02.12.2023 - Shaped By Christ - The Body of Christ

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 3:1-9

1 Corinthians 3:1–9 NRSV

1 And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, 3 for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? 4 For when one says, “I belong to Paul,” and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not merely human? 5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 8 The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each. 9 For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building.

The Body of Christ

02.12.2023

Who are you?

God created every one of us with a curious problem. We can see everyone around us, but we cannot see ourselves. We can look at parts of ourselves, and with help from other objects, we can catch images of ourselves, but our eyes can not be turned in such a way that we can look and get a good sense of what we look like. Therefore, based upon looks alone, the person sitting next to you better understands what you look like than you do.

We typically have similar blindness to who we are inside and outside. Most of us are far better at describing other people than we are at describing ourselves. Physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, we rely heavily on the input of others to help us know who we are.

And we want to know who we are.

We need to know who we are.

Studies suggest that we find ourselves somewhere in the middle of the five people we spend the most time with. Sometimes we influence them, and other times they affect us. It is why small groups are so important. It is not a matter of being guilty by association. Whoever gets our time gets to tell us who we are. They are the ones who shape us. That is why parents, teachers, coaches, scout leaders, and other mentors are so important in the lives of young people. It is why who you work with can be as important as who you work for.

Your fellowship can either lead you closer or further away from God. Discipleship happens when you invite God into your fellowship and allow Him to influence your group from the inside. Our passage today gives us a glimpse at how God works in you and me together, building us into something greater than ourselves. God is making us into the Body of Christ, created and empowered to work for Him.

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Building blocks

Our world is a series of building blocks forming layers to create bigger things. From Genesis 1, there was a process of building our world that started with Light and finished with human beings. We often assume that small things are simpler than big things. Sometimes they are, and other times the small things are the most intricate. For example, a simple pile of rocks becomes a brick wall when those stones are aligned in the right relationship with each other. The wall's strength has more to do with the connection between the rocks than their size and strength.

Peter wrote to the churches that we are like “living stones” in the church. In our passage today, Paul wrote to describe some of those connections between those living stones of the church. The church of Corinth was built out of shape, metaphorically speaking. The people understood their relationship, and their alignment was based on the leaders they followed. Some of those leaders were no longer with them. Others had never been in their church at all.

This misalignment was further complicated in that these people sometimes met in houses for worship rather than in a shared worship space, like the Temple in Jerusalem. In a city that may have had as few as 40 Christians, they could not find a way to get along. Rather than work together for the care of each other and the mission to share Jesus with the City, they preferred to do what was right in their own eyes.

What was Paul’s response to this situation? He called them babies. Paul said it more poetically, but the concept, and the shameful nature of the comment, were still there. These Christians took pride in their extravagant worship, top-notch teaching, and some socially influential members. Paul let them know that they were wrong. They were not only acting like babies but still living in the flesh. They were babies, spiritually speaking. There was nothing to be proud of.

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Growth

There is a bit of an underhanded insult in Paul’s comment to the Corinthians, but there is also a powerful kind of poetic grace in it. In one moment, Paul took away their ability to boast about their church, and in the next, he shared the grace-filled solution to their problem. Yes, they were still spiritual babies. What do spiritual babies need? Spiritual milk. They needed the basics of the faith. Rather than telling the church what to do, Paul told them what they needed.

We celebrate Scout Sunday today and are grateful to have them with us in worship. They stand on a legacy of leaders who have been raised over decades. We have a plaque with the names of those who have completed Eagle Scout projects in the back of our sanctuary. Those scouts all started with the basics of scouting, such as learning to tie knots and the Scout Law. You won’t get to Eagle Scout without knowing and practicing the basics.

The solution to misalignment is nurturing growth. So the responsibility for re-aligning the church is upon the shoulders of those who spiritually feed others. When there is division in the church, go back to the basics. And, as our scouts know well, it takes more than just telling people the basics. You have to teach them. You have to put it in words so they can understand and walk through it with them. You can only teach or lead with a healthy relationship with those you are leading and teaching.

Furthermore, you cannot give what you do not have. That responsibility for nurturing others into the right relationship with each other begins right at the top with your pastors and church leaders. If we don’t have the right relationship with each other, that brokenness grows as it flows into the church family. If you are the spiritual parent of your family, that spiritual nurturing responsibility falls to you. Remember, we are shaped by the people we give the most time to.

Every pastor, every leader, every teacher, and every parent is gifted in unique ways, even when we have the same tasks to perform. That makes our mission seemingly impossible for one generation to hand off a ministry to the next and expect the growth to continue. On our own, we could expect churches to last only as long as local businesses: One generation if we are wise and fortunate. But this is not our church. It is not our ministry. It is not our church family. It is God’s.

The house is not owned by bricks that make it up. It is owned by the one who lives there. And you know I’m not talking about this building we are sitting in today. I am talking about us. When two or three of us are gathered together, is Jesus there living among us? When we gather together as a church family, are we fit and hospitable enough to welcome in the Spirit of God?

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Our Work

How many of you plan on going camping this year?

My brother Curt works to help oversee the United Methodist Church camps back in Illinois. He started attending summer camp in middle school every year until he grew enough to lead a cabin of campers. Several years later, he directed the whole camp and then multiple camps. Now he works to raise the next generation of camp leaders. Of course, there is always camp property to deal with every year, but he has worked to tear down, renovate, sell, and rebuild property over his years of leadership there. Curt would tell you plainly that it is the relationships that make or break you in ministry.

The programs can be changed, and the property has to be maintained or replaced. But over the years, the one thing that cannot change is that church camp is where leaders who have a growing relationship with God spend days and weeks with others who want to grow closer to God themselves. If you do not have a growing relationship with God, you will struggle to lead others to be in alignment with God and each other.

You have probably heard about the revival poured out among the students on campus this week. Student and community leaders expressed concerns about how individual leaders could twist or manipulate this spiritual momentum, seizing the gathering crowds. Instead, we saw people from all across the community coming together in worship and prayer, seeking to grow closer to God in a beautiful way. Dr. Brown, the President of Asbury University, shared a short message about unity last Friday evening. He called for a holy unity, the kind prayed for by Jesus in John 17, and reminded us that we would not find biblical unity by our own wisdom, power, or good intentions.

We only find biblical unity when we are willing to move and choose to move toward God. It is only then that we, who may be standing in very different places today, will be able to find ourselves shaped again into God’s field, God’s building - aligned securely with Christ, the Cornerstone. It is only then that we will be a church family that is filled with the Holy Spirit and is led by God Himself.

Brothers and Sisters, your part, your responsibility in helping us move from the faithful service of God yesterday to the faithful service of God today, and heading toward the faithful service of God tomorrow, is to lean in closer to God yourself. We are days away from the season of Lent, and I encourage you to take this season to look at the foundation of your own spiritual life. What will you give up to make room for God to come live in your life? What will you take up to help shape your life to be more hospitable to God’s Spirit? How will you spend your time, and who will you spend it with as you seek to discover who you are in the Body of Christ?

Humanity has been building things for thousands of years. We have created structures and named them “Wonders of the World.” Yet we all recognize that God surpasses those greatest wonders with every sunrise and sunset, the majesty of His mountains, the power of the oceans, and the forests He has created in our world. So what might we look like as a church if we let God shape us?

Sunday school starts in just a moment. I encourage you to pray about finding a group of fellow Christians to gather with as we prepare and enter our season of Lent together. Find a place where fellowship becomes discipleship for you and helps you grow closer to God. You are also invited to join us this evening at 6 pm for our evening worship service.