Text: 1 Corinthians 12:1-31 (Primarily: 12:12-31)
(North Toronto Corps - Sept 16/90 AM)
(South Shore Corps - February 20/94 AM)
(Chatham Citadel – August 15/99 AM)
I am sure that everyone has at one time in their life had a bad experience with a hammer.
I know I have.
Think for just a moment about all that goes on in just a few brief moments: Your right hand grips the hammer. Your right arm swings back. Your eye scans the area. Your brain calculates the arc of the swing, the velocity of the hammer and the angle at which the hammer will hit the top of the nail perched on a piece of wood and held in place by your left hand.
The instruction is sent from your brain to your arm to swing your arm and begin your hand’s descent. At first everything is going fine. Then suddenly, an alarm goes off. The angle of attack is wrong. The hammer is going to hit too close to the edge of the nail. Your brain desperately sends the signal down the line “abort!” but it is too late! The hammer comes crashing down slightly behind the nail.
At first you wonder why there was no loud crack from the hammer hitting the wood, and then the answer comes up your arm. The soft thud you heard was the hammer hitting your left thumb.
Immediately your right hand goes into action. It drops the hammer and moves quickly to the aid of the left thumb. The trauma is not isolated only to your hands. Your whole body becomes upset and begins to react. Your eyes water with sympathy. Your lungs and vocal chords produce a cry for help from anyone nearby. Your feet dance about in a panic wondering where they can carry you. Your heart begins to beat faster to supply extra oxygen to all of the parts, and your glands begin to supply adrenaline to encourage them all.
At no point in that time do the parts of your body take time to argue over who’s fault it was that the damage was done. Instead, they all stop what they are doing and take part in the rescue effort.
On the biological scale of things, your body could probably do without that one small insignificant thumb – I mean, you do have two of them… isn’t one redundant? - but no matter how little the part is; the body would not function the same without it.
The same applies to any other part of the body. If a toe or an ear, a nose or a tongue feel pain, then the rest share in its grief. Can you imagine how things would be if the body of Christ worked together as closely as that?
In 1st Corinthians, Paul gives us this analogy of the church and I would like us to take a few moments to explore it this morning. “So it is with Christ” Paul says, “we were all baptized by one spirit into the body.” We as individuals are parts of that body, and just as our physical bodies require many parts to function properly we as a church need all the parts to make us whole.
THE BODY: MANY PARTS
The more doctors study our bodies, the more complex they seem to be. In every body, there are hundreds of organs and glands; there are millions of cells, billions of molecules and trillions of atoms. Even more amazing, all these parts work together, and (at least when you are younger) rarely complain or disagree with each other.
Paul tells us that the body of Christ is like our physical bodies in this way. It is very complex. There are millions of parts, and every one works in its own area, at its own task. As parts of Christ's body, together, we follow the desires of Christ, the head of the body, to do the work He appoints and instructs us to do.
As a part of Christ's church, his body, we each have a place. He has a plan for us that will keep the whole body functioning as an effective unit. We are an important part of God’s plan. Paul tells us that each of us has a task to fulfill and even gives us a list of some of them in 12:28: apostles, prophets, teachers, workers of miracles, healers; helpers, administrators, and those who speak in tongues. He then goes on to tell us that none of us can be all of these things at once, but that through love we are bound together in Christ to become a unit.
I wonder if we could translate these parts of the body into modern occupations, since our society is built on the same “body” principle. Verse 28 then might read: Preachers, analysts and weather people, teachers, accountants, lawyers, engineers and designers, doctors, nurses, social workers, politicians, managers, translators and poets.
There are many kinds of jobs, and all of them are important. The position of deacon in the church might seem more prominent than the cook in the kitchen, but in reality, the cook doing their job for God is just as important as the pastor.
In March of 1981, President Reagan was shot by John Hinckley, Jr., and was hospitalized for several weeks. Even though Reagan was the United States’ chief executive, in reality, his absence had very little impact on the country. On the other hand, a garbage collectors strike in Philadelphia not only had the city in a literal mess, the pile of decaying trash quickly became a health hazard. A three-week nationwide strike would have paralyzed the country.
So I ask you, who is more important - the President of the United States or the garbage collectors?
THE BODY: WORKING TOGETHER
Can you imagine if your right hand suddenly wanted to go one way and your left hand wanted to go the other? What if both decided to do it without first checking with your brain to see if it was OK? It would look a bit like a Three Stooges rerun. There would be chaos!
Everyone who claims to be a part of the body of Christ has a task to do. That means that your first responsibility should be to find out what that task is. You might be surprised to learn that your friends and even your Pastor cannot tell you what it is you are supposed to be doing. Everyone can help and make suggestions, of course, but in the end, it is God himself who has chosen that task for you, and only you can find out what it is and go and do it.
The pastor should not have to ask the question; “are you effective in performing the task God requires of you to make the body function.” because you should already be asking yourself that question.
Those who know me know that I was once a reluctant Salvation Army Officer. God knew, however, that Salvation Army Officership was the right thing for me at that time. Even though I denied the call for years, God continued to show me this was the way I should go. In some ways, my denial of the call was almost an acknowledgement that the call was real. Even entering The Salvation Army’s Training College, I still questioned whether I was really called to do this or not.
But God persevered and eventually he convinced me that, not only was Officership the place I should serve him, it was the best thing that could happen to me personally as well. At that point in my life, and in history, he had chosen for me to function as a part of his body by being a Salvation Army Officer – in Montreal, Prince Rupert, Prince George and Chatham.
In hind sight, I’m glad He persevered. Sometimes he chooses a function for us that seems undesirable. Some are called to missionary service, or to martyrdom – it’s not always easy. But the ignoble purposes are just as important as the noble ones. I mean, who runs up to their Mom and Dad when they are little and tell them, I want to grow up to be a waste disposal technician? If they did, their parents would probably be shocked and dismayed – yet keep in mind the importance of that job.
After years of service with The Salvation Army, I began to realize that not only was it a service to those who I had the privilege of ministering to, it was a point of growth for me also. It stretched me in ways that I needed to be stretched. When we begin to fit into the place God has for us, and do it gladly, we also discover the rewards God intends for us in fulfilling his will.
We also begin to see the bigger picture of how the talents he has given us find a synergy with others. That is the way God created us to be, as a healthy parts of a functioning body working together in His service.
THE BODY: MAKING IT WHOLE
Yet, that’s not the way his body exists today. The body of Christ in this world is sick… riddled with a virus called “sin”, and the "great physician" has had to perform major surgery on the body at great personal cost to eradicate that virus. He has grafted us gentiles into the body in a way we were not originally intended to be. He reaches out to you and to me and invites us to be a part of the body in exactly the place we best fit.
Some parts of the body have grown lazy and withered away. Others have become obese, gorging on things that are appealing, but are far from healthy. Still others, feeling the need to keep the body moving are stressed beyond their ability to function properly and are ready to break. Still others have found a balance and are doing their utmost best to serve God in the place He desires them to be.
If you cut off your finger and separate it from the rest of the body, it is still technically part of your body, but what good is it? All it can do is lie there and testify that somewhere out there is a body that’s missing a finger! To really be a part of the body, the finger has to join in fellowship with all the other parts.
Again, if you don’t exercise your body, it begins to stiffen and atrophy and eventually, parts will begin to shut down.
Jesus does not want us to be an infirm church in a hospital ward denomination. He has built us to be an athletic church and run the race of life; to reach the goal; to soar on wings as eagles; following the instructions of Christ, who is the head of the body, and our nervous system, helping us to communicate with each other, and work together. And as a healthy, functioning body, we will see amazing things accomplished in His name. Ignore his plan will not only be fatal to the church, but to us individually as well.
CHALLENGE
The challenge for us right now is to ask ourselves are we fulfilling that task that God has planned for us?
Within your church programs there are likely to always be holes; places where there should be people doing the task God has appointed. There may even be some positions filled by the wrong people – people who were good enough to take on the task simply because it needed to be done, but God intended them to be used somewhere else.
God intends everyone to find the place he has set aside for them. And every person has a place. Isn’t it encouraging to know that God has a plan for your life not only to be saved, but to be a part of something bigger – a part of his family, an active part of His living, breathing body.
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