Scripture Lesson: I Corinthians 12:12-27

Sermon Transcript for September 21, 2008

By Pastor Bob Coleman

Last week Pastor Andy helped to open this series of the bridge—A Bridge to God, he shared with us. How we are to be in touch with and how God is in touch with us, that God constructs the bridge over which we can cross to be in His presence. Today we are going to talk about the “Bridge to People”; next week the “Bridge to Community”, following that the “Bridge to the World”. So as we look at the very same bridge that was used last week as the bridge to God, we are going to look at the meaning of how we are to cross it and be in the presence of people. And we say, “Well, we are with people all the time.” Well Flo, in her wonderful heart and her desire to do it right, kind of missed the boat. She thought that structure alone was all you need, a good committee. And fellowship was at the top of her list, at least.

We are going to talk about something that is a bit more serious then Coffee Hour, structure, or fellowship, or any task force. Because as we step up on to this bridge, we are going to need to understand that God has constructed this bridge also. And as we heard last week, these three nails represented the body of Christ, for He becomes the bridge for which we can cross to be in God’s presence. And we understood them to be the nails that remind us of His crucifixion.

We want to give other meanings to those nails this morning and we want to do so by way of a Scripture that will be very familiar to you. It’s one that gives us a physical connection. Something that we can all identify with because we all have a body, all of us have a body from which we can live and have our being and do our journeys through this world as we walk and talk and experience life. Paul, in I Corinthians, Chapter 12, has a passage that gives us that very physical identification. This metaphor of the human body becomes the body of the church of Jesus Christ. He starts in Verse 12, “The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body: So it is with Christ. 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. Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 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. And then to skip down to verse 25 of the same passage Paul continues, and let me read that together, “As it is, there are many parts, but one body. So that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.

This morning I saw in the Indianapolis Star a message of the body that we don’t want. A family that you can see the name, it’s printed and public, that what binds them together is crime. Among the father and the mother and the children and siblings and in-laws or out-laws in this case, there are over 50 convictions in that one family. When we talk about when we are with the body of Christ is to get rid of those convictions. We would call this sin in our setting.

And so that is why the first nail that we are looking at this morning, is the nail of forgiveness. Before we can cross this bridge from one side to another, before we can be a part of other peoples’ lives, before we can be a family together as the body of Christ, God provides a bridge over which we need to see that forgiveness is the first step. As last week, Pastor Andy shared that Christ was the bridge through His life, His death, and His resurrection, forgiveness is the first nail. And as that nail is there at the first step upon the bridge, we must first hold on to it. And we might think we would hold on to it forever, but you can see what would happen if I literally held on to this nail. I would never get any farther. There must be a moment then when we are able to let go and actually not only receive forgiveness, but to forgive also.

Jesus tells the story in Matthew 18 that’s a very difficult story. Jesus seems at moments to not mince words with us and tells us parables and stories to hit home in a way that is uncomfortable to us. It’s a setting where in Verse 21 Peter asks Jesus, “Lord, how many times should I have to forgive my brother who sins against me? Seven time?” Peter was probably trying to be generous. Jesus responds. Do you know what He said? “Not just seven times, but seventy times seven”, which is to be, in understanding of that number, without end, an infinity number. He goes on, Jesus says, that “Therefore the Kingdom of Heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As they began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents (that would be a large amount in our day also) was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold into debt.” (What if we responded to credit card debt and mortgage debt today in that way? Our jails would be filled to overflowing, right? If every one who could not pay back a debt was jailed.) “So the servant fell on his knees before the master and said, ‘Be patient with me. I will pay everything back.’ The servant’s master took pity on him. canceled the debt and let him go.” (Now that’s forgiveness.) “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred dollars. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay me back what you owe me!’ His fellow servant fell on his knees and said, ‘Be patient with me and I will pay you back.’” (Where did you just here that?) “But he refused. Instead he went off and had the man thrown in prison until he could pay the debt.” (Never have understood that—throw people in prison to pay back a debt when they can’t earn when they are in prison. But that was the rule of that day too.) “When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened. And then the master called the servant in and said, ‘You wicked servant. I cancelled all of your debts because you begged to me. Shouldn’t you at least have had the same equal mercy with your fellow servant as I had with you?’ In anger his master turned him over to the jailors to be tortured until he should pay back all he owed. And then Jesus says to those who will listen, ‘This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we use trespasses. Other congregations use debt; some use sin. They are all synonymous. They are something that you owe someone for something. The sin that God forgives through Jesus Christ is the nail of forgiveness. But as we hold on to it and ask for mercy and beg to God to forgive us for our sins, we are also to let go and forgive those who have sinned against us. We cannot make any progress cross this bridge to truly be with other people until we understand that principle. It will hold us back forever because from that step forward we will be stuck until we come to the middle of the bridge. If we can let go and forgive people, then we can come to the nail of acceptance.

What does it mean to be accepted? It means when others say, “Hey, come on in. You are part of us. We want you here.” A church should always be an accepting place. We may not always be an accepting place. But Paul, supported what we heard earlier in the quote from Matthew when Jesus said this, when in Galatians Paul said in Verse 3, “For all of you who were baptized into Christ and clothed yourselves with Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek”. (By the way, that was the way of dividing the whole world into two camps. You were either Jew or you were those Greek gentiles.) “You were neither slave nor free; male nor female, for you were all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise.”

Just these past two weeks I’ve been receiving e-mails from a couple that I have known for almost thirty years. And the question that they are struggling with is very central to this very piece. They believe that they are forgiven and I think that in some cases they have actually forgiven others. But they can’t get beyond this acceptance stage because they read some of the things that Jesus said and it strikes still at their heart as if their low self-esteem has been brought back into their lives. That’s the word they used. And I said, “Well, of course, what Jesus does for us is to recognize that we all have something needful beyond who we are, and that is to be accepted by God, to be accepted by Jesus Christ, to be accepted by the church which is, as we heard, the body of Christ.”
So if we make our way across this bridge, what we need to understand is that this is not a law that says we are to accept people, this is an action of grace. The law, the government says we are to hire people without discrimination against their race or their gender or their age or several other categories. That’s a good law, I think, overall. Applied, well, what it says is, you should hire a person because they are qualified for what you want them to do. They have the skill, the experience, or at least the energy and the desire to learn and to move forward. And you hired them because you want them to be your employee not because you ruled them out in others because of the way they look or where thy come from or what they believe.

Now the church is somewhat exempt from that because I think the rule that could be applied is—we will hire only those who are without sin. That would leave a pretty small staff. It would be down to Andy and I. And, honestly, I’ve had a little concern about Andy. The hiring practices of the church, whether we formally hire someone by paying them or engage them into a ministry of the church as most of us are as volunteers. That hiring practice is to say, “We accept you because you are forgiven. We accept you as part of the body of Christ not because you have earned your right to be here, not because you fit some kind of a profile, but because all of the rest of us don’t have any claim to be here but we are here anyway. We are accepted also.

What a powerful statement that is to this couple who feels a sense of low self-esteem even though they know God has forgiven them in Jesus Christ. They feel that sense of grace but they can’t get beyond it because they feel these barriers are put up for them in their situation. Actually, it would make sense for us to have one barrier to hiring people—if they had not been forgiven and if they will not accept others. If they do not believe in the body of Jesus Christ and believe they are a part, it would not make sense for them or anyone to be here.

But yet, still, Jesus comes back in so many of His stories that are recorded in the Gospels tell us that He said, “The world’s rules of exclusion are not my rules. I will heal lepers; I will call a tax collector; I will have a terrorist on my team. That’s what a zealot was in those days. I will have even a traitor among my inner circle. That’s who Judas was. And I will converse with women of low reputation and even those who are the lowest of the lowest, Samaritans. I’ll not only talk to them but I’ll see their hearts for where they are.

Jesus time and again says this acceptance piece was meant to be as open as possible so that all will feel presence of God’s love. So how can we be a part of the body of Christ if we exclude the hands or the feet or the eye or the ear? Every part has its right and joyful position for it is Christ who is the head.

But Jesus goes on and gives us another story that is not a comfortable one. And this is where, even though Flo meant well, some churches have gone that way; have been exclusionary and high-handed in a sense of, “Well, we’ll decide who can come here or not.” It happens in Matthew 22 where he tells the parable of the wedding banquet. And the setting is that this gentleman wants to have a wedding and he’s going to throw a big party. And who does he invite? First the people he knows, the connected people, the inside people, the wealthy people because he, too, is wealthy. And he sends out all of these wonderfully engraved invitations. In that day it meant he sent a servant who went and personally asked them to come to this banquet on this day for this occasion. And guess what happened? “Oh, I can’t come. I’ve got to pull my oxen out of the ditch.” Or “I can’t come; I’ve got this other engagement.” And “Oh, I can’t come…” because of all kinds of reasons. The invitation was a high invitation. And Jesus goes on and says, “The master became so irate about it he told his servants, ‘Well if those people won’t come, you go out and you go to the streets and you bring in everybody you can.’ So the servants went out in the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad. And the wedding hall was filled with guests.”

So Jesus was saying, “If the church will not accept people, I’ll keep going out in my Spirit and let the world know that everyone is accepted in my love.” Now, if they can’t ask for and receive forgiveness, if they can’t give forgiveness, if they won’t accept the acceptance of God, what can God do about that? That’s when we exclude ourselves. God’s Kingdom is non-exclusive. To get across this bridge, we must recognize that we are to be forgiven, accepted, and finally connected.
Well, it’s one thing for us to be forgiven, it’s another to think and act as we are being welcoming and accepting of people coming, but it’s also to recognize that as we started out with the Scripture this morning, that we are connected as we are a whole body, as our whole physical body is connected. Any one who has lost an arm or a limb or lost an eye, sight or hearing, knows that sense of vacancy and the vacuum that creates. The metaphor that Jesus uses and that Paul uses to help us understand the body is to say clearly, without question, we are like the dry bones that Ezekiel talks about in the Old Testament. We are the dry bones disconnected in this world until we recognize that it is Christ’s blood and His body and His connection for us that brings us together and makes us whole.
This church, no different than any other church in the Christian faith, is to feel that sense of oneness with each other. It doesn’t always mean that you are pals and good buddies, but you know that everyone else has a right to be here, has a call to be here, and everyone that is yet to come in through these doors has a right to be here and are called to be here because we believe clearly that we are connected through Jesus Christ. And it is through Jesus Christ that we are the body of Christ.

So before we go out in the community next week or we talk about the world in two weeks, we’ve got to be the church here. And we have to understand that acceptance and that forgiveness and the connection is the gift that Jesus Christ gives us.

So we’ve made our way across. And by the way, this is a journey of the bridge that you may have to cross daily. It’s not just a one time experience. For all of us daily need to be forgiven; none of us are perfect. And all of us may well need to re-understand and re-accept our acceptance and to be connected anew. But whether we have made it across and got to the other side yet, here’s where we are. And we design the church, in particular, to be this way. So that there is a place that we consider that is holy-it’s the sanctuary. And there is an altar that reminds us that God is present. The bridge is to bring us again, full circle, into the presence of God because we are in the presence of God’s people. We cannot be anything else but that and to be the church of Jesus Christ. We must be the body connected living in a sense of ongoing forgiveness, acceptance, and the power of being together that we can do much more together than we can do separate. And we’ll do even greater beyond that because we are together in the power and the Spirit of Christ our Lord.

So three questions for you this morning to ponder in a moment of silence. I want you to think, “Have I fully accepted God’s forgiveness in my life through Jesus Christ? Tied with that, “Are you blocking forgiveness for someone else? Have you accepted Christ in to your life? And “Do you accept others in the same openness or do you build barriers between yourselves and others?” “Do you feel that you are a Christian on your own just struggling to get by?” Or “Do you feel a sense of power by being with other Christians, brothers and sisters together?”

Think about any one or all three. But don’t stop with just this morning. When you go out the door, don’t leave these questions behind. Ponder them further because that’s the bridge that we must cross to be with God’s name. Let’s be in silence together. “May we each take a step of forgiveness, acceptance and connection across the bridge that you have provided for us. Amen.”

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