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My friend, Leonard Sweet, is the
Professor of Evangelism at Drew Theological School in New
Jersey. Len is a visionary leader in the life of the church,
but sometimes not so good with the details. He lives in a
state with an auto inspection and, of course, he forgot to
get the car inspected. In fact, he forgot to take care of
the car! So he ended up being stopped by the highway patrol
for a routine on-the-spot inspection of his car and he was
given a citation...two points: “A bad body and a weak
horn.”
Now, honestly, Len has neither. He is
strikingly handsome with a powerful voice most preachers
would die for. But he says the citation about his car made
him think about the church.
How is
the Body? What is the quality of our life together,
our fellowship?
And
what about the Horn? How effective is our
proclamation of the Gospel?
And there is
no better place to look for a word from the Word than in the
letters to the Corinthians.
1. WHAT ABOUT THE
BODY?
St. Paul’s
favorite analogy for the church is that of “the Body of
Christ.” He uses it in almost every letter. First
Corinthians chapter 12 is one of the best known. The chapter
reads like an anatomical textbook or an organizational
manual, calling for all the various body parts working
together for the sake of the whole. He then shifts to a bit
of wit and sarcasm, using ribald humor to describe the
ridiculous image of a body turned upon itself:
If the foot says, “Well, since I’m not a
hand, I’m not part of the body.” Or just because the ear is
not an eye, is it any less a part of the body? If the whole
body were one big ol’ eyeball, where would the hearing be?
If the body were just an ear, how could it smell?
And the
Eugene Peterson translation of his concluding verse 27:
“But you are Christ’s body... that’s who you are. Never
forget it.”
So how’s the
body-building?
I guess I
have to begin with a confession. When I was in high school,
I was just a scrawny kid. So when I went to college, I
decided to do something good for myself. I signed up for a
class, “Body Building 101.” I went to the class. I did one
semester of weight lifting and exercises. I was determined
this was the course that was going to make a difference in
my life. It was great… for one semester. But when the class
was over, I found myself falling right back into the same
patterns as before—never made it to the gym, lost track of
my discipline. You see, I guess I didn’t realize that when I
signed up for Body Building, it was meant to be a course for
life. And building the body of Christ is a lifetime course,
a course that never ends, always in training, always
stretching and toning every muscle to be the body Christ
intends.
We usually
read First Corinthians chapter 13 at weddings, and it’s very
appropriate as it lifts up the pattern of self-giving and
sacrificial love. But when St. Paul wrote the letter, he
wasn’t writing about marriage. He was writing about the life
of the church. When you read chapters 12, 13 and 14
together, as they would have been in the original text
without chapter divisions or punctuation, you discover he
isn’t talking about husbands and wives. He is describing the
characteristics of life within the body:
Now you
are the body of Christ, and individually members of it. And
God has appointed in the church, apostles, prophets,
teachers, workers of miracles, healers, helpers,
administrators, speakers in various tongues...but earnestly
desire the higher gifts, and I will show you a still more
excellent way. If I speak with the tongues of men and angels
and have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging
cymbal...so abides faith, hope and love, but the greatest of
these is love.
...and the conclusion is actually in
14:1:
“Therefore, make love your aim.”
I love the Eugene
Peterson translation:
If I
speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but I don’t
love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I
speak God’s word with power, revealing all mysteries and
making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that
says to a mountain, “Jump!” and it jumps, but I don’t love,
I’m nothing.
Love
never gives up.
Love
cares more for others than for self.
Love
doesn’t strut,
doesn’t
have a swelled head,
doesn’t
force itself on others,
isn’t
always “me first,”
doesn’t
fly off the handle,
doesn’t
keep score of the sins of others,
doesn’t
revel when others grovel,
takes
pleasure in the flowering of truth,
puts up
with anything,
trusts
God always,
never
looks back, but keeps going to the end.
Love
never dies. So go after a life of love as if your life
depends on it — because it does.
That’s the
standard for body-building, the lifelong task of building
the body of Christ in love, as if our life depended on it,
because it does. All that we do in Wesley Groups and small
groups, study groups and book groups serves the purpose of
nurturing the spiritual life of the church, building the
body together.
Len Sweet
says he was ticketed for a “bad body,” and at this point in
our life together, let me ask: “How’s the Body—the quality
of our fellowship?”
2. AND HE WAS TICKETED FOR A BAD
HORN…WHAT ABOUT OUR PROCLAMATION?
The primary
task of the church is to witness to the strong name of Jesus
Christ—to make known the Gospel, to reach a dying world with
the word of life, to proclaim the Good News of God’s
salvation in Christ. John Ed Matheson is the pastor of one
of the fastest growing United Methodist churches in the
country, Frazier Memorial UMC in Montgomery, Alabama. John
Ed says:
The last
command of Jesus should be the first task of the Church: “Go
into all the world and preach the Gospel, making disciples
and baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit.”
Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. All too often,
the Church gets turned in on its own life, and what was
meant to be “body-building” for the sake of ministry and
mission becomes nothing more than narcissistic self-care,
like an egocentric weight-lifter who becomes so obsessed
with his physique that he actually begins to worship his own
body. We are not in the body-building business in order to
glorify ourselves or just so we can say, “Look what a great
body we’ve got.” We build the body for the sake of
mission, the sake of the proclamation of the Gospel.
In the early days of the
Methodist movement, we were marked by two characteristics:
-
the
nurture and care of small groups called “class
meetings,” where the first and primary question was
“How is it with your soul?”—the shared life as the
Body of Christ, and...
-
a passion
for sharing the Good News, the proclamation of the
Gospel across the frontier. The mission: “To spread
scriptural holiness and reform the continent.”
It’s the
balance between body building and bold proclamation. One
church historian says that in those early days of the
Methodist circuit rider on the American frontier, there was
a common saying about the weather. When it was really
miserable, people would say that the weather was so bad,
“nobody was out but the crows and the Methodist preachers!”
And it wasn’t just the preachers. Methodism was primarily a
lay movement of men and women carrying the Word of Christ to
a needy world, regardless of the weather and the storms of
life surrounding them.
Robin Lovin
is the former dean of the Perkins School of Theology in
Dallas. One time I heard him tell a story of the early days
of Methodism in Texas. Robin says that in 1860 there was a
fire that consumed a large share of the city of Dallas. In
an effort to discredit some of the Methodists because of
their fight against slavery, the fire was blamed on a
Methodist preacher who came to organize the slaves. He was
accused of encouraging them to set the fires for their
cause. If it’s true, it is certainly a questionable
strategy, but Dean Lovin asked:
When was the last time a Methodist in
Texas was blamed for setting a town on fire? When was the
last time Methodist outrage over racism set a city ablaze?
When was the last time the heat from a United Methodist
altar warmed the community with the flame of love and the
hope of life? When was the last time people looked in on our
life together and said, in the words of the Charles Wesley
hymn:
See how great a flame aspires
kindled by a spark of grace.
Jesus’ love the nations fires,
sets the kingdoms on a blaze.
Back then
they called it “a passion for souls,” evangelical zeal,
evangelistic witness. Call it what you will, where is the
desire to share the love of Christ with others, the power of
our witness?
This week I
was at the annual meeting of “The Gathering,” a group of
large church pastors from across the country who meet once a
year to share our successes and frustrations and to learn
from each other. The group met here with Bill a few years
ago, and I have to say, that gathering set a standard for
all the rest. They remember Birmingham with great warmth!
Whenever I am in a group like that, I have to say I am so
incredibly proud of this congregation. But no matter what we
have accomplished in witness and mission, the call of Christ
is always ahead of us, always calling us beyond ourselves
for the sake of the world, always moving us to do more in
building the body and proclaiming the Word.
The calling
of the church is not to maintain a membership, but to deploy
a mission force; not just to care for buildings, but to
build the body; not just to nurture a loving fellowship
within, but in nursing a broken world without in the love
and compassion of the Christ.
Well, Len’s
citation was for “a bad body and a weak horn.” It got his
attention, and it captures ours.
“For you are the Body of Christ, and
individually members of it...
therefore, live in love, as if your
life depended on it—because it does.” |
