Sunday, January 21st, 2007
Epiphany 3
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
1 Corinthians 12:12-31
During our training as journeymen, way back in the dark ages of the mid-80s, our group of 65 candidates was divided into teams of varying sizes, with different goals set for us each week. One team I was in was asked to come up with a multi-media presentation for one of our devotional times in the evenings. We gathered, and those of the group who at that time had already decided on a career in ministry, suggested we do a slide show – back when they were still 35 mm SLIDES that you put into a tray that ran through a projector – based on our passage this morning. The rest of the group served as models for the pictures that were taken to provide the visual representation of the text as Paul walks us through what it means to be a part of a whole.
There were, course, poses of people trying to show themselves to be a hand, or a foot, or an eye, and at the same time to look down on some other member of the body. It was still pretty close to the 70’s, if you ask me.
It was not the first attempt at a more-or-less dramatic representation of the ‘many members, one body’ passage of first Corinthians.
The point was, and is, that this has been a centerpiece of our understanding of what it means to be a part of the body of Christ because it so clearly states the realities of existence AS a member of the body.
We recognize and understand that as much as we differ as individuals, however we see things differently, or even use different terminology, phrases, and titles, we are STILL all members of the same body – the body of Christ.
The congregation of the church at Corinth was about as multi-anything as you could GET at the time; racial, ethnic, cultural, religious. There were Greeks, Romans, Jews, Asians; there were former pagans, disciples of Aphrodite, the prevailing ‘church’ of Corinth, and Jews who still held to most of their own religious practices. There were former Greek Stoics, former Roman emperor-worshippers, and as there likely are everywhere, nominal members of the majoritarian popular church – folks who wouldn’t say they WEREN’T disciples of Aphrodite, but who would just as soon roll over in bed and go back to sleep if at some point the religious holiday called for an early-morning trek to the temple at the top of the mountain overlooking Corinth. Think melting pot on steroids. Think people from both sides AND ENDS of the track meeting weekly if not more frequently for worship and to try to learn about what it means to follow Jesus.
The results were … in some ways predictable. Conflict, certainly. Cliquish behavior, yes. Lack of accountability to one another in the spirit of Christ: yes. Openly immoral behavior: sadly, yes.
What is interesting, though, is that, in spite of everything that is going on, all the sordid detail of it, Paul never stops calling the church in Corinth the body of Christ. They never lose that status. Even with all the infighting, with all the bickering, the shunning, the outright enmity, the presumption remains that the church is still the representation of Christ to the half million people of the city of Corinth.
As Raymond Bryan Brown puts it, “The Corinthians ARE the body of Christ. The church … exists through the work of Christ. The Corinthians do not create the body of Christ but manifest it because they confess Christ in obedient faith by accepting the benefits of his death and resurrection. The church is the body of Christ because it draws its life from him.”
In other words, we are not the body of Christ because of who we say WE are, we become the body of Christ when we are united in proclaiming – AND LIVING – who HE is.
There is a simple obviousness to the fact that there is diversity in this room. We can look around and see differences that are apparent – by the way we dress, by the way we act and speak; differences of origin – from around the country or around the world, in some cases. There are other differences we are aware of because we know each other – differences in education, training, employment. And yet, we gather together and sing the same songs together, read the same scriptures together, pray similar prayers together.
There are people who would look at us from the outside and call us, basically, a white anglo-saxon protestant church. I would hope we would bridle at the name. Not that we AREN’T basically that, but more at the fact that we KNOW OURSELVES to be much more multi-faceted than that. We know ourselves to be … shaded here and there with some pretty distinctive colors. The experiences of our lives that have colored our perception – that have in some cases enriched our existence and in others have tainted it. We find ourselves touched, infused, tinted with a whole rainbow of experiences that makes us much more three-dimensional than a simple name can describe.
What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?
What we come down to in the midst of that understanding, is that differences are there. They are, for better or worse, part of who we are as a family. We have either learned to live with them and love each other anyway or we have moved on. We have found that in that diversity there is strength. There is the strength and encouragement we can find when we have gone through something that we might at first believe ourselves to be alone in, only to discover that there are three other people who’ve gone through the same thing and survived. There is the understanding acceptance recognized when we are so deeply ashamed of what our lives have become and yet we long for a community to embrace us in spite of that, as we try to pull that dissolute life back together, and find ourselves among caring brothers and sisters who do not judge because THEY were not judged – or who perhaps WERE judged, and from THAT experience found the meaning in the biblical injunction against doing just THAT.
As a body, as the hands and feet and mouths of Jesus Christ in Emmerton, Warsaw, Richmond County, the Northern Neck, Virginia, the United States and beyond, we have it in our power to be a haven, to be a refuge, a safe place away from a world that would sooner serve as judge, jury and executioner when faced with the frailties of human existence; a world that would likelier scoff at sincere attempts to right the wrongs, straighten up, de-tox, clear the air, clear the name by someone who has recognized they are not who God created them to be, and are setting out on a journey towards redemption.
The question for us here this morning is, who will we invite along on the journey?
Let’s pray.
Epiphany 3
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
1 Corinthians 12:12-31
12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. 14Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? 18But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many members, yet one body. 21The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” 22On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; 24whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, 25that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. 26If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. 27Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. 28And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues. 29Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? 31But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.
During our training as journeymen, way back in the dark ages of the mid-80s, our group of 65 candidates was divided into teams of varying sizes, with different goals set for us each week. One team I was in was asked to come up with a multi-media presentation for one of our devotional times in the evenings. We gathered, and those of the group who at that time had already decided on a career in ministry, suggested we do a slide show – back when they were still 35 mm SLIDES that you put into a tray that ran through a projector – based on our passage this morning. The rest of the group served as models for the pictures that were taken to provide the visual representation of the text as Paul walks us through what it means to be a part of a whole.
There were, course, poses of people trying to show themselves to be a hand, or a foot, or an eye, and at the same time to look down on some other member of the body. It was still pretty close to the 70’s, if you ask me.
It was not the first attempt at a more-or-less dramatic representation of the ‘many members, one body’ passage of first Corinthians.
The point was, and is, that this has been a centerpiece of our understanding of what it means to be a part of the body of Christ because it so clearly states the realities of existence AS a member of the body.
We recognize and understand that as much as we differ as individuals, however we see things differently, or even use different terminology, phrases, and titles, we are STILL all members of the same body – the body of Christ.
The congregation of the church at Corinth was about as multi-anything as you could GET at the time; racial, ethnic, cultural, religious. There were Greeks, Romans, Jews, Asians; there were former pagans, disciples of Aphrodite, the prevailing ‘church’ of Corinth, and Jews who still held to most of their own religious practices. There were former Greek Stoics, former Roman emperor-worshippers, and as there likely are everywhere, nominal members of the majoritarian popular church – folks who wouldn’t say they WEREN’T disciples of Aphrodite, but who would just as soon roll over in bed and go back to sleep if at some point the religious holiday called for an early-morning trek to the temple at the top of the mountain overlooking Corinth. Think melting pot on steroids. Think people from both sides AND ENDS of the track meeting weekly if not more frequently for worship and to try to learn about what it means to follow Jesus.
The results were … in some ways predictable. Conflict, certainly. Cliquish behavior, yes. Lack of accountability to one another in the spirit of Christ: yes. Openly immoral behavior: sadly, yes.
What is interesting, though, is that, in spite of everything that is going on, all the sordid detail of it, Paul never stops calling the church in Corinth the body of Christ. They never lose that status. Even with all the infighting, with all the bickering, the shunning, the outright enmity, the presumption remains that the church is still the representation of Christ to the half million people of the city of Corinth.
As Raymond Bryan Brown puts it, “The Corinthians ARE the body of Christ. The church … exists through the work of Christ. The Corinthians do not create the body of Christ but manifest it because they confess Christ in obedient faith by accepting the benefits of his death and resurrection. The church is the body of Christ because it draws its life from him.”
In other words, we are not the body of Christ because of who we say WE are, we become the body of Christ when we are united in proclaiming – AND LIVING – who HE is.
There is a simple obviousness to the fact that there is diversity in this room. We can look around and see differences that are apparent – by the way we dress, by the way we act and speak; differences of origin – from around the country or around the world, in some cases. There are other differences we are aware of because we know each other – differences in education, training, employment. And yet, we gather together and sing the same songs together, read the same scriptures together, pray similar prayers together.
There are people who would look at us from the outside and call us, basically, a white anglo-saxon protestant church. I would hope we would bridle at the name. Not that we AREN’T basically that, but more at the fact that we KNOW OURSELVES to be much more multi-faceted than that. We know ourselves to be … shaded here and there with some pretty distinctive colors. The experiences of our lives that have colored our perception – that have in some cases enriched our existence and in others have tainted it. We find ourselves touched, infused, tinted with a whole rainbow of experiences that makes us much more three-dimensional than a simple name can describe.
What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?
What we come down to in the midst of that understanding, is that differences are there. They are, for better or worse, part of who we are as a family. We have either learned to live with them and love each other anyway or we have moved on. We have found that in that diversity there is strength. There is the strength and encouragement we can find when we have gone through something that we might at first believe ourselves to be alone in, only to discover that there are three other people who’ve gone through the same thing and survived. There is the understanding acceptance recognized when we are so deeply ashamed of what our lives have become and yet we long for a community to embrace us in spite of that, as we try to pull that dissolute life back together, and find ourselves among caring brothers and sisters who do not judge because THEY were not judged – or who perhaps WERE judged, and from THAT experience found the meaning in the biblical injunction against doing just THAT.
As a body, as the hands and feet and mouths of Jesus Christ in Emmerton, Warsaw, Richmond County, the Northern Neck, Virginia, the United States and beyond, we have it in our power to be a haven, to be a refuge, a safe place away from a world that would sooner serve as judge, jury and executioner when faced with the frailties of human existence; a world that would likelier scoff at sincere attempts to right the wrongs, straighten up, de-tox, clear the air, clear the name by someone who has recognized they are not who God created them to be, and are setting out on a journey towards redemption.
The question for us here this morning is, who will we invite along on the journey?
Let’s pray.
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