E-mail Sermon May 11, 2008 - "The Common Good"

“The Common Good”

1 Corinthians 12:3b-13

Willapa United Methodist Church

May 11, 2008

Stan Norman

Did you know that the average human brain has about 100 billion nerve cells?  Did you know that the average human scalp has 100,000 hairs?  Did you know that the average human heart will beat 3 billion times in its lifetime and pump 48 million gallons of blood?  Did you know that each square inch of human skin consists of 20 feet of blood vessels?  Did you know that during a 24-hour period, the average human will breathe 23,040 times?  Did you know that human blood travels 60,000 miles per day on its journey through the body?  The human body is incredibly complex! 

The people that we meet in the Bible did not have scientific statistics at their fingertips to prove that point, but they were certainly aware of the complexity of the human body.  In Psalm 139 we read, “For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.  I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”  Jesus tells us in the Gospel According to Matthew, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?  Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.  And even the hairs of your head are all counted.  So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.”

We have the Apostle Paul to thank for the analogy of the Church as the Body of Christ.  There must be something to it, because it certainly has stood the test of time.  So, let’s look at a few scientific statistics about the Body of Christ, the Church.  Did you know that there are more than 2 billion Christians in the world?  Did you know that there are millions of Christian churches and temples scattered across the globe?  There are more than 20 Christian churches in North Pacific County!  Did you know that there are more than 38,000 Christian denominations, groups of churches that share a set of beliefs and/or values?  The Body of Christ is incredibly complex!  Please pray with me.

May the words of our mouths, the meditations of our hearts, and the conduct of our lives be always acceptable to you, O God, our strength and our blessed redeemer.  Amen.

Paul’s letters to the early Christian church in Corinth were written in response to divisions and factions that had grown up within that church in only its first three years of existence!  Paul founded the church in Corinth during his second missionary journey in A. D. 51.  By A.D. 54, he was writing his first letter to them, the letter that we call

1 Corinthians.  The Corinth church included many different types of people:  conservative Jewish Christians; more liberal Gentile, or non-Jewish, Christians; citizens, or free people, and slaves; people loyal to Paul, people loyal to Peter, and people loyal to Apollos; men and women; the aged and the very young; people who could speak in tongues and people who could not speak in tongues. 

The Corinth church was very diverse, and with that diversity came complexity, and with that complexity, disagreement and division.  You see, it’s human nature to think that we, and people who look and think like us, are the most attractive and important parts of the Body.

In our text for today, Paul is dealing with a dispute over which spiritual gifts are the most important.  Specifically, is it necessary to speak in tongues in order to be a “real” Christian and a true member of the church?  Doubtless, they had heard the story of the Church’s birthday in Jerusalem, the Pentecost story; probably from Paul himself.  Those who could speak in tongues – similar to what happened to the eleven apostles in our reading this morning from Acts – were obviously hand-picked by God to lead the church in Corinth, weren’t they?

I think Paul makes three very important points in this part of his letter to try to get the church in Corinth back on track:  First, while there is great diversity among humans in the gifts, services, and activities that they bring to the Church, there is only one God; and, that one God, whether Father, Son, or Spirit, is the source and goal of all human activity.  Second, the Spirit makes each of us unique and gives each of us gifts for the purpose of serving the community, the Church.  Or, to put it a more modern way, “There is no I in team.”  Third, we are all in this thing together.  We are all one body, created by God to be in community with one another, and to be in communion with God.

Now, you may be thinking that we have learned a lot in the last 1,950 years about being the Body of Christ.  We don’t have those kinds of divisions within the church that the Corinthians had!  We don’t have any Jews in our congregation.  We don’t have any slaves in our congregation.  We don’t have any people in our congregation who speak in tongues.  After all, we’re Methodists, we don’t even raise our hands when we sing!  Well, let me give you a couple of things to think about:

How many of us think that homosexuality is wrong because the Bible says that it is; and how many of us think that homosexuality can’t be wrong because we have friends or family members who are homosexual, and they are some of the most caring people we know?

How many of us think that war is wrong, including the War on Terror, because the Bible says that it is wrong to kill and that we should “turn the other cheek”; and how many of us think that there is such a thing as a just war, and point to all the warfare and killing done in the Old Testament by, and in the name of, God?

How many of us think that abortion is wrong because the Bible says that it is God who forms us and knits us together in our mothers’ wombs; and how many of us think that abortion can be justified in cases of rape and incest?

How many of us think that evangelism must be the first priority of the church because Jesus commissioned the church to make disciples; and how many of us are more concerned with providing food and shelter to the poor because it’s hard to hear and accept the Gospel when your stomach is empty, or you’re living in a cardboard box?

Do we have to pick between being reconciling or evangelical?  Do we have to pick between being conservative or liberal?  Do we have to pick between being pro-life or pro-choice?  Do we have to pick between social justice and evangelism?  Or, should we refuse to be labeled anything but “Christian”?

We may be mostly white, middle-class Americans in this church, but we certainly have very diverse views of the Bible and of God. Please think about what it means to be the Body of Christ as I read a few more verses of 1 Corinthians, chapter 12.

I’ll repeat the last two verses that Sue read, so you can get your bearings.  I’ll be reading from Eugene Peterson’s modern language translation, The Message.

1 Corinthians 12:12-31 (The Message)

 12-13You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you're still one body. It's exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.) Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.

Skipping to verse 25:

 25-26The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don't, the parts we see and the parts we don't. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.

 27-31You are Christ's body—that's who you are! You must never forget this. Only as you accept your part of that body does your "part" mean anything. You're familiar with some of the parts that God has formed in his church, which is his "body":

   apostles
   prophets
   teachers
   miracle workers
   healers
   helpers
   organizers
   those who pray in tongues.

But it's obvious by now, isn't it, that Christ's church is a complete Body and not a gigantic, unidimensional Part? It's not all Apostle, not all Prophet, not all Miracle Worker, not all Healer, not all Prayer in Tongues, not all Interpreter of Tongues. And yet some of you keep competing for so-called "important" parts.

But now I want to lay out a far better way for you.

Would anyone care to guess what the “far better way” is?  I’ll give you a hint:  The next chapter is 1 Corinthians 13.  That’s right, the far better way and God’s greatest gift, a gift that we all receive, is love.  1 Corinthians 13 is often titled the “The Gift of Love.”  Hymn number 408 in the United Methodist Hymnal is a paraphrase of the first few verses of 1 Corinthians 13.

God, through the Holy Spirit, has given each and every one of us spiritual gifts that are important to the Body of Christ.  You may be an apostle, a prophet, a teacher, a miracle worker, a healer, a helper, or an organizer.  You may be a lay leader, a committee chair, a housekeeper, a trustee, a musician, or a child-care provider.  No matter what your particular gift is, it is valuable to God and to the Body of Christ.  There are really only two rules for sharing your gift:  share it lovingly, and use it to work for the common good.

Amen.

Now, let’s turn in our hymnals to #408 and sing “The Gift of Love” quietly and prayerfully together, as one Body…