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Our Church
First Presbyterian Church, Toccoa
105 East Tugalo Street - Map, Directions Toccoa, GA 30577 Phone: (706) 886-3680 Email: · About Our Church  From the Pastor
1st Corinthians 12:12-31
When I think of the church at Corinth, I am reminded of how dysfunctional our society of today is---------of all of the worldliness and pride that is so evident within creation in our time. Corinth, because of its’ location, was an important crossroads between both east and west, and north and south. Financial prosperity could be found there, but Corinth was known even better for its wickedness, and corruption. If you wanted to insult someone in that time, there were no stronger words you could use than to say, “you live like a Corinthian.” The church at Corinth was filled with various groups and sects from the surrounding society, each of whom claimed allegiances to their own teachers, and there was an unhealthy righteous indignation between these groups. The church was not simply divided---------it was nearly hopelessly fractured by this arrogant pride, by power, by immorality-------people found themselves divided by their diversity of beliefs, and divided by their inability to live together responsibly as followers of Jesus Christ.
It is to this dysfunction that Paul sat down to write, and the first four chapters of Paul’s 1st letter to Corinth lead us to understand the tremendous depth of these problems. Our text for today is a small portion of Paul’s prescription for healing the brokenness of the church. And what it teaches is that to be the church, as God wills the church to be, depends upon the followers of Christ accepting diversity NOT as something divisive and weakening, but as something powerful and positive------to seek unity (NOT UNIFORMITY) in the midst of diversity.” As an example, Paul likens the church to the human body, which only functions well, when all the diverse parts are working well together----the body has “many different parts, but one Spirit; there are many things to be done, but one Lord.”
\Examined carefully, the human body is miraculous--------beyond our understanding, though modern science is unlocking some of the secrets. When functioning properly, each and every complex part of the system, takes and fulfills its’ own specific place, and the parts work together for the purpose for which it was created. When even the smallest part does not work properly, the whole body is affected.
In thinking about this text this week, there was a new clarity that came to me concerning what Paul was saying. I am convinced that Paul’s example was even more powerful than he was able to fully recognize------that human illnesses very often begin when one system in the body begins to fight another. Cancer begins when a single cell mutates and no longer works with the rest of the body, but against it. And this is true of other illnesses as well. We had a friend in the church in Sumter, SC who had Multiple Sclerosis, and though I don’t understand the hows and whys of it all I do know this-----that the doctors were treating her with bee stings so that the illness that was fighting inwardly against her body, would have to fight outwardly against the bee venom. The human body is a miraculous thing--------------when it functions as it should.
As Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, the body he was writing to was tragically close to being terminally ill. But just as the body can be broken, Paul is offering the body of the church at Corinth, the hope of healing---------and he does so by taking his image of the church as a (body), and creating a theological image---that the church is not only a living body, but it is THE living body of Christ. No one can fully explain what was going on in Paul’s mind concerning his theology of the church, but the basic points are clear, ---that the love of God revealed through Jesus incarnation, continues to be revealed beyond the death of Christ in the new incarnation, Christ’s re-birth in a new living, and breathing body-------the church. If we understand the church in this manner, then we can understand the importance of each and every part of the body--------there are no small and insignificant parts. For us, to be part of the body of the living Christ is both an awesome responsibility, AND a tremendous joy. In such thinking, it is not our own wills and desires that are important---------it is not our own individual place within the body, NO matter how important or unimportant a part we think we play. It is accepting that diversity is a good thing (for there would be no body if we were all hearts, or brains, or muscles)-----you see, we humans keep thinking in terms of uniformity (for it is true that we are much more comfortable with people who are just like us, who think like us, act like us, and believe just like us. What Paul is teaching us is that uniformity is not the goal-------but unity. The truth is, that the church (though it is a place of healing for us) is not about us at all, but about the living Christ who can bring hope to the hopeless, healing to the broken, renewal to the hurting-----------our lives (and therefore the church) should be about how we find and fulfill our individual and specific place within Christ’s incarnate body-----how we find the plan of God for our lives------how we hear and follow God. And so this leads me to the question, “What kind of Body are we?”
This was the issue that Paul was teaching the people at Corinth, and though he was much more pastoral in his epistle than I am in my words that follow, in blunt terms he was telling them, “Wake up----you are the body of Christ, but your demonstration of Christ to the world is appalling and inexcusable. The world is suffering, and what you show them is just more of the same------- hopelessness, anger, hostility, and brokenness-------it is what they see in the world; it is what they see also in the church. They are confused by what it means to be Christian--------, BUT the real tragedy is that they are learning that lesson from those who claim that they are Christian, from those who proclaim they have been saved by the grace of God, from those who claim they have been transformed by belief in Jesus Christ. Wake up!”
And so I ask you again, “What Kind of Body (of Christ) are we, really? Perhaps a few questions might help us flesh out the answer! In our living as the body of Christ, do we reveal the wondrous love, compassion, and reverence that comes from knowing Christ? Do we draw others with different gifts into the living body so that the body of Christ might more fully live as God intended? Do we commit ourselves to taking our own place within the body? Do we, as the church, function to the glory of God, or to the sensibilities of human beings?
These are questions beyond my ability to answer, but be it known, as individuals, and as the church, we answer them every day by actively taking our own specific place in the body as God has designed, or by passively sitting on the sidelines.
Over 20 years ago, in my first pastorate, my presbytery committee assignment was the Committee on Ministry. It is the most exciting presbytery committee to serve on, and I was honored to be given the opportunity to serve there. At the same time it is probably one of the most frustrating committees to serve on, because the COM (the committee on ministry) is often the first responder to problems within a church. And some of what I learned in those four years still haunts me today. I learned that there are great things going on in the church of Jesus Christ, but I also learned that church people can be unbelievably cruel. I would never have thought it possible, that those who believe in a loving God, could be so hateful, spiteful, and unforgiving. Sometimes the anger was directed at the minister, and sometimes it was directed from the minister----sometimes it was aimed at the session, and sometimes caused by the session. In so many of the circumstances it was more than just minor disagreements, but had become septic. And in some of those churches, the sickness became terminal. Those churches (and please remember that the church is the people) suffered. But the real tragedy for those churches didn’t end with those suffering people on the inside of the building---oh, no-------it bled out into the streets and into the community. In so many of the cases, (as I remember them) instead of people accepting the diversity around them, it was the diversity of belief that caused the problem---you know (my ideas are better than yours, my faith stronger than yours, my beliefs more orthodox than yours) and when this happened, people took up sides. And once people took up sides, well. . . . .it wasn’t a pretty sight. Often in those confrontations, in terms of what Paul is teaching about the body, it became clear that many people seemed to think that they were the brain of the body which should decide the course, instead of the heart that pumped life into the body, or the muscles and tendons that got the job done, or the nerves that carried the message to the muscles. And when one part suffers, the whole body suffers.
It is a strange thought, but perhaps one of the reasons why God allows such bad things to happen in the world, for it seems that it takes a catastrophe to get us to stop and wake up. We have seen it in so many times, where in the midst of such things as terrorist strikes, tsunamis, tornadoes, earthquakes, and the like, we are awakened to the terrible need cause by the suffering. And, in these extreme times and circumstances we lay down our personal desires and wishes, and work together.
One final warning-------one of the great problems in the church of today is that we assume that by looking at the gifts God has given an individual, that we can determine where they fit within the body of Christ. But God doesn’t work that way--------sometimes God does call the gifted as we would see------------but just as often, I think, God gifts those whom God calls.
And so, what kind of body are we in the name of Jesus Christ? Tragic as it may sound, the answer I think, depends not on how we see and define ourselves, but how those who have not yet seen the Christ in our community, view us.
God has gifted us greatly, and whatever potential we have met, is nothing compared to the potential that has not yet been fulfilled in us.
And so I pray, “May we who claim Christ as our salvation and our Lord, seek and find our own place within the living body of Christ, seeing and understanding the beauty of diversity, and coming together in unity, that the work of Christ might truly be ours.”
AMEN!
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