Our Savior’s Ev. Lutheran Church

Epiphany 3C

January 25, 2004

I Corinthians 12

Pastor Christa von Zychlin

One Body, Lots of Differences

You know, it would be so nice if growing as a church community would be a clear pathway:  Follow steps A,B, and C, and your church will grow, individuals will love each other and see eye to eye, and there will never, ever be a budget deficit.

God, being infinitely wiser than us, has allowed  it to develop  otherwise. 

Human relationships are infinitely complex, sometimes wonderfully so, sometimes NOT so wonderfully.

There’s a Christian speaker named Grady Nutt who explains how every southern town in America, no matter how small, has 3 Baptist churches.  1)There’s always a First Baptist Church, whether it’s called that or not,  At some point some folks would get upset about the  priorities, or the budget, or the preacher,  and they would haul off to form 

2)Bible Baptist Church. 

And then a few years later, some folks would get to feeling that SOMETHING is being overlooked -- then THEY would break off , catch up with a few disgruntled characters from the original First Baptist church, in order to start a 3^rd) Calvary Baptist Church. 

So there you have a little Southern town of maybe 1,000 folks, and three Baptist churches.  No outreach programs, no prison ministries, little interaction with poor people, no interest in the problems of the city folks 50 miles away, no youth programs, because none of those three churches had enough youth for a program, wildly fluctuating levels of hymn singing, because musicians were all volunteer, and there was no money in any of their 3 budgets to spend on anything besides paying the preacher and maintaining, each one, their own church buildings.

St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians, is dealing with the church in Corinth where a young church has been growing to the point where it, has enough different kinds of people in it that there are some major frictions going on.  This doesn’t happen in a family size church, where it’s the same good people who have been doing the same good churchy things for many years in a row.  It’s what happens when a church is dynamic, and new people with different priorities and different way that they were called into becoming Christ followers, now have to figure out how to be the church together:

One group in Corinth says, “Our tradition goes back to Peter, after all, he walked and talked with Jesus himself, so keeping the tradition of Peter is what we’re all about.”

Another group in Corinth puts themselves under the leadership of a polished preacher & teacher named Apollos.  Now Apollos had big city style, man the pews were full when it was his turn to speak, and some people, when they left the meetings after they’d heard Apollos preach, they’d think or even say, now that’s church!  This Paul character doesn’t have any clarity or vision to him at all.

Then others in Corinth and in our world today, say no, the real church is where mission is happening where people are being sent out to teach about Jesus as the Savior of the world to people who haven’t even heard it before. 

And others say, no the real church is where people are caring for each other, where members know they will  always be visited, and always be cared for.  No matter what they’ve done, or how long it’s been since they’ve come to church, they will be welcomed, loved, and prayed with.  That’s being Jesus’ hands & feet, in the body of Christ.

And others say, that’s being too internally focused!  Those are naval gazers.  For Pete’s sake.  The church is the only organization that exists primarily for people outside of itself!  The real church is where the people… not just the pastors & staff but the people… are actually feeding the hungry with bagged groceries at the food pantry and constructing real wood & stone shelters for the poor in Alaska , in Appalachia & in inner city  Milwuakee.

And no, says someone else, the real church is where people are coming up to the altar and rededicating their lives to Christ,

Yes, chimes in another, the real church is where lives are being transformed.

The real church, says one contemporary voice, is where we can sing praise songs with an electric guitar

And another says no, the real church is where a Bach chorale is sung with passion and reverence.

Here in this church we’ve been having some mostly very healthy but not easy discussions about priorities as we prepare for an annual meeting and a balanced budget for 2004..  We want to do all of those things that we’ve just heard, and sometimes it seems to some of us that OUR priorities are being pushed aside.

Let’s listen to the words of St. Paul in First Corinthians 12 today, shall we?  Let’s put ourselves under the authority of God’s Word.  In his letter,  St. Paul compares the church to a human body.

Now each of us has a body & we know exactly what St. Paul is talking about, don’t we?

In order to pick up your glass of orange juice in the morning, it’s not enough, is it, to have a strong arms and four fingers…. Without an opposable thumb you are lost.

And you’d better not even think about walking if your inner ear is messed up.  Any of you experience that before?  It’s not enough to have working legs and feet – you need that inner balance of the inner ear to tell you which way is up.  You need that hidden, obscure part of your body.

Few of us get up in the morning and thank God for our thumbs, inner ears, collar bones, or white blood cells.

In fact,

We don’t even know the names of a tenth of the body parts that are needed to keep us alive… but we surely need them, and whoa unto us if they get broke, damaged, or God forbid, parts of our bodies, fingers nose or elbows would decide what the hey, I’m not needed or appreciated here, so off I go & join that body, across the street.

In 1 Corinthians 12, St. Paul says, you know what you guys?  You need one another.  You may not know one tenth of the members of Our Savior’s, but you are all cells of the same body of Jesus Christ, called to love a broken world. 

What an amazing calling we have been privileged to receive, to learn to be Christ’s body together, in real ways, with real people, in real disagreements over priorities, with real love that reaches out to really change real people’s lives.   Amen.

Office (262) 367-6000 • Fax (262) 367-6769

Email us:  info@oursaviorshartland.org

Some information on these pages is presented as Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files.  Adobe provides a free program; Adobe Reader; for reading PDF files.  Use the following link to Adobe's site to download Adobe Reader.

Site Last Updated On:  Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Contact the webmaster

Copyright © 2002 Our Savior's Evangelical Lutheran Church, ELCA All Rights Reserved. Our s Hartland Wisconsin ELCA