I often wonder, as I’m sure
other pastors do, if a sermon lives on past Sunday morning. Preaching is a
curious thing. I spend about 15-20 hours (give or take) a week on sermon preparation
– reading, researching, studying, praying, making notes, outlining and,
ultimately, writing and reading and editing. All for a sermon that lasts about
20 minutes.
So, I wonder…does the sermon
live on past those 20 minutes? Does it live past Sunday afternoon? Monday
morning?
Every now and then I get a
little affirmation that, yes, God does in fact continue to use the words I
write and speak. Every now and then someone will say something like, “Remember
when you preached about…” or “I remember you said that in a sermon.”
More often I hear things like, “You
should preach about that sometime,” just a couple of weeks (or days) after I
did in fact “preach about that.” Those are the moments when I wonder, “Does the
work – the prayer, the study, the wresting – make any lasting difference?”
Today I got a little shot of
affirmation.
A few weeks ago an elderly
couple attended worship at NWUMC. They are members of another church but worship
with us from time to time. After the service on this particular Sunday, Mr. Noselew
(not his real name) was very complimentary of the service and the sermon.
He asked if I write them out
word for word or if I write an outline and fill in the rest in the preaching. I
told him I do write them out, and that I actually preach from a manuscript. He
then asked if I ever printed them out (I preach from my iPad). No, I had not
before – except on the occasion when my iPad was on the fritz.
He then told me that if I
printed it, he would love to have a copy. Well, I was over the moon. I told
him, “Of course.” And I left church that morning with a little spring in my
step. Honestly, I thought he probably wanted a paper copy because his hearing
is not good and he didn’t actually hear the sermon. Regardless, I printed a
copy and left it at the church for him to pick up.
This morning, Mr. Noselew
called me at the church. He, again, complimented the sermon. I preached on “hope”
that Sunday. He talked about how much he needed to hear that and that so many
others did as well.
He said he went to visit a cousin
who has been ill for quite some time. On his visit, knowing that his cousin
needed a word of hope, he gave him a copy of my sermon. He went on to ask if he
could copy the sermon and give it to others.
Wow! I have never been so
flattered.
So I say all of that to say… it
is wonderful to know that, yes, the words God inspires in me do in fact live on
and make an impact beyond Sunday morning.
By the way, if anyone wants a
copy of my sermons, I’ll be glad to print one for you.
I am ever grateful for the
opportunity, the privilege, of proclaiming Gods word to God’s people. Thanks be
to God!
As she ran, her thoughts raced faster than her feet. Maybe she was mistaken. It was so dark. Maybe her eyes had deceived her. The tears in her eyes did cloud her vision. She could be wrong. Still the blood ran cold through her veins as she fled the garden. The grief of the previous two days gave way to rage. Her cold blood began to boil as the reality of what she saw set in.
The stone moved. Who would move the stone? It could only be the Romans. No one else would venture outside the city before sunrise as she had. But why? Was the body gone? She ran before she looked to be sure. The shock of what she saw moved her legs before her thoughts could process the scene.
As she reached her destination, she could not find words. She could only scream – a desperate, haunting scream – as she collapsed to the ground.
He couldn’t sleep. Neither of them could. How long had they been in this dark house? Crouched, silent. Gripped by grief, frozen in place by fear. John replayed the last meal over and over in his head trying desperately to remember what he saw; what he heard.
Peter wept. Shame surpassed grief days ago. The contempt he felt for Judas Iscariot on that dark night was quickly eclipsed by his self-loathing. “No,” how could he say, “No”? “I don’t know him.” The words rang in his ears. His own words shouted again and again in his head. “I don’t know him.”
Then a scream. Both men bolted to their feet. Had the Romans found them? Had they too been betrayed? They strained to listen to the dark morning. The scream gave way to loud sobs. Sobs known to John’s ears. Mary.
The two men burst through the door into the lightening morning.
Through her sobs, Mary heard motion. A door opened. Hands gripped her arms. Lifted her. Then the familiar voices. “Mary! Mary, what’s wrong?”
“They’ve taken our Lord out of the tomb.”
Peter felt the words hit him in the gut. “Taken?” As his mind reeled, his hands fell from Mary’s arms. After a moment of frozen shock, he turned to John, but only saw his back as he sped away.
John ran. He’d never run faster. What could it mean? Could Mary be mistaken? He reached the garden and saw the stone pushed aside. At the sight of the dark opening, his feet ceased their movement. He stood frozen in place. He stared. Could do no more than stare.
Peter ran behind John, trying his best to catch him. To arrive at the tomb first. The shame of the previous days seemed to drift, if only slightly, from his mind – replaced by uncertainty, confusion, anger, and… a slight, an ever-so-slight ray of unexpected hope.
When Mary reached the garden, John stood outside of the tomb. Stuck in place by shock or anger or simply disbelief. Peter came out holding the linen that should cover the body of their master. Their friend. John entered the tomb. He quickly exited and joined Peter as they silently stumbled toward home.
Mary could not enter the tomb. She saw the confusion, the distress, in Peter’s eyes as he passed. She heard John’s halting breath as he tried to speak to her but could not find words. She knew now that she was not mistaken. She stood in the garden, the sound of her sobs drowning out the singing birds. She could not enter, but she felt she must look. She must see for herself – Jesus is gone.
She leaned toward the opening, eyes clinched tightly, hoping against hope that she was wrong; that they all were wrong. She leaned toward the opening hoping to see his broken body, to perform the ritual cleaning and anointing she came to perform. She opened her eyes but could not keep them open. The light was blinding. She looked again. Two figures draped in white sat inside the tomb. Together they asked, “Why are you weeping?”
Her voice answered before her mind could comprehend the question. “They’ve taken my Lord. I do not know where they have laid him.” Saying the words aloud brought renewed grief. She could not look at this empty cavern any longer.
She turned to leave, but there was a man. She thought Peter or John had returned or the other disciples upon learning the news had begun to arrive. She was wrong. She did not know him. As he stepped toward her, he spoke, his voice seemed oddly comforting – at once familiar and unrecognizable.
“Woman, why are you crying? Whom are you looking for?”
He must be the gardener. He will know where Jesus’ body was taken. She wanted to grab him, to demand to know. She wanted to fall at his feet to beg him to return the body – to help her find her friend. With an unknown strength, her calm, firm voice spoke.
“Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you laid him. I will take him away.”
At that moment, her world changed. With one word, her grief, her anger, her uncertainty burst into uncontainable joy.
“Mary.” Spoken with a love and recognition she did not expect – could not expect. “Mary.” Her name. Spoken by a voice she’d heard a hundred times. Spoken by a voice she knew she should not hear – would never hear again. But she did hear it. “Mary.”
That simple word meant so much, but at that moment in her mind it meant only one thing. She found her master and her friend. She found Jesus and he was alive. She turned and sputtered the only word that would leave her tongue in that moment. “Rabbouni” – Teacher, Lord.
Jesus said more to her, but she barely heard any of it. She could only look at him. Basking in his risen glory. Jesus is alive. She didn’t want to leave. She wanted to never leave. To never again be out of Jesus’ presence. “Go tell my friends” he told her.
Peter and John found some of the other disciples. They told them about Mary’s report. About the empty tomb. They sat in silent uncertainty. A sudden rap on the door startled them from their thoughts. The door burst open. Mary stood in the entryway, her tear-streaked face beaming with excitement.
She shouted, “I have seen the Lord!”
In that moment all uncertainty, all thoughts were replaced with one. “Christ is risen!”
Here is the last sermon in my series on community. This was preached 5/12/2013.
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The Social Network. What does your social
network look like? To whom are you connected? Think for just a moment. How many
people in this room do you know by first and last name? How many people in this
church do you where they live? How many have you visited at home? How many
people have you prayed with? Not just said – “I’ll pray for you” then gone on
your way – but taken time to sit and pray with them. How many people here do
you know you can count on in a crisis? Is there someone in the church who you
can talk to about things with which you struggle? Is there someone who you know
will call you out, in a loving and constructive way, when you’ve done something
stupid? How many people in this room have you laughed with? Cried with? With
how many people in this church have you shared your faith story? From how many
have you heard their story?
I hope you can think of at least a few
people who fit into each of those categories. That’s what a social network is
supposed to look like.
I want to share an image with you. Have any
of you ever used Friend Wheel on Facebook? It will show all of your friends and
then show what connections you and that friend have in common. Here is my Friend wheel. The dots around the circle represent the people I am
friends with on Facebook. The lines between them connect those who are friends
with one another. Just to give you a better idea of how it works, here’s
another slide. In this one I highlighted one friend to show the mutual
connections we have. This shows my connections to Misty, so these are all of the mutual friends we
have.
So these 240-something dots represent all of
my Facebook friends, but If I were going to make a “friend wheel” of people
like I mentioned earlier. Those with whom I am close. Those who will call me
out when I do something dumb. The ones I can really talk to. That wheel would
look more like this. And I may have overestimated
a relationship or two. The sad part of this wheel is not the small number of
people on it, but the infrequency with which I meet and talk with those people,
save one.
This is the connection I described earlier.
This is the connection we need to have. This is the social network we need to
build. A small network of people who will support us; who will pray for and
with us; who will help us through our struggles. A group of people with whom we
grow closer to Christ as we grow closer to one another.
Our scripture this morning gives us some
instruction about why we need one another. Jesus tells us to be salt and to be
light. There is something distinctive about salt and light. By nature, salt and
light are communal. Or at least they should be. I want to look at what being
salt teaches us about our need for community and then what light teaches us.
Salt is an interesting substance. It has
been in use since about 6000 BC. At one time, salt was even used as a currency
because of its value. Our word salary was derived from the word salt. I don’t
know how much truth there is to this, but if a slave was traded for salt, and
performed poorly, we get the saying – “He’s not worth his salt.” In Jesus’ time
and place, salt was a necessity. Salt was used to season food, but salt was
also used as a preservative. 1st Century Judea did not have
refrigerators, but with salt, you could cure meat to make it last longer. Salt
was used in some purification rituals. Salt was sprinkled on all offerings and
sacrifices in the Jewish Temple.
Salt was essential in Jesus’ world and in
that of his audience. They understood the importance of salt when he told them
– “You are the salt of the earth.” The thing about salt, though, is that it is
not useful to itself. It only has value in that it is applied to other things.
It seasons food. It preserves meats. It is used to purify. Salt enhances the
things around it.
In other words, if we are salt, we are no good
by ourselves. Salt is not for itself. We are not to be kept to ourselves. To be
salt, we must exist for others. To season and enhance all of those around us.
If we keep to ourselves, we lose our saltiness – we lose our value. To lose our
saltiness means that we become useless to those around us. We become so
consumed with ourselves that we lose the connections around us. We no longer
enhance or season our world.
I want to take a little break here to
interject something. All of this talk about community and our faith being
dependent upon being with and around other people does not mean that we should
never spend time alone with God. Quite the opposite. We need time alone with
God. Jesus tells us we should spend time in private prayer. In fact, when Jesus
prays he almost always goes off alone to pray. Solitude is a good thing. For
introverts like me, it allows us to recharge.
Maybe we can think about it in terms of
salt. We spend time with other believers to get seasoned. That time we spend
together enhances our time with God.
We spend time alone with God to become
saltier. We pray and study so we can become more helpful to others. We spend
time with God so that we can be salt for others. We spend time with others to
get salted.
Jesus also says we are to be light. You are
the light of the world. Light, just like salt, is meant to be shared.
Scripture, again and again, refers to Jesus as light. Just a few verses before
our the scripture read this morning Jesus quotes a passage from Isaiah in
reference to himself. When he says that “the people who sat in darkness have
seen a great light.” The Gospel of John talks about the light of Jesus breaking
into the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome the light.
Now Jesus says we are to be light. We are to
reflect the light of Jesus for those around us. Jesus goes on to say that when
someone lights a candle, they put it on a stand so that it will give light to
everyone in the house.
This got me thinking about a couple of
different images. The first is the power that light has over darkness. Have any
of you ever been spelunking, or as we used to call it, cave crawling? As a kid,
my dad used to take us to Collier Cave. Or Coffee Cave – which ever you want to
call it – to go cave crawling. We would all put on some old clothes, get our
Atlanta Braves replica batting helmets, and grab a flashlight to go crawl
around in the mud 30 feet underground. I loved it!
One thing I learned in that cave is that you
don’t understand dark until you are underground without a light. We would get
to a certain spot in the cave, deep enough that no outside light came in, and
turn off our flashlights. It was dark. It was a darkness that you could feel.
We were in a room that was probably 100 feet in diameter with 20 foot ceilings
but with the flashlights off it felt like the walls were right next to me.
Standing there in that blackness, my dad
struck a match. One simple little match. And suddenly the room was huge again.
That overwhelming darkness was no match for that tiny little light. Which shows
us the power that light has over darkness. It brings to life that passage from
John – the darkness cannot overcome the light.
But the room was still dark. Then someone
turned on a flashlight and we could see a little more. Then another flash
light. Then another and another. Until finally we lit the entire room. It
wasn’t bright, but it was lit. We could see the room, we could see each other.
Not only did I learn the power light has
over darkness, I also learned that a light can shine through the darkness, but
as we let our light shine together the light becomes brighter. The darkness
recedes more and more until when we add enough light shining together, it
doesn’t matter how dark it is, we’re illuminated.
It makes me think of the Christmas Eve
candlelight service. We start ina dark room with a single candle burning. And
that single light is all you can see. But that light gets passed from person to
person until everyone in the room is letting their light shine. And together
those candles light up the sanctuary. You can see everything.
That’s what being light teaches us about
community. Your light may shine, but together we shine brighter. Together the
light of Jesus is even more powerful. It lights our way and it is a light for
the world.
And back to the cave for a moment. Another
reason we come together is so that our light can be a help to those who are
struggling to shine. I remember being in the cave a group of 6 or 8 of us and
my flashlight died. If I’d been alone, I’d be done for. But there were 5 – 7
more flashlights there to help me get out of that darkness.
I want to put a practical spin on this
series. I’ve talked a lot about community and about having a group of people to
pray with and study with.
I’ve talked several times over the last few
weeks about a quote from John Wesley about Christianity being a social
religion. That wasn’t simply something he preached. It was something he lived
and practiced. The Methodist movement started when Wesley was at Oxford University
and he and his brother and a few more friends started what we would call a
small group. They prayed and studied together. And they visited prisons and fed
the hungry together. This led Wesley to start the Methodist movement as a
movement of community. There were Methodist societies throughout England. Each
society was broken down into bands which were then divided into class meetings.
These class meetings were groups of 6-8 people who would pray together, check
up on one another, care for one another.
Earlier this week, one of my professors
posted a story on his blog about his daughter. This story gave a perfect
example of what small groups are about. His 2 ½ year-old daughter came to him
one morning with her baby doll and said it was the baby Jesus. After breakfast,
he told her it was time to go to school. She told him that she was Mary and he
was Joseph. “Ok, Mary, it’s time to go.” When they got to her daycare, he asked
if she wanted to leave the baby in the car. She told him, No. Maybe I can share
Jesus with my friends, and when they’re done they can give him back to me.”
That is exactly what social religion is about. That is what a small group is
about. It is a group where you share Jesus with others and they share Jesus
with you. And together you grow more and more like Jesus.
This is the third sermon in a series on community. This sermon was given on Confirmation Sunday, so it is a little shorter
A few weeks ago, I started a sermon series
called “The Social Network.” The inspiration for this series was a couple of
quotes from John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. In one of his writings he
said, “Solitary religion is not to be found
[in the gospel of Christ]. ‘Holy
solitaries’ is a phrase no more consistent with the gospel than holy
adulterers. The gospel of Christ knows of no religion but social; no holiness
but social holiness.” In another sermon, Wesley explained that in saying that
Christianity is a social religion he means that our faith cannot survive
without being with and sharing with other believers. In other words, our faith
is dependent upon community. It is dependent upon connection to one another.
We spent a couple of weeks talking about this connection that we call
the body of Christ. In the body of Christ, we are connected to one another just
as all of the parts of our body are connected to one another. Jesus talked
about that connection, too. He said, “I am the vine and you are the branches.” Today
is a special day because we get to be a part of and to witness as new branches
are grafted onto the vine of Jesus. This morning, we welcome new members into
the body of Christ. And we get to witness some others making their first public
proclamation of their faith and affirm their part in the body.
Now, I want to talk to our confirmands and those who will be baptized
for just a few minutes. I hope the rest of you will listen, too, but I’m going
to talk to you guys. Today, you will claim your part in the body of Christ.
What does that mean, though? A lot of what it means will be addressed in the
questions you’ll answer in just a few minutes. Do you reject evil and
wickedness and repent of your sins? Do you accept the gift of God’s grace that
allows you to resist that evil? Do you confess Jesus Christ as your savior?
Will you be faithful members of Christ’s holy church? Will you support the
church with your prayers, your presence, your gifts, your service, and your
witness? In those questions you see what it means to be a member of Christ’s
body. It doesn’t just mean that you say you believe in Jesus. It doesn’t just
mean that you come to church on Sunday mornings and maybe Wednesday nights.
Being a part of the body of Christ means that you are committing
yourself to live as a follower of Jesus. It means that you are committing to
live a life of the Spirit. To do the best you can, empowered by God’s grace, to
live a life of holiness. To do good, to avoid evil. You are committing yourself
to growing closer to Jesus day by day – by studying, by praying, by
worshipping, by serving others. You are promising to be an active part of the
body. Not a paralyzed arm, but an active working part of the body of Christ.
Sounds hard, doesn’t it?
It is hard, but guess what. You don’t do it alone. First of all, it’s
only by God’s grace that we can do good and avoid evil. It’s only by God’s
grace that we grow closer to Jesus. But we have more help also.
I saw visual example used last week that I
want to share with you this morning. As Christians, one of the symbols of our
faith is the cross. In the cross, we are reminded of the sacrifice that Jesus
made for us. Jesus came to earth, lived as a man, and died so that our sins can
be forgiven, so that for us death holds no power. Think about John 3:16 - For
God so loved the world that he gave his only son. So that whoever believes in
him won't die, but will have eternal life. The cross reminds us of that gift.
The gift of God’s redeeming grace, returns us to righteousness in the eyes of
God. So you see that the cross connects us to God.
Looking at the cross, we can think about the
vertical part as that connection to God. But the cross has two parts. Vertical
and horizontal. This horizontal part is a connection as well. The cross
connects us to God, but it also connects us to one another.
Now I want to talk to the rest of the people
here, but I want you guys to listen.
As followers of Christ we have a
responsibility to one another. Paul writes in Ephesians that, as the body of
Christ, we have a responsibility to help one another grow closer to God. By
praying together, worshiping together, studying scriptures together, and by
sharing our faith stories with one another. In the scriptures that Anna Kate
and Claire read this morning Paul and the writer of Hebrews reminded their
readers that we are called to encourage one another.
Paul wrote of the Body of Christ again in 1
Corinthians 12. There he says that not only do we help one another grow, but we
are also to care for one another. In verse 26, he says "If one part
suffers, all the parts suffer with it, and if one part is honored, all the
parts are glad." This connection we have through Jesus Christ is more than
a common faith. It’s more than believing in the same thing. It is a
responsibility to care for one another physically and spiritually. Look around
the room, each of us is connected to one another. Each of us has a
responsibility to one another. Each of us, through the power of the Holy Spirit
is connected by the Love of God and called to share that love.
Each of you in this room has a
responsibility to these who will be baptized or confirmed this morning. Not
only will they make promises and commitments, but so will you. Each of you will
reaffirm your own commitment to live as followers of Jesus. You will also make
a commitment to these young men and women. You will promise to proclaim and
live the gospel as an example to them. You will promise to surround them with
love. You will promise to pray for them. To support them, to help them as they
do their best, empowered by God’s grace, as they grow in their faith. To help
them become more and more like Christ.
That is what “social religion” is all about.
That’s what it looks like to be connected to God and to one another. This
afternoon, you, the confirmands, will be given a cross as a reminder of your
decision to follow Christ. Let it also serve as a reminder that you are not
doing this alone. You are connected to God and we are all connected to one
another.
Last week we began a series called The Social Network. I
said last week, that we are talking about a social network that has little to
nothing to do with Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest, but everything to do with
the person to your left, your right, in front of and behind you.
Last week I shared with you a quote from John Wesley that
served as an inspiration for this series. Wesley wrote, “Solitary religion is not to be found [in the gospel of Christ]. ‘Holy solitaries’ is a phrase no
more consistent with the gospel than holy adulterers. The gospel of Christ
knows of no religion but social; no holiness but social holiness.” In other
words, the Christian faith is not something we can do on our own. Living as a
follower of Jesus Christ has a distinctively social aspect. I also gave you
Wesley’s definition of what he means that Christianity is a social religion. He
said that our faith cannot survive without living with and sharing with other
believers. In other words, our faith is dependent on community.
So during this series we are talking about the importance of
community. And this is actually something we talk about all the time, probably
without thinking too much about it. We often talk about being a community of
faith, but what does that mean? We talk about being the body of Christ, but,
again, what does that mean? That’s going to be our focus today. What it means
to be the body of Christ and what it looks like to live as the body of Christ.
In our scripture this morning Paul talks about the body of Christ. Paul
uses this metaphor again and again in his letters. He talks over and over about
the church as the body of Christ. We read an example of that last week. In
Ephesians 4:12 Paul we are all given gifts and have a responsibility to use
those gifts to do the work of God to “build up the church, the body of Christ.”
It is a metaphor we see throughout the New Testament. As the church, we make up
the body of Christ. It is more than a metaphor, we are the embodiment of Christ.
We are to be the eyes and ears, the hands and feet, the voice and the heart of
Jesus for the world.
Through our baptism, we are initiated into the body of Christ. We become
members of that body. But it’s more than membership in an organization. I read
an article this week that talked about the church as an organism versus an
organization. That’s the way we should think about the church. As a living
organism. One point that article made is that an organization has many heads,
the church has only one head. Ephesians and Colossians both talk of the church
as the body of Christ and Christ as the head of that body.
So instead of members of an organization, we are members of the body,
just as our hands and feet, arms and legs are members of our body. And just as
we use our members – our arms, legs, hands, and feet – to move and work in the
world around us, Jesus uses us the members of the body of Christ to work in the
world.
There are three aspects of the body of Christ present in our scripture
that I want to focus on as we think about what it means to be the body of
Christ and how we live as the body of Christ.
The first of these goes back to the quote from John Wesley I read
earlier. “Solitary religion is not to be found in the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
If we are a part of a body, the we are dependent upon one another. Paul speaks
of the church in terms of a human body. The many parts make up one body – and
so it is with the body of Christ. When we talk about the human body, we know
that no part of the body can survive apart from the body.
When I was growing up I remember seeing a Michael Caine movie called
“The Hand”. Has anyone else seen it? In that movie, Michael Caine’s character
had his hand cut off in a car accident. Actually, I think he was sticking it
out the window in a fit of road rage and it was knocked off. Well, for the rest
of the movie, that malevolent hand tormented Michael and the rest of the cast.
In reality, if you were to lose a hand or a finger, it can be
reattached, but doctors say that it must be within 6-12 hours because the
tissue begins to deteriorate quickly. And, of course, the thing would not
reanimate on its own.
The same is true for us as members of the body of Christ. We cannot
survive apart from the body. Our faith, our growing closer to Christ is
dependent on being with other Christians. It is dependent on being connected.
Jesus uses a similar metaphor to the body in John chapter 15. There he
says that he, Jesus, is the vine and we are the branches. In other words, we
are all connected through Jesus. He goes on to say in verse 4, “For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the
vine, and you cannot be fuitful unless you remain in me.”
I know what some of you are thinking. “I can remain connected to Jesus
without being connected to the church!” “I can feel just as close to God on the
golf course or in a tree stand or running or hiking or”, you name it. I would
argue that you cannot stay connected to Jesus without the church. On our own,
we start to depend on ourselves instead of others. And that leads to depending
on ourselves instead of depending on God.
And, as I mentioned last week, we are created for relationship. A
defining characteristic of God is the trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
That is community. It is relationship. This is the image in which we are
created. We are created to be in community. We are created to be in
relationship with God and with one another.
The second thing we learn about being the body of Christ is that in the
body, we are all connected to one another and through that connection, no one
part is more or less important than another.
One reason Paul wrote this letter to the church at Corinth was because
of arguments among the members about who was more important. In verse 13 Paul
attempts to settle this argument. “Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves,
some are free. But we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and
we all share the same Spirit.”
In other words, in the body of Christ, we are all equal. It’s odd that
in the 2000 years since this letter was written, these same issues are still
lingering. We still deal with issues of race, gender, social status, economic
status. All of these are things that divide us, things that in some cases turn
us against one another. All of them are things that Paul tells us don’t matter
one bit in the body of Christ. In Ephesians 3:6 Paul makes this same argument.
He wrote, “And this is God’s plan: Both Gentiles and Jews who believe
the Good News share equally in the riches inherited by God’s children. Both are
part of the same body, and both enjoy the promise of blessings because they
belong to Christ Jesus.”
In the body, no
part is more important than the other. And something else to remember. It’s not
up to the parts of the body to determine who is and who is not a part of the
body. Paul reminds us that some parts that seem the weakest and least important
are actually the most necessary. It’s not our job to decide who is on or out of
the body. It’s our job to work as one body. To be one body. Paul says we should
be in harmony so that all of the parts care for one another.
Which leads to
the third thing we learn about the body of Christ. That when one part suffers,
the entire body suffers. When one part rejoices, the entire body rejoices. Our
passage ends with an emphatic statement – “You are the body of Christ.” James Boyce says that in light of this
passage that verse is more command than statement. He says, “we are meant to
hear that this calls us not to some assertion of privileged status, but rather
to the recognition of our responsibility for mutual care for the members of
this body.” We are meant not to simply have sympathy for those around us, but
to have empathy. Do you know the difference?
I’m going to
show my geekiness. Is anyone a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation? Do you
remember counselor Deanna Troi? Troi was an empathy. Her mother came from a
planet of mind-readers, but her father was human. So instead of reading
someone’s mind, she could feel their emotions. She was an empath. She literally
felt what they felt. That is what it means to have empathy.
If we have
sympathy, we feel sorry for someone. If we have empathy, we feel their
suffering. When is the last time you had empathy? True empathy? When is the
last time you suffered with someone. I saw it put like this. When I have an ear
infection, the rest of my body suffers. But when Ms Eloise is widowed I don’t
really suffer, when frank gets a cancer diagnosis, when the Smyth’s baby is
still-born – occasionally I feel a pang of something. Maybe I breakdown and cry
for a few minutes. But then I go about my life. I certainly don’t suffer with
the suffering.
The best way to
do that is going back to the second point. We are all connected to one another.
But we tend to build barriers between us that keep us from truly feeling what
the other is feeling. In the body of Christ we have to let those barriers go.
We have to open ourselves to God and to one another.
To do that, you
have to make your faith about more than 11am-12pm every Sunday. You have to
make church about more than sitting in these chairs once a week surrounded by
acquaintances and then going back to real life when the service is over.
To truly be the
body of Christ, you have to know the rest of the body. You have to spend time
together. You have to share with one another. In order to truly be the body of
Christ, you have to make Christ the head of you. What does the head of a body
do? It directs the body. Tells it where to go and what to do. It senses pain
and joy from the different parts and lets the rest of the body feel that as
well. To connect ot one another we have to first connect to Christ.
A couple of months ago I preached a sermon series (titled The Social Network) on our need for community and its vital role in our faith. I'll post a couple this week and a couple next week. This sermon was preached April 7, 2013.
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Ephesians 4:11-16
New Living Translation (NLT)
11 Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers.12 Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ.13 This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.
14 Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth.15 Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church.16 He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.
The Social What?
Today we are starting a new sermon
series titled “The Social Network.” When we think of a social network, most of
us think of social media. Things like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. That’s not
the social network we’re going to talk about for the next few weeks.
But the series title is a play off of
that thought. When I began thinking about this series several months ago, I
came up with some great sermon titles. Some ways to play off of social
networking, and specifically, the names of some popular social media outlets.
Here’s one: “Get your face in the
book”
Nice, right? How about this one? “Don’t
Twitter Around with Jesus”.
Even better, I think. Here’s another – “Make Jesus your (P)interest”.
And finally – “Get Linked In to Jesus.”
Those are great, right? I’ll admit,
they are purposely cheesy. And they really have nothing to do with this series
of sermons. They have little to nothing to do with what I really want to talk
about for the next few weeks.
We are going to talk about a concept
that, like it or not, is vital to our faith. Community. The social network
we’re going to talk about has nothing to do with Facebook or Twitter, but has
everything to do with the person sitting on your right and your left, and in
front of you and behind you. It’s about us.
The truth is, we need one another. We
need community. The concept of community seems foreign to our modern
sensibilities. Instead we are a society based on individualism. But there is
still an innate need, and a longing for community. And here’s where social
media will make a brief appearance. Because for many of us, Facebook has become
our community. Actually, I should say: Facebook has become a substitute for
community. In reality, I think it may have done more harm than good in terms of
connecting people.
I’m going to get on my soapbox for a
minute. Well, I guess that’s what I do every week, isn’t it.
Let me start by saying that I use
Facebook. Facebook has some great features and some wonderful qualities. BUT –
Facebook and other social media sites have developed what I would call a false
community. It’s people offering impersonal happy birthday wishes and sharing
either the mundane moments of everyday life or just sharing how wonderful their
kids and husband and in-laws are. It has become our personal hype machine.
“Look how great my life is.” But don’t ask me how things are going. Just “like”
my status when I share the latest wonderful life event. I’ll tell you, I have
kids. They are not always angelic and wonderful. Sometimes they are selfish and
bratty. I’ve been married for 18 years. Misty will tell you that every day with
me is not a walk through the roses. Maybe that’s a cynical view of Facebook,
but it irks me a little that this is what we know as a social network – this is
what some people call community. Being in community means that we live
together. It means we share life. Good and bad. It means having a real
connection to one another.
I found a couple of definitions of
community that I want to share. The first is a sociological definition. It says
that community is a social unit larger than a small village that shares common
values. Yawn. That is little more that a group of people in proximity to one
another. That doesn’t sound like a community to me.
The other definition comes from
biology. It says a community is a group of living organisms interacting and
sharing a populated environment. OK, that sounds like my idea of a community.
Not simply living near one another, but interacting, conversing. Living
together.
The way I see it, something like
Facebook doesn’t promote community. It promotes individualism. It’s not about
living together or interacting. It’s about me and what I want to share and how
I feel and what I think is important. Again, I’m being a little cynical. I know
there are other aspects to social media that are helpful in connecting us. But
our true connection should be real. It should be face-to-face. It should be
with people, not websites.
I shared part of a quote from John
Wesley with you last week. I want to repeat it this morning. This is part of
the inspiration for this sermon series. In the preface to a book by John and
Charles Wesley called Hymns and Sacred
Poems, Wesley wrote “Solitary religion is not
to be found [in the gospel of Christ]. ‘Holy solitaries’ is a phrase no more consistent with the gospel
than holy adulterers. The gospel of Christ knows of no religion but social; no
holiness but social holiness.”
The last sentence, and especially the last
phrase, of that quote has been taken out of context and misused for a long
time. You will often hear ‘no holiness but social holiness’ as a call for the
church to be involved in social justice issues. There might be a connection to
make there, but it’s a stretch. What Wesley is really talking about is
Christianity as a social religion. Wesley went on to explain that phrase in a
sermon later in life. He said that by social religion he means “it cannot
subsist at all without society, without living and conversing with other
[believers].” In other words, our faith is meant to be lived out in community.
Not only that, but our faith depends on community.
Unfortunately, we live in a society
that thrives on individualism. Individualism is the idea the individual is of
primary importance. It emphasizes the virtues of self-reliance and personal
independence. It’s a concept and an attitude that has been taught for a long,
long time in this country. And there is a lot of good in the concept.
Individualism promotes self-confidence. It promotes the idea that you are a
person of worth and importance. Individualism should promote equality of all
people. It allows us to have our own opinions and allows us the freedom to
share those opinions. Individualism tells us that we can be successful, that we
can accomplish things.
But there is a flip side to
individualism. Individualism also teaches that we should rely on ourselves.
Instead of equality, it sometimes goes to the extremes of “I’m the most
important, so I’m better than the rest.” It creates people who, to contradict
Barbara Streisand – who don’t need people, but still consider themselves the
luckiest people in the world. Individualism teaches us that we can do it on our
own, which leads to the attitude that we should do it on our own. That if we
can’t, then we are a failure. And those who can’t succeed, they’re just not
trying.
And this attitude of individualism seeps
into our church life. Maybe it’s less “I can save myself” than “I can be saved
alone.” But still it’s an attitude that believes in self. Church becomes about
me and what I need. I go to church to save my soul. I go to church so I can
feel better about myself. I go to church for me. For my needs. For my soul.
I love how the Holy Spirit works. I’ve
been planning this series for several months now. But this week, one of my
professors said this: “We are much
more interested in an individual faith – ‘Getting my soul right with Jesus’ –
than we are with notions of talking about the community of the church. We need
to reclaim the notion that we are never Christians alone, but we are only
Christians and we are only faithful, insofar as we are faithful to God with one
another in the community of the church.” This is exactly what John Wesley means
when he says that our faith cannot survive without being with, talking to, and
learning from other believers.
If all we have is individualism, we end
up, well, we end up as idolaters. Ayn Rand wrote this is her book Anthem. “And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this
god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant
them joy and peace and pride.This
god, this one word:‘I.’”
In her book, Because He Loves Me, Elyse Fitzpatrick talks about the idolatry of
individualism. She writes about our need for community, and specifically our
need for people of faith to whom we can confide and expect to be held
accountable. People with whom we can talk about our faith and our doubts, and
who talk to us about their faith and their doubts. That sort of relationship,
she says, flies in the face of our individualistic society. She writes this: “This idolatry of privacy and individualism is one of the
greatest detriments … in the church today. God has placed us in a family
because we don’t grow very well on our own. It’s still not good to be alone. We
need the encouragement, correction, and loving involvement of others who are
willing to risk everything for the sake of the beauty of his bride.” His bride,
referring to the church, the bride of Christ. In other words, what’s important,
what the church should be about, is not “getting my soul right” but the act of
being together. Worship together. Learning together. Growing together.
I want to make an important distinction between individualism and
individuality. Individuality means that we have our own identity. We are who we
are and we remain that way. That is what Paul writes about in our scripture
this morning. He says we are all created with certain gifts, and all of those
gifts are important to the life of the church. He also says that we are given
those gifts with the responsibility of using them to do God’s work and build up
the church. Don’t think of building up the church as simply growing in terms of
numbers. But growing in faith, helping one another grow more and more like
Christ. Our scripture wraps up with a sentence that is one of the most
important sentences you’ll hear today. Paul is talking about the body of Christ
and the part each of us plays in that body. “As each part does its
own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is
healthy and growing and full of love.” Our faith depends on community, on being together –
worshiping together, learning together. We are created to be in community.
Next week we’re going to talk more about the Body of
Christ and what it means to be a part of that body.
This morning we come together to celebrate that community
– the community of the Body of Christ.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this here or not, but
several years ago when we lived in Kentucky, Abby, my youngest, was about 3
years-old. She loved communion. She got so excited on communion Sundays. One
Sunday we were driving to church, and it happened to be the first Sunday of the
month. From the back seat Abby asks, “Dad, are we having community today?” We
laughed because it was cute, then I thought, you know, we are. And I answered,
“Yes, Abby. Yes we are.”
Today we are going to have community. Holy Communion is
community. It is the gathering of the community of faith around the table of
Christ. It is meaningful to us as individuals, but it is much more than a
personal event.
That notion of community noticeable in the liturgy used
in observing communion. The prayers and readings use plural pronouns. We, us,
our. For years when I participated in Communion, I would pray I, me, and my
instead. I didn’t realize the communal nature, probably until Abby asked that
question almost 10 years ago. We gather as one body. Paul wrote in 1st
Corinthians that “because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for
we all partake of the one bread.” So we gather as one body to share in the
grace of God and to celebrate our one faith.
We’re wrapping up our series on temptation
today. Over the last couple of weeks we’ve looked at what scripture teaches us
about temptation. The first week, we saw from James chapter 1 that temptation
is really a result of our own desires or passions. James 1:14 says, “Temptation comes from our
own desires, which entice us and drag us away.” I shared with you that same
verse from The Message, it says that we can only blame “the leering, seducing
flare-up of our own lust.”We talked about the way to
control these passions is to make sure that Jesus is Lord of your life. Then
our desire is only God’s will.
Last week we looked at the story of
Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. I said that the temptation Jesus faced
there is the same temptation we face; to put our trust somewhere other than God
– to let something else sit on that throne. Temptation is often a matter of
trust. I trust in stuff, in money, in what I can see and feel. I trust me.
Instead of trusting God’s will, trusting the way of Jesus. So instead of Jesus
sitting on the throne of our heart, money is there or people or our stuff or
ourselves.
Today, I’ve titled the sermon “Deliver
Us”. That title probably sounds familiar to you. It’s from the Lord’s Prayer.
When pray that prayer, we pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us
from evil.”
I ran across a video this week that I
want to share with you.
I love that. But not just because it’s funny. Look at
their slogan,
“Once
you shake ‘em you can’t shake ‘em.” Now that says a lot about temptation.
Temptation is hard enough to resist, but once you give in it becomes that much
harder. I saw an article from a couple of years ago on Psychology Today’s
website. In that article, Dr. Rebecca Gladding says that when we give in to
temptation we teach our brain that this is an important action and should be
repeated, so the brain starts sending cravings. She uses the specific example
of chocolate. She wrote, “As time
goes on, my brain begins making eating chocolate a priority and I find that I
am craving it day and night.” Once
you shake it, you just can’t shake it.
We talked before about our desires leading to temptation
and temptation leading to sin. Paul liked to talk about being a slave to sin.
Dr. Gladding seems to be pointing to just such a thing. We give in to
temptation which leads to sin and we start to crave it. We can’t live without
it. We become a slave to sin. Once you shake it, you just can’t shake it. Once
you start, you just can’t stop. Which brings us back to “deliver us from evil”.
Resisting temptation is not our natural human response.
And once we’ve given in, it’s just that much easier to do it again and that
much harder to resist. So we pray. As Jesus taught us to pray, “Deliver us.”
In the garden of Gethsemane, just before Jesus was
arrested, he told his disciples to “pray so you won’t give in to temptation.
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” As we saw last week, this is
something Jesus knew from experience. Jesus also knew that temptation would
come.
In a letter to the church at Corinth, Paul told them that
temptation is inevitable. He wrote this: “13The temptations in your life are no
different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow
the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will
show you a way out so that you can endure.”
There are a couple of really important things this
passage tells us about temptation. 1) We’re going to be tempted. There is not
any notion here that we will not be tempted. 2) We can resist temptation! “You
will not be tempted more than you can stand.” But we are human, we are flawed.
3) God will deliver us. God will show us a way out.
A couple of weeks ago I introduced the 5Rs of resisting
temptation. Adam Hamilton, who is the pastor of Church of the Resurrection (a
United Methodist church in KC), came up with these a few years ago. He used
them again in a sermon a couple of months ago. I think they offer some
wonderful advice for resisting temptation.
I gave you the first one a couple of weeks ago, but I’ll
cover it again. These are things to do when you feel tempted.
1)REMEMBER Who You Are – You are a child of God, a
follower of Jesus Christ, a leader in the church, a leader in the community.
You may be someone’s husband or wife, someone’s mother or father. Is the thing
you are struggling with consistent with who you are?
2)RECOGNIZE the consequences of
your actions. Maybe you
could ask yourself: will I feel better or worse after doing this? Will I be
proud or ashamed? Will I be more free or will I be enslaved by doing this? Who
will be hurt by my actions? If the thing becomes known, what will happen to the
people who trusted me? What will they think of me?
3)REDEDICATE yourself to God. In prayer ask for God’s strength.
Maybe a really simple, easy to remember prayer like: “Lead me not into
temptation, deliver me from evil!” It’s also a chance to remind yourself who is
on the throne of your life.
I shared this tweet with you a
couple of weeks ago: “Temptation is coming today...and every day. The
question is whether Christ is on the throne of your heart now? Will He be your
Lord today?” Is Jesus on the throne of your heart? Or as I
asked it last week: Do you trust in Jesus?
4)REVEAL your struggle to a trusted
friend. Part of the
power of temptation comes from its secretiveness. When you tell the secret to
someone holding you accountable, it loses some of its power. This is why James
tells us in 5:16, “Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another,
that you might be healed.” Maybe it’s not the healthiest or most effective
motivator, but it also adds some guilt to the situation, and guilt is a great
deterrent. If eating donuts is a sin…well we’re all in trouble… But just as an
example… If eating donuts is a sin I struggle with and I tell Bill, and I know Bill
isn’t going to judge me but will help me be accountable – he’s going to ask me
if I’ve been eating donuts – those donuts lose a little of their power over me.
5)REMOVE yourself from the situation. When Jesus speaks about sin in
the Sermon on the Mount he tells us that if our eye causes us to sin, we’re to
pluck it out, or if our hand causes us to sin, we’re to cut it off. He is using
hyperbole but he’s seeking to make this same point—remove yourself from the
situation. We saw this in the video of the “Marshmallow Test” two weeks ago.
Those 4-5 year-old kids who really did not want to eat the marshmallow would
just ignore it. Pretend it’s not there. Pretending won’t always help, but
leaving a situation will. Keeping yourself out of tempting situations will. Back
to our donut example, I should never go near the donut table. If I walk in and
see donuts I should probably leave.
So those are the 5 Rs of resisting temptation, but what
if we don’t resist? Because, let’s face it, we’re not always going to resist. I
don’t mean that to be taken as a defeatist attitude. It’s just the truth. Sometimes
we will try to resist and fail, sometimes we just fail. Luckily it’s not the
end of the road.
There’s another part of the Lord’s Prayer I want to
remind you of: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass
against us.” Forgive our missteps, our stumbles, our failings, our sins. We are
reminded of this throughout the New Testament. 1 John 1:9 tells us if we
confess our sins, God will forgive us and cleanse our wickedness. Colossians
1:13-14 says this “For he has rescued us from the kingdom of
darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, who purchased our
freedom and forgave our sins.”
Now, that’s not a “get out of jail
free” card. It doesn’t mean I can walk in and say to myself, “I can eat all of
the donuts I want now, because I can just ask God to forgive me!” That attitude
embraces sin. There’s no repentance there, confessing our sins means we repent.
To repent means to turn the other way. I read Colossians 1:13-14, but look what
leads up to that scripture about forgiveness:
10 Then the way you live will always honor and please the
Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit. All the while, you
will grow as you learn to know God better and better.
11 We also pray that you will be strengthened with all
his glorious power so you will have all the endurance and patience you need.
May you be filled with joy,12always thanking the Father. He has enabled you to
share in the inheritance that belongs to his people, who live in the light.
We are called to live in the light, to live in a way that
honors God – that pleases God. That doesn’t mean we won’t mess it up. It means
we’ve got to try. It means we’ve got to do everything we can to resist
temptation. Thank God, we have a savior who delivers us from temptation!
There are three things I want to stress as we talk about
being “delivered from evil”.
Two of them come from the passage in Galatians that was
read earlier. First, it says we should nail our desires and passions to the
cross. In other words, we are to die to our old sinful self. Paul says we
should live by the Spirit. As we live by the Spirit, we are renewed. We are
changed into a new creation. As we trust and follow Jesus, through prayer,
reading scripture, growing closer to God, the Holy Spirit works to change us.
Sin loses its grip. Our desires and passions lessen, and God’s will becomes our
desire.
Paul gives us another tip for how we are delivered from
temptation. In verse 2 of chapter 6, Paul says we should share each other’s
burdens. I love verse 3. “If you think you are too important to help
someone, you are only fooling yourself. You are not that important.” Help
one another! This goes back to our 4th R – reveal your struggle. Be
ready to help others and don’t be afraid to ask for help.
The third thing to remember about being delivered is that
through the life, death, and resurrection we are delivered. We are delivered
not just from temptation, but from the penalty of sin. Because of Jesus sin no
longer binds those who believe, who call on him as their savior.
We are delivered in those 3 ways. Jesus delivers us from
the penalty of sin. The Holy Spirit working in us delivers us from the power of
sin so that it no longer holds us captive. And lastly, God works through each
one of us to help one another, to love one another, to share our burdens.
