Being One Body in Christ
Sermon preached Sunday, August 21, 2005
by Todd Koser
A few weeks ago I was designated to write the prayers for the service. After I had finished writing those prayers I knew that, at least for me, they had presented a message I needed to hear. When the prayers were written, the Rhoda's sermon topic was radical inclusivity and I hope they spoke to you on that day. When I started to prepare for my turn preaching, I was pleased to see that the lectionary passages provided verses that linked to the prayers that I had written. As I thought about what to preach about, I decided to take the opportunity to try to expand on an allied message and evolution of that message to me over the last month.
I want to share with you my thoughts about some of the challenges and comforts of being a part of "one body in Christ." Since this evolved out of my prayer writing, my thoughts have fallen into the progression of the main or confessional prayer, which was in three parts.
Here is the first section of the prayer, "God, we reject membership in Your Body. We perceive ourselves to be sufficient and complete. We exalt our role in Your world and dishonor and diminish Your other members. "
I find this is unfortunately easy to do. When our presbytery, conference or some larger grouping in the Christian church endorses a position or statement I cannot agree with, I am left wondering, "What is wrong with them?" I don't participate in those institutions very much, if at all, and that makes it easy for me to envision some amorphous mass of people who I want to divorce myself from.
It doesn't get much harder to do when the scale is manageable. I recently read Glorious Appearing by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. This is the last book in the Left Behind series of Christian based novels set during the time of the Second Coming. This is not something I would normally read, but it was the selection of my book group and so I approached it hopeful that it would serve as a window into the world of fellow Christians who are much more socially conservative than I am and very literalist in their reading and understanding of the Bible. I have to confess a complete failure of imagination and empathy. The depiction of the second coming of Jesus was so divergent from my hopes for this world, I was left feeling more angry and alienated than before I read the book. My mantra while reading became "What were these two guys thinking?"
Even here among ourselves we are hardly of one mind or heart or understanding. We acknowledge this within our congregation by having two designations for congregants as Members and Friends, but I think these labels really only scratch the surface of the differences in individuals' core beliefs. A few months ago Barbara Tilley made a very emotional request for prayers. A family friend was very sick, and in talking about her grief and fear for them that they might die soon, she said, "I don't believe what you all believe" referring to the existence of an afterlife and salvation. I think that took great courage to acknowledge the implicit barrier she felt in her reaching out to the rest of us.
In I Corinthians 12, verses 20 and 21 it says "As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you…." Some days my all too human reaction is "just watch me," or "who says I can't?" Dissent, defiance, anonymity and differences in core beliefs can be real barriers to seeing ourselves as "being one body in Christ." So we need to recognize them.
And so that leads to the second section of the prayer: "God, our denial of membership in Your Body does not sever us from You. Our inability to perceive the larger Body and its movements does not stop You from working in and through our lives. To You belongs the honor and glory as we work towards Your ends."
Indeed, the body metaphor is further extended in Corinthians. In verses 24 to 26 Paul writes, "… But God has so composed the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior part, that there may be no discord in the body, but that the members may all have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together." If you have ever had a really bad infection, you know the truth he is talking about here.
Within our denominations, we seek to distinguish ourselves as a certain type of member of the body, designating our congregation as "More Light," "Open and Affirming," a "sanctuary congregation," a member of the Interfaith Working Group and we act accordingly. Paul, in the reading for today from Romans, wants the early church to accept and harness the power of these differences. He writes "Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them …." Of course the more difficult part of this is to accept that other congregations are acting according to the mission and gifts that were given to them. We, at TAB, are one part of the complete message to God's people, and they are another.
As I was preparing a Sunday School lesson on Martin Luther and the Reformation, I was surprised to find that the strict literalist tradition of biblical interpretation has most of its roots in this schism. As German and Swiss peasants left the Catholic Church and began to read and study the Bible without mediation from a priest, they rejected allegorical and non-literalist approaches that were often the basis of Catholic interpretation and teaching. These had been used at times to support the divine right of kings and other oppressive doctrines and so they were flatly rejected. So the roots of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins's approach to the Bible come from the same Reformation that also gave birth to so much that I love about the church.
Within this congregation, we come from more faith traditions and backgrounds than any other church I have ever attended. While this brings the strength of having a wide array of experience to draw from, I have sometimes gotten caught up in trying to name the set of core beliefs common to us all. Maybe this the wrong approach since I've never been able to get anywhere looking at the situation this way. I've been here 14 years now; maybe its time I try something new? I am starting to think that the beliefs that bind us together are more of a web, a wide array of strands that connect a few individuals, who are in turn joined to others via different paths and beliefs.
I think we need to find ways to explore and talk about the strands of the web that binds us together so we can discover new links and constantly weave ourselves together into a stronger and stronger unit. That kind of work can be very scary, it is not easy, at least for me, to articulate those beliefs that are core to my personal faith, especially in such an intimate setting where I know that many others may not feel the same way, but I think there is real value in trying. It is like hiking also. When you are descending a steep trail and pass someone struggling to climb up the way you just came, you can give them encouragement: "only another tenth of a mile and then easy going." We need to find all the intersections and common paths we are traveling as we walk humbly with God.
In reconciling ourselves to the differences of gifts and abilities given to us by God, we open ourselves to the possibilities of finding a common bond or path.
And then finally, the last section of the prayer was: "God, we give thanks for membership in Your Body. All the daunting tasks and failings we see in our world, we turn over to the work of Your great Body. There is no wound Your Body cannot heal, and so we seek to understand our rightful place as a member of Your great Body."
We, or at least I, often get too focused on the issues of disagreement and contention within the larger church bodies where we are members. In preparing for my book group I got to thinking about the folks who have been snapping up books from the Left Behind series and what I might possible have in common with them. In fact there is common work that we can all agree needs our attention and resources. Things like the One Great Hour of Sharing and Word Communion Sunday are two of them. In researching this sermon I was a little surprised to find that the OGHofS collection within the Presbyterian Church (USA) totals something close to 7 to 8 million dollars by my informal accounting. The reason it is hard to get a total is that the money is split three ways between disaster assistance, hunger relief and the self-development of people. Together all of us make this possible and in ways that would be unimaginable for a single church or group. While the world-wide community of Christians may not agree on too many things, we have managed to designate a particular day, World Communion Sunday, to celebrate an affirmation of our common bond one to another over the whole globe.
We also seek the common bonds within this congregation. When Patricia was making her preparations to fill the pulpit during her sabbatical, I wrote back to her that I was willing to preach, but would prefer not to do more than two rotations, but would be willing to do three in a matter of dire need. When I received the list of preachers I was really please to see how many of us had volunteered to take a turn. 16 of us are filling the pulpit between July and October and the main requirement is a willingness to share a message with this gathering. We haven't set a qualification list, which hopefully you aren't regretting today, and that means that 1 out of 4 of our adult members will be sharing themselves with us. I think this is a unique opportunity to start exploring the strands of the web and path of the journey that draw us together.
As we open ourselves in gratitude to both the unique and common gifts God has given us, our perception of the body of Christ grows stronger.
And finally I offer this last thought, which I hope you find to be a comfort but may be a challenge. It is beautifully summarized in a poem by Walt Whitman, graciously selected by Deb Ahrens, and printed on the bulletin cover.
On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought
of the clef of the universes and of the future.
A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe
All lives and deaths all of the past, present, future,
The vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd
And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.
This comfort is the fact that the body of Christ extends beyond our human community into a creation vaster than we can comprehend. And in all that, God can "compactly hold and enclose them." We are cradled in the palm of God's hand, our differences, our affirmations, even in the vastness of the universe, just so.
© 2005 by Todd Koser. All rights reserved. Please consult the author at tabernacle@tabunited.org if you wish to use the text of this sermon, in whole or in part.
