There was a golfer named Jones, who was twenty minutes late at the first tee one Sunday morning, and the other three members of the regular foursome were almost ready to tee off without him. “I agreed with my wife,” explained Jones, “that this Sunday I’d toss a coin to see whether I played golf or went to church. And you know, fellows, I had to toss that coin forty-three times before it came up heads.” Whether you came here by coin flip or because you wanted to be here, I’m glad you came. I hope you will be blessed as we gather together as one family today for our Annual Meeting. We are celebrating our 59th year as a part of the Body of Christ known as St. Anne’s Episcopal Church, and our 41st year in this building.. As we look back over our history we see many highs and a few lows, but the testimony of this church is that we have persevered, we have endured, we have continued on as a body of believers.
One of the main reasons this church has been able to continue for these many years is because of God’s grace and because of an enduring sense that we are a community of believers. We are often tempted to place too much emphasis on the priest, thinking that church rises and falls solely on the priest.
I
came across a chain letter a while back. Here is what it said,
“Dear Church member,
This chain letter is meant to bring happiness to you. Unlike other chain letters it does not cost money. Simply send a copy of this letter to six other churches who are tired of their priest. Then bundle up your priest and send him to the church at the bottom of the list. In one week you will receive 16,436 priests, and one of them should be a dandy! Have faith in this letter. One man broke the chain and got his old priest back.” This church has survived not simply because of, but sometimes in spite of the priest.
Each church is made up of many different personality types. Each is made up of many different likes and dislikes. Each person in the church has in mind what they think would make the perfect church. As we all know, no church can ever have all of the elements we would want, nor will it ever be perfect if for no other reason than we are a part of it. Since we are not perfect, we bring our imperfections into the church. The cumulative effect of a church full of imperfect people is that each church will have its downsides.
What makes the church unique is that most church members recognize this fact and are willing to live with the imperfections the church has. The reason they are willing to do this is because of one thing, many of the same people who provide the imperfections in the church are they very people they love and want to be with. This is really an illustration of what St. Paul meant when he talked about the Church as the body of Christ. He made the point that each person in the church is part of the body, not just any part, but an important part of the body. So much so that in 1 Corinthians 12: he says: “The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many they form one body…so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” Today at our Annual Meeting you have nominated a number of people to be honored for their exemplary work as part of the body of Christ here. In reality many more could be honored, but as we honor these few, we in fact are honoring us all, because we are part of the body together with them.
One of the things that we learn from St. Paul’s lesson that we heard read today is that there is an attitude that we should have with one another. That attitude is that we want the best for each other; we want their greatest good. Sometimes this means we defer to their wishes, sometimes we need to be sensitive to the sensitivities of our brothers and sisters.
This is illustrated in our Epistle lesson from 1 Corinthians when Paul talked about some people of his day who were Christians who were greatly offended when a Christian ate meat that had been sacrificed to a pagan idol.
Some Christians had not yet come to the place where Paul was. Paul believed, like Jesus said in Matthew 15, that it is not what goes into a person’s mouth that defiles him, but rather it was what came out of his heart and then out of his mouth. But there were some who had not yet come to that understanding. As a result, St. Paul said that he would rather not eat meat if it meant that a particular brother or sister would have their consciences defiled.
That word defiled meant in those days to make something unclean or unholy in the sight of God. So a person might feel unclean or unholy (defiled) if they ate meat sacrificed to idols. Some of you have seen the show Fear Factor and know that on that show they require contestants to eat disgusting things. I can’t imagine eating the things they eat, it turns my stomach. That was the same feeling that some had if they knew they were eating meat sacrificed to idols.
Paul was saying that even though it was not a problem for him to eat that meat, he would refrain from eating it if it was going to cause his brother or sister to be offended. He was looking out for the good of the whole body rather than simply taking advantage of his own freedom.
The Old Testament people were very much aware of defilements, too much aware. Old Testament law mentions many things that defiled, and what to do about them – not at all repeated in the New Testament, which ought to tell us something. Many foods defiled (Lev.11). Giving birth defiled (Lev. 12). Some diseases made people unclean (Lev.13). Women’s menstrual periods defiled (Lev.15). Immorality, idols, touching dead bodies – hundreds of things defiled. Jesus found the Pharisees performing four hundred ablutions a day just to wash away defilements. The word “kosher” comes from those days of careful washings and preparations designed to avoid defilement. Simon the Pharisee was convinced Jesus was no prophet or he would have prohibited that woman of ill repute from defiling him by touching his feet in Luke 7.
Jesus countered this by letting his disciples eat with unwashed hands, and by teaching them directly that it was “not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.”
Once for all Jesus did away with exterior fears of defilement and consequent rituals to cleanse. No Christian need fear defilement from outside things. There are many things that Christians do and are free to do, but some do not yet live into that freedom. I had some Baptist friends one time that used to live by the motto: “We don’t drink, cuss, smoke, or chew, or go out with girls that do.” As an Episcopalian I grew up in an atmosphere where those things were perfectly acceptable in moderation. Not that they were necessarily good for you, just acceptable if one felt they wanted to do that.
St. Paul is saying, however, that if we are around Christians that we know are offended by such things, the honorable thing to do is to refrain from those things in their presence. We do it so that their consciences will not be defiled. We are sensitive to the sensitivities of others because as St. Paul said, “they are a brother or sister for whom Christ died.”
Going back to Jesus’ teaching about defilements, we notice that Jesus maintained the gravity of inner defilements; “out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders. These are the things which defile the man.” Not what touches us from outside but what we feel inside and do outside, immorally or idolatrously, is what defiles.
While the Hebrew mentality of Old Testament days was nearly fanatical about avoiding defilement, in our day there is virtually no awareness of it. St. Paul reminds us in 1 Cor. 7:1: “Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.”
There are two aspects to this idea of defilement that I want to focus on.
First, you and I must take responsibility to realize that when we sin we are defiled, made unclean, unholy. Thankfully Jesus Christ is ready to cleanse us and forgive us as we confess our sins. Secondly, what we don’t often realize is that when we sin, especially when we are with our brothers and sisters in Christ, our sin has consequences which many times affect our fellow church members. When, for example, we gossip about another, our sin causes others to think in a negative way toward the person about whom we have gossiped. Their reputation could be ruined, which might please us if truth be told, but would not necessarily be helpful for the body of Christ.
If we don’t take into account the feelings of others then our selfishness can cause us to act in harmful ways toward them and ultimately that has an effect upon the whole church. This can be seen in our lackadaisical attitude toward the commitments we make to one another. It sometimes appears that the promises we make to our brothers and sisters in Christ aren’t nearly as important as the ones that we make out in our workplace or in the secular world. While we wouldn’t think about not doing a job required of us at our place of employment, we sometimes don’t think twice about not doing a job for the Lord and for his church that we have agreed to do. This has a ripple affect down through the church ranks.
The things we do can defile not only ourselves, but also those around us. Author John Sanford, speaking about this area of defilement said, “Every thought or action each of us does adds to or lightens the burden of defilement which sits upon us all. This means every church service and every prayer meeting is an act of spiritual warfare, lifting some of the defilement of our age off us all. But it also means that there is no private sin, no matter how secret. Every sin adds to the epidemic of sin which now afflicts the church and all mankind.” There is a benefit to coming each week to worship. That benefit is the cleansing we received from all of the filth that comes upon us from the TV, the computer, and the secular world around us.
Not long after the I.Q. test was developed, several studies were conducted to find out how different groups of people scored on the test as groups. The test was administered to men and women, young and old, rich and poor, and many ethnic groups as well. It was in this context that the I.Q. test was given to a group of Hopi Indians.
When the Hopi received the test, they immediately started to ask each other questions and to compare their answers. The instructor saw this happening, and quickly intervened, telling them that they each had to take the test alone. “You are not permitted to help each other or to share your answers among yourselves,” he told them.
When the Hopi heard this, they were outraged and refused to take the test, saying, “It is not important that I am smarter than my brother, or that my brother is smarter than me. It is only important what we can do together.”
Unfortunately, we live in a world that puts a big emphasis on what we do alone. As a result, we suffer from all sorts of maladies: low self-esteem, competitiveness, jealousy, greed, anger, and hostility to name a few.
But God created us to live in community with each other – to work together, to share our resources with each other, to help each other out. The principle is love, not competitiveness and greed. In the body of Christ, no one is greater or more important than anyone else. Christianity is not a religion of Lone Rangers. We really do need each other.
I have noticed over this last year and two months that this congregation has been working more and more as a team, as a body. Many have the vision that we, working together as a body, are working toward the same purpose, to bring people to Christ, to bring people closer to Christ, and to work together to help this church to grow as God designed it to grow.
Part of growth involves changes and new approaches. It sometimes means doing new things to expand our way of doing ministry and our way of reaching out to those in need of Christ. These changes can sometimes challenge our comfort zones. We may have to see with new eyes what God can accomplish through us and through new ways of doing ministry.
So many members of this congregation have caught the vision of what we can become as a church. They have begun to look for exciting ways to generate a new enthusiasm for St. Anne’s and for our Lord.
Let me encourage you to keep up the good work, to be aware or your own life and how your words and actions may affect the rest of the body for good or ill. When Cheryl Prewitt was four years old, she hung around her father’s small country grocery store. Almost daily, the milkman would come into the store and greet her with the words, “How’s my little Miss America?” At first she giggled, but eventually she became comfortable with it... and even liked it a little. Soon the milkman’s greeting became a childhood fantasy…then a teenage dream. Finally, it became a goal… and in 1980, she stood on a stage in Atlantic City and was crowned…Miss America. You may not realize that your words have power to influence people in a positive or negative way. If we say encouraging things to other people, they will be more likely to live up to those words of encouragement. If we do the opposite, then we can imagine what the results might be. Your encouragement of others, your support of others may be instrumental in them achieving great things for God and for this church. As we keep the Lord Jesus in the forefront of all that we do, we will remind ourselves to love others as Jesus would love them, and to encourage them in ways that will cause them to become more like Him. Jesus is indeed the reason why we exist as a church. It is only as we keep Him in the center of all we do that this church can ultimately accomplish His purposes.
You are the body of Christ, each one of you are important parts of that body.
I want to conclude with a quotation from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. I am reading from the Living Bible paraphrase. It says, quoting from chapter 4 verses 15-16, “Instead, we will lovingly follow the truth at all times – speaking truly, dealing truly, living truly – and so become more and more in every way like Christ who is the Head of his body, the church. Under his direction the whole body is fitted together perfectly, and each part in its own special way helps the other parts, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.”
You and I are the body of Christ. May he help us to live fully into what it means to be a community of believers called the Church.