This sermon can be summed up in one sentence, if we are to be the church we must strive to be one, one body, one faith, one love, one people. The end. Okay, so its not quite the end, sorry for those of you who want to go home and get ready for the Super Bowl. As you may have realized in the last three months but I usually do a sermon over a single piece of scripture, I sometimes will talk about other scriptures in a sermon but they are all for the benefit of understanding the main scripture. Today is going to be a little different. I have four points this morning and there is a scripture for each point. I did it this way to illustrate that much like the many of us are to be one, the many of the Bible is one as well.
One Body – 1 Corinthians 12:12-31
I could just say that Paul says it pretty good in this scripture, so I don’t really have anything much to add to it. But I will try to, if not add, at least expound on a few things that Paul brings up. The first thing I would want to say is that each part of the body has something in common. For instance this is my hand, and my eye and my foot, they have me in common. Now if my body was made up of parts of different people it wouldn’t work that well, if I had one of my legs and one of Mary’s I would be leaning here not standing. For my body to work to its fullest it has to be comprised of my body parts. Much like my body the church must have something in common. We are not a bunch of bodies we are all part of Christ’s body. We are Christ’s hand, and Christ’s eye, and Christ’s underarm, and lets face it someone has to be the underarm.
Secondly we are all different. While we make up one body we bring our own gifts and talents and stories to the table. I know full well how some of my body parts work. I can somewhat explain how the lens and cornea and iris work, to explain how my eye can see. I could talk to you a little about veins and arteries and how the blood pumps oxygenated blood around our cardiovascular systems. There are other parts of my body that are a complete mystery to me, my gallbladder for instance. The same can be said for us as a church. I can tell you my story and most of Mary’s story, but only a little bit of John’s story or Donna’s story. I do not have Jennica’s gifts or Linda’s. I have some talent in several areas but not enough for the church to be great by myself. Only when we are all bringing our gifts, talents and stories to the table are we able to accomplish all that God has in store for us.
Third, we all must go is the same direction. The thing about a body is that the parts are not detachable. The hand can not take a vacation from the body if it expects to still have movement. You can’t pluck out your eye and expect to have the same kind of vision that you used to have. No part of the body can go its own way, nor can the body get rid of any of its parts and still work the same way. The body must continually go in the same direction. To this end we must be willing to work together toward the same goals. To do this we all must be willing to occasionally not get our own way. We must be willing to lay aside our own ambitions so that the body can become greater than its parts.
The final thing I would like to say about being a part of the body is that when one part of the body hurts we all hurt. Two weeks ago I was sick, among other symptoms I had a pretty bad cough, at first a very dry one and then one accompanied with chest congestion. After one particularly bad night I went to work and every time I coughed my chest and sides hurt. This happens because the body is one whole. Much like the body cannot be separated without drastic damage neither can one part hurt without the rest of the body being affected. That’s the negative aspect of being a body, yes by the joining of the various parts we are stronger and more capable of greatness than if we go it alone, but we are also more susceptible of being caused pain. At least we are if we are truly being the body that we are meant to be. If any one of our parts hurt we all should hurt. If Julia loses someone we should ache with her. If someone loses a job we should all attempt to lift them up. People often complain about how the government should not be in the business of helping people who need help. Maybe they shouldn't and maybe they wouldn't need to be if the church was doing its job and helping the widows and orphans and holding onto the people right in our midst. If we are ever to become the body of Christ we need to get his hands working his feet moving and his voice speaking words of comfort and hope.
One Hope – Romans 5:1-11
Which brings us to the second point this morning, we need to be a church, a people, a body with one hope. In 1992 Steven Curtis Chapman released an Album titled Heaven in the Real World the title track had a quote on it from Charles Stanley that went, “Where is the hope? I meet millions who tell me that they feel demoralized by the decay around us. The hope that each of us have is not in who governs us or what laws are passed or what great things we do as a nation. Our hope is in the power of God working through the hearts of people. And that is where our hope is in this country and in this life.” And I think that is what we need to focus on the work that God is doing in our hearts and in our lives. How often do we tend to focus on other things, namely the negative things that pop up. We focus on the car breaking down or another bill in the mail when we don’t have enough money for the previous one, and there are still things that you hope to accomplish and do, but they keep getting pushed back. Instead maybe we need to refocus on God, refocus on what God has done for us already, the places that God has already brought us through, and then remember that this too shall pass.
To that point I would like to share a story that I found online recently. "It was a beautiful spring day, and a sense of peace stayed with me as I left the cathedral on Easter Monday morning. I paused for a moment on top of the steps leading to the avenue, now crowded with people rushing to their jobs. Sitting in her usual place inside a small archway was the old flower lady. At her feet corsages and boutonnieres were parading on top of a spread-open newspaper. The flower lady was smiling, her wrinkled old face alive with some inner joy. I started down the stairs - then, on impulse, turned and picked out a flower. As I put it in my lapel, I said, "You took happy this morning." "Why not? Everything is good." She was dressed so shabbily and seemed so very old that her reply startled me. "You’ve been sitting here for many years now, haven’t you? And always smiling. You wear your troubles well." "You can’t reach my age and not have troubles." she replied. "Only it’s like Jesus and Good Friday... ’ She paused for a moment. "Yes?" I prompted. "Well, when Jesus was crucified on Good Friday, which was the worst day for the whole world. And when I get troubles I remember that, and then I think of what happened only three days later-Easter and our Lord arising. So when I get troubles, I’ve learned to wait three days ... somehow everything gets all right again." And she smiled good-bye. Her words still follow me whenever I think I have troubles. Give God a chance to help... wait three days.
What if we decided to wait three days, or just one, or why not just a few hours, if we waited to begin stressing out, waited to start complaining, waited on the Lord. I wonder how many times we would be comforted before we lamented, how often would an answer come before we questioned, how often would we never need to stress if we simply waited and had hope in the Lord.
Another quote that I found when looking online was “Is there a hope when hope is taken away? Is there hope when the situation is hopeless? That question leads us to Christian hope, for in the Bible, hope is no longer a passion for the possible. It becomes a passion for the promise.” A couple weeks ago I mentioned that failure is not a period, just a comma. The main reason for that is that we continue to go on. We continue to have faith, and hope in God. That’s what we’re talking about here, hope in God, not hope in ourselves, and not hope in each other, but hope in God. That’s why it’s not about a passion for the possible, but rather a passion for the promise, God has already promised his love, his caring, his companionship. All we have to do is believe, and if each one of us could believe that then we would all have the hope that we need to be uniquely one.
[This next section references a post that has not yet been uploaded, sorry for the confusion]
One Love – Galatians 5:22-26
Once we realize the impact of being one body and once we can gravitate toward having one hope we can also start living one love. Last week I talked about the directions of love. That we need to first love upward to God then inward to ourselves and finally outward to the world. This is a continuation of that final direction, about loving the world. In addition I spoke about two months ago on the fruit of the spirit, kindness in particular. I touched on the fact that the fruit of the spirit might best be understood as being love, a love that looks like joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. DL Moody says it this way “it speaks in Galatians about love, the fruit of the Spirit being love, joy, peace, gentleness, long suffering, meekness and temperance. The way this writer has put it -- and I think it is very beautiful -- is that joy is love exultant, peace is love in repose, and long suffering is love enduring. It is all love, you see, gentleness is love in society, and goodness is love in action, and faith is love on the battle-field, and meekness is love at school, and temperance is love in training.”
In other words if we are to be one we must have a well rounded love. Our love must be a positive outpouring of joy from time to time. We must verbally share our love with others. I don’t know how many times a day I tell Mary I love her, but I do it at the end of every conversation, every time I go to work, every time I come home. Letting her know how much I love her is very important to me, and even with the amount of times I say it she seems to overlook it sometimes when I screw things up. We need to share our love with each other and with others. In addition our love needs to be one of peace. It needs to be a love that can calm certain situations. A love that brings peace to us and others when the storms are raging and we don’t know which way is home.
Our love needs to be a love that endures, a love that is patient. We can not show a fickle love to the world. If we only love people who are like us we fail, but if we love people that are not like us only when we see them as being on our side we still fail. Our love must endure the hardships, it must keep us together during the arguments and bring us back together when the arguments cease. Also, our love needs to be a love of kindness, a love at school, a love that educates, a love that brings along those that have little love so that they can have great heaps of love.
Moody said that gentleness is love in society, which means that when we are showing love outside our walls it must be a love that holds on instead of letting go. Our world is all about putting people in boxes. We’re Republican or democrat, we’re young or old, we’re rich or poor, we’re educated or stupid, we’re this or we’re that. The love of God unites us into one, with differences of opinions, but one none the less. Our love must also be a self-controlling love, a love of temperance. It must be a love that holds us accountable, a love that understands that we must not be extremely loud nor extremely soft in our love, but to find a happy medium.
Love is the most important thing that we can do in this life because there is a need to seek joy, a need to fight for peace in your lives, there is time it takes to be patient, the learning for goodness, the action of kindness, the loyalty of faithfulness, the soft touch of gentleness, and finally the strength that is found in self-control. May we now move forward with the fruit of the spirit indwelling in our lives ever deeper ever more true. It can be difficult to live as a follower of Jesus in the world we live in. It takes each of the fruit of the Spirit in order to do it, and it takes a lot of self-control to do it successfully, but if we are not willing to engage the world how does Jesus ever met the people who need him.
One People – Ecclesiastes 4:8-12
As I said at the beginning my reason for using different scriptures throughout this sermon was to show the unity of the Bible. From the very beginning to the very end the Bible is about calling God’s creation to be God’s people. He started with a single couple in Genesis, then a family, then a people, then it was expanded it to include anyone who would believe, in the end the whole world bows and praises God. The Bible is a book of unity. This morning I want to end with my favorite Old Testament book, Ecclesiastes. In my opinion Ecclesiastes is a book of philosophy, and being a philosophy major in college I greatly enjoy it. It is about deep thoughts and deep problems. Sometimes the author, who most agree was probably Solomon, speaks of the waste of things, about how there is nothing new under the sun, but in chapter 4 he turns to a lone man and then friendship, and finally to community. [Ecclesiastes 4:8-12] You see when we stand alone it is just a matter of time before we fall. And if we fall alone there is no one to help us back up. So we need friends. We need a helping hand, a reassuring hug, a shoulder to cry on.
About a year ago I preached a sermon on friendship at the church we were attending at the time. My three points were (1) where you find a friend is sometimes surprising, (2) how you become friends is by trusting and (3) the way friendship grows is by loving. I will not bore you with another sermon, but what I will say it that the way that we can become one people is by becoming friends. By asking how we are doing and caring about the reply, by offering our hands, our hugs, and our shoulders, and by walking alongside each other through the good times and the bad times and the times in between. A three strand cord is not quickly broken. A four strand one is even better, but what about a thirty strand one, how strong can that be, what can that cord accomplish.
Today I would ask you to care a little more about each other than you did when you walked in here this morning. I would ask that we strive for a real faith, to show a real love, and to be a real people. Then we will be this church for this place at this time.
Peace and Love,
Pastor K
No comments:
Post a Comment