“God in Search of a
Body”
1 Corinthians
12:12-31
First
Presbyterian
The Reverend
Thomas A. Sweet
October 26,
2008
Stewardship
Dedication Sunday
In
the book of Exodus, we read of Israelites, newly liberated from their bondage in
It
was when the Israelites came to
That
God calls the Israelites to be a kingdom of priests is tantamount to God saying
that God needs a body in the world. God
needs flesh and blood. God needs a
body so that the world can see who God is and about who and what God cares.
Read in its context and intention, no small feat for all of the ways it
routinely is miscast and misrepresented, the Bible
reveals God to us so that all of us who are drawn to God can live not only as a
priesthood of believers, to use a Reformation concept, but as God’s body in
the world.
Suffering
under the tyranny of Egyptian taskmasters, the Israelites’ humanity had been
diminished and degraded. What they
had to learn in the wilderness was how to be more truly and deeply human since,
as a later saint has said, “the glory of
God is a human being fully alive.” The
ten commandments given to the people at Sinai were not intended to be a series
of strict and punishing rules but rather the framework of how a priesthood of
God’s people can live together in freedom and community.
They are a precursor to
So
the first two commandments cautioned the people not to have other gods and not
to make idols or other physical representations of God.
It was commonplace in that day for people to make statues and carvings as
physical representations of the divine beings they believed controlled their
fates and destinies. These images
tried to depict what the people believed about their gods.
But
the God of the Israelites is different. Their
God invited the Israelites to be priests, to show the world who their God is by
the manner of their living. Their
God does not need representations of stone or marble or wood because their God
has people. God is in search of a
body to bear witness in the world and God has invited the Israelites to be that
body. That invitation subsequently
was issued to all people everywhere. It
has been extended to us.
In
our own tradition, we believe that Jesus is the consummate human portrait of God
and thus the early church designated him as Jesus the Christ - the Christ, as
Paul and some of the other biblical writers tell us, being the overarching
spirit or force or energy of God in and through the universe.
“The Christ of God” is how
the Bible sometimes puts it.
What Jesus did was to show us as far as it is humanly possible the truth
of Christ and thus, also, the truth of God.
The
name that
That
is a pretty sobering thought, isn’t it? And
yet, as the psalmist said, “we are
crowned with glory and honor and have been given stewardship of God’s
creation.” Several weeks ago I
suggested a simple mission statement for our congregation: “to be generous.” But
now I like this one, too: “to live in
the world as God would live if God had a body.”
So it does not help, I think, to describe God as, as classical
theology sometimes does, as immutable, omniscient, and omnipotent.
Words like “just,” “compassionate,” “forgiving,”
“merciful,” “generous,” “loving,” “humble,” and
“hospitable,” seem to do far better. For
that is, as the prophet Micah and the parables of Jesus remind us, the way
God’s body is to be in the world.
As
the body of Christ or the body of God in the world, we are called to extend
ourselves in God’s name, to live in the world as God would live.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was in
David
wrote in what we know as the 23rd Psalm:
“God leads me in paths of
righteousness, right-relatedness, for God’s name’s sake, for the sake of
God’s reputation.” As the
body of Christ, we are to live in the world as God would live.
That
is not always easy to do that, but we surely can move toward it.
How? I am moved by an old
Cherokee story in which an old grandfather says to his grandson, “I
have two wolves inside of me. One is
mean and angry and jealous and fearful and stingy and irritable.
The other one is kind and loving and patient and good and generous.
And they are fighting to the death.”
So the grandson shouts excitedly to his grandfather, “Well,
which one wins?” The
grandfather says to the boy, “The one
that I feed.”
There
is an old Jewish story about a man who once stood before God, his heart breaking
from all the pain and injustice in the world.
“Dear God,” the man cried, “look
at all the suffering, all the anguish and duress and distress in the world.
Why do you not send help? To
which God responded, “I did send help.
I sent you.”
One
of the most profound of the Proverbs in the Bible is the one that says, “Some
give freely, yet grow all the richer. Others
withhold what is due, and only suffer want” (Proverbs 11:24).
Tony
Campolo tells the story of an African-American man standing at the front door of
a great big church scratching his head, a pensive look on his face.
Suddenly, Jesus Christ himself appeared beside the man and said to him, What
is troubling you, my friend?” The
man, not realizing that he was talking with the Lord himself, said, “They
told me I can’t get into this church because I am not the right color.”
Jesus said to the man, “Don’t
be troubled by that. I’ve been
trying to get into that church for years, and they won’t let me in, either.”
I
talked with someone this week who told me about an old episode of Star
Trek she saw on television many years ago.
It made me remember an episode, too, that touched me so much I went and
wrote it down and still have it in my file of notes.
In it, Mr. Spock, whose approach to life and crisis is absolute
rationality said to Captain Kirk:
“Captain, unless my calculations are
mistaken, which is highly unlikely, in fourteen minutes and thirty-two seconds
the spaceship Enterprise and all of its occupants will be atomized.”
Kirk
shouts back at him, “Is that all you can
say, Spock? We all are going to die,
and all you can do is tell us the facts without any feelings?”
Spock
says, “I fail to see how emotions in any
way can alter the equation.”
Then
Sybok, Spock’s half-brother, says to him. “Has
it ever occurred to you, Spock, that truth cannot be approached by reason only?
Have you ever considered that you might have to feel your way there with
love?”
A
pastor in
When
the baby was born, there was trouble during the delivery and the child was
rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit.
As the days dragged on, the baby’s condition worsened and she became
more critical. The baby was getting
weaker and weaker.
During
his baby sister’s stay in intensive care, little Michael asked again and again
if he could go in and sing for his sister the song that he had sung to her every
night while she was in her mother’s womb.
The medical personnel would not allow it, but, as the child grew weaker,
Karen protested and insisted that they allow little Michael to go in and sing
his song. The doctors had tried to
prepare Karen and her husband for their baby’s death and finally they decided
it would do no harm to let the little boy sing to his sister.
They wrapped him up in all kinds of sterilized clothing and put a mask
over his face. Then he made his way
over to the bassinet at which he began to sing his favorite song, a song he had
sung to his little sister every night before she was born.
He sang, “You are my sunshine, my
only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray.
You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you, please don’t take my
sunshine away.”
Nobody
knows for sure how or why it happened, but a few days later, that family took
their baby girl home.
Faith,
hope, and love. Not cynicism,
pessimism, and skepticism. Faith,
hope and love. These are of God and
God needs a body to embrace them and to live them, a body to live in the world
as God would live.
Amen.