RELATIONSHIPS: THE BEAUTY OF CHURCH
THEME: THE VARIETY OF RELATIONSHIPS MAKES THE CHURCH BEAUTIFUL.
TEXT: 1 Cor. 12:14-18
I am a member of the local Rotary Club. I enjoy going to the club meetings on Tuesday at Bradley’s. The people are great and the food is good too. It is a nice break to go be with some people from the community that I do not typically see. It is my way of staying connected to Waynesboro outside of the congregation. But I have to admit that sometimes I wonder why I am a member of the club. I pay $45 dollars a month to eat with this group. In my mind I think that I am a member because it helps me serve the community and it helps me to be a community person. But every so often I wonder, can I not find a cheaper way to do this. My mind thinks “that $45 dollars would really be nice to spend on something else.” So I wonder occasionally why I remain a member of the club. There are some really good big results like I am helping people to defeat polio and I am helping people across the world to have clean drinking water. I am all for these projects. But sometimes I need some practical reasons why I am doing something. I need something that I can feel and taste in the present, not just in the future.
Maybe you have felt this way about church before? Why do you continue to bother coming to church? Every Sunday rounds around and you get up and come. Some of us come out of habit. We could not picture ourselves doing anything but this. Some of us come out of obligation. Some of us would prefer not to come, but we do because of family. Maybe we have all asked this question before in our lives. Why bother coming to church every week? We know of the big reasons. You know, you need to come to go to heaven. We all want this. We all want to go to heaven. But if you are like me, you need some here and now answers to why come to church. You can think of a lot of different ways to spend a Sunday, especially if you have worked all week and this is your only time off. Why get all the children dressed up and bring them to church? Why fight with the husband who wants you to stay home? Why spend your time on Sunday morning listening to some message that the preacher thinks you need and sing some songs that you do not even know and certainly would never let any hear you sing outside of the church building. So have you ever asked yourself why bother coming to church. Why be part of a church family?
You know the big reason—heaven. But some everyday reasons would be great to know. One of the biggest, practical, everyday reasons for me is relationships. The church offers relationships of such a variety that no other human group that I know of develops. Relations are so important in life. Think about life without relationships; it is impossible. We need relationships. In fact God created us for relationship. In the beginning God made man with woman, but this was not good. God had a relationship throughout eternity with the Son and the Holy Spirit. Man is made in the image of God and hence made for relationships. And the church was made to provide meaningful and various relationships. In the church you meet more than people your age. You meet people who are older than you, younger than you, poorer than you, and richer than you. You meet people with different interests, hobbies, likes and dislikes. You just never know who you will meet in a church building. You can expand your horizons; you can grow in knowledge, and learn how to fix a car. There is no end to the different types of relationships that you will make in church. I have learned how to invest because of church, I have learned how to golf because of church, and I have learned how to be a father better because of church. Church is more than just waiting to go to heaven. The church provides needed skills to learn to handle life successfully. The church is here to help us through life.
Paul talks about how the church is different and the same. Everyone is united and everyone is different. Everyone adds some special to the congregation. We are all equal in Christ and we are all special to Christ. Through the diversity in the church, we can develop different relationships with different people. In 1 Corinthians 12:14-18 “For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body," it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body," it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired.” We need this diversity. We need single mothers, older men, younger ladies. We need families with no kids and families with tons of kids. We need retired couples, working couples, and odd couples. All of this diversity adds to the beauty of the church. This is why the foot of the church should not be discouraged. The ear should rejoice that he is different from the eyes and not try to become an eye. Imagine if everyone in the congregation were eyes, no one could hear anything. Imagine if the congregation were all older people, there would be no joy of seeing the children. Imagine if everyone was younger with kids, there would be no wisdom and no help being grandparents. Everyone has a part of the congregation. We need each other.
While I was at Brown Trail, I did not know anyone in the vicinity of 500 miles. I had no family there or friends at first. But there was this one couple that chooses to befriend me. It was an older couple. Most of the younger couples had children and were involved in their kid’s events. This is the beauty of the church. The older couple had some children but they lived a long ways off. The couple had some extra time and love to share with others. I needed someone to help me out. I needed some family and the older couple needed some family. God is putting people who need each other together in the church. The church is beautiful when we have people who are different working together.
Paul talks about this diverse nature of the church. He says in Ephesians 3:28-29 “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. Only in the church do these groups come together. Never in the world do older people who are not family and younger people spend time together. In the world people who are poor spent time with the rich. A slave would never get to know a master and a master become friends with a slave. The church breaks down the barriers of class, racial, group, and type. We are one in Christ. And we have the blessing of knowing people who are different from us. We help those who need help and people help us.
This is what Paul is instructing in Titus 2:2-6 “Older men are to be temperate, dignified, sensible, sound in faith, in love, in perseverance. Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips, nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be dishonored. Likewise urge the young men to be sensible.” This is the great thing about the church. These relationships make our world better. We learn life skills. Young men have older men teaching them. Young women have older women teaching them. Most weeks do not go by without Charity mentioning something that Mrs. Lorene has taught her, in fact, when my mother-in-law comes to visit, she always learns something from Lorene also. I have learned so much from older men and young men.
I still remember the day that Daniel Roark invited me over to his house after services. Daniel was a new Christian. He became a Christian after watching a “Truth and Love” T.V. programmed produced by Brown Trail. Ever since then, he was a dedicated Christian. His wife passed away some time back and he sat in the back row of Church. I sat with him one day and we became friends. On that Sunday he had me over for lunch and he said he wanted to teach me something. After lunch he pulled out all this paper work. I said, “I am going to teach you how to invest.” On that Sunday he told me about investing and how to read shocks and mutual funds, taxes, Roth IRA’s and 401Ks. He was a retired shock broker and was very well off. He asked me how much I had to invest and I said 100 dollars. So on the next Wednesday night, he passed me a check for 400 dollars and said, “You need five hundred to get into this fund now, you take your money and my money and do the paper work like I showed you. I did, and since then I have been investing and planning my retirement. Only in the church does this happen for free, someone who is knowledge about something help someone else. Older people invest in younger people. And all of us together help each other out in life.
So this week, I need you to invest in someone else. Who in this congregation needs some of your skills? Most times someone older would love to show you his talents and someone younger needs you to help them. Whatever the talent is? Sometimes we only develop relationships with our families in this congregation. Or we only spend significant time with people of like mind. This week look around the congregation and find someone to get to know better. Approach someone about spending sometime with them or ask them to help you on a project. You can ask for advice on some issues that this person knows well. But this week, make it a point to talk with someone new about something you do not know very well.
Several centuries ago in a mountain village in Europe, a wealthy nobleman wondered what legacy he should leave to his townspeople. He made a good decision. He decided to build them a church. No one was permitted to see the plans or the inside of the church until it was finished. At its grand opening, the people gathered and marveled at the beauty of the new church. Everything had been thought of and included. It was a masterpiece. But then someone said, "Wait a minute! Where are the lamps? It is really quite dark in here. How will the church be lighted?" The nobleman pointed to some brackets in the walls, and then he gave each family a lamp, which they were to bring with them each time they came to worship. "Each time you are here’" the nobleman said, "the place where you are seated will be lighted. Each time you are not here, that place will be dark. This is to remind you that whenever you fail to come to church, some part of God’s house will be dark"
