The Failure (and Ironic Success) of Apologetics
In 1988, a book by Alasdair MacIntyre was published under the
title, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Without attempting to
summarize the argument of its 400 pages, suffice it to say that
MacIntyre demonstrates admirably that Justice (and, by extension,
morality) is a word or concept that means different things to different
cultures and times. He traces, as a paradigm case, the change from what
people meant by "justice" and "rationality" (two ideas MacIntyre claims
are always deeply intertwined) from presocratic Greek thought, through
Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, through the Middle Ages to Hume and his
heirs. The change, even within Western history, striking.
Some would argue that this means that there is no such thing as
"absolute" justice, morality, rationality and the rest. The argument
being, if so many different cultures disagree on what these terms mean,
how can we possibly say that one of them is right and the rest of them
are wrong? This is amplified when we consider that we have a tendency
to assume that the rationality, etc. that we are immersed (or grew up)
in is "right." In such a case, how can a claim to be committed to an
"absolute" truth of any kind be anything other than a new form of
imperialism, where we go into new cultures and, under the guise of
spreading "rationality" or "truth," in fact end up spreading nothing
more than our own forms of thought and life?
I am not entirely convinced that arguments like MacIntyre's (and
also, in their own way, of Kuhn, Feyerabend, and others within the
philosophy and history of science) lead us to conclude that there is and
can be no such thing as absolute truth. Rather, it means that, if
there is such a thing as absolute truth, which is not just a
characteristic of Christian faith but also is true of philosophical
systems like Plato's (as well, incidentally, of Eastern philosophies
which do not so much emphasize what is, but what is not which,
ultimately, presuppose their own metaphysical convictions), we do not
have access to it in any way that somehow manages to bypass a particular
language and conceptual framework.
There has been a longstanding strategy in modern Christian
apologetics which gets an awful lot of mileage out of the idea (which,
in my opinion, is suspect if not entirely false) that, because all human
beings are created in the image of God, we all share a kind of common
moral awareness. By building on that, along with other related claims
to commonality, apologists often try to reason that the "whence" of that
moral awareness is God, and therefore, since everyone already believes
in moral standards, everyone already believes in God. It should be
noted that, while many contemporary apologists for Christian faith would
identify as being theologically (if not politically) conservative, this
idea has far more in common with the theology of Schleiermacher, the
father of Liberal theology, than the example of Paul the apostle and the
other Biblical authors. It should also be noted that, even if this
line of reasoning were valid, it would not be a victory for Christian
faith but for classical theism. Any train of thought that simply does
not take the actual life, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ is
not a distinctly "Christian" argument.
What is interesting is that, in addition to the fact that this
line of argument is not good theology, nor is it good apologetics, it is
also fundamentally flawed from a philosophical and sociological point
of view. The irony of this is that anyone who is involved in missionary
work can see the flaws. It does not matter into what culture you
enter, there are interesting differences as to what is "just" or "moral"
that belie any real confidence in the standard apologetic argument from
morality. The best one could say is that, because every culture has
moral standards (though they are often very different from one another),
the source of the existence of standards in general (not the standards
themselves) is God. If this line of reasoning is sound, it is no more
helpful than the other. There have been several missionaries in the
last twenty years or so who have shared how their experiences in other
cultures have called into question their conviction that their own
culture was the standard by which to judge the values of others, but
this has challenged them to reflect all the more deeply about the nature
of justice, morality and truth, rather than abandon them.
All of this is to say that this line of reasoning (that truth
and faith are bound up with moral standards) has become so deeply
engrained into our culture that both the theological (and political)
left and right believe it. In fact, it has become something of a basic
axiom which people have turned into a means to critique Christian faith
from a new angle. The argument goes something like this. You are
correct that I have a deep moral sense. It is part of my very identity
and I believe it, even when other things seem uncertain. When I take
this moral sense and I read parts of the Bible (or, as often as not,
when I hear others tell me what is in the Bible), I find things there
that violate my sense of right and wrong and so, therefore, I stand in
judgment over what I find there.
It is significant that, in many ways, this is nothing more than a
contemporary, non-Christian (not to say atheistic) appropriation of the
apologetical argument from morality. While Christian apologists
attempted to say, "Anyone who reflects for a minute on their sense of
morality will realize that the gospel is true," these new non-Christian
apologists are attempting to say, "Anyone who reflects for a minute on
their sense of morality will realize that the gospel is ridiculous, as
well as the Bible in which we read about it." It is deeply ironic that
this way or arguing has demonstrated that the apologists have actually
won, even if their victory doesn't look like they wanted. They have
finally convinced the American people of their major premise, that our
moral sense ought to be judge of everything else. The only problem is
that people took that major premise and concluded, not that they were
immoral, but that the gospel is immoral. If we combine this with a
decreased sense of the majesty of the Christian tradition (which may or
may not be too bad a thing), we find that people are unwilling to give
the gospel the benefit of the doubt and, when their first encounter is
bad, simply dismiss the rest.
The problem with this is that, in the attempt to reveal
Christians as naïve and non-Christians as enlightened, the secular world
has joined large portions of the church in their naïveté by becoming
every bit as imperialistic and paternalistic as the views they condemn.
We don't say that sex-slavery is wrong because it violates our own,
culturally conditioned notion of how we ought to treat other people; it
is wrong because it violates universal human rights. In many ways, this
is a more arrogant position than a Christian position that says that,
because sex-slavery is clearly against what God would will, as revealed
in Christ, it is against God and therefore is wrong, which at least
recognizes that we need to be informed by God what really is right and
wrong and that we cannot trust our feelings to always be right on the
topic of morality, because it presupposes that there is something about
humanity that should make it clear what is right and wrong and that
people who do otherwise are not just in communities that have not yet
been shaped by the gospel but are fundamentally evil and must be
restrained from maintaining their tradition.
If we cannot understand that other people have different points
of view from ourselves and that we will need to translate and, at a more
basic level, learn to listen, we will never rise above name-calling.
Baptizing our own point of view and using it as the standard by which
to judge others does not become magically noble when separated from
Christian faith. Secular culture is every bit as biased and full of
agenda as religious culture. What we must do is learn how to work
together and acknowledge the fact that, if indeed there is such a thing
as absolute truth (which, as a Christian, I believe in wholeheartedly)
it very well may stand in every bit as much judgment over me as it does
over you.
Showing posts with label Church. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Church. Show all posts
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
A Polanyian View of Church Order?
A Polanyian View of Church Order?
As most people probably already know, I am a theologian. I am not a theologian by profession except inasmuch as all pastors are implicitly theologians, whether they take that task seriously or not. I am not academically qualified to speak as a theologian in the sense of one with a PhD in theology. And yet, I consider myself a theologian nonetheless. This does not mean, however, that theology is my only interest. It isn't. My secondary interest that has developed is the philosophy of science. Though there are certain aspects of this field that do not interest me (perhaps because I am not convinced they are dealing with the kinds of issues that are primary), I am trying to read as widely as I can since I have found the issues being discussed in it to be remarkably parallel (though not identical) with my primary interests in theology.
One of my favorite philosophers of science is Michael Polanyi, who actually may have had a more profound impact and influence on theologians than on scientists, judging by subsequent literature. Polanyi began his career as a physician, then went back to school to be trained in chemistry. Later, he was pulled into philosophy almost unwillingly because of discussions about the nature of science that were going on between Western scientists and the scientists in the Soviet Union. The question that dominated these discussions was to what extent (if at all) should the state provide guidance for the development of science. Those in the Soviet Union argued that the state, which planned everything else, should plan science. After all, if one of the great purposes of science is to serve the advancement of a state, then the state should be able to say what these scientists should be working on. In the West, this was opposed, though there was a time when this opposition was rather weak which, it would seem, is what pulled Polanyi into the debate in the first place. Western scientists argued that science could only be pure if it was free from political oversight, at least in the sense advocated by the Soviets.
Polanyi had many reasons to advocate for his view. First, because he is convinced that all knowledge, not least scientific knowledge, is the knowledge of persons who are dedicated to the truth of reality. That is, all knowledge is personal knowledge, which does not mean subjective knowledge but the acknowledgement by persons of what is the case independently of that acknowledgement. Because of this, persons engaged in research must be free to follow their personal (and largely tacit) insights and hunches. Often, significant discovery arises, not because a research program has made it clear what one should work on but because a scientist travels down the lonely road where they see a promising result that nobody else could see.
Additionally, Polanyi draws attention to the fact that much of science is only verifiable by a small number of specialists. This deviates from the kind of objectivist notions that have become increasingly popular in our culture today that say that all scientific claims are publicly verifiable, that is, anyone could do the experiment and see that the results are true. This, of course, is not true. In point of fact, only people who have been educated into a scientific culture, who have been trained to operate in ways consistent with contemporary science, who know how to use the laboratory equipment, and who have spent years working on a specialty are actually able to verify every experiment, and indeed many experiments go unverified, not least because of the tremendous cost of time and money it would involve. The point of this for our discussion is that the state is fundamentally unqualified to discern which paths in research are promising and which are not. To trust what has traditionally been done by the dynamic and unformalizable scientific intuition to bureaucrats would be to destroy science in one fell swoop.
What would seem to be a measure introduced in order to improve efficiency would turn out to be grossly inefficient, because it kills the creativity that makes science, which is far less exact and formal that many people often think, work. Rather, Polanyi argues that the most efficient way forward is to allow each scientist the freedom to pursue their own interests, to follow their own clues, and to make their own discoveries. By making the government over what research is done decentralized, it can benefit from the mutual oversight of all scientists instead of one, perhaps scientifically minded but perhaps not, politician or committee. This means decisions can be made quickly by the people who are competent to make them rather than slowly by people who may know nothing about the matter. Also, because of the practice of academic publishing, scientists can know what is going on around the world and adjust their own work to most effectively take advantage of these global insights.
In the last month or so, I have been struck with the significance of this line of thought for the church. I have begun to realize recently that most of the churches I have known have a tendency to decide, in the abstract, what it is that a church should be about, develop ideas of the kinds of ministries that should happen, and then try to recruit leaders to shape it. When this is the approach, I have noticed that several things happen. First, we tend to have some degree of difficulty to find the right people to lead these different ministries. There are some who have the skills necessary but who are already overburdened with volunteering. There are others who have the skills but have no passion for the ministry they are being recruited for. There are still others who have the skills needed but have never been asked and so may not even realize that they have such abilities. There are also times when we have people who are excited and passionate about something but simply do not have the competence to get it done.
Secondly, I find that when the ministries of the church become fundamentally more basic than the people who are leading them, there comes a time when leadership shifts for whatever reason and we often find that the idea that we might allow a ministry to cease too horrifying, so we scramble to find someone, anyone, who is willing to fill the spot. They might not be the kind of person needed for that ministry, they might be being pulled from another area where they are effective, and we must also always entertain the possibility that the church might be being called to allow a particular ministry to come to completion so that resources can be reallocated and new things can get started.
This way of approaching ministry puts the main power in the hands of very few people, who are often all too happy to take it and use it. Masterful "visions" that are generated in the mind of one person are imposed on others and what is and what is not in line with it is decided ahead of time, which carries with it the double-edged sword of the fact that the vision is clear, but it is not necessarily shared by the people. What ministries should and should not be pursued are no longer based on the prayerful answer to the question, "What is God calling us to at this time and place" and instead rooted in the question, "In what way does this further the vision we voted on once upon a time."
The problem with this whole way of approaching ministry is that it sometimes works and it has worked for some time in many churches. Leaders in a more authoritarian past established such rules for church governance and they have remained more or less unchanged. Even those who have come from such rebellious generations, who have been ruthless at changing the outer trappings of so many churches, have left the internal structure largely unchanged. The people are different and the hairstyles and clothing have changed, but the top-down authoritarian structure that the church learned, not from the self-giving Lord, but from the marketplace, has remained.
This is why I have found Polanyi's conception of academic freedom for scientists to be so compelling for the church. This is not simply because I like Polanyi's work (though I do), but because it seems to give some concrete insight into what Paul wrote so often in the New Testament. Paul does not create job descriptions out of abstract speculation and then apply them to every church without adjustment. His vision for the church approaches ministry in such a way that ministry is never a job to do, where qualified people can be swapped in and out with no real change. Ministry is always done by people who are prepared and gifted by God for the task, which means that the gift of God must be understood as more basic than the task that is performed by means of it.
To put this in more concrete terms, when Paul speaks of a five-fold ministry in Ephesians 4:11-13, we must not read it in such a way as to imply that there were clearly defined "job descriptions" for what it was to be an apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor or teacher. Rather than saying, "We need these five tasks done, who can we find to do them," it seems more consistent with Paul to say, "God seems to consistently raise up these five kinds of people. It is not for no reason that he does this. Find them and recognize them." Paul often exhorts the leaders to lead, but he never seems to be concerned about where leadership would come from. God would raise it up if we only have eyes to notice.
Who knows what it means to be an evangelist? Those who receive the ministry of the evangelist? Not really. Who can spell out what an apostle is? Someone who has never been called to nor participated in the apostolic calling? In many ways, it is not even entirely possible to have the ministers themselves define what it takes to do their job, since God does not seem to be all that worried about the secular qualifications of those whom he calls. Jesus did not send Peter and the other disciples off to seminary to be trained; he simply called and they followed. Peter never took a preaching class, Paul was never formally trained in pastoral care. The passion and the anointing that comes from the Holy Spirit can do what all the training in the world could never do on its own (it should be noted that I am in no way against formal training. However, we must never imagine that God is waiting for someone to go to school before they can be used by him).
In spite of all the efficiency that seems to be inherent in a rigidly centralized conception of the church, it can be woefully inefficient. So long as the central leader is well aware of the gifts and graces of the people in the church and can entrust leadership into their hands, it is true that such church government can be quite efficient. However, it is often tempting to insist that the pastor is not only an overseer who responds to issues by reallocation of resources but is also the prime minister, who has skills that nobody else can approximate, who fills a professional need, who sees themselves primarily as an employee of a local church and not primarily as a servant called and sent by God. If this happens, ministry quickly becomes made after their image and any gift of a layperson that does not fit into such an image becomes marginalized, regardless of how necessary it may be.
If a central planning agency for science could be trusted to always know which are the promising projects, could be relied upon to always know what is needed and how to maximize resources to that end, it would be amazingly efficient and helpful. If it falls down, even in a minor way, it has the distinct possibility of crippling science and discouraging scientists from making new and hitherto unlooked for discoveries. In a similar way, if a pastor is always able to see clearly what is needed and the best way to go about responding to that need, it could be a wonderful way to run the church. However, if a pastor lacks the knowledge and discernment needed for this task at any point (which inevitably happens as they are human and finite like everyone else), they may find that their greatest strengths can turn out to be their greatest weaknesses in a given context.
Is pastoral ministry important? Absolutely. Is it as important as the ministry of lay people? Of course. But, it must be clearly noted, it is no more important than this. To behave as if this were not so not only skews the whole Polanyian system but is tantamount to an eye saying to a hand, "I have no need of you." It seems to me that a more significantly decentralized approach to ministry is more conducive to allowing the Holy Spirit to govern, not only the individuals who make up the church, but the church as a whole. Those who have gifts in particular areas will be able to provide mutual oversight, freeing up those with different gifts to work elsewhere and elsehow.
The questions that remain are these. How can we move forward? How can we convince the average Christian that God actually wants to use them, has gifted them, not only with skills, but with passions, that he wants to harness for the good, not only of the church, but of the world? Undoubtedly the answer involves prayer and repentance regarding ways we have been discouraging in the past.
As most people probably already know, I am a theologian. I am not a theologian by profession except inasmuch as all pastors are implicitly theologians, whether they take that task seriously or not. I am not academically qualified to speak as a theologian in the sense of one with a PhD in theology. And yet, I consider myself a theologian nonetheless. This does not mean, however, that theology is my only interest. It isn't. My secondary interest that has developed is the philosophy of science. Though there are certain aspects of this field that do not interest me (perhaps because I am not convinced they are dealing with the kinds of issues that are primary), I am trying to read as widely as I can since I have found the issues being discussed in it to be remarkably parallel (though not identical) with my primary interests in theology.
One of my favorite philosophers of science is Michael Polanyi, who actually may have had a more profound impact and influence on theologians than on scientists, judging by subsequent literature. Polanyi began his career as a physician, then went back to school to be trained in chemistry. Later, he was pulled into philosophy almost unwillingly because of discussions about the nature of science that were going on between Western scientists and the scientists in the Soviet Union. The question that dominated these discussions was to what extent (if at all) should the state provide guidance for the development of science. Those in the Soviet Union argued that the state, which planned everything else, should plan science. After all, if one of the great purposes of science is to serve the advancement of a state, then the state should be able to say what these scientists should be working on. In the West, this was opposed, though there was a time when this opposition was rather weak which, it would seem, is what pulled Polanyi into the debate in the first place. Western scientists argued that science could only be pure if it was free from political oversight, at least in the sense advocated by the Soviets.
Polanyi had many reasons to advocate for his view. First, because he is convinced that all knowledge, not least scientific knowledge, is the knowledge of persons who are dedicated to the truth of reality. That is, all knowledge is personal knowledge, which does not mean subjective knowledge but the acknowledgement by persons of what is the case independently of that acknowledgement. Because of this, persons engaged in research must be free to follow their personal (and largely tacit) insights and hunches. Often, significant discovery arises, not because a research program has made it clear what one should work on but because a scientist travels down the lonely road where they see a promising result that nobody else could see.
Additionally, Polanyi draws attention to the fact that much of science is only verifiable by a small number of specialists. This deviates from the kind of objectivist notions that have become increasingly popular in our culture today that say that all scientific claims are publicly verifiable, that is, anyone could do the experiment and see that the results are true. This, of course, is not true. In point of fact, only people who have been educated into a scientific culture, who have been trained to operate in ways consistent with contemporary science, who know how to use the laboratory equipment, and who have spent years working on a specialty are actually able to verify every experiment, and indeed many experiments go unverified, not least because of the tremendous cost of time and money it would involve. The point of this for our discussion is that the state is fundamentally unqualified to discern which paths in research are promising and which are not. To trust what has traditionally been done by the dynamic and unformalizable scientific intuition to bureaucrats would be to destroy science in one fell swoop.
What would seem to be a measure introduced in order to improve efficiency would turn out to be grossly inefficient, because it kills the creativity that makes science, which is far less exact and formal that many people often think, work. Rather, Polanyi argues that the most efficient way forward is to allow each scientist the freedom to pursue their own interests, to follow their own clues, and to make their own discoveries. By making the government over what research is done decentralized, it can benefit from the mutual oversight of all scientists instead of one, perhaps scientifically minded but perhaps not, politician or committee. This means decisions can be made quickly by the people who are competent to make them rather than slowly by people who may know nothing about the matter. Also, because of the practice of academic publishing, scientists can know what is going on around the world and adjust their own work to most effectively take advantage of these global insights.
In the last month or so, I have been struck with the significance of this line of thought for the church. I have begun to realize recently that most of the churches I have known have a tendency to decide, in the abstract, what it is that a church should be about, develop ideas of the kinds of ministries that should happen, and then try to recruit leaders to shape it. When this is the approach, I have noticed that several things happen. First, we tend to have some degree of difficulty to find the right people to lead these different ministries. There are some who have the skills necessary but who are already overburdened with volunteering. There are others who have the skills but have no passion for the ministry they are being recruited for. There are still others who have the skills needed but have never been asked and so may not even realize that they have such abilities. There are also times when we have people who are excited and passionate about something but simply do not have the competence to get it done.
Secondly, I find that when the ministries of the church become fundamentally more basic than the people who are leading them, there comes a time when leadership shifts for whatever reason and we often find that the idea that we might allow a ministry to cease too horrifying, so we scramble to find someone, anyone, who is willing to fill the spot. They might not be the kind of person needed for that ministry, they might be being pulled from another area where they are effective, and we must also always entertain the possibility that the church might be being called to allow a particular ministry to come to completion so that resources can be reallocated and new things can get started.
This way of approaching ministry puts the main power in the hands of very few people, who are often all too happy to take it and use it. Masterful "visions" that are generated in the mind of one person are imposed on others and what is and what is not in line with it is decided ahead of time, which carries with it the double-edged sword of the fact that the vision is clear, but it is not necessarily shared by the people. What ministries should and should not be pursued are no longer based on the prayerful answer to the question, "What is God calling us to at this time and place" and instead rooted in the question, "In what way does this further the vision we voted on once upon a time."
The problem with this whole way of approaching ministry is that it sometimes works and it has worked for some time in many churches. Leaders in a more authoritarian past established such rules for church governance and they have remained more or less unchanged. Even those who have come from such rebellious generations, who have been ruthless at changing the outer trappings of so many churches, have left the internal structure largely unchanged. The people are different and the hairstyles and clothing have changed, but the top-down authoritarian structure that the church learned, not from the self-giving Lord, but from the marketplace, has remained.
This is why I have found Polanyi's conception of academic freedom for scientists to be so compelling for the church. This is not simply because I like Polanyi's work (though I do), but because it seems to give some concrete insight into what Paul wrote so often in the New Testament. Paul does not create job descriptions out of abstract speculation and then apply them to every church without adjustment. His vision for the church approaches ministry in such a way that ministry is never a job to do, where qualified people can be swapped in and out with no real change. Ministry is always done by people who are prepared and gifted by God for the task, which means that the gift of God must be understood as more basic than the task that is performed by means of it.
To put this in more concrete terms, when Paul speaks of a five-fold ministry in Ephesians 4:11-13, we must not read it in such a way as to imply that there were clearly defined "job descriptions" for what it was to be an apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor or teacher. Rather than saying, "We need these five tasks done, who can we find to do them," it seems more consistent with Paul to say, "God seems to consistently raise up these five kinds of people. It is not for no reason that he does this. Find them and recognize them." Paul often exhorts the leaders to lead, but he never seems to be concerned about where leadership would come from. God would raise it up if we only have eyes to notice.
Who knows what it means to be an evangelist? Those who receive the ministry of the evangelist? Not really. Who can spell out what an apostle is? Someone who has never been called to nor participated in the apostolic calling? In many ways, it is not even entirely possible to have the ministers themselves define what it takes to do their job, since God does not seem to be all that worried about the secular qualifications of those whom he calls. Jesus did not send Peter and the other disciples off to seminary to be trained; he simply called and they followed. Peter never took a preaching class, Paul was never formally trained in pastoral care. The passion and the anointing that comes from the Holy Spirit can do what all the training in the world could never do on its own (it should be noted that I am in no way against formal training. However, we must never imagine that God is waiting for someone to go to school before they can be used by him).
In spite of all the efficiency that seems to be inherent in a rigidly centralized conception of the church, it can be woefully inefficient. So long as the central leader is well aware of the gifts and graces of the people in the church and can entrust leadership into their hands, it is true that such church government can be quite efficient. However, it is often tempting to insist that the pastor is not only an overseer who responds to issues by reallocation of resources but is also the prime minister, who has skills that nobody else can approximate, who fills a professional need, who sees themselves primarily as an employee of a local church and not primarily as a servant called and sent by God. If this happens, ministry quickly becomes made after their image and any gift of a layperson that does not fit into such an image becomes marginalized, regardless of how necessary it may be.
If a central planning agency for science could be trusted to always know which are the promising projects, could be relied upon to always know what is needed and how to maximize resources to that end, it would be amazingly efficient and helpful. If it falls down, even in a minor way, it has the distinct possibility of crippling science and discouraging scientists from making new and hitherto unlooked for discoveries. In a similar way, if a pastor is always able to see clearly what is needed and the best way to go about responding to that need, it could be a wonderful way to run the church. However, if a pastor lacks the knowledge and discernment needed for this task at any point (which inevitably happens as they are human and finite like everyone else), they may find that their greatest strengths can turn out to be their greatest weaknesses in a given context.
Is pastoral ministry important? Absolutely. Is it as important as the ministry of lay people? Of course. But, it must be clearly noted, it is no more important than this. To behave as if this were not so not only skews the whole Polanyian system but is tantamount to an eye saying to a hand, "I have no need of you." It seems to me that a more significantly decentralized approach to ministry is more conducive to allowing the Holy Spirit to govern, not only the individuals who make up the church, but the church as a whole. Those who have gifts in particular areas will be able to provide mutual oversight, freeing up those with different gifts to work elsewhere and elsehow.
The questions that remain are these. How can we move forward? How can we convince the average Christian that God actually wants to use them, has gifted them, not only with skills, but with passions, that he wants to harness for the good, not only of the church, but of the world? Undoubtedly the answer involves prayer and repentance regarding ways we have been discouraging in the past.
Monday, April 2, 2012
Palm Sunday 2012
04/01/12 Palm Sunday 2012 Grace UMC
Palm Sunday is a bittersweet day in the life of the church. On the one hand, it is a day when all kinds of people were out and giving praise to Jesus as He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. On the other, the crowd crying out "Hosanna" serves as a striking parallel to the crowds crying out, only a week later, “Crucify him!” On days like this, I sometimes wrestle with finding the appropriate emotions. Should I rejoice or should I grieve? Should I laugh or should I weep? Should I be glad because Christ seems like He is being accepted or should I mourn because the masses will reject Him in only a short time? You might not have this problem, but Palm Sunday is difficult for me.
I want to highlight the very last part of our text for this morning where we have the Pharisees saying to Jesus, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop [making noise]." Jesus' response is very interesting. He says, "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out."
According to the Bible, stones are pretty impressive. They can do all kinds of things. In fact, just about the only other time that stones get mentioned in the entire Gospel of Luke, it is when John the Baptist is speaking to the Pharisees and sharing with them a few choice words. He says, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham for our ancestor;' for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham." It almost seems that stones are kind of a second-string, a "B" team, the ones that God turns to, or at least can turn to, when the people of God miss it.
What Jesus is saying is that God's will will be done, regardless of whether or not it is we who do it. Jesus is coming into his kingdom, into the royal city. There will be rejoicing, and if the people who are there do not rejoice, the stones themselves will cry out. There will be shouts of praise, and if the people don't do it, like the Pharisees wish they wouldn't, the stones will shout.
What does this say about the Pharisees? It means that they have absolutely no idea what God is actually doing in their midst. It means that the way they view reality is so skewed that, in spite of all their learning, in spite of all their experience, in spite of all their credentials and the respect they have accumulated from the people, they are far from understanding what the right thing to do might be. In fact, they are so completely confused that they think that the right thing to do is actually the wrong thing to do. Not only this, but it turns out that Jesus considers the response that the people are making and that the Pharisees hate to be obvious. It is so clear that even the stones on the side of the road would know to do what the Pharisees cannot seem to understand. What does it say about the Pharisees if the stones understand something about God that they cannot?
And yet, we should not judge the Pharisees too harshly or else we might miss the ways that we are all too much like them. After all, the people who are shouting Hosanna today are shouting "Crucify Him" within a week. The appearances are good, but they might not be any more than skin deep. We need to remember that, when Jesus was entering Jerusalem, most of the people who are shouting his praise were shouting because they expected him to come and overthrow the Romans, to rescue them from political oppression. When they finally come to realize that Jesus has no intention of leading a political revolt that would simply change the government but leave the corruption of humanity fundamentally unchanged, that he is not satisfied merely by invading the city of David but fully intends to invade the hearts of humanity and overcome evil at its very source, they drop their support.
This idea is that the entry of Christ is supposed to be a celebration. When God comes, the people rejoice. It's how it should be. And if God comes and the people don't rejoice, creation rejoices, to the shame of the people. The way it stands in the story, the people cry out in joy, the people rejoice, and that rejoicing simply as such, stands in judgment over the antagonists, because the antagonists don't get it. It's the fact that some people get it that reveals that those who don't get it are in the wrong, that there is another way to do it, that they don't have all the information, that indeed the fact that they ought to rejoice is made clear by the fact that there is rejoicing going on. And then Jesus says, "If they were silent, the stones would cry out." If the people are silent, creation itself rejoices. When God comes and we do not rejoice, creation rejoices; and that rejoicing, that honest to goodness response to God becomes the word of judgment for us.
But what does the shouting of a stone sound like? Have you ever heard one? The fact of the matter is that God is far more active in our world today than his people are, doing work in our midst and around us while we are trying to get our act together. Given how much God is present in our world today that we seem to miss, it seems to me that the stones should be shouting out with some frequency. But would we recognize it if we heard it? Paul has these interesting words to share from his letter to the Romans. "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now..."
Jesus' words to the Pharisees strongly imply that it is entirely possible that stones can have a deeper understanding of who God is and what to do when God comes near than we human beings sometimes do. We hear earlier in the Gospel of Luke that all of our boasts to a strong heritage, that our families have been members of this church for generations, that we come to church every Sunday, that we participate in a class every week, or anything else, do not matter as much as we might wish they did, because God can raise up people like that even from the stones. So if the stones can do so many of the things that we can and should do, why are we the ones that seem to be in the center of this heavenly drama, why is it that the gospel is that God loves us humans and not that God loves the stones? Why is it that when God came into our world of space and time, he came as a human being and not as a stone? Simply and for no other reason than because he loves us. Why does God not abandon us when we are unfaithful and not follow through with raising up people of faith from the stones? Because this love is so strong that it will not let us go, but continues to pursue us.
So, what does that mean for us today? Does God come into our midst, does God meet with us, does God do these things, is there anything today even somewhat analogous to what we celebrate on Palm Sunday? Is God coming here? Because if he isn't, and if he doesn't, then Palm Sunday doesn't mean a lot for us today. All it is, is a remembrance of what happened once upon a time. But, if it does happen, if Jesus indeed does come here to Spencer, to this church, among these people, and if God does those things and we do not rejoice, then creation rejoices, to our shame.
Are we prepared to listen, are we prepared to hear, are we prepared to believe that God really moves? I've met a lot of folks in this church, and I've gotten to know several of you fairly well, and I know that many of you have had profound encounters with God in the past, that you can remember a time when God was so real to you that you would do anything to follow. And unfortunately, when I hear stories like that, what seems to be conspicuously unsaid, is that it's been a while since that has happened; that it's not something that happens everyday. And I can't help but wonder, if we do not feel the joy that comes with the presence of God, does it mean that God is not here? Or does it mean that we've stopped finding joy in God's presence? Or does it mean that we've become blind and deaf to the presence of God, that God could be here and we wouldn't even know it?
So the question is, how can we listen, how can we hear? To be honest, to understand this, if we look in the New Testament, we realize it is not simply a matter of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, it isn't simply a matter of taking initiative, "Now, I'm going to listen to God," because if we do that we tend to fall on our faces, just simply making a decision on our part does not necessarily solve our problems. We read in the New Testament several stories of blind men, and we read about one who cries out, "Have mercy on me, Son of David." Have mercy on me, come to me, heal me for I cannot heal myself; cannot pull myself up, cannot manufacture my own sight. Something has to happen from outside of me to make it happen.
And so, let us rejoice. God is here. God has triumphantly entered, has triumphantly invaded, into our place, into our town of Spencer. By the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ is here now. We're going to celebrate communion. Gathered together as one body, with one bread and one cup. United in Christ, bound together by the blood of Christ, made brothers and sisters of Christ, fellow heirs of Christ. And if you can't rejoice today, if you think about the presence of God coming in here, into your heart, into your pew, and sitting along side of you, and if the very presence of God here and now does not get you excited, pray. Ask God to fill your heart with joy, to fill your life with wonder, to remind you every day of the things you once knew, of those times when God transformed your life, when God reached in and all of a sudden you realized that the gospel meant more than just words on a page, that it transforms hearts, it transforms lives, to remind you every day of those moments and to remind you that there is nothing to stop God from doing those same kinds of things today. Whatever you do, though, do not say, "O Lord, I'll get it right tomorrow, I'll get my act together tomorrow, or even today." Or "By golly I'm going to do what I can to get my act together now." Instead say, "Lord, save, Lord speak. Lord enter my heart because until you do, my heart will remain like stone.
So as we come before the table, as you come forward to receive, remember that when you celebrate communion, it's not a declaration that you've lived the last week or the last month totally devoted to God, it's not a declaration of how faithful you have been or even "This is how faithful I will be." When we come and we partake of the bread and the cup, we are saying "Lord I am in need, and I am in need of you in the same way as I am in need of the basic necessities of food and drink. I need you to come into me I need you to sustain me, I need you for whatever you will give. So as you come forward today, if you are rejoicing in the Lord, say, "Lord, come and reign. Reign more fully and more completely, take this joy and fan its flame into a raging bonfire, that it may be seen by all that your word and your glory may go forth." And if you have a hard time rejoicing this morning, come and say "Lord, take that fire that I used to have, that used to drive me, and relight it. And care for it, and kindle it and make it grow." Let us pray
AMEN
Palm Sunday is a bittersweet day in the life of the church. On the one hand, it is a day when all kinds of people were out and giving praise to Jesus as He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. On the other, the crowd crying out "Hosanna" serves as a striking parallel to the crowds crying out, only a week later, “Crucify him!” On days like this, I sometimes wrestle with finding the appropriate emotions. Should I rejoice or should I grieve? Should I laugh or should I weep? Should I be glad because Christ seems like He is being accepted or should I mourn because the masses will reject Him in only a short time? You might not have this problem, but Palm Sunday is difficult for me.
I want to highlight the very last part of our text for this morning where we have the Pharisees saying to Jesus, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop [making noise]." Jesus' response is very interesting. He says, "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out."
According to the Bible, stones are pretty impressive. They can do all kinds of things. In fact, just about the only other time that stones get mentioned in the entire Gospel of Luke, it is when John the Baptist is speaking to the Pharisees and sharing with them a few choice words. He says, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham for our ancestor;' for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham." It almost seems that stones are kind of a second-string, a "B" team, the ones that God turns to, or at least can turn to, when the people of God miss it.
What Jesus is saying is that God's will will be done, regardless of whether or not it is we who do it. Jesus is coming into his kingdom, into the royal city. There will be rejoicing, and if the people who are there do not rejoice, the stones themselves will cry out. There will be shouts of praise, and if the people don't do it, like the Pharisees wish they wouldn't, the stones will shout.
What does this say about the Pharisees? It means that they have absolutely no idea what God is actually doing in their midst. It means that the way they view reality is so skewed that, in spite of all their learning, in spite of all their experience, in spite of all their credentials and the respect they have accumulated from the people, they are far from understanding what the right thing to do might be. In fact, they are so completely confused that they think that the right thing to do is actually the wrong thing to do. Not only this, but it turns out that Jesus considers the response that the people are making and that the Pharisees hate to be obvious. It is so clear that even the stones on the side of the road would know to do what the Pharisees cannot seem to understand. What does it say about the Pharisees if the stones understand something about God that they cannot?
And yet, we should not judge the Pharisees too harshly or else we might miss the ways that we are all too much like them. After all, the people who are shouting Hosanna today are shouting "Crucify Him" within a week. The appearances are good, but they might not be any more than skin deep. We need to remember that, when Jesus was entering Jerusalem, most of the people who are shouting his praise were shouting because they expected him to come and overthrow the Romans, to rescue them from political oppression. When they finally come to realize that Jesus has no intention of leading a political revolt that would simply change the government but leave the corruption of humanity fundamentally unchanged, that he is not satisfied merely by invading the city of David but fully intends to invade the hearts of humanity and overcome evil at its very source, they drop their support.
This idea is that the entry of Christ is supposed to be a celebration. When God comes, the people rejoice. It's how it should be. And if God comes and the people don't rejoice, creation rejoices, to the shame of the people. The way it stands in the story, the people cry out in joy, the people rejoice, and that rejoicing simply as such, stands in judgment over the antagonists, because the antagonists don't get it. It's the fact that some people get it that reveals that those who don't get it are in the wrong, that there is another way to do it, that they don't have all the information, that indeed the fact that they ought to rejoice is made clear by the fact that there is rejoicing going on. And then Jesus says, "If they were silent, the stones would cry out." If the people are silent, creation itself rejoices. When God comes and we do not rejoice, creation rejoices; and that rejoicing, that honest to goodness response to God becomes the word of judgment for us.
But what does the shouting of a stone sound like? Have you ever heard one? The fact of the matter is that God is far more active in our world today than his people are, doing work in our midst and around us while we are trying to get our act together. Given how much God is present in our world today that we seem to miss, it seems to me that the stones should be shouting out with some frequency. But would we recognize it if we heard it? Paul has these interesting words to share from his letter to the Romans. "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now..."
Jesus' words to the Pharisees strongly imply that it is entirely possible that stones can have a deeper understanding of who God is and what to do when God comes near than we human beings sometimes do. We hear earlier in the Gospel of Luke that all of our boasts to a strong heritage, that our families have been members of this church for generations, that we come to church every Sunday, that we participate in a class every week, or anything else, do not matter as much as we might wish they did, because God can raise up people like that even from the stones. So if the stones can do so many of the things that we can and should do, why are we the ones that seem to be in the center of this heavenly drama, why is it that the gospel is that God loves us humans and not that God loves the stones? Why is it that when God came into our world of space and time, he came as a human being and not as a stone? Simply and for no other reason than because he loves us. Why does God not abandon us when we are unfaithful and not follow through with raising up people of faith from the stones? Because this love is so strong that it will not let us go, but continues to pursue us.
So, what does that mean for us today? Does God come into our midst, does God meet with us, does God do these things, is there anything today even somewhat analogous to what we celebrate on Palm Sunday? Is God coming here? Because if he isn't, and if he doesn't, then Palm Sunday doesn't mean a lot for us today. All it is, is a remembrance of what happened once upon a time. But, if it does happen, if Jesus indeed does come here to Spencer, to this church, among these people, and if God does those things and we do not rejoice, then creation rejoices, to our shame.
Are we prepared to listen, are we prepared to hear, are we prepared to believe that God really moves? I've met a lot of folks in this church, and I've gotten to know several of you fairly well, and I know that many of you have had profound encounters with God in the past, that you can remember a time when God was so real to you that you would do anything to follow. And unfortunately, when I hear stories like that, what seems to be conspicuously unsaid, is that it's been a while since that has happened; that it's not something that happens everyday. And I can't help but wonder, if we do not feel the joy that comes with the presence of God, does it mean that God is not here? Or does it mean that we've stopped finding joy in God's presence? Or does it mean that we've become blind and deaf to the presence of God, that God could be here and we wouldn't even know it?
So the question is, how can we listen, how can we hear? To be honest, to understand this, if we look in the New Testament, we realize it is not simply a matter of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, it isn't simply a matter of taking initiative, "Now, I'm going to listen to God," because if we do that we tend to fall on our faces, just simply making a decision on our part does not necessarily solve our problems. We read in the New Testament several stories of blind men, and we read about one who cries out, "Have mercy on me, Son of David." Have mercy on me, come to me, heal me for I cannot heal myself; cannot pull myself up, cannot manufacture my own sight. Something has to happen from outside of me to make it happen.
And so, let us rejoice. God is here. God has triumphantly entered, has triumphantly invaded, into our place, into our town of Spencer. By the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ is here now. We're going to celebrate communion. Gathered together as one body, with one bread and one cup. United in Christ, bound together by the blood of Christ, made brothers and sisters of Christ, fellow heirs of Christ. And if you can't rejoice today, if you think about the presence of God coming in here, into your heart, into your pew, and sitting along side of you, and if the very presence of God here and now does not get you excited, pray. Ask God to fill your heart with joy, to fill your life with wonder, to remind you every day of the things you once knew, of those times when God transformed your life, when God reached in and all of a sudden you realized that the gospel meant more than just words on a page, that it transforms hearts, it transforms lives, to remind you every day of those moments and to remind you that there is nothing to stop God from doing those same kinds of things today. Whatever you do, though, do not say, "O Lord, I'll get it right tomorrow, I'll get my act together tomorrow, or even today." Or "By golly I'm going to do what I can to get my act together now." Instead say, "Lord, save, Lord speak. Lord enter my heart because until you do, my heart will remain like stone.
So as we come before the table, as you come forward to receive, remember that when you celebrate communion, it's not a declaration that you've lived the last week or the last month totally devoted to God, it's not a declaration of how faithful you have been or even "This is how faithful I will be." When we come and we partake of the bread and the cup, we are saying "Lord I am in need, and I am in need of you in the same way as I am in need of the basic necessities of food and drink. I need you to come into me I need you to sustain me, I need you for whatever you will give. So as you come forward today, if you are rejoicing in the Lord, say, "Lord, come and reign. Reign more fully and more completely, take this joy and fan its flame into a raging bonfire, that it may be seen by all that your word and your glory may go forth." And if you have a hard time rejoicing this morning, come and say "Lord, take that fire that I used to have, that used to drive me, and relight it. And care for it, and kindle it and make it grow." Let us pray
AMEN
Sunday, March 11, 2012
1 Corinthians 12:12-31
03/11/12 1 Corinthians 12:12-31 Grace UMC
What exactly is the church? For some it may be nothing more than a place to go when it is time to get married or buried. Others might see it, additionally, as a place to get their children baptized. I suppose that it is all of those things and, to the degree to which those things get people to think about the grace and mercy of God and the abundant life as promised to us by Jesus, it is not a fundamentally wrong way to look at the church, though it is far from being adequate. Seeing the church as primarily a dealer of spiritual goods and services for people to come and consume is really not very helpful, though it is incredibly common in our world today. It is seen as a place where we can go and receive things that will help us to live our lives. The ministries of the church are understood to be a kind of spiritual marketplace, where we can pick and choose what we think will be relevant to us and, if nothing seems overwhelmingly appealing, we just walk on by and go about our business.
Now, there is probably at least one person here this morning who, when I asked, "What is the church" began to think these words: I am the church! You are the church! We are the church together! All who follow Jesus, all around the world! Yes, we're the church together! The church is not a building, the church is not a steeple, the church is not a resting place, the church is a people. Those words come, of course, from a hymn that, for better or for worse, we are not singing this morning. The point that it makes so clearly is that, at the end of the day, the church is not about the building or the pews, or the pulpit, or even the singing and sermon, but the people. But even according to that hymn, it isn't just any old group of people, is it? No, it is "All who follow Jesus all around the world." Though neither of the Wesley brothers wrote that hymn, it certainly agrees with everything that John Wesley wrote about the nature of the church.
One of the most significant passages in the entire Bible about what the church really is can be found in 1 Corinthians, chapter twelve. Paul begins with this observation. "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. For 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." I think that Paul's use of this idea of Christians being bound together as the Body of Christ is incredibly interesting. You have a body and you have the members that make up that body. In spite of the fact that you can't have a body without the members, you really can't say that a body is nothing more than two arms, two legs, a torso and a head. The parts of the body aren't parts of a body unless they are related to one another, joined together in some coherent way. What Paul is saying is that we are not just isolated Christians, we are bound together as the body of Christ, that we might only be part of that body, but we are what we are because we are related to everyone else who is also a Christian. I have said before and I will say again that, as important as it is to get your own personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ settled, there is no such thing as an individual Christian, a Christian who is not bound to other Christians. There are only Christians-in-community. Whatever else a person may be who has isolated themselves from the community of others in the hope of doing things their own way, they are not a Christian, according to the Bible.
So, we are bound together, but what does that really mean? Thankfully, Paul gives us some very helpful guidelines. "Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. if 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. And 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. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be?"
This tells us a few things. First, it tells us that God has not allowed us to exempt ourselves from the body of Christ. It does not matter who you are, what your gifts are, or what you do in the church, you are fully a part of the Body of Christ. In fact, you are much more dear to the proper functioning of the church than you realize. You should never say, "Well, I only do this. It really isn't that much." Every time you say that, you are saying that, because you are not a hand or an eye, that is, because you aren't doing one of the things that you think is crucial to the life of the church, your ministry does not matter, that you are infinitely replaceable, that anyone could do what you do. Nothing could be further from the truth. The longer I live as a human being and the longer I serve as a pastor, the more I see that it is seldom when two different people share the same gifts, graces and passions. The simple fact of the matter is that, whether you realize it or not, you have gifts that the church, both locally and at large, need. And if you allow yourself to fall into the trap of assuming that, because you don't do certain things, because you aren't a preacher, or because you aren't leading a particular ministry, you aren't doing vitally important work, you have missed Paul's point. Not one of us has the permission of God to excuse ourselves from our calling to participate, in whatever way, in the life of the church.
It also tells us that if a church ever becomes made up of the same kinds of people, people who all value the exact same things, it is something very much other than what the church was meant to be. The church is meant to be made up of all kinds of people, people who have different backgrounds, who have different gifts, who can do things that other people cannot do, or perhaps do not want to do. If everyone was a pastor, who would be in the congregations? If everyone led some ministry or group, who would be participating in them? The church was never meant to be a collection of people who all do the same things. The beauty is that we are called to be in this together.
Paul continues. "As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The 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.'" If the first part of Paul's argument teaches us that we are not allowed to exempt ourselves from being part of the body of Christ, this part teaches us with equal force that we are not allowed to exempt anyone else from being part of the body of Christ. Unfortunately, this is something that has been all too common in churches throughout the years. It is no secret that there are many different Christian denominations in the world today. Some denominations are closer to being like each other than others are, but it seems as though every group of Christians has at least one other group of Christians that they do not believe are really Christians. It takes several different forms, depending on who we are dealing with, but it is altogether too common.
Our tendency to exempt others from the body of Christ is not less unfortunate within the context of a local church. It is entirely too common that people who are excited about one particular issue or ministry cannot see the forest for the trees and tend to behave as if the ministry that they are doing is the only ministry worth doing or the one that the church should really be focusing on. I cannot tell you how many people I have met over the years who have a great passion for ministry that is helpful and healthy for the church but aren't doing what they feel called by God to do because someone, at some time, told them that they couldn't or that it wasn't important, or that they should be involved in some other, real, ministry. What is this but the eye or the head saying to the hand or the feet, "I have no need of you," or perhaps the even stronger, "The church has no need of you?"
According to Paul, this must not be so. "On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and 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; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. if one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it." Paul is making rather a bold implication here. He points out something that is still as true for us as it ever was during his time. We go out of our way working on ways to take the parts of our body that we are less comfortable with and make them more presentable. We try to wear clothes that fit us well, that highlight our best features and downplay our worse ones. If we cannot avoid people seeing our less attractive parts, we do what we can to make them less embarrassing. This desire that we have to highlight our strengths and downplay our weaknesses as far as our bodies are concerned is the basis of the entire makeup and clothing industries, among others.
What Paul is suggesting is that maybe it is not altogether different in the church. The parts are interrelated in a way that is deeper than we might expect. There are, of course, certain parts of the church that we tend to think of as being "more important" than others and those that we think of as "less important" but it would be misleading to think this way. For example, speaking as a pastor, I cannot help but notice that the most faithful people I have ever met in my life have not been pastors but laypeople; the most capable workers and most dedicated people I have ever seen in the church have often been the people that everyone else may have overlooked. Does the church need dedicated leaders in order to be what it has been called to be? Of course, but this does not mean that such leaders are necessarily the most brilliant, most organized, most faithful people around; it simply means that they have been called to do what they do. I sometimes wonder if God called me to be a pastor because I have, in all reality, a fairly narrow skill set and that, because there are relatively few things that the church needs that I can do, I might be able to encourage others to use their skills for the greater health of the whole body.
The point is that, if we take what Paul has to say seriously, we find that our whole sense of "better" and "worse" in ministry is turned upside down. His point is that we are integrated together in the body of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit and that this unity is so profound that to cut anyone off in any way is parallel to the amputation of the human body. It is true that the body might be able to live without a particular part, but it isn't how the body was designed to be and if we get too excited about cutting off body parts, there isn't much of a body left.
Let us look at one more part, at the end of Paul's words for us this morning. "Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?" Paul asks this series of rhetorical questions, knowing that the answer that we have to give to each one is, "No." Not everyone does any particular ministry, but the important thing is not that everyone does a particular thing but that someone does it and that we rejoice as a body that it is being done, even if it isn't us who are doing it. Not everyone is an apostle, but there are some who are called to be apostles. Not everyone is a prophet, but God does indeed call people to the prophetic ministry. Not everyone is a teacher, but there is still a great need for capable teachers. If everyone did something, it would destroy the church. We need everyone to work together, doing what they are passionate about, making what they care about a reality. If we all simply listen to what God is saying to us and step forward in faith, God will take care of our needs.
Let me put it this way. What good is it for a church to have wonderful outreach into the community if they do not have any way to nurture the people once they become active? What good is it for a church to have brilliant preaching if there are no structures in place to provide follow-up for those who are struggling with how to respond? What good is it if a ministry is excellent at convicting people of their sins and making them aware of their need for God if they have no way of joining them with others to help them grow and be assured of their salvation? What good is it for a church to have a strong ministry to the poor in their community if they are not prepared to welcome them into their midst in the worship service?
We need people who are comfortable bringing the love of Christ outside of these walls, but we also need people who are comfortable with making people feel welcome in a church they have visited for the first time, which can be an incredibly nervous experience. We need people who are gifted and passionate about ministry to and with elderly people, people who are excited about ministry to and with young people and with every age in between. What we need more than anything else are people who are listening to the prodding of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit is indeed prodding you, and taking what the Spirit says and turning it into a reality. Your pastors have gifts and graces, just like you do, but we don't have every gift and every grace. There are some things we get more excited about than other things and if a Church has to wait until the pastors can get through all the pressing concerns that face them on a daily basis before we can make ministries a reality, there is much ministry that we could and should be about that will simply be left undone.
So, if you have given of your time, talents, and energy for many years now, thank you for your service; keep it up, we need you. If you have never acted on what God has called you to do, do it now, even if it is for the first time. If you have criticized the ministry of others because it doesn't fit in with what you think are the most important things for the church to focus on, I ask that you would stop doing so. If there are aspects of the ministry of this church that you don't think are as important or as respectable as others, consider treating them with even more honor, as Paul suggests. And finally, if you used to be active in ministry in whatever form but you have been told that your ministry wasn't important or were discouraged from doing what God called you to do, I beg you to forgive whoever discouraged you and give it another try. God loves us and the world too much to let little hurdles get in the way of being joined together in passionate ministry in the world. Remember, everyone you meet is someone for whom Christ has died. Let us join together, in whatever way we can, and be the church, for as different as we may each be from each other, we are all part of that same body of Christ. Let us pray.
AMEN
What exactly is the church? For some it may be nothing more than a place to go when it is time to get married or buried. Others might see it, additionally, as a place to get their children baptized. I suppose that it is all of those things and, to the degree to which those things get people to think about the grace and mercy of God and the abundant life as promised to us by Jesus, it is not a fundamentally wrong way to look at the church, though it is far from being adequate. Seeing the church as primarily a dealer of spiritual goods and services for people to come and consume is really not very helpful, though it is incredibly common in our world today. It is seen as a place where we can go and receive things that will help us to live our lives. The ministries of the church are understood to be a kind of spiritual marketplace, where we can pick and choose what we think will be relevant to us and, if nothing seems overwhelmingly appealing, we just walk on by and go about our business.
Now, there is probably at least one person here this morning who, when I asked, "What is the church" began to think these words: I am the church! You are the church! We are the church together! All who follow Jesus, all around the world! Yes, we're the church together! The church is not a building, the church is not a steeple, the church is not a resting place, the church is a people. Those words come, of course, from a hymn that, for better or for worse, we are not singing this morning. The point that it makes so clearly is that, at the end of the day, the church is not about the building or the pews, or the pulpit, or even the singing and sermon, but the people. But even according to that hymn, it isn't just any old group of people, is it? No, it is "All who follow Jesus all around the world." Though neither of the Wesley brothers wrote that hymn, it certainly agrees with everything that John Wesley wrote about the nature of the church.
One of the most significant passages in the entire Bible about what the church really is can be found in 1 Corinthians, chapter twelve. Paul begins with this observation. "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. For 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." I think that Paul's use of this idea of Christians being bound together as the Body of Christ is incredibly interesting. You have a body and you have the members that make up that body. In spite of the fact that you can't have a body without the members, you really can't say that a body is nothing more than two arms, two legs, a torso and a head. The parts of the body aren't parts of a body unless they are related to one another, joined together in some coherent way. What Paul is saying is that we are not just isolated Christians, we are bound together as the body of Christ, that we might only be part of that body, but we are what we are because we are related to everyone else who is also a Christian. I have said before and I will say again that, as important as it is to get your own personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ settled, there is no such thing as an individual Christian, a Christian who is not bound to other Christians. There are only Christians-in-community. Whatever else a person may be who has isolated themselves from the community of others in the hope of doing things their own way, they are not a Christian, according to the Bible.
So, we are bound together, but what does that really mean? Thankfully, Paul gives us some very helpful guidelines. "Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. if 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. And 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. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be?"
This tells us a few things. First, it tells us that God has not allowed us to exempt ourselves from the body of Christ. It does not matter who you are, what your gifts are, or what you do in the church, you are fully a part of the Body of Christ. In fact, you are much more dear to the proper functioning of the church than you realize. You should never say, "Well, I only do this. It really isn't that much." Every time you say that, you are saying that, because you are not a hand or an eye, that is, because you aren't doing one of the things that you think is crucial to the life of the church, your ministry does not matter, that you are infinitely replaceable, that anyone could do what you do. Nothing could be further from the truth. The longer I live as a human being and the longer I serve as a pastor, the more I see that it is seldom when two different people share the same gifts, graces and passions. The simple fact of the matter is that, whether you realize it or not, you have gifts that the church, both locally and at large, need. And if you allow yourself to fall into the trap of assuming that, because you don't do certain things, because you aren't a preacher, or because you aren't leading a particular ministry, you aren't doing vitally important work, you have missed Paul's point. Not one of us has the permission of God to excuse ourselves from our calling to participate, in whatever way, in the life of the church.
It also tells us that if a church ever becomes made up of the same kinds of people, people who all value the exact same things, it is something very much other than what the church was meant to be. The church is meant to be made up of all kinds of people, people who have different backgrounds, who have different gifts, who can do things that other people cannot do, or perhaps do not want to do. If everyone was a pastor, who would be in the congregations? If everyone led some ministry or group, who would be participating in them? The church was never meant to be a collection of people who all do the same things. The beauty is that we are called to be in this together.
Paul continues. "As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The 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.'" If the first part of Paul's argument teaches us that we are not allowed to exempt ourselves from being part of the body of Christ, this part teaches us with equal force that we are not allowed to exempt anyone else from being part of the body of Christ. Unfortunately, this is something that has been all too common in churches throughout the years. It is no secret that there are many different Christian denominations in the world today. Some denominations are closer to being like each other than others are, but it seems as though every group of Christians has at least one other group of Christians that they do not believe are really Christians. It takes several different forms, depending on who we are dealing with, but it is altogether too common.
Our tendency to exempt others from the body of Christ is not less unfortunate within the context of a local church. It is entirely too common that people who are excited about one particular issue or ministry cannot see the forest for the trees and tend to behave as if the ministry that they are doing is the only ministry worth doing or the one that the church should really be focusing on. I cannot tell you how many people I have met over the years who have a great passion for ministry that is helpful and healthy for the church but aren't doing what they feel called by God to do because someone, at some time, told them that they couldn't or that it wasn't important, or that they should be involved in some other, real, ministry. What is this but the eye or the head saying to the hand or the feet, "I have no need of you," or perhaps the even stronger, "The church has no need of you?"
According to Paul, this must not be so. "On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and 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; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. if one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it." Paul is making rather a bold implication here. He points out something that is still as true for us as it ever was during his time. We go out of our way working on ways to take the parts of our body that we are less comfortable with and make them more presentable. We try to wear clothes that fit us well, that highlight our best features and downplay our worse ones. If we cannot avoid people seeing our less attractive parts, we do what we can to make them less embarrassing. This desire that we have to highlight our strengths and downplay our weaknesses as far as our bodies are concerned is the basis of the entire makeup and clothing industries, among others.
What Paul is suggesting is that maybe it is not altogether different in the church. The parts are interrelated in a way that is deeper than we might expect. There are, of course, certain parts of the church that we tend to think of as being "more important" than others and those that we think of as "less important" but it would be misleading to think this way. For example, speaking as a pastor, I cannot help but notice that the most faithful people I have ever met in my life have not been pastors but laypeople; the most capable workers and most dedicated people I have ever seen in the church have often been the people that everyone else may have overlooked. Does the church need dedicated leaders in order to be what it has been called to be? Of course, but this does not mean that such leaders are necessarily the most brilliant, most organized, most faithful people around; it simply means that they have been called to do what they do. I sometimes wonder if God called me to be a pastor because I have, in all reality, a fairly narrow skill set and that, because there are relatively few things that the church needs that I can do, I might be able to encourage others to use their skills for the greater health of the whole body.
The point is that, if we take what Paul has to say seriously, we find that our whole sense of "better" and "worse" in ministry is turned upside down. His point is that we are integrated together in the body of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit and that this unity is so profound that to cut anyone off in any way is parallel to the amputation of the human body. It is true that the body might be able to live without a particular part, but it isn't how the body was designed to be and if we get too excited about cutting off body parts, there isn't much of a body left.
Let us look at one more part, at the end of Paul's words for us this morning. "Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?" Paul asks this series of rhetorical questions, knowing that the answer that we have to give to each one is, "No." Not everyone does any particular ministry, but the important thing is not that everyone does a particular thing but that someone does it and that we rejoice as a body that it is being done, even if it isn't us who are doing it. Not everyone is an apostle, but there are some who are called to be apostles. Not everyone is a prophet, but God does indeed call people to the prophetic ministry. Not everyone is a teacher, but there is still a great need for capable teachers. If everyone did something, it would destroy the church. We need everyone to work together, doing what they are passionate about, making what they care about a reality. If we all simply listen to what God is saying to us and step forward in faith, God will take care of our needs.
Let me put it this way. What good is it for a church to have wonderful outreach into the community if they do not have any way to nurture the people once they become active? What good is it for a church to have brilliant preaching if there are no structures in place to provide follow-up for those who are struggling with how to respond? What good is it if a ministry is excellent at convicting people of their sins and making them aware of their need for God if they have no way of joining them with others to help them grow and be assured of their salvation? What good is it for a church to have a strong ministry to the poor in their community if they are not prepared to welcome them into their midst in the worship service?
We need people who are comfortable bringing the love of Christ outside of these walls, but we also need people who are comfortable with making people feel welcome in a church they have visited for the first time, which can be an incredibly nervous experience. We need people who are gifted and passionate about ministry to and with elderly people, people who are excited about ministry to and with young people and with every age in between. What we need more than anything else are people who are listening to the prodding of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit is indeed prodding you, and taking what the Spirit says and turning it into a reality. Your pastors have gifts and graces, just like you do, but we don't have every gift and every grace. There are some things we get more excited about than other things and if a Church has to wait until the pastors can get through all the pressing concerns that face them on a daily basis before we can make ministries a reality, there is much ministry that we could and should be about that will simply be left undone.
So, if you have given of your time, talents, and energy for many years now, thank you for your service; keep it up, we need you. If you have never acted on what God has called you to do, do it now, even if it is for the first time. If you have criticized the ministry of others because it doesn't fit in with what you think are the most important things for the church to focus on, I ask that you would stop doing so. If there are aspects of the ministry of this church that you don't think are as important or as respectable as others, consider treating them with even more honor, as Paul suggests. And finally, if you used to be active in ministry in whatever form but you have been told that your ministry wasn't important or were discouraged from doing what God called you to do, I beg you to forgive whoever discouraged you and give it another try. God loves us and the world too much to let little hurdles get in the way of being joined together in passionate ministry in the world. Remember, everyone you meet is someone for whom Christ has died. Let us join together, in whatever way we can, and be the church, for as different as we may each be from each other, we are all part of that same body of Christ. Let us pray.
AMEN
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