, his body was spotted on earth. The apostle Paul wrote about it. He saw this group of people in Corinth called Christians gathered in Christ’s name. But they were quite a mess. They fought among themselves. Some thought they were more spiritual than others. They argued over theology. They argued over ethics. They argued over morality. They argued over worship. Aren’t you glad we don’t have these kinds of problems in the 21st century church!
Paul tried to settle their disputes. He urged them to be reconciled. Read 1 and 2 Corinthians through at one sitting sometime. You can hear Paul’s frustration. He tries everything. He tries reason and logic. He appeals to scripture and history. He tries passion and anger, pleading, commanding, cajoling. But nothing seems to work.
The Corinthian church seems to be a diverse gathering of people, some of whom want their way to triumph over the way of others. In various ways they are so different from each other and it has caused conflict.
So Paul tells them, “Look. Everybody is different in the church, but this is not a weakness, this is a strength, in fact, this is God’s plan. It means we all have different gifts. Would it be easier if we were all the same? Perhaps. But we would be incomplete. We would be lacking in what those different from us could offer. Each and every person has some gift, and every gift is important, and no one is expendable. We are as diverse as the different parts of a human body, and just as connected.
And then Paul tells them what they could have never imagined. He says, “Together, you are the Body of Christ. No one person makes up the whole Body. No one congregation makes up the whole Body. One of you is the arm of Christ. One of you is the foot. Together you are the Body of Christ.”
Our differences are necessary. Because arms cannot see. Eyes cannot walk. Ears cannot talk.
Alone we can do very little. But connected we can be the Body of Christ in the world.
We connect by acknowledging and respecting the different gifts each of us bring as coming from the same Spirit of God. And we stay connected by pursuing the greatest spiritual gift of them all, what Paul calls the more excellent way, the way of love. Paul says, “Amidst all your differences and disagreements, hold on to love for each other and express that love in the world. Because if you don’t have love it doesn’t matter what else you have.”
This text expresses the priority of community, of working together, of being connected as the Body of Christ in the world.
As a congregation we have adopted Ten Missional Points for our life together. One of them stresses the importance of Congregational Participation, encouraging all of us to engage in the life and ministry of the congregation as the Body of Christ. We need each other.
Another of those missional points has to do with Having a Sense of Belonging, seeking to be a community where people feel that they belong, where they are a part of something larger than themselves, where they are not alone, but feel they belong to a spiritual family.
And that’s because we need one another in order to be the Body of Christ. There is a real sense in which one cannot be Christian apart from the Church. The Bible speaks of the members of the church as members of Christ’s body. Therefore, in crude terms, individual Christians are nothing more than body parts. To be a living, vibrant body of Christ we must live into our baptism, enter into community with one another and minister together.
Each body part is essential. No one in the church can look at another person and say, “I don’t need you.” Paul says God has so arranged the Body that the seemingly insignificant parts are really the most important. Think of the tiny cells in the human body. If they do not work properly we can die. Our hands and arms, our feet and legs, our eyes, ears and mind are useless if the small cells within our bodies do not work properly.
And so the little things done around here - those of you who volunteer your time, those of you who feel like your offering is too small when it’s all you can afford, those of you who take the time to keep children during worship or on Sunday nights during Divorce Recovery, those of you who serve food on Wednesday nights - you are as vital to our functioning as the Body of Christ as those of us who try to preach and lead worship and teach Sunday School and are able to give generously.
What is crucial is that each of us realize our gift and listen for God’s calling as to where we can use that gift within the Body of Christ.
We need what you have to offer. Especially during these days when we cannot afford as many staff positions as we have in the past and need to be giving more money to ministry outside our walls. That requires all of us to give more of ourselves and of what we’ve been given. And that we do the work together for the sake of the Body of Christ in the world.
We are not called to go it alone. Alone we cannot do what needs to be done. We need other congregations.
And as individuals we need the connection of community, working together to do what God has called us to do.
Community is not a luxury but a necessity for our lives. Our souls require community and what it provides. The experience of authentic community is one of the purposes God intends to be fulfilled by the church. The church must be focused on experiencing what God intended and created us to have - spiritual community as members of the Body of Christ.
The future of the church depends upon whether we develop true community. We can get by for a while on having a good crowd and charismatic personalities, and programs to meet every need, but unless we sense that we belong to each other, there will be no lasting quality to a faith community.
The call of Christ is an invitation to community. An invitation to serve together as the Body of Christ in the world. Our world needs what the Body of Christ has to offer.
What about you? Do you have the courage to watch the news? Can you get past the comic section of the newspaper? If you watch and listen, you know there are people hurting in this world who need the love and comfort we can bring as the Body of Christ. If you watch and listen, you know there are injustices that need the voice and action of the Body of Christ. It is a heartbreaking world we are called to serve. It is a world that needs the Body of Christ. We can make a difference. We can bring healing and hope and transformation.
And so I ask you:
Where are you being the hands of Christ in the world?
Where are you being the voice of Christ?
Where are you being the feet of Christ?
Can we join together in community with the purpose of being the Body of Christ in the world?
Will you help us be what God is calling us to be?
Will you offer your gifts, your passion, your heart?
Will you be Christ to the world?
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CRESCENT HILL BAPTIST CHURCH
2800 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, Kentucky 40206
(502) 896-4425
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