Ligaments Of The Church

Ligaments of the Church

Ephesians 4:12-16

Have you ever thought much about ligaments? You know what I am talking about, right? Ligaments. …the things that hold our skeletal system together. Ligaments are the super strong fibrous connectors that hold our bones together. They are different from tendons which are the super strong fibrous connections that hold our muscles to our skeleton.

I want to talk a few minutes about ligaments. Here is a picture of the ligaments in your shoulder – …do you see how they wrap themselves around the bones and actually hold the shoulder together?

Here is a picture of the ligaments in your elbow …can you see how they hold the joint together? …without the ligaments, our skeleton would fall a part …it would just be a collection of bones. Ligaments are important!!

Literally, ligaments are holding all of us together right now!

Now these ligaments are designed to hold us together tightly, but sometimes, if we put too much stress on our ligaments, they can stretch …or tear …or become detached ….and when that happens, the joints these ligaments hold together become loose and the joints begin to wear …and soon, the joint fails ….all because the ligament …that little part that holds it all together …is damaged.

You know, the Apostle Paul loved the church. He gave his life to the cause of building up the church. And as he struggled to communicate to people how wonderful the church was, he often turned to the human body as an analogy to help people understand.

The human body is made up of many parts, just like the church. It’s good for the parts to be different, to specialize. Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 12. In verses 12-24, Paul emphasizes the importance of all the different functions particular body parts perform and how they are all necessary to make a whole body. …and in Romans 12:8, Paul reminds us of the importance of all the parts working together ….doing their special function in harmony with one another so that the whole body functions well.

And just like our bodies have a head …the body that is the church has a head also …Christ is the head of the church. And in this morning’s text Paul extends the body analogy even further, mentioning the ligaments of our bodies to help us see the importance of connections in the church.

This morning we turn again to one of the most amazing pictures of the church, Ephesians 4:12-16. We are actually picking this passage up in the middle of one of the Apostle Paul’s loooooong sentences, so don’t think you have missed something, just listen to the beautiful picture Paul gives of us how the body of Christ should work.

Today we look at the ligaments of the church, the relationships that hold the church together.

12 “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. 14 We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. 15 But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.”

This is the Word of God for us, the People of God ….Thanks be to God!

My friends, …when we connect to Christ the head, …He connects us with one another.

And that’s a message that our lonely world needs to hear! The Pandemic of the past two years has brought the plight of our society to light in an ‘in-your-face’ way …we live in a desperately disconnected world!

…A world where the ligaments that are needed to hold society together are being stretched! …our connections are flopping around, and people are getting hurt.

Sociologist, Robert Putnam, in his best-selling book “Bowling Alone,” talks about something he calls ‘social capital’. Social Capital is that core connectedness that societies need to flourish. …It is the relationships that hold us together.

Let me give you a picture of social capital. When Christie and I were much younger, we lived in a small town of about 500 people. Severn was known as a clannish town. People said they could feel people watching them as they came into town. Well, one afternoon, Christie fell into and through the glass storm door of our house while I was at work. She cut the artery in her right arm and ended up with a shard of glass lodged in her arm. In the days before cell phones, she grabbed a towel, wrapped her arm that was spirting blood and went across the street to our neighbor who was a retired nurse. The nurse’s husband called 911 and then came to work to get me. When I got to their house, literally within 5 minutes, our next door neighbors had already been contacted and were taking care of our children, Christie was packaged ready for transport to the hospital …but there was no ambulance. So, our neighbors loaded us into their car and drove us the 20 miles to the nearest hospital. We hadn’t been there long before my dad showed up to support us, and early the next morning, our pastor came by to see how Christie was doing.