What a Body!

1 Corinthians 12:12-27

October 3, 2004

 

1.   Today is World Communion Sunday, the day Christians all over the world gather around the Lord’s Table in Spirit.  What do you know about this world-wide Church?  It’s divided into many denominations, right?  There is still the original one (Eastern Orthodox) and the Western Roman that developed a separate identity 1,000 years later, which we now call Roman Catholics.  And there are those that broke away from the Western Church during the Reformation—Lutherans, Presbyterians, Reformed; and the Anglicans and Episcopalians. And there are those that developed in the United States—the Baptists, the Churches of Christ, the Assembly of God, the Pentecostals, and more than a few others.  There are almost as many denominations as there are body parts!  And at last count, there were more than 2,000 body parts! 

2.  So imagine for a minute that the church actually is the Body of Christ.  Let’s give names to the most likely parts.   Arms are the first that come to my mind.  What denomination is most noted for waving its arms?  Pentecostals.   What denomination uses its legs to walk all over the world?  Baptists.  What denomination is known for its warmth, its big heart?  Methodists (John Wesley said his “heart was strangely warmed” when he heard preaching from Paul’s Letter to the Romans about the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ.   Ever since then, Methodists have been the warmest of the denominations.)  What about brains?  What denomination is known for its thinking?  Presbyterians!

3.   Using Paul’s metaphor, the Body of Christ, we recognize how important each body part is.   If the Church were all arms, how would it think?  If the Body of Christ only had a brain, and therefore could only think seriously and orderly about the Church, how would it bring the God News to other lands?  If it only wore its heart on its sleeve, and gave away all it had to help the poor, how could it think about the best way to help the most people?  If it only traveled to all countries, how could it have time to worship God?  You guessed it!  There is no way we can be “The Body of Christ” if we were all the same!  It takes all of us, each denomination doing what it does best, so we can accomplish around the world in our time what Jesus accomplished in Palestine during his time. 

4.  Sometimes the Church has been called “The Army of God” and we sing “Onward Christian Soldiers.”  Martin Bell tells a story about called “Gods Rag-Tag Army.”  It’s in his book The Way of the Wolf.  Bell vividly paints a picture of God as a tired old Army general wearing what was once a splendid uniform.  And the reason God is so old and so tired is because you and I, and millions like us, are the only soldiers God has in this “Army.”  We’re a difficult lot.  The drumbeat isn’t even regular, so everyone is out of step.  And God has to keep stopping along the way to pick up one of the tinier soldiers who decided to wander off and play with a frog, or run in a field, or whose foot got tangled in the underbrush.  That’s why nothing God does happens very fast–and yet the march goes on.  The biggest problem is that sooner or later we soldiers begin feeling lonely and grab for the hand in front and the hand behind.  We think we are moving ahead, but there are so many of us that we’re really going around in circles.  A sensible general would take this little army and shape it up!  Whoever heard of a soldier getting out of line to go play with a frog?  And what general who would stop the march of eternity to go find the soldier who got out of line?  Our God, that’s who!  But this is no endless, empty marching.  God is going somewhere!  God’s steps are deliberate and purposeful.  God may be old, and God may be tired, but God knows the way, and intends for every last one of us to go, too.  Only there won’t be any forced marches.  After all, there are frogs and flowers, and thorns and underbrush along the way.  And most of us are afraid and lonely and would like to hold hands or cry or run away.  And we don’t know where we are going, and we can’t seem to trust God–especially when it’s dark out and we cannot see.  But God won’t go on without us.  And that’s why it’s taking so long!  That’s the end of the story.  Isn’t that an apt description of us?

5.  Whether we call the Church “God’s Rag-tag Army” or The Body of Christ, we are part of it.  And we can be proud of our part!  We can’t all wave our arms; we can’t all walk throughout the world; we cannot all be warm and fuzzy; we cannot all be intellectual.  It takes every denomination on this earth to do what Christ needs us to do!  Most Sundays we celebrate our differences; we gather in our separate houses of worship to be distinctively who we are.  But today we set aside those differences, and gather around Christ’s table, to receive the spiritual food we need to be this body!  Thanks be to God!