What It Really Means to be the Church? (Part 2)
What It Really Means to be the Church (Part 2)
1 Corinthians 12:4-7
When I was in grade school, we had a game that was beloved by the students and despised by all the playground supervisors. We called the game, “One, Two, Three…Blacktop!” One of the cool things about the game was that it was never announced ahead of time. You’d just see it start to take shape. One group of people would slowly gather on one side of the playground, across the blacktop. The other group would do the same on the other side of the blacktop. To a casual observer, nothing was happening. Then, someone would call out, “One, Two, Three…Blacktop!” Everyone on each side would start running. The goal was to make it to the other side. Alternatively, the goal was to keep anyone from making it past you. This led to pure carnage—with bodies strewn across the blacktop on both sides. If the blacktop was icy, you got the added thrill of people sliding on top of one another across the pavement.
If the playground supervisors didn’t stop the game right away, everyone would gather up on their new side: “One, Two, Three…Blacktop!.” I’m not suggesting we should teach this game in Lake Bluff. Here’s what I will tell you, though. The breakthrough strategy for winning turned out to be joining hands with your teammates. We were stronger, better, even braver, together. (Besides, in sixth grade, how else were you going to get to hold a girl’s hand? How else were you going to find out that apparently, she really wanted to hold yours?)
That’s actually quite a life lesson—that we are stronger, better, even braver, together than we would be on our own. In a culture that worships rugged individuals, it takes time to learn this lesson. I bet you’ve learned it anyway, though: when a friend went with you for a tough medical appointment; when you finally opened up about your struggles and someone listened; when you had a project to do and you could have done it on your own but you asked a friend for help.
What we are facing this morning is our second pass at exploring the question, “What does it really mean to be the church?” I suggested last week that Paul and the members of the earliest churches guessed that what they were doing as the church was getting ready for the world to radically change. They were wrong. However, while they were waiting for that change to happen, whether they realized it or not, they were being the church. They were being a caring community who sought to ground that care in following what Christ lived and taught. They encouraged each other to live a life of faith and they practiced that life together. As a result, the church spread beyond Jerusalem. In the earliest church, people joined hands and survived.
We are better together, stronger together, braver together. Christ did not call us to disappear on some vision quest into the wilderness. Christ did not suggest that we give up on the world and bide our time until we got to a better place. Christ called us to love our neighbor and love our enemies. Christ called us to feed the hungry and care for the sick and clothe the naked and visit those in prison. Before Christ called us to do any of those things, Christ called his disciples and his followers into community. Why? Because the work of living our faith is way too difficult to do on our own.
So, why do we need each other? Why are we stronger together? The answer is really straightforward. Everyone has different talents and gifts and abilities. Everyone is tuned a little differently and notices different things and adds different points to a discussion. Even if someone is really talented at one thing, chances are that they are equally untalented at a variety of other things. When our community is diverse, we are more likely to see what we otherwise would miss. When our community is diverse, someone will be able to do something that the rest of us can’t do. Maybe someone will be able to sing the solo that you’d never, ever want to hear me sing!
Some gifts will be super concrete. We have a member who told me that he hates meetings but loves projects. He’s been doing project after project ever since. (Thank God!) We have a set of members who are really good at finances. They love numbers! I hate numbers! (Thank God for those people!) We have folks who are really talented teachers who throw themselves wholeheartedly into teaching our children. Decades from now they will be remembered by those children! We have folks who make casseroles for P.A.D.S. to feed the homeless—really good casseroles that get rave reviews from people who are really hungry!
Other people in our community have gifts that are a bit less concrete. For me, there are people who are encouragers. It could be as simple as smiling at a point in my sermon or chuckling at my attempt at humor. (Thank you!) It’s the person at coffee hour, following up with someone who had a tough “concern” during “joys and concerns.” It’s the people who write notes, notes that acknowledge how well someone sang during worship or that recognize how hard someone is working as a parent, or that just say, “Hey…it’s so good to have you as part of the church family.”
When a community of faith is alive and well, people move from “What’s in this for me,” to “How can I help?” They see a need and think, “We should do something about this,” rather than “Someone should do something about this.” They put their head together with other people who care and pool their gifts. They do something rather than nothing. What’s done is never perfect but always matters. Really, if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of this miraculous process, it is sometimes jaw-droppingly powerful. We are stronger, better, braver and…more faithful…when we are together. Instead of waiting for someone else to do something, we get things done. Period. Stop.
Paul agrees. Every one of these gifts is a gift of the Spirit. These gifts come in every shape and size and form. These gifts have one thing in common; they are given by God. When these gifts are used to help others, God’s presence comes to life. As Jesus suggested, we catch a glimpse of the Kingdom of God.
Here are three challenges. First, it’s really tempting to think that our gifts are ours to keep, to monetize, to withhold. Intellectually, we know they are God’s gifts that we are meant to share but it is a challenge to not think, “I helped them. Now, they owe me!” Second, what we have to share isn’t always what people want. They may want a quick fix and we may be offering something more “long haul.” Sometimes, the other people who want to help may want to offer their gifts, not mine. We have to figure out how to do helpful things together. The together part is always more cumbersome. None of this is easy…
The “together” part depends on trust. Trust can get violated in so many ways. Broken pastors destroy trust by violating financial boundaries, by gossiping, by taking advantage of someone sexually, and on and on. These people do terrible harm to their communities, harm that makes trust feel foolish and impossible. Broken members violate trust in similar dramatic ways, too. However, some of the damage done in the community is less dramatic and more chronic; we fail to appreciate each other; we fall in love with conflict rather than with loving one another, holding our grudges and withholding forgiveness; we think our job is to judge whether someone in need is “worthy” and withhold grace.
Finally, sharing our gifts won’t work if we fail to be an open community. While we are busy trying to follow Jesus, who went out of his way to welcome and care for the overlooked and the ignored,, we somehow conclude that it is our job to decide who is in and who is out. Only the people who don’t make us uncomfortable can belong. Only the people who don’t challenge us can belong. Only the people who will keep doing what we’ve been doing can belong. When people have to earn our acceptance in order to be part of the community, we are no longer a church. Instead, we are just a bunch of people pretending we are God.
The boundary around the church cannot be a stone wall. People need to be able to move freely into the circle. People also need to be able to move out of the circle. No one is required to be here. No one is excluded from being here. What brings someone into the circle is the desire to worship together with the hope of discerning God’s presence in the world. Within that circle, we encourage each other to rise to the enormous challenge of allowing faith to shape how we live. And on our best days, we join hands and join forces and share our gifts and our resources to do the work that God is calling us to do: to feed; to care; to visit; to help; to do something rather than nothing. The more open the circle is, the more likely it is that we will be able to do that work. The more we join hands and do that work, the more we will discover the joy of life together.
Here’s the truth. People are acutely aware of the terrible things that have happened in churches. As if sexual abuse and financial fraud and power mongering weren’t bad enough, we’ve had to watch as churches covered those things up and sometimes attacked the victims. People aren’t that anxious to trust the church any more…for good reasons.
At the same time, we are also in a cultural moment of huge division and mistrust. Culturally, people are intentionally choosing to disconnect from community in all its forms, not just the church. This has left people feeling isolated and alone and lonely. The long term damage of that kind of isolation to individuals is prevelant: a rising tide of anxiety and depression and addiction. The long term damage of that isolation to our communities is obvious, too. Without sharing life in community, we can easily villify others and believe any conspiracy theory because we no longer have any real relationship to anyone who is different or thinks differently.
When no one trusts the church and no one really trusts each other in our culture, what does it mean to be the church? We have to live differently. When in the culture, people who disagree with one another aren’t talking to one another, we need to be a place where we talk. When in the culture people don’t trust each other, we have to be a trusting community. When people feel no one cares, we have to show them by our actions that we do. Our actions won’t be perfect but they will be something, not nothing. And then, having done something, we need invite others in, “Hey, imagine what we could do, together?”
We don’t have to be the hierarchical, judgmental, other worldly church. We don’t have to be divided and hateful like our culture. We could be a sign of hope and an invitation to change…together. The choice is ours to make.