Individual Unity : comments

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Individual Unity

1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

A Place for Each One

“Shhsss kids, I have to concentrate.” Another Sunday morning, another church. Our young mother seeks to enter this week's candidate for meaning. “Where is the parking? Is the church behind door number 1, door number 2 or door number 3?” These practical questions mask her deeper disquiet, “Will there be a place for me? Are there people like me there?”

Our reading tells us that everyone has a place we are find a place in the body of Christ for everyone, and find our place in the body. Sometimes it is hard to find a place. A new member came to church work day. Everyone started to work, but our new member was gently but firmly told when she started dusting, “Evelyn always does that.” or when went for the vacuum she was informed, “Harry runs the vacuum.” Finally, she got an idea. She knew that Dorothy died a few months ago, so she asked, “What did Dorothy clean?” Or she cleaned the windows every year. “Is anyone doing that?”, “Well, no” came the answer. So our new member found her place.

In Quarterlife Crisis authors Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner interview over a hundred twenty somethings who are striving to find their place in the real world. Partly because there are so many options, settling for just any job isn't an option; twenty-somethings take their time to find their place in the real world which offers them an overwhelming number of choices in careers, finances, living situations, and relationships. The church can be a place for them no matter where their search takes them, no matter if they are a foot this month and an eye next month, or retail worker this month and a carpenter next month, in a relationship status or in a “Complicated” status. Through it all they are still part of the body of Christ here at Goodyear Heights.

Differences Natural and Necessary

Paul says that the church is like a body composed of many different parts. We are not here to make everyone the same, differences are not only natural and but necessary. A member sent me a cartoon, a church lady is on the phone, “They're putting choruses in the hymnbooks and projecting hymns onto the screen. It's getting so I can't remember what I'm not supposed to like!” The focus needs to be not on what I like and don't like, but how the mes can connect to be we.

Paul uses the image of body, but Carlos Wilton uses a sports image: For the team is one and had many players, and all the players are of the team though many, are one team…Indeed the team does not consist of one player, but of many. If the defensive end would say, “Because I am not the quarterback, I do not belong to the team.” that would not make him any less a part of the team. If the whole team were quarterbacks, where would the running backs be? If all were kickers, where would the receivers be? The quarterback cannot say to the offensive line, “I don't need you.” Not without getting knocked to the ground the next play. Only when all the parts are at their best selves does the whole team rejoice.

In the first church I served, a man came up to me and said, “Don't ask me to speak in front of people, but if you need a strong back and a weak mind, I'm your man!” No one can do all things, but all can do one thing. From serving on session, to the great force for good we have for deacons, to Vacation Bible School, to dinner committee, to fund raising for youth, to leading the youth group. There are different places for service by different people and all are needed.

We need each other.

It is sadly popular to slice up the body of Christ into fragments. Discarding some as “too”: too strict, too liberal, too fundamentalist, and dismissing others as “uns”: un-Biblical, un-American, un-intellectual. We all are too much some ways and not enough in others. Yet by the great grace of God, we are all brothers and sisters in one uncomfortable family that is too proud to admit that we need each other.

The writer John Donne says it this way:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less…any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind…

I remember at one General Assembly a member from the Witherspoon society asked me for a null modem cable. Strangely I was without one and he went off to continue on his quest. Later I saw him and asked if he ever found his cable. “Yeah”, he said, “The Layman booth lent me one.” Now the Witherspoon Society is usually considered liberal, okay, really liberal, other groups have speakers and a lunch they have a band and a party. So I asked him if the good folks at the Layman knew what group he was from? He said “Yes, but us techies have to stick together”. I wished he had said, “Us Presbyterians have to stick together, or even us Christians have to stick together.” We need each other to solve the problems and overcome the challenges.

Baptism is a lifestyle choice.

Baptism is all about unity of the body. We make promises to the child and parents to provide a church home for them and the parents promise to raise the child in the church. Strangely, Baptism is often view as a event by the unchurched; like a hellfire vaccine, or a handstamp for heaven. Get it done, get on with your life. But baptism is a lifestyle choice not an event in a baby book.

Years ago, I had a conversation with a pre-school director who was resisting holding graduation exercises complete with cap and gown for the five years who were going off to kindergarten. As cute as they are, the educator believed that such a graduation was meaningless, even a mockery of the effort and time spend by those who did don the cap and gown after years of high school, college, or graduate school. Dressing up for an event doesn't make an education, the ceremony is only meaningful after committing to the learning and the work that accompanies it. The difference between a uniform and a costume is the commitment and experience of the person wearing it.

Baptism commits one to be a part of the body, a student body, that meets at least weekly to learn and grow in the one faith, it is a sign of our unity in the spirit, a unity that invites and includes all of God's children and welcomes their varied gifts and contributions to the good of the whole.

Summary

There is a place for you here in the body of Christ. We realize that none of us is as complete and competent as all of us. The body of Christ needs all kinds of people contributing their unique part of the body into which we have been joined by baptism into one. You are welcome, you are valued, you are needed by Christ here.