DAILY SCRIPTURE READINGS

Mon.: Ps 19 & I Cor 12:12-31
Tues.: Luke 4:14-21 & I Cor 12:12-31
Wed.: Neh 8:1-10 & I Cor 12:12-31
Thurs.: Ps 71:1-6 & Jer 1:1-10
Fri.: Luke 4:21-30 & Jer 1:1-10
Sat.: I Cor 13 & Jer 1:1-10

THE PULPIT: God's Arrangement...the Church's Arrangement - 1 Cor. 12:12-31

In last week’s text, Paul urges the Corinthians to view their spiritual things as gifts from God, for the common good. Sometimes, though, using our gifts for the common good sometimes isn’t enough. Imagine a church that truly wants to use their gifts for the common good. The music team is busy rehearsing for Sunday. The building and grounds team is working hard to repair the building. The care team is baking cookies to take to the visitors who came to worship Sunday. This is a great picture of using our gifts for the common good, but imagine if they were all happening at the same time. The music team can’t hear for all the hammering, and can’t concentrate because of the sweet smell of fresh-baked cookies. The maintenance team can’t do the stuff they need because the power has to stay on for the ovens. The care team has to throw away the last batch of batter because it is filled with sawdust and other debris. Sometimes the pursuit of the common good isn’t enough.

This week’s text picks up where we left off last week with 1 Corinthians 12:12-31. Hear the word of the Lord.

We believe that the church is “the community that confesses Jesus Christ as Lord.” Paul prefers to define the church as “the body of Christ.” This image further demonstrates the point he made last week. All of us have unique gifts to give in the service of the body. Just imagine if the foot would try to succeed from the body because it doesn’t think it has any gifts. Imagine if the eye, because it wishes it were an ear, would decide not to be a part of the body. No one is giftless. Each of us has a gift to contribute.

The body language also emphasizes the idea put forth last week that no gift is inferior. All gifts are important and all gifts are needed. Paul says we should image the head saying to a hand, “you really aren’t that import. Surely not as important as the heart, so you can go ahead and leave. We don’t really need you.” How absurd! Every gift, like every part is needed. No gift is better than any other. We all have a gift necessary for us to be the body Christ has called us to be.

Consider the intricacies of the body. The body truly is an amazing miracle. Consider everything that makes up the body and everything that goes on so the body can function. I’ve lost count of how many “systems” there are in the body. It seems like when I was in high-school biology there were something like nine of them. Now, though, it seems there are more. Consider some of them: the circulatory system (heart, arteries, veins) pumps the blood throughout the body; the digestive system (esophagus, stomach, intestine) breaks food down into usable nutrients; the immune system (skin, membranes, hair) keeps disease out, and fights it when it gets in; the muscular system enables us to move; the nervous system (brain, spinal chord, nerves) control the body and its senses; the respiratory system (nose, trachea, lungs) take in oxygen and expel CO2; the skeletal system (bones, tendons, ligaments) gives us form and protection; the excretory system gets rid of all the stuff we take in and can’t use. Those are just some of the systems and some of the things going on within the body.

Each one has its own task for the good of the body. Imagine if one decided it would just go around doing its task independent of the others. Your heart might explode! Its task is to beat. It starts beating just as fast as it can, and then it explodes because the nervous system was unable to regulate its rate. Or imagine the digestive system taking in just as many nutrients as it can get a hold of: donuts, fast food, lots of desert! We’d all be stay-puffed marshmallow people if we didn’t have the excretory system to get rid of what is unusable. Imagine the muscular system trying to move without the aid of the skeletal system. We’d be blobs of goo oozing around on the floor.

The body cannot exist and fulfill its purpose if its systems just go about their task independent of the others. And so, Paul says, “as it is, God arranged the members in the body.” God has created the body to give us a certain quality of life. For that purpose to be accomplished each part has to do its job, but it must do its job in cooperation with all of the others. It must work together. Every part of the body must not only do its job, but must also depend on every other part to do their jobs. It takes the whole body, and all the parts working together, cooperating and communicating within God’s arranged structure to fulfill its purpose to bring about quality of life. “There may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”

“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. ...Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”

The church is just like the body. First, the Church is one. The church is Christ in the world. Christ is no longer present in the world in his physical body, but he is present in the church, his mystical body. Just as the Spirit came upon Christ at his baptism empowering him to fulfill his mission, so to the Spirit came upon the church at Pentecost empowering it to fulfill his mission. Though we are many, yet we are one. Unified in Christ, and unified in Christ’s mission.

It is a mission revealed in this morning’s gospel reading. It is a mission of preaching good news to the poor. It is a mission of proclaiming release to the captives, and healing to the blind. It is a mission of setting free the oppressed and proclaiming the Lord’s favor. It is a mission of salvation to the world. In Christ, salvation was given to the world. The church still carries out that mission today. It is a mission that we still carry out today. It is a mission that is carried out only when we exist in the unity of Christ, united in his mission.

In that unity, however, like the body, we are made of many systems or parts. We have a church board, or as I like to think of it, the Congregational Leadership Team. We have Sunday School. We have Ladies’ Ministry and LIFT. We have Men’s Ministry. We have Caravan and NYI. We have the choir, and our audio-visual workers. We have VBS. We have Missionary service. While we are unified in Christ for His mission, we have many parts that contribute to our fulfilling of His mission.

The question before us this morning is how we all connect. How do our ministries relate to one another? How and where does each ministry fit within the mission? Two words are going to be key in our understanding of how we all fit. The first is synergy. It simply means, “combined action.” When things are working synergistically, they are working differently, but together to accomplish a specific goal. Take walking for instance. It takes many systems working in synergy to walk from the parsonage down to Roxanne’s for a bowl of soup. Our skeletal system keeps us upright. Our nervous system helps us to see where we are going. Our muscular system is making us bend at various places: hips, knees, ankles, shoulders & elbows just for starters. The increased work means we need more oxygen so the respiratory system kicks in and the circulatory system has to work harder to get the blood flowing. Synergy is all the different parts working together to achieve a goal.

The second word that is key to our fulfilling Christ’s mission is interdependence. It means we need one another, we rely on one another, we trust one another. Just like none of the systems of the body could exist without the others, neither can the church, or any of its parts, be what it was intended without the others. Evangelism and discipleship maximize worship because they bring more worshippers into the church and they make the ones we have better. None of us grow as much as we can if our lives are not focused on Christ in worship, or on carrying out His mission in evangelism. None of us can be the share Christ’s salvation if we don’t experience him in worship or learn about him in discipleship. Interdependence means that the NYI needs the choir and the choir needs ladies' ministry and ladies' ministry needs our hard working maintenance team. We all need one another if we are to carry out the mission Christ has for us.

The Church is the body of Christ existing in unity in Him and for His mission, yet as diverse parts of the whole that work together with synergy and interdependence. This is the image Paul paints of the church, and it could not be a more fitting message for us. One of the big questions that I have struggled with since coming here has been how all the different groups are connected. How do we work together? How do we keep in touch and communicate? How do we know that we are all on the same page, working together for the same things?

Most of you are also aware that we recently did a survey to help us see what our strengths and weaknesses are. Strengths are those areas where we are well equipped to fulfill the mission of Christ. Weaknesses are those areas that keep us from being as effective as we might be in fulfilling His mission. In the near future, we will be all getting together to look at those results - to celebrate our strengths and look at our weaknesses. I would like to share with you today the area that we will be working the hardest to improve over the next year. That area is our structure. The survey results seem to suggest that we have a hard time when it comes to this connectedness, this working together, this synergy and interdependence.

There are certainly many things that play into this, but I want to challenge you all to think and reflect on why this particular area might have emerged as an area of concern. Why would the survey suggest that we feel most inadequate and most in-equipped in our structure and connectedness? I want to also challenge you to think about creative ways we can improve and positive steps we can make together in this area over the next year. Feel free to give me a call or an email, or to even drop by some afternoon to share your ideas. I would cherish the opportunity to listen to your thoughts and to your heart.

Paul’s message this morning is that God desires us to be the best church we can be. God desires us to be the body of Christ. That means we must be unified in Christ and for his mission, but that we must also exist and contribute the gifts we’ve been given, working together synergistically, and interdependently, just as God exists, three in one, to the glory of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

No Updates

Due to the holidays, there will be no updates until 2007. Have a very Blessed Christmas.

Pastor Eric

DAILY SCRIPTURE READINGS

Monday – Luke 1:68-79, Mal 3:1-4
Tuesday – Php 1:3-11, Mal 3:1-4
Wednesday – Luke 3:1-6, Mal 3:1-4
Thursday – Isaiah 12:2-6, Zep 3:14-20
Friday – Luke 3:7-18, Zep 3:14-20
Saturday – Php 4:4-7, Zep 3:14-20

MISSIONARY MOMENT

Please take a few moments each day to pray for the church in the following districts:



Alabama South


Argentina Litoral

THE PULPIT: power, love & purity - Malachi 3:1-4

From what I understand, being from Toronto means being familiar with “The Christmas Carol.” You know, Disckens’ classic that Disney remade as “Mickey’s Christmas Carol?” If you’re not, let me just pause to encourage you to go ahead and mark your 2007 calendar toward the end of November, so you will remember to go and see the local production. It is wonderful story, they do a great job with the musical, and you should all go and enjoy the show. Commercials now aside, “The Christmas Carol” is Charles Dickens’ classic commentary on the state of society in England in his day.

It is the story of one old buzzard, Ebenezer Scrooge, who is a successful businessman. Ebenezer didn’t become wealthy by accident. He was very thrifty. He had one employee, Bob Crachet, his nephew, he barely kept the office warm enough to keep one’s blood from freezing, and he believed in hard work and a lot of it. He is a stickler and never cuts anyone a break. His life is about making money.

We catch up with our characters on Christmas Eve as they are discussing the next day: Christmas Day. Crachet, of course, wants the day off to spend with his family. Scrooge, of course would rather work. He would rather get more money. After all, a day off is a day of lost wages. When Crachet won’t settle for a half-day, Scrooge gives in and agrees that his nephew can have Christmas off. Bob replies with a hearty “Merry Christmas Uncle.” Ebenezer spouts a miserly, “BAH, HUMBUG.”

As Scrooge walks home, everyone one the street greets him, it seems, with a Christmas greeting. He starts out just ignoring them all, but they finally get the best of him and he starts his usual “Humbug” retort to everyone he passes. He just doesn’t understand this day: Christmas. “What’s the appeal?” “Couldn’t we just all go back to work?” “Can’t we just keep making money?” Scrooge had lost sight of the real meaning of Christmas. He had lost sight of the real meaning of LIFE.

The people of Israel, especially the priests, faced a similar dilemma. They too had lost sight. They had lost sight of the real meaning of worship. They too had lost sight of the real meaning of life. It seems unfathomable, but they had. And in their blindness they led the people into a life of self-serving as well.

After loosing everything and living in exile for so long, they were finally brought home. The walls were rebuilt, the temple was rebuilt, their lives were rebuilt. But life was not as it should be. The priests were corrupt, worship was corrupt, life was corrupt. They regularly offered lame or sick animals as sacrifices and keep the best for themselves. They worship in vain. It would be far better to not worship at all. They cause the people to stumble. The people turn their back on God for other people. They question God. They suggest God is absent, or blesses the evil. Yes, Judah lost sight of the real meaning of life.

Life became soiled. It became so stained with their lives of sin, that God raised Malachi to give them warning. And so Malachi prophesied our text this morning:

“‘I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,’ says the Lord Almighty. But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in days gone by, as in former years.”

I wonder what Dickens would have written had he been writing of Christmas in our culture. Dickens seemed quite put off that people missed the message of Christmas. He seemed agitated that Christmas had become just another day instead of the Holy Day it has always been. He seemed to have his feathers ruffled by those who used Christmas for self-serving purposes rather than others-serving purposes. How might he have viewed Christmas in the 21st century valley, instead of 19th century England?

Would he have found a people who genuinely sees Christmas as a time to celebrate that God became one of us? Or do we somehow still miss the point of Christmas? Would he find a Christmas that was a Holy day set aside for our worship of the Christ child? Or would he find that we still use Christmas as just another day? Would he find a people who truly makes room in the inn for the coming Christ? Or would he find that we still manage to use Christmas for our own purposes? These are questions I have been wrestling with lately.

Do I get it? Do I make Christmas Holy? Do I make room for Christ? As I have reflected on Malachi’s stern prophecy, I reflected on my life. I ask myself these questions. I think about how miserable I was going Christmas shopping. I was not feeling well, I had too many things to do, I was mad about not finding the restaurant I’d been looking forward to, I was quite irritated by the idiotic drivers in the parking lots and the marathon it took just to get to the mall entrance. There is nothing like Christmas shopping on a Saturday afternoon at the Robinson Mall to get me in the Christmas spirit!

I think about my schedule: the usual sermons and visits, decorating the house, Christmas parties, Christmas shopping, Christmas baking, planning extra Hanging of the Greens and Christmas Eve service, Choir practice, Christmas parades and float building. I feel like I have more to do now than at any other time in the year. And what is usually the easiest thing to be put on the back burner? Prayer and Scripture - Christ?

I wonder how I will spend Christmas. I’ll be driving to Circleville on the 23rd to celebrate with my Mom’s side of the family and then back that evening. I will be having services on the Christmas Eve in the morning and the evening, but not too late because I want to be sensitive to people who have family they need to see – and because after the service I’ll be hitting the road again to see more family. We’ll spend a couple days with family and then be back. It will be another week as usual and then after worship on the 31st a trip to Cleveland to celebrate with more family. I wonder just how much room I’m making for Christ – and how much I’m giving to meet the expectations of others and myself. Am I making Christmas holy? Or am I taking it in vain so I can do the things I want to do, but am not willing to make time to do any other time? Somehow, when I hear the words of Malachi, I feel like they are spoken to me. I feel like a Levite who has taken what God has given us as holy and made it about me. You don’t have to be a theologian to know what the theological word for this type of twisting and spinning and refocusing of life. Sin. Sin is simply taking focus off Christ and focusing on something else.

Last week’s text was one of hope. Christ is our hope. No matter how much I might mess up. No matter how much I might loose focus, Christ still comes no matter what. This morning’s text tells us Christ’s coming bring about our purity. In the coming of Christ, we are purified. The coming of Christ is like a refiner’s fire. It is like laundry detergent.

As I read, one author shared that not many of us have experienced a refiner’s fire. He talked about it in modern terms as a blast furnace. I thought to myself, “and what exactly can I say about a blast furnace that this church doesn’t already understand?” So I decided to keep reading and keep thinking. A blast furnace isn’t the only image Malachi uses. He also compares the purifying work of Christ to laundry soap. Now that’s an image we don’t look at very often. The blast furnace talks of power and heat and danger, but what about laundry detergent?

Laundry detergent provokes an entirely different image doesn’t it? It has to be gentle. It cannot be too abrasive because the clothes are made of delicate fabric. The clothes we wash are worn against our skin and so it must be gentle. It evokes an image of a loving mother, gently rubbing our soiled laundry with soap and then on a washboard, seeing to it that all is clean.

Mothers are just the best. You know what amazes me about mothers? My mother wanted nothing to do with cleaning fish, or touching worms. She didn’t even want us talking about such filth at the dinner table. Yet I could make no mess that Mom couldn’t clean up. My first job in Kansas City was as a babysitter for a friend’s infant daughter. Part of my job was changing her messy diapers. The wet one’s I didn’t mind, but I had to work hard to keep my lunch down when they were the other kind of dirty. Mother’s aren’t fazed by such nastiness. All I had to do with the diapers was take them off and throw them away. Most of our mothers didn’t have disposables. They used cloth. That means they had to change and clean us, but they also had to wash the diapers. I get nauseous just thinking about it.

How many of us were ever sick growing up? Now, how many of us made it to the trashcan or the toilet every time? Someone had to clean it up! It was probably Mother. Antonina and I still call our mothers when we just can’t get a stain out. They always seem to know just the right trick. There is nothing too dirty for a mother to clean up. Christ came to purify us and make us clean. He came with the power and heat of a blast furnace, and yet with the tenderness, gentleness and love of a mother who cleans up her children’s most vile messes.

Advent is about preparing for what is to come. How, then, do we prepare for the purity Christ desires of us? How, then, do we prepare for the purity Christ brings at Christmas? Malachi tells us there will be a messenger who will prepare the way. Our call to worship this morning was Zechariah’s song. It is the song he sings at the birth of his son John the Baptist. It was John’s purpose “to go on before the Lord to prepare the way for Him (Luke 1:76b).” How did John prepare people fore the coming of Christ? Luke tells us, “He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (3:3).” We prepare for the coming of purity by repentance.

Sin is anything that turns us away from Christ. Repentance is turning back toward Christ. Repentance is returning our life to proper alignment with Christ. It is not just expressing sorrow or regret; it is turning. It is realigning our life to Christ. My grandfather was a navigator in the Air Force. He could navigate by the stars. It always amazes me that people can find their way in the darkness by observing the stars. Repentance is regrouping our life’s wanderings. It is finding that star that points us to Bethlehem. It is charting a course for the manger where we will find the Christ child wrapped in swaddling clothes. If you are like me, and I suspect I am not alone, there are many stars in your sky. Many stars tempt us to go in varying directions. Many things compete with Bethlehem as the destination we are seeking. Advent is the time to look within. Advent is the time to we look above. Advent is the time to find the star that points us to Christ. We turn, we repent, and we focus on Christ who will bring us purity. Who will cleanse us and purifies us from all unrighteousness.

Frederick Gaiser wrote, “Christ came to burn away all our impurities – and it pains us to know that our failures cost him his life. But his fire is the passionate fire of love. And we can warm ourselves in its glow. Yes, Christ came to wash away our sin – and it pains us to know that he had to wash us with his own blood. But in his tender scrubbing we feel the loving hands of a mother’s care. God’s bathtub is the font, where we can relax safely forever. Christ combines all God’s strength and fire with all God’s love and mercy. We need both to combat the dangers of the world and the sins of our own making. In Christ we have both: fire and heat, soap and water. Strength and love. Oh, yes, come, Lord Jesus. Make us clean (“Refiner’s Fire and Laundry Soap: Images of God in Malachi 3:1-4.” Word & World: XIX.1. Winter, 1999.).”

DAILY SCRIPTURE READINGS

Monday – Ps 25:1-10, Jer 33:14-16
Tuesday – 1 Thes 3:9-13, Jer 33:14-16
Wednesday – Luke 21:25-36, Jer 33:14-16
Thursday – Luke 1:68-79, Mal 3:1-4
Friday – Php 1:3-11, Mal 3:1-4
Saturday – Luke 3:1-6, Mal 3:1-4