THE ART OF BODY BUILDING
Jesus is not here…in the flesh. His body is not here but his Spirit is here. We read in John 16 that Jesus had to go away; he had to return to his Father in heaven, so that his Spirit could come, so that his very person, the essence of his being could be with every believer everywhere in the world. Through the work of his Spirit, his body can be found in and through the people known as the Church.
We have been given the task of building the body with the help of the Spirit. But with body building come certain dangers. As with the Corinthian Church, the church today can easily focus on certain areas while ignoring others.
Consider the art of bodybuilding itself. Many years ago on “The Merv Griffin Show,” the main guest was a bodybuilder. During the interview, Merv asked, “Why do you develop those particular muscles?” The body builder simply stepped forward and flexed a series of well-defined muscles from chest to calf. The audience applauded.
“What do you use all those muscles for?” Merv asked. Again, the muscular specimen flexed, and his biceps and triceps sprouted to impressive proportions.
“But what do you use those muscles for?” Merv persisted. The body builder was bewildered. He didn’t have an answer other than to continue flexing.
What strikes me as odd is that of all the people sitting here today, no one looks like that. There is no practical purpose to building enormous muscle mass except for looks. And most people are grossed out by how it looks. While physical fitness is important, exercising the mind, exercising your spirit, and exercising your serve are equally important to having a balanced body, a body that is healthy and useful.
This is the thrust of Paul’s teaching to a church that built up certain muscles but neglected other body parts. Here in our passage today we learn what makes us part of the body and why every part counts to bring glory to Jesus.
1. How you became part of the body
How did you become part of the body of Christ? Quite simply, when you believed in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and allowed him to claim his rightful place as Lord of your life. This is really no simple thing. But when you believed you were joined through the baptism of the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ. We symbolize this great event through the water baptism Jesus commands us to receive.
We are Mennonites and by no means Pentecostal. So when we speak of the baptism of the Holy Spirit some of us grow a little suspicious. Is this some ecstatic, lose-control-of-your-body kind of experience? We don’t adhere to that. But Paul does speak of Spirit baptism right here in Corinthians. He says:
“For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body – whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free – and we were all given the one Spirit to drink” (13).
You were baptized in the Holy Spirit and given a gift or gifts of a spiritual nature at the time of your conversion. The word “baptized” in this context has a double meaning. It is in one sense ‘being initiated into’ and in another ‘being overwhelmed by.’ The Greeks at that time spoke of a sunken ship as being baptized. That ship was not merely initiated into water; it was thoroughly overwhelmed by water. Not only was the ship under water, the water was inside the ship. What Paul wants us to understand then is that the Holy Spirit is in us and we are in the Holy Spirit. We are surrounded, overwhelmed and indwelt by the Spirit who comes from Christ. Through this Spirit we are made part of something much larger than our individual selves, we are made part of the body of Christ.
Martin Lloyd-Jones, a well known Reformed preacher, asked his congregation a question along these lines. He said, “I want to talk to you today about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. You may call it what you want, but I want to know, have you experienced the fullness of the Spirit?...I know that all of you would want to say to my question about the Holy Spirit, ‘Well, we got it all at conversion; there’s no need for any more experience.’” (And we Mennonites would say ‘amen’ if we were able to). But then Lloyd-Jones said, “Well, I have only one other question to ask you. If you got it all at conversion, where in God’s name is it?”
When we did our gift survey at Men’s Retreat, we did another test beforehand. Its intent was to show us our starting point in terms of ministry. The short answer for me was that I had wisdom and commitment but was lacking power. And many of us are lacking power, the power of the Holy Spirit. We are apt to lean on our own resources and forget that the body needs the Holy Spirit to give us power and energy to use our gifts. It is the Spirit too who makes the body one.
2. Why we need all the parts
M. Night Shyamalan’s movie, The Lady in the Water, featured some pretty odd characters. There was a doctor who turned his back on his practice and lived as a caretaker; there was a movie critic who was always wrong; and there was a man who spent all day exercising one arm. In a surreal way it was a collage of people using the wrong gifts. But it was the man who exercised one arm that struck me. He was the picture of a man who emphasized one part of his body to the detriment of the rest.
“Now the body is not made up of one part,” Paul says, “but of many” (v. 14). Then he goes on to amputate body parts as a lesson of how appendages cannot detach themselves as if they were unnecessary. Is the ear jealous of the eye? Is the foot jealous of the hand? If your eye was on the end of your nose could better smell what you were looking at? He concludes this metaphor saying, “But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body” (18-19).
One wonders at the wisdom of our surgeons who deem it necessary to remove the useless parts of the body. Why did God give us an appendix? Why did God give us gall bladders and tonsils if they just get infected and need to be removed? Is there something we don’t know about those body parts?
If we ranked our body parts as to their importance and threw away the parts we didn’t deem as worthy, our bodies would look mutilated. The fact is those parts we don’t know what to do with are still there for a reason. God put them there.
So what is Paul getting at with this metaphor? He means to say there are no insignificant members of the body. If we think this way of ourselves or others within the church it is due to a faulty understanding of what church work is. Many understand the work of the church to be the three hours Sunday morning we gather together to learn from the word and fellowship over coffee. As this concept goes, it is the people who lead these meetings who have the important gifts. They keep everything in order and speak, pray or sing publicly so that others can follow. The rest of the people in Church look at them and say, “That is the work of the church. I can’t do any of those things, therefore, I really have no part to play in the church.”
No, this is only a small part of the work of the church. In reality, ushering, singing, teaching a class and preaching are necessary, but so are the witnesses of God’s truth who go out to be salt and light in their work places and neighborhoods. The majority of the work of the church is this: healing the broken-hearted, helping the poor, delivering people from the lies they live with, encouraging the fearful, anxious and depressed, and showing them Jesus through it all. That is what the body of Christ has come into the world to do – to preach the good news – use words if necessary.
So you can’t sing. The church is more than singing. It is not cloistered in these walls. If you think it is, then it is time to tear down the walls and release the church. Each of us is a part of it. All of us together are the body of Jesus to the world.
3. When your body hurts
Paul means for us to take the metaphor of the body quite literally. He explains this in two ways: one, the body has parts that seem unmentionable; and two, the hurts and joys are to be felt throughout the body, as if it were a literal body.
Paul said, “…those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment” (22-24).
A doctor once approached a preacher and said, “You may be interested to know that there is a certain part of your body that is absolutely essential to you as a preacher. You probably do not even think about it when you are preaching, and yet without it you could not do the work you are doing. Do you know what it is?” The preacher wondered if it was the tongue or the brain. “No,” the doctor replied, “It’s your big toe. Did you know that if you didn’t have a great toe on each foot you could not even stand up to preach? It is the toe that has the ability to sense when your body begins to lean, or shift, or get out of balance, or fall, and it immediately strengthens you so that you can stand up and speak.”
The Church needs its big toes. Without them I cannot speak. You may think your gift is insignificant or modest compared to others. But without people who have the gift of helps, who set up chairs, serve food, fix what’s broken, change projector bulbs and enjoy doing it, we would limp along as a cripple without these essential helps.
What about when the big toe gets stubbed? Or a finger gets jammed in the door? The whole body feels it. Paul said, “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it” (26).
When one of our people suffers it is supposed to be natural for all of us to feel some of that hurt. Just like a literal body is hampered by a toothache and cannot sleep, all of us will be bothered when a brother or sister discovers they have cancer. Part of our body is hurting and we feel it.
Recently a local business closed its doors and some of our people were out of work as a result. Though I have not had opportunity to express it, this has been on my thoughts and in my prayers for quite some time. These families are struggling with what to do next. So I have prayed along with many of you for the care of these families.
You know what’s funny though? If one of us is honored we may have a harder time feeling the joy. Last week Elaine Peters graduated from Seminary and we celebrated with her. But my joy for her was tainted with envy because I want to be done my masters too.
We hurt together; we rejoice together. We are the body of Christ and each part is a part of us.
4. Your part is important
You may have wondered where you fit into this great body (it is great because it is Christ’s body), especially considering the awesome list of gifts mentioned here. Is your listed here? Don’t worry, let me encourage you, as Paul said firstly: “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it” (27).
The list of gifts here includes apostles, prophets, teachers, miracle people, healers, helpers, leaders, tongue speakers and tongue interpreters. Is this list exhaustive? No! Is this list ranked in order of importance? No, the first three are called first, second and third as a historical reference to how the church is planted. But the rest are in a different order than other lists and tongues is mentioned last because of the next argument coming up. Does everyone have to have all the gifts, especially tongues? No, as Paul says, not everyone has all the gifts as implied by his rhetorical questions…Are all apostles…Do all speak in tongues?
But if these gifts are not ranked according to importance, what does Paul mean by “…eagerly desire the greater gifts”?
First of all, this is addressed to the entire church. Your gifts are chosen for you by the Holy Spirit, and no matter what you desire you are not going to get anything unless the Holy Spirit has chosen it for you. However, we as a congregation of believers are to desire the higher gifts and seek to have them visible among us. What are the higher gifts? Those that serve the common good of the body and bless the community. We will see more of that when we study the next passage and the most excellent way will be revealed to us.
If the Holy Spirit has chosen your gift, it fits you and it is important. Whatever it is, this body needs you. And the body encompasses much more than this fellowship here, it is worldwide, it is beautiful and it speaks many languages. Wherever you go in the world, the body of Christ can be experienced by those who belong to it. And your part is important.
Body building is the art of creating muscle as one would sculpt a piece of limestone or marble. It might be pretty (ugh) to look at but it’s not much good. On the contrary, if while we work with our bodies and put in some good sweat and effort, the muscle will develop where we need it and it will be very useful.
This is much like growing a good lawn. I am told that if you want to get rid of the weeds don’t go and pluck out the thousands of roots. Rather grow the grass, nurture it, feed it and water it and the good grass will choke out the weeds.
Look at the church. We see weaknesses and wonder what to do to make our body stronger. There is one answer. Don’t worry about the weaknesses. Concentrate on the strengths and do the work that the Holy Spirit directs us to. And let other churches do what God tells them to do. We don’t have to do it all. As we work, we will develop our strength and that which is weak will be strengthened too.
The art of body building is above all in the hands of the Holy Spirit. Let’s not forget that we need his power to do anything of significance in God’s kingdom. Ask the Holy Spirit to develop your gift in you and to give you courage to add it to the building up of Christ’s body.
AMEN
