Paul writes in Colossians 1:19-20: “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in [Jesus], and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”
God’s vision, God’s great plan for humanity, is to bring reconciliation – and we don’t have to look far to see how desperately we need it. We see it on a national and international scale on our TV screens every single day. We see a need for reconciliation even closer to home within and between communities in our own town; within and between families, neighbours, work colleagues, churches. And we see it right here in this church family. We are a divided and broken people, and yet God’s desire is that we are united in Christ Jesus. It’s the reason Jesus came to die on a Roman cross. It’s the reason the Holy Spirit was sent: to bring together every one of us with God, and with each another.
This was Paul’s message to the church in Corinth, and it’s Paul’s message to us today. Let’s listen to 1 Corinthians 12:12-29:
Reading: 1 Corinthians 12:12-29
The Church at Corinth was an ugly place. 1 Corinthians 1 speaks of how some church members pledged their allegiance to one church leader, whilst others pledged their allegiance to another. “I follow Paul,” some cried. “I follow Apollos,” others cried, “I follow Cephas cries another group.” 1 Corinthians 3 speaks of jealousy, quarrelling and divisions. 1 Corinthians 4 speaks of arrogance, pride and boasting. 1 Corinthians 5 speaks of sexual immorality and an unwillingness for the church to deal with the sinner. 1 Corinthians 9 tells of the church’s tendency to be backbiters of Paul’s ministry. 1 Corinthians 11 tells of how the church couldn’t even share in the meal of communion without people falling out and refusing to share their food. 1 Corinthians 12 talks about the conflict between those who had the gift of tongues and those with other gifts. And 1 Corinthians 15 and 16 talk about heresies creeping into church life – bad teaching about the resurrection that went to the core of their faith.
Let’s be honest, if we lived in Corinth – many of us wouldn't bother going to this church
Now I don’t believe we are on a par with the church in Corinth, BUT we do need to be aware of the differences among us that threaten to become divisions. We have people who are well to do, and we have people who are hard up. We have people who speak in tongues, and people who most definitely don’t want to speak in tongues. We have old people, and young people. We’ve got conservative evangelical Christians, and we’ve got liberal Christians, and we’ve got plenty of people who haven’t got the foggiest what those terms mean. We’ve got ex-Anglicans, ex-Baptists, ex-Methodists, ex-Pentecostals and even a few born-and-bred Reformed folk like me. We’ve got infant baptists and adult baptists; people who think we should marry same sex couples and people who think we most definitely shouldn’t. We have people who are very vocal and get their voice heard, and we have people who are much quieter who don’t. We’ve got people who like to pray out loud, and people who like to pray silently. We’ve got people who like new worship songs, and people who like traditional hymns. We’ve got people who love the drums and people who hate the drums. We’ve got people who think we need to be doing more to reach young families, and people who think we should be doing more for the elderly. We’ve got people who think the crèche area enables parents of babies and toddlers to engage in worship, and we’ve got people who think it’s a real distraction to worship.
It is natural that we think differently. God has made each and every one of us unique. But these differences must not become divisions. We need to see the bigger picture – that’s what Paul calls the Corinthians to, and that’s what he calls us to.
It’s a bit like Google Maps on the internet. If you type in the church’s address, you can see a photo of the church from Wickersley Road. You can see the cars in the car park, the cross on top, the Ducklings nursery sign – all up close. If you use your mouse to zoom out, you then see a satellite image of the church from above – its roof and grounds and some of its immediate neighbours, and then if you zoom out again you get a good chunk of Herringthorpe, then Rotherham, then South Yorkshire, then Northern England, then Britain, then Europe and then eventually the whole world as it looks from space. Now when we focus solely on our opinions, on what we want, we’re zoomed all the way in to our front door – and God calls us to step back, to zoom out, to see the bigger picture.
What is the bigger picture of the church?
Paul says, “Christ is like a single body, which has many parts; it is still one body, even though it is made up of different parts. In the same way, all of us, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether slaves or free, have been baptized into the one body by the same Spirit, and we have all been given the one Spirit to drink.”
The divisions of the world – Jew or Gentile, slave or free, rich or poor, black or white, evangelical or liberal, Pentecostal or Congregationalist – those kinds of labels do not matter to God, and they shouldn’t matter to us. Yes, we are different. But we needn’t be divided. We are united, we are reconciled to one another through Jesus – through our baptism, in His body and by His Spirit.
Let’s look at each of these in turn:
1. We are united through our baptism – we have UNITY IN BELIEF
What this means is: we are united by what we believe, by the faith we profess.
Like most people, I think I’m right and that everyone else is either wrong or not quite as right as me. I believe that all people should believe what I believe – but the truth is we are never going to agree on everything even within small groups of like-minded people. But we can, and indeed we must, be united on the core doctrines of our faith – what baptism is all about.
In baptism, we proclaim our faith in one God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We recognise our fallenness and brokenness, our need for God. And we give thanks that Jesus has died and risen again to overcome that brokenness and to bring us back into relationship with God and with one another. We profess our desire to keep turning from evil, and to keep following Jesus every day. Those are our core beliefs in a nutshell and we need to be united in them... holding slightly looser the secondary issues that divide.
2. We are united in Jesus’ body – we have UNITY IN COMMUNITY
The great Victorian preacher Charles Spurgeon asked his congregation one day "Have you ever read [the great poem] the Ancient Mariner?" Spurgeon went on, "I dare say you thought it one of the strangest imaginations ever put together, especially that part where…the corpses of dead men rise up to man the ship - dead men pulling the rope; dead men steering; dead men spreading the sails. I thought what a strange idea that was. But do you know that I have lived to see it done! I have gone into churches; I have seen a dead man in the pulpit; a dead man as a deacon [or elder]; a dead man handing the plate; and dead men sitting to hear...”
It’s true that individual congregations can be dead, but we shouldn’t be. We need to be reminded that we are baptised into the one global church which is alive – not only in a human sense, but as the living embodiment of Jesus himself in the world today. There’s a real challenge there for us: we might be a vibrant church at a human level, with a good congregation and lots going on. We might see ourselves as being alive, but are we really? Are we really the living embodiment of Jesus? There is a difference between running church services and community activities (going through the motions of church life) – and actually being the embodiment of Jesus in the world today.
We need to catch God’s glorious vision of who we are together as the church, and we need to catch God’s vision for the part that each of us is to play.
We talk of church ‘members’ and the word ‘member’ comes from the human body – the different limbs and body parts are its members. We use the word ‘dis-member’ when we want to talk of a part being cut off from the body. The truth is that each of us is a member of the church, the body of Christ.
A few years ago the cartoon dog Snoopy had his left leg broken. Apparently, hundreds of people wrote letters or sent sympathy cards to Snoopy and Snoopy himself philosophized about his plight one day while perched on top of his doghouse and looking at the huge white cast on his leg. "My body blames my foot for not being able to go places. My foot says it was my head’s fault, and my head blamed my eyes.... My eyes say my feet are clumsy, and my right foot says not to blame him for what my left foot did...." Snoopy looks out at his audience and confesses, "I don’t say anything because I don’t want to get involved."
When things go wrong in the church, it’s usually just the same as with Snoopy’s body. The foot is trying to say, ‘Because I’m not a hand I don’t belong’ and the eye is trying to say ‘Because you’re a hand, you don’t belong.’ But that’s nonsense – a hand can’t be replaced by an eye, a foot can’t replace a hand. Every different part of the human body has a different and equally important part to play. Every member of the body of Christ, every member of our local church family, is needed. Let’s not dis-member the church by letting differences become divisions. Instead, let’s play our role and let others play theirs.
One pastor said that his church was filled with willing members - 20% were willing to work, and 80% were willing to let them. It’s so sad when that’s true. As members of the body of Christ, we can be compared to pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. Each piece has protrusions and indentations. The protrusions represent our strengths - our God-given gifts and talents - and the indentations represent our weaknesses where we need others to help us. But the neat thing is that the pieces complement one another and produce a beautiful whole. Just as each piece of a puzzle is important, so each member of the body of Christ is important. Just as, when one piece is missing from the puzzle, its absence is very obvious and damages the picture, so also is the whole weakened when we are absent from the body of Christ.
Just as, when each piece of a puzzle is in place, any one piece is not conspicuous but blends in to form the whole picture, so it should be in the body of Christ.
We need unity in community – and such unity comes when we do what Paul asks of us in the next chapter – the famous love passage of 1 Corinthians 13. You and I need love, oceans of love – love that is patient and kind, love that keeps no record of wrongs, love that always protects, always trusts and always perseveres. What a revolution the world, and even our church, would see if we really loved like this. Without love, we are but a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal – we are Spurgeon’s church of the dead, going through the motions, but not embodying the living love and mercy and grace of Jesus in the world today. I implore you, I plead with you as your pastor: choose love, choose mercy, choose grace, choose to do God’s will (it’s God’s will to love!) and not your own.
3. We are united by the Holy Spirit – we have UNITY IN MISSION
The Holy Spirit is given for so many different reasons – to comfort, encourage, build up, inspire, and so on. But perhaps the top reason Jesus sent His Spirit was to empower us for mission. Just look at the book of Acts and what happens after the Holy Spirit comes at Pentecost: it’s all about God’s mission, Jesus’ mission, exploding across Jerusalem, Judea and to the ends of the earth.
We must let the Spirit unite us in God’s mission. Our local church vision statement is “To be a community centred on Jesus.” Our vision is God’s vision: it’s reconciliation – we long for people to be reconciled – brought back – to God, by centring their lives on Jesus. And therefore (since it’s all part and parcel) we long for them to be united with one another.
How do we go about that mission?
At one level, it’s by each of us being fruitful on our frontlines (the 6Ms – modelling godly character, moulding culture, being messengers of the gospel, etc from LICC's 'Fruitfulness on the Frontline' series) – and here our differences are a real blessing, enabling us to reach and serve different people. The same Spirit empowers all of us in this work.
At another level, it’s about what we do together as the church. I really struggled with one of my previous congregations because they were really keen to do outreach and run community events, but they never really wanted to mention Jesus. They were comfortable serving cups of tea, and running what were effectively secular youth activities, and putting on fun days and Christmas tree festivals – but they didn’t want to go deeper than that, as if they were ashamed of their faith. There was no unity in mission.
We need to think about why we do what we do. Do we just want to help the community, or do we want to help the community and lead them to Jesus? Do we just want to serve because we enjoy it, or because we enjoy it and we want to lead people to Jesus? If we cut out the leading people to Jesus bit, then we lose our unity in mission – and we will often end up with people falling out with each other and going off in different directions – because the main thing is not the main thing, everything is out of kilter as people seek different goals. But when we are united in our purpose, united in God’s work, we will have the strength to work through our differences and carry on serving for God’s sake. We will be bound together as we see God move and make a real difference to people’s lives.
We need to be united, recognising our shared baptism, body and Spirit.
Over the next year and beyond, we are going to be focussing on our vision – of being a community centred on Jesus, a community that loves God, loves one another and loves God's world. But for anything we do to be effective, we need unity – unity in belief, unity in community and unity in mission. And unity, like love, is a choice. We can choose to dis-member the body of Christ – one critical, gossiping word at a time. We can choose to damage and defame the church. We can choose to force our own personal agendas, and fail to see God’s agenda. We can choose to put up barriers and walls. We can choose to just go through the motions and be a church of the living dead.
Or, or we can choose life. We can choose love. We can choose mercy and grace. We can choose others’ needs before our own. We can choose God’s way, God’s calling, God’s life for us as His people. We can choose to be an answer to Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane – that we might be one so that the world will know we are His disciples.
What will it be? The choice is ours.
