Driving back from our All Church Retreat last night, I thought about the Talent Show I had just left.  Traditionally children, as young as four, share jokes with the congregation.  One of our younger children delivered her “Knock Knock” joke and the congregation burst into hearty applause. You should have seen her face light up with joy and confidence as she raced off the stage to her parents, who were, of course, capturing the moment on their phones. What a beautiful illustration of the Body a Christ, a room full of people rooting for each other. How blessed to be in a space where everyone is rooting for you!      

Years ago, when my Lewis was a Boy Scout, we went on a three night 50 mile canoe trip.  The nice part of camping out of a canoe is finding you don’t need to carry your camping gear on your back! The teenage quartermaster planned out our meals, safety gear, and kitchen supplies and we divided the gear among the canoes.  All day, we paddled down the Buffalo River and set up camp along a high grassy bank. As the scouts began preparing our first big common meal, we discovered that in well-intended efforts to optimize kitchen gear we brought one set of cooking stoves and a different set of regulators. Lacking a 5 oz part to connect our stoves to the fuel, our stoves did not work. We  made due with campfires, detaching the stove’s grates for improvised stove tops, but every meal took twice as long!  Every part matters!

Christ (Paul says Christ- not the church or the body of Christ but Christ) 

Christ is just like the human body—a body is a unit and has many parts; 

and all the parts of the body are one body, even though there are many. 

God has placed each one of the parts in the body just like God wanted.  

So do not say to each other, “I don’t need you,”  

You are the body of Christ and parts of each other. ( 1 Cor. 12)

We need each other. We need the church. Right now, we are enduring an epidemic of Christians saying to each other- “I don’t need you.” I disagree with you and I am better off without you.  We are in an age of disagreement and disaffiliation, wherein  many spiritual people are quietly saying to a divided or monochromatic church- “I do not need this”.  Paul preaches you need each other- you have something to offer each other!  

Sometimes we mistakenly think the early church had its stuff together, and if we could just get back to that purer age, when everybody loved Jesus, one another and neighbors, then God’s kin-dom would break out.  The church body that Paul names as “Christ” was a mess. Maybe the church is always a mess. Maybe incarnational or real-life Christianity is about God in the messiness?  In 1 Corinthians 1, right after greetings and opening prayers, Paul names the mess: “Siblings, Chloe’s people gave me some information about you, that you’re fighting with each other. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ: I beg you don’t be divided into rival groups, start getting along… You are so divided up, thank God I did not baptize any of you!” (adapted 1 Cor. 1) When the beloved founding pastor says “thank God I did not baptize any of you” so as to add to divisions, that is a burn or an edgy hyperbole. How can Paul call the church “Christ” or “Christ’s Body” when it  is such a mess?  Grace is bigger than us! 

Many come to church asking “what can I get out of church” or maybe “do these people reinforce what I already believe?”. The problem is that Christianity asks a different question:  “what can I offer God, my faith community and our world?” Asking “what can I get from church” starts us off on the wrong path. To be spiritual whole you  offer yourself to the church. Each and every part of Christ Body matters. Each part has something unique and beautiful to offer from “our toenails to our crown”  

Last week, Rev. Stephen Bryant, former Publisher of The Upper Room, shared  how “Prayer means opening and offering ourselves to God.”  Shephen shared how  each of us brings our relationship with God to the church community. “Our gift to one another is sharing our relationship with God with each other.”  We need each other’s journeys, stories and lives to be “Christ” together.   It is easy to see places of division, but so often seen Christ in church members like you.  I once went to see a widow, whose husband had died unexpectedly that morning and when I walked into the living room two widows from her Sunday School class were there with her. When one part hurts, they all hurt. These widows knew insights and struggles I  did not know. We need each other.   

J Paul Sampley writes in The New Interpreter’s Bible “Christian unity, neither requires uniformity nor encourages it. For Christians to be different is not only acceptable, but it is expected, and even necessary for the richness, wholeness and vigor of the body believers. Unity lies in being one with Christ in the body together with one another . We might do well to pay attention to Paul’s insistence…that all members are equally important to the well-being of the body of Christ. No one is less important. No one brings less to the body of Christ.”

John Wesley argued that “there is no such thing as a solitary Christian”- this is a bit of an offensive sermon in that Wesley goes after the monostatic tradition that separates itself from others to find inner holiness. Wesley argues that you cannot do Christianity by yourself, instead Christianity is a communal activity. Wesley’s Fourth Discourse on the Sermon on the Mount deconstructs our age of siloed individualistic spirituality!  Wesley teaches that we can not practice the Fruits of the Spirit or live into the Beatitudes apart from community- we need each other to practice love, maintain joy, express generosity, make peace, be humble, exercise patience, demonstrate kindness, do good, remain faithful, convey gentleness, and reveal self-control? How can we be the “light to the world” alone?. (Mt. 5 or Gal 5.)  

But hear the really good news- you have something to offer even when you are a mess. You are part of “Christ” even when you are blowing it, because Christ’s mercy and love are boundless!  You do not have to get it right for me to still need you.  This is a radical communal idea rooted in grace so much greater than any of us.  

American Christianity right now is so divided about what we believe about the Bible. It struck me this week that Paul is writing to a church that does not yet have a New Testament. Paul says to a Bible-less church you have everything you need- right now in community, you have the presence of Christ!  Jesus was and is bigger than the Bible, we so often fight over.  We need each other.  “There are different spiritual gifts but One Spirit; there are different ministries and the same Lord; and there are different activities but the same God who produces all of them. God has given the Spirit to each person for everyone’s good.”  She has a word of wisdom. He has knowledge. They have faith. He brings healing. She moves mountains. They speak prophetically.  She can tell faith from fakery.  They have the gifts of tongues. He can put into words the deep emotion they brought. All these things are produced by the one and same Spirit. And the Spirit gives what God wants to each person. You have all you need- but you need to be part of the Body to have it! 

Oh that we might stop thinking, “I don’t you”, but instead with Love strive to be a room where everybody is rooting for each other. Amen