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"In the one spirit we were all baptized into one body." (1 Corinthians 12: 13) When we are baptized we are adopted by God into a special family that St. Paul likes to call "Christ's body". It is a great way to think of our membership in one organism. He makes a simple but powerfully true statement that we might want to remember when we are thinking about splitting the church again. He reminds us that "If the foot would say, 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, 'Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body." The ear and the foot don't get to decide whether or not they are part of the whole, they simply are. And there is not much that they can do about it. You could, I suppose, cut off your foot or your ear and then they would not be part of the body. But that defeats the point, doesn't it? That ruins the whole and makes the body less than it was. It's still a body, to be sure, but a body that limps along and doesn't hear as well as it might if it still had both ears. Families are much the same way. We are not given a choice as to whose family we will be born into. And if we declare that we are no longer part of a family, does that really make us substantively different than we were before making the declaration? Does it change our parentage or our DNA? If I announce that I'm no longer part of the family that gave me life, will my sisters wake up the next morning and wonder why they never had a brother? Would we recognize each other on the street? When we put it that way it's easy to see how absurd the idea is of splitting a family or a body. But we often think that it is possible to split what God has made whole. Churches are bodies that are much the same as the ones we've already mentioned. In fact, the church is the body that Paul happened to be talking about when he came up with this metaphor. Just as we are given no choice about what family we are born into, in many instances we are not given much of a choice in what tradition we are baptized into or that we are baptized at all. We find out that our parents have raised us as Christians or Jews or Muslims and we are identified with that faith for life. Before we get lost in the possibilities of what other faiths believe about who is in and who is out, let me say that this sermon is primarily about "who is in" and "who is not in" within the confines of Christianity. It's enough for me to keep track of the tenets of this faith. I don't know how all modern Jews, for instance, would describe someone who was born a Jew and then is baptized. I do know that Paul still considered himself a Jew after becoming a follower of Jesus and being baptized. So did the Apostles who were the first followers of Jesus. One could not be unmade as a Jew just because one chose to be baptized in Christ Jesus. Christianity sees things much the same way. It is simply not possible to be unmade as a Christian. Simply not possible. Because we are not the ones who make someone a Christian, God is. God acts during baptism to honor our faith, whether it is 100% trusting that Jesus is Lord or perhaps has a sniggling little doubt and we are coming to the baptism because we know it is "what everybody does" and we would have to explain too many things that we don't even want to think about if we didn't get the baby baptized. It is, after all, not our faith anyway. It's God's. And it's the Church's, because God has chosen to pass it on through the Church. Some of us might be beginning to say, "Wait a minute! I have a choice in all of this, don't I? Perhaps I can't choose my mother or father, but surely I can choose my church. I'm an American and we have freedom of choice." Well, you may choose to attend in this particular community or in that community over there, but it's still the Church catholic. That is, it's still the universal Church and the Body of Christ. And whether we sing the right hymns at the right tempo or not (I think we do a fine job at that, by the way) we will be no less the church. I'm not talking about matters of preference, like the hymns and wonderful organ music we have or the dancing and hand waving that others like. We are all still the part of the same body and we are fine as long as we don't go around claiming God for ourselves and throwing others out of the family. What if I choose not to attend church at all? Am I still a Christian? Well, what if I choose not to attend my family's birthday and holiday get-togethers, am I still part of the family? One may be a Christian, a part of the family, and choose to act in ways that are contrary to the way that the family normally acts. That changes the membership in the body not at all. It does, however, make for the need of God's grace and forgiveness in out lives. It does mean that we might need to be reconciled one to another and to God before we can join the party again and act as though nothing had happened. I want to tell you a story about my own family that points out the utter ridiculousness of trying to pretend that we can undo what God has done and also points to our own very real need for reconciliation. When I was a very young boy one of my grandmother's brothers died and we went to the funeral. My great uncle had been a farmer and lived out in the country, near where my grandparents lived. All of the family attended the Baptist church out in the country and were buried in the cemetery there or in one of the other little towns where family members had settled. My great uncle had done a couple of things that had irritated the community. One was that he didn't like to go to church and apparently didn't attend very often. That he didn't attend probably didn't bother too many people outside the family except for the preacher. Another matter, more serious to the larger community, was that he had an affair with a younger woman. Of greatest importance was how he chose to deal with all of this. He committed suicide. I don't remember all of the details about what was said or not said at the service or where it took place, but I do remember that it was not in the cemetery where other relatives were buried. The thing I remember most clearly was the drive home. My mom was inconsolable. She was crying and talking about the way that people were treating her dead uncle. How could God deny one of His own creatures the love that He had promised to all of us? That was the message that my mom had taken from the preacher; that her uncle would surely spend eternity apart from God and all the rest of the family that would be in God's presence. And to make sure of that judgement, he would not be buried in the church cemetery. What he had done was hurtful. There is no denying that adultery and suicide are horrible choices and that anyone who makes those choices is in need of reconciliation with God. There is no denying that anyone making the choice of adultery is in need of reconciliation; not only with God but also with family members. But it is not possible to suspend or unmake the membership in either the family or the church. It is necessary, and it is possible, to be reconciled; reconciled both with God and family. It is reconciliation that we are called to as a body of Christians. It is easy to see why the church wanted to deny my great uncle a place with the rest of the body. He had broken the rules and broken the trust of the community. And when people do that to us we want them to be kicked out of the community. We want a community of people that we can trust and count on. There is nothing wrong with that when we are talking about the communities that we live in and choose to be associated with. If we choose to associate ourselves with a community in a town, like Colorado Springs, then we might very well choose what rules one must follow to remain part of the community. It allows us to say that people who murder and steal must live apart from us so that we can be safe. It allows us to say that folks who want to raise cows and chickens and pigs must do that in a proper environment, not a crowded neighborhood. But we must remember that the church is not our community of choice, it is still God's community and God makes the choices. And God's choice is that once you have become a member of His family he will not give up on you. Once you are made part of the body you will not be unmade. The body will either be whole with you or less than whole without you. In later years my mom and I discussed her uncle's death. She knew that no one could take away the love that he had given to his family and the love he shared with her. She also knew that God would simply have to be trusted to help make the reconciliation possible that people could not accomplish. But God might be big enough to do what we cannot. All of this is to make the simple point that we have no right to decide who is in and who is out in the Body of Christ. God decides. And God's decision is that we are family, we are members of one body made from one Spirit. We may choose to cut off the foot or the ear from the Body of Christ, and it will not make a more whole Body, but a Body that limps and doesn't hear very well. We need one another. We cannot be whole by trying to deny family members a place at the table. There may be members of our family who don't feel welcome, who are in need of reconciliation or healing, and it is up to us to help them know that they are indeed welcome as part of the family. You may know someone who needs to be part of a spiritual home but has not been told that they already have a home, they just need to show up. Or you may know someone who feels like they have been kicked out of the family. It is up to all of us to keep our family together, with all of the cousins that sing off key and the aunts and uncles that have bad habits. We have been given the incredible gift of being made members of the Body of Christ; a body that needs ears and feet as much as eyes and hands. When we hear talk of splitting that Body we would do well to remember the wisdom of Paul about what is possible and what is not possible for us. We may not remake the body with only the parts we like; we may only heal the ones God has given us. In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. |