Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
The First Sunday of Epiphany
January 7, 2007
W. Gregory Pope
Chosen
Blessed
Broken
Shared
Luke 3:21-22
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
The first sermon in a series on
Being the Body of Christ in the World: Loving God, Loving Neighbor
I begin with you today an Epiphany journey of “Being the Body of Christ in the World: Loving God, Loving Neighbor.” Two thousand years ago Jesus lived and taught, died and rose again. His literal physical body no longer walks the earth. However, Jesus has gathered his followers into community to be his body in the world - his hands, his feet, his voice, his heart.
Many things can be said about the identity, mission, and calling of the church - who we are, what we are called to be and do. But nothing gets to the heart of our identity than to say as did Paul to the Corinthians, “We are the Body of Christ.” We’re going to spend the next few weeks in 1 Corinthians 11, 12, and 13 discerning what that means.
As the Body of Christ we are called to follow Jesus - to be his disciples and to make disciples of one another. What it means to be a disciple was summed up by Jesus with the two great commandments rooted in ancient Jewish scriptures: to love God with everything that we are and to love our neighbor as ourselves. We are the body of Christ, called to be and make disciples, followers of Jesus, who love God and love one another - neighbors, friends and enemies alike.
I want us as a congregation to keep this identity and calling always before us. I want it to inform everything we say we are and everything we do. To be the body of Christ (that is who we are called to be) in the world (is where we are called to be), loving God and loving neighbor (is what we are called to do). It’s that simple. It’s that big.
This morning we are gathered around the Lord’s Table where we remember the broken body and shed blood of Christ. It is a table rich with meaning. This morning I want to reflect upon the body and blood of Christ symbolized here as a metaphor for our identity as the body of Christ in the world.
We gather around the table and see the Body of Christ symbolized in the bread and the cup. The night before he died we are told that Jesus took the bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to his disciples. And as he did, he said, “This is my body.” The taking, the blessing, the breaking, and the giving - all symbolic of what would happen to Jesus’ body on the cross.
Scripture also teaches that as his followers we are the Body of Christ. We are taken, blessed, broken, and given to the world.
It was Henri Nouwen in his beautiful book Life of the Beloved (Crossroad, 1992) that first developed for me this four-fold action of Christ at the table into a metaphor for our individual lives as the beloved of God. I am making it a metaphor of our life together as the Body of Christ.
In order for us to be the Body of Christ, we must receive into our lives the Body of Christ, symbolized in the bread and cup. At this table we receive nourishment from Christ to be the Body of Christ.
As the Body of Christ it is crucial, I think, to allow the sacraments of Holy Communion and baptism to shape our ministry. We could call it “sacramental ministry.”
Sacramental ministry is communal. In Baptism, we are baptized into the body of Christ. It is not an individual experience alone. In Holy Communion, we are gathered as the community of faith around the table where Christ is present and we enter into a holy communion with Christ and one another. Sacramental ministry is communal.
In the sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion, what happens in the water and what happens at the table and what Christ does to the bread is what happens to Christ and to us as the Body of Christ.
TAKEN / CHOSEN
As Christ took the bread so we have been taken, chosen, by Christ: “You did not choose me, I chose you,” he said. Let us be careful to understand that to be chosen does not mean others are rejected. Before we took our first breath we were all of us chosen by God, taken into God’s arms, where God’s breath entered us and we were given the gift of life. Our task to accept our chosenness. Or as Paul Tillich said, accept the fact that you are accepted by God. We have been given life and chosen to be Christ in the world, part of which is revealing to others their own chosenness.
But we need to be shaped and formed into the likeness of Christ. And so we are baptized. Whether at the beginning of our lives or as adults, baptism further reminds us who we are.
BLESSED AND BELOVED
“It is not enough to be chosen,” Nouwen says. “We also need an ongoing blessing that allows us to hear in an ever-new way that we belong to a loving God who will never leave us alone, but will remind us always that we are guided by love on every step of our lives.” (Nouwen, 59)
In Baptism, we hear that blessing. In Baptism, we find ourselves to be the chosen, blessed and beloved of God, seen by God as special and precious beings. Each person I baptize, as they come up out of the water, I share with them words of blessing, the blessing Jesus heard from God at his baptism, God’s blessing upon all of our lives: “You are my child - the Beloved - in whom I take delight.” We are ones whom God loves.
This is the crucial word that enables us to love God and love one another. You remember the second of the great commandments - to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. The key to loving ourselves is knowing we are the beloved of God.
It is the most intimate truth about us all. There is nothing more central to our well-being than to accept ourselves as the Beloved of God. That means “letting the truth of our Belovedness become enfleshed in everything we think, say, or do” (Nouwen, 39).
God’s word of blessing and approval in the life of Jesus came before his ministry began. And it must come before our ministry begins. Else we will live our lives attempting to earn God’s favor and love. In Baptism you receive God’s blessing on your life, not because of anything you have done, but simply because you are: “You are the Beloved.”
We’ve often wondered why Jesus was baptized. Could it be that Jesus was baptized as a way of experiencing the blessing of God upon his life, bathed in the waters of God’s love, empowered by God’s Spirit?
At our Baptism, not only do we receive the blessing of being God’s Beloved, we also receive the blessing of God’s cleansing grace, a symbolic washing away and forgiveness of our sin. This is essential for our lives and the service we offer to God. We must not serve God and engage in ministry out of guilt. We live our lives loving God and serving others, not out of guilt, but in gratitude and blessing as the forgiven and beloved children of God.
In order to remain aware of this blessing of cleansing symbolized in baptism, it has been a practice by some to place your hands in water each time you enter worship. Through this act you are reminded weekly of your baptism, a reminder that you are chosen and blessed by God, forgiven by grace. Who among us doesn’t need the reminder that our failures are forgiven, washed away in the waters of God’s love?
This blessing is also experienced at the Table. Gathered at the table we reflect upon the self-giving of Jesus for us and the world and we are reminded again that we are the Beloved of God. At the Table, Jesus takes the bread that is his Body, and that is us as His Body, he takes it and he blesses it.
As persons beloved of God we are blessed at our Baptism. And at the Table, as the Body of Christ, we are blessed.
BROKEN
Having taken the bread and blessed it, Jesus then breaks the bread, symbolic of his own breaking upon the cross.
Can we go so far as to say the breaking of the bread and the breaking of Jesus’ body on the cross is symbolic of our breaking as the Body of Christ in the world?
Henri Nouwen says we participate in the Eucharistic life, the life presented at the Table, when we too are broken by the world’s sorrow and by our own sorrow. Ministry cannot be isolated from pain. We cannot ignore our own pain. We cannot ignore the world’s pain. We must let ourselves be broken by our sorrow and the world’s sorrow. Like Christ, as the Body of Christ, we participate in that suffering sorrow and seek to bring the healing hope of God.
Nouwen recalls a scene from Leonard Bernstein’s Mass (a musical work written in memory of John F. Kennedy). Toward the end of the work, the priest, dressed in liturgical vestments, is lifted up by his people. He towers high above them, carrying in his hands a glass chalice. Suddenly the human pyramid holding the priest high collapses, and the priest comes tumbling down. His vestments are ripped off and the glass chalice falls to the ground and is shattered. As he picks himself up and walks slowly through “the debris of his former glory” - barefoot, wearing only blue jeans and a t-shirt - children’s voices are heard singing, “Laude, laude, laude” - “Praise, praise, praise.” Suddenly the priest notices the broken chalice. He looks at it for a long time and then, haltingly, he says, “I never realized that broken glass could shine so brightly.” (Nouwen, 82-83)
SHARED
The broken glass of our lives will only shine as we share our broken selves and the broken Christ with others and with the world.
Having taken the bread that is his Body, Jesus blessed it, broke it, and gave it, shared it with his disciples. The chosen one, beloved of God, allowed himself to be broken and shared for the redemption of the world. Jesus gave his broken self for the world and shares it with us all.
As we gather at this Table, I invite you to watch with reverence the breaking of the bread and the pouring and lifting of the cup as it is shared among us. As you watch, remember the broken body of Jesus and his blood poured out. Remember also that we too are to be broken and shared for others. We are chosen, blessed and broken in order to be given, shared, with the world. If we were to truly know that we are chosen, blessed, and broken to become bread for others, we would dance for joy and generously give of ourselves and our possessions. “Our greatest fulfillment lies in giving ourselves to others.” (Nouwen, 85)
To share our brokenness with one another and the world connects us in a communion of spirits that is holy. Nouwen says that the way we are broken tells us something unique about one another, because we’re all broken in different ways. To share our deep pain is an expression of trust and vulnerability. Because of our brokenness, we have something to share with the world. Until we are broken there are no pieces of us to be shared.
Jesus said, “This is my body broken for you.” As the body of Christ, having identified through baptism with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, we are meant to be broken and shared. Can we say to the world, “We are the body of Christ broken for you”?
This table serves as a model for our ministry as the Body of Christ, to enflesh the life of Christ in the world. This is the calling of the church. The question is: When we leave this table today will we be the body of Christ in the world?
feed back to Greg
return to Sermon Index
CRESCENT HILL BAPTIST CHURCH
2800 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, Kentucky 40206
(502) 896-4425
We would like to hear from you.
Return to oldsite Home page
Return to newsite Home page